by Jeff Lindsay
Jackie looked at her. “It’s kind of like acting,” she said. “I mean, like, when you’re doing Shakespeare? He doesn’t tell you anything in the script, like how you should react, or how you should say things. So you look at what he has you do, what he has you say, and you work backward from that.” She turned and gave me a quick smile. “Like Dexter said.”
The warmth I’d been feeling in my face suddenly slid down into my chest. Somebody understood me. Jackie understood what I had done. It was so wildly unlikely that this goddess of the silver screen should understand anything, let alone something like me, that I just stood and looked at her and felt a small and grateful smile creep up onto my lips.
But of course, Robert could not allow me to feel any real happiness. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “This isn’t fucking Shakespeare, sweetheart. This isn’t your goddamn thee-ate-ter. This is the real world. This is a fucking wacko, psycho, out-of-his-skull asshole who likes to bite your tits off, and playing Neighborhood Playhouse acting games in your head isn’t going to catch him.”
“Neither is throwing up every time you see a little blood, Bob,” Jackie said sweetly.
Robert opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. But Deborah spoke before he could get out his no-doubt-stinging reply.
“All right, fine,” Debs said. “I’m glad you see it, Jackie. I don’t see it, but what the fuck; that’s why I put up with Dexter.”
“What about my stunning competence?” I said. “And my understated wit? And-”
“What I still don’t see,” Deborah said, riding over the rest of my modest list of good qualities, “is how it connects to where you started. About the eyes. I mean,” she said, holding up a hand to stop me from saying something I wasn’t going to say, “all right, he rips out an eye, he fucks the eye socket, and he kills her.”
“And he keeps the eyeball,” I said.
“You don’t know that,” Robert blurted out.
“I think I do,” I said.
“Most of these guys keep souvenirs,” Deborah said, and I enjoyed a rare moment of having a sister who backed me up now and then. “That’s cold fact, right out of the book.”
“So we’re supposed to look for a guy carrying around a bunch of eyeballs?” Robert said, making a face of great disbelief and distaste. “Jesus fuck.”
Jackie snorted. “Good idea, Bob,” she said. “Let’s just start frisking people, and when we find somebody with a baggie full of eyeballs, he’s our guy.”
“I’m not the one who brought it up,” Robert said, and he was going to say more, but Deborah stopped him.
“Shut the fuck up, both of you,” she said, and they both did. She looked at me. “What are the odds he’s done something like this before?” she asked me.
I thought about it. “Pretty good,” I said. “Maybe not a lot, but almost certainly once or twice before.”
Jackie frowned and cocked her head. “How do you get that?” she said.
“The first time couldn’t be this, uh … this complete,” I said. “Just killing for the first time would be too distracting, too powerful. He would rush through it, and then panic and run, quickly. But then he doesn’t get caught; he starts thinking about what he should have done.…” I nodded at her, nearly overwhelmed with the idea that she understood. “You know.”
“Yeah,” she said. “And so he thinks, ‘That was too fast; I didn’t get caught-next time I’ll try this.…’ ” Her eyes got far away again as she saw it. It was a real pleasure to watch her-a pleasure that was quickly shattered, of course, by Deborah.
“All right,” my sister said. “Let’s put this out on the wire, see if there’s anything like it out there.”
“What good does that do?” Robert said. “I mean, even if he did it before, nobody caught him.”
“A truly keen grasp of the obvious,” Jackie said.
“It beats the hell out of psychic detective work,” Robert sneered back.
Deborah looked at me and shook her head wearily. “Get him out of here,” she said.
SEVEN
I spent the rest of the morning showing Robert how to find latent blood with Bluestar. It isn’t very hard; you spray it on something and whatever traces of blood there might be glow at you, no matter how much it has been scrubbed. Good stuff, and it didn’t degrade the DNA, which was becoming more important every day. Robert didn’t seem to mind blood in the minute amounts we were working with, and the hours passed quickly enough with no more than minor irritation when Robert’s questions got too persistent. But at least he wasn’t being aggressively obnoxious. When Jackie wasn’t around, he wasn’t nearly as annoying, and as the clock approached noon it occurred to me that if I could put up with him a little longer, he would probably pay for lunch again.
So I endured him patiently, working with him as he happily used up almost an entire bottle of Bluestar, and I was just about to drop a casual hint to him that lunch might be a good idea when my phone began to chirp at me.
“Morgan,” I said into the phone.
“Get up here,” Deborah said. “We got a hit.”
“What?” I said, very surprised. “You mean you got a reply from the wire?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Two of ’em.”
“That isn’t possible,” I said. And it wasn’t. It was much too soon for anyone to respond to the query she had sent out. It should have taken days, even weeks for some cop somewhere in the country to get around to reading it, checking his files, finding a match, and then responding. Most cops have a life, and a caseload that is already overwhelming, and so although professional cooperation with a brother officer is a great idea, it’s never quite as important as finishing a report before the captain chews your ass, with a little time left over to make it to your kid’s soccer game.
But Deborah was claiming she’d had not one but two replies, and before I could question her any more she said, “Now,” and she hung up.
