interviewing.'
I'd read the revised manual about a hundred times, mostly in drop-jaw disbelief at the autonomy supposedly granted the PSIT. In cases judged to be under the unit's purview, Harry and I were to be the ones coordinating the efforts.
'Excuse me, Captain,' I said, 'but this scene, combined with the Nelson murder, displays evidence of a disordered mind, pyschopathologically or socio pathologically that means '
Squill jabbed a manicured digit toward the door. 'Door,' he elucidated.
'Dammit, sir, hear me out. The evidence indicates '
'Swearing at a superior officer? That's it. I'm done talking, Detective.'
'Then how about listening, Captain? We have two men beheaded, and we have '
'You, Officer,' Squill barked to a young patrolman by the back door.
'Yes, you. Wake up. Get over here and escort Mr. Ryder from the house, now.'
' clear evidence of a disordered mind…'
Burlew's hand tightened around my bicep like a vise and I yanked it free. 'Off me, Burl. Shouldn't you be washing the captain's socks or something?'
Burlew wheeled to me and spat a gray plug of newsprint on the floor.
'Anytime,' he dared, a foul-breathed Gibraltar with clenched fists, cannonball biceps bulging beneath his jacket. 'Got the balls to try it?'
I shifted my balance low in my hips and felt the buzz of energy just below my navel. I could smell heat coming off Burlew. His penny-sized eyes blazed with anger, but behind it I sensed fear.
'Sergeant,' Squill commanded. 'Get over here. We have work to do.'
Squill gave Burlew a come-hither twitch.
I spoke low. 'Captain needs a foot rub, Burl. Best get on it.'
Burlew tried to set me on fire with his glare, then tongued his lips and turned toward the studio, a heavy shoulder nudging me as he passed.
'Your time's coming, asshole,' he whispered.
The uniform was at my side. 'I'm sorry, Detective Ryder,' he said,
'but could you please step outside, sir? Please.'
Shaking with anger, I went to the porch and heard Harry's whistle. He walked up from the shadows beside the house.
'Welcome to the B team, Carson. We B out here while Squill's in there.
He showed up while you were with the fiancee and it was like the Marines landing.'
'Explain this to me, Harry. Am I missing something?'
Harry pointed to a big command SUV pulling onto the front lawn, engine revving needlessly, tires breaking traction and spitting grass. Look at me, the machine seemed to say as it lurched to a stop. The passenger door opened. After a five-second pause to let camera lights frame the scene, Deputy Chief Plackett emerged as if born of the dark vehicle. He straightened his tie, showed the newsies his palm, and no-commented his way to the house. Bile roiled in my stomach I got the message: Squill and Plackett were doing the brass-hat dance, Squill performing for Plackett, Plackett for the cameras and public. While inside the house a dead and mutilated human body functioned as a prop in an act of ego theater.
'Excuse me, Detective Ryder?'
I turned to the uniform Squill had walk me from the house, a young blond guy looking like he'd skipped directly from the Cub Scouts to the MPD.
'I'm sorry about the action in there, sir. The captain ordered me and I '
'Did what you had to do. Relax.'
'It's bullshit if you ask me, Detective. It seems if anyone should be in there, it should be you. This crazy stuff… wasn't it you solved that Adrian case by yourself? I mean, didn't you?'
His words were innocent, but they wrapped dread around me. From the corner of my eye I saw Harry's head angle my way, watching my response.
'Not really,' I told the patrol officer, trying to talk through the sand in my throat. 'I just got lucky that other time. And I had a lot of help.'
'Carson, you neeeeed me again…'
I didn't tell him where the help had come from. Or how just thinking of going back for more made my knees weak and my spine cold. I looked at Harry. He was studying the sky like it was a movie screen.
I drove home with the windows down, the AC blasting, and a knot in my gut the windstorm in the car couldn't blow away. Created in the wake of the Adrian killings, the PSIT was the rarest of all public-relations contrivances: one that accidentally or not served a purpose. But, like so many blue-ribbon-panel creations over the years, the PSIT seemed destined for an unmourned death. Quietly excised from existence in the next iteration of the procedures manual, its transitory purpose would be served, its vaporous delusions no longer required. Until the next Joel Adrian. Or maybe whatever the hell was out there now.
When I arrived home, drained and angry, the light on my phone signaled a message. I pressed the Play button.
'Hello, Carson? Are you there? It's Vangie Prowse. Pick up, please.
I want to