Deborah was alone when Robert and I got back to her desk. She was frowning at her computer screen, and she looked up and tapped it to show me her e-mail when we walked in. “Look at this,” she said. “Two of ’em, in two different cities, and it’s absolutely our guy, no question.” She flipped her finger at the screen. “Body found in a Dumpster, right nipple missing, same kind of marks on it-”
“What about the eyes?” I said.
She nodded. “The first one, over a year ago in New York, both eyes ripped out; one found near the body, the other never found. The second one, um …” She looked down at the paper, nodded. “Yeah. Vegas. Like, four months ago.” She looked up and smiled triumphantly. “One eye missing, semen traces on the face. It’s him, Dex. It’s gotta be.”
I nodded. It probably was him. But knowing that didn’t catch him, and it left a crucial question, maybe the most important of all. “New York, Vegas, and now Miami,” I said. “Why?”
“He’s harder to catch if he moves around?” Robert offered.
“Most serial killers don’t even think about getting caught,” Deborah said. “They stay in one place, even in one neighborhood.”
Robert looked at me. “Really?” he said.
I nodded. “Yup, pretty much,” I said. “So if this one doesn’t, it’s for an important reason.”
“Okay. So why?” Robert said.
“He could be chasing something-or someone-specific,” I said. “Or …” A very small idea popped into my head. “Those are all cities that have a lot of conventions,” I said.
“Right,” Deborah said. “We can cross-check the lists, see if anything matches.”
“What are you saying?” Robert said. “He could be going to all these conventions, like, he’s a Shriner or something?”
Deborah shook her head wearily, and I took pity on her and came to the rescue. “Shriner sounds plausible,” I told Robert patiently. “He could make his getaway on one of those little tricycles they ride in parades.”
“The case files are coming by e-mail,” Debora
h said. “But I got detectives in two different cities wanting to fly down here and shoot somebody.”
“Tell them to stay home,” I said. “We have enough of our own shooters in Miami.” I looked around the room, and it felt a little bit empty. “Where’s Jackie?”
Debs waved a hand. “She had an interview,” she said. “Matthews told her she could use the conference room.”
Before I could arrange my face to show that I was impressed by Matthews letting anyone use his conference room, Robert blurted out, “Interview? With who?”
It might have been my imagination, but it seemed to me that his face lost a little bit of color, and he definitely looked unhappy.
“She didn’t say who,” Deborah said. “One of the magazines, I think.”
“Magazine,” Robert said. “Like a local one?” he added hopefully.
“The captain would never let her use the conference room for a local magazine,” Debs told him, and she said it with such a complete lack of expression that I realized she had picked up on Robert’s apprehension and was playing him a little.
“Shit,” he said. “They should have-She really didn’t say which one? I’ll be right back,” he said, heading for the door. “Gotta call my agent.”
Debs and I watched him go, and I said, “You have a very nice wicked streak, sis.”
She nodded, stone-faced. “It passes the time,” she said. She turned to her computer, and after scrabbling at the keyboard for a moment, she said, “Case files are here.” She frowned and hit a few more keys, mumbling, “Goddamn it” under her breath; my sister had many sterling qualities, but computer competence was not one of them. Even so, after a moment her printer began to whir, and she pushed back from the computer with a look of satisfaction.
“New York got here first,” she said.
“Naturally,” I said, and I leaned forward to look at the pages as the printer spit them out. The first few pages came out quickly; they were standard typed cop report, and Deborah snatched them up and began to read eagerly. Page three took a long time to print-a photograph, probably of the victim as she had been found-and I waited impatiently as it came out one line at a time. It finally sputtered all the way out and I grabbed it eagerly.
Nowadays, digital technology has made police photography much more colorful and detailed than in days of yore. My adoptive father, Harry, had been forced to look at grainy black-and-white pictures of dead bodies. It can’t have been nearly as much fun. Because of the high-resolution color cameras we use now, I could see the wonderful rainbow of pigments left by the various punches, bites, and slashes on the body, ranging from bright pink down through the spectrum to deep purple. In fact, the image was clear enough that I could make out the mark of individual teeth in one of the bites, and I made a mental note to tell Deborah to check dental records for a match.
I studied the picture carefully, looking for any hints that might tell me something new. The similarities were striking. This victim, like ours, was a young woman who had almost certainly been attractive before the series of unfortunate events that had led to this picture. She had a very nice, trim figure, and shoulder-length hair of the same golden color our local victim had. I worked my way down the body, noticing that the knife wounds were in the same places, and I was so engrossed that it was several moments before I became aware of a soft floral aroma nearby, and realized that somebody was standing behind me. I glanced up quickly, startled, to see that Jackie had come silently back into the room and was standing very close to me, peering around my shoulder at the photograph. Her hair was down now, hanging around her face in a way that was disturbingly like the victim’s. “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t hear you.”
“I was a Girl Scout,” she said. “Merit badge in woodcraft.” She didn’t move away, and for a very long moment I forgot about the photo in my hand and just inhaled the subtle perfume she was wearing. Jackie finally reached a finger around me and tapped the picture. “This is different,” she said. “I mean, it’s not the one we’ve been working on.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“What is it?” she said, sliding her finger down the image of the body.
“We got an answer to the query Deborah sent out,” I said.
“Really,” Jackie said. “I thought it was supposed to take a while?”
“It always does,” I said. “Unless it’s a really high-profile case.”
“What would make it high-profile?” she said.
“A lot of things,” I said. “She might be somebody’s daughter.”
“Almost certainly,” Jackie murmured.
“Or it could just be because she’s young, pretty, not a hooker.”
Jackie looked up and raised one eyebrow at me. “And white?”
I nodded. “Sure. But nobody ever admits that. How did you know?”
She looked back at the picture. “I did an after-school special about that,” she said. “An African American girl goes missing, and the family can’t get the cops to do anything.”
“I’m sure they did something,” I said. “Just not as much.”
“Where did this come from?” she asked.
“New York,” I told her, and I realized that this was a wonderful opportunity to further her forensic education. And to be truthful, I didn’t want her to move away, either. So I added, “How many things do you see that are different?”
She glanced up at me and gave me a quizzical half smile. “What, like one of those puzzles for kids? How many things are not the same?”
“This is the homicide version,” I said. “For grown-ups.”
“All right,” she said, and she began to study the picture in earnest. She bent her head forward so that her hair brushed against my bare arm. She pulled it back and tucked it behind her ear, revealing her neck, and I could see the pulse fluttering in her carotid artery.
“Vegas,” Deborah said. She said it softly, under her breath, but I still jumped; I’d forgotten there was someone else in the room. Debs gave the keyboard a few more irritated pokes and the second file began to print. Once again the first few pages were the report, and they whirred out quickly. When the photograph finally slid out I stepped around Jackie and grabbed it, and it was just like the other two: a young woman with a good, athletic figure and shoulder-length golden hair. There could no longer be any question about the pattern; now it was a matter of trying to figure out why this specific type was necessary.
“I found something,” Jackie said, pointing at the picture. I looked at where her finger rested on the victim’s face. There was nothing there but smooth skin.
“What?” I said.
“Well,” Jackie said, “the Miami victim has a slash mark here. Lemme see Vegas.” She held out her hand, and I gave her the second picture, leaning in to look with her. “Yeah, see? This one has it, too. Just one quick slash, right across the face.” She looked up at me, her violet eyes bright. “What does that mean?”
“Anger,” I said.
“About what?” she said. “Because right there on the face is like-”
But before she could say anything more, Robert came bustling back into the room.
“I’m going to have to wrap up here early,” he said happily. “I got Screen Time magazine in ninety minutes.” He waited for somebody to congratulate him, but nobody did, so he nodded at the papers Deborah held, frowned, and said, “Is there anything in the report? You think it’s our guy?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Deborah said. “It’s pretty much the same handwriting.” And maybe because I had already complimented her on her wicked streak, she added, “Take a look at the pictures; see for yourself.”
Jackie looked up at him expectantly and held out the pictures. Robert stared at her, and then his jaw muscles tightened and he leaned forward and took them. He swallowed, visibly steeled himself, and began to look them over. “Jesus,” he said. “Oh, my God.” He handed the pictures back to Jackie. “Sure looks like the same guy. I mean, there couldn’t be two guys doing like
that, right?”
“Probably not,” Deborah said.
“So, what do we do with this stuff?” Robert said.
“We compare all three,” I said.
“Right,” Robert said, nodding. “What are we looking for?”
“We don’t know until we see it,” I said. “But he’s done this three times, and every time the odds increase that he made a mistake, left some kind of clue.”
“Okay,” Robert said. He raised his eyebrows and added, “Hey, I did this feature a few years back? I played an alcoholic detective, and there’s a serial killer killing young girls. And this guy, my character, he’s divorced? But he has a daughter, and it turns out the killer is stalking her, so I have to go sober and catch the killer before my daughter is killed.” He shrugged. “Low-budget thing, Israeli money. But very authentic, and it got great reviews.” Deborah cleared her throat and Robert flashed her a quick smile. “Right. Sorry. Anyway,” he said, “he looks at when the serial killer strikes, you know. He sets up a time line, and it turns out he kills somebody every six weeks? So I set up a trap for the guy at the right time, and that’s how I catch him.” He looked at Deborah, and when she didn’t say anything, he looked at me. “So I thought, maybe it turns out to be nothing, but should we do that with this one?”
“Why?” Jackie said. “We don’t even know what city he’ll do it in next time. So how does it help to know when?”
“We could just look,” Robert said stubbornly. He raised an eyebrow at me and said, with a kind of boyish eagerness, “Whaddaya say, Dexter?”
I couldn’t think of any way that knowing the interval between kills could possibly tell Robert anything useful. On the other hand, Robert happy and busy was a lot easier to take than Robert sulking. “All right,” I said. “It can’t actually hurt anything.”
Deborah shrugged and held out the two reports. “Knock yourself out,” she told me.
I took the reports from Debs, and Robert came over and stood beside me, forcing Jackie to step away. She moved to Deborah’s desk and leaned one haunch on the corner, while Robert bent over the pages I was holding. He didn’t smell nearly as good as Jackie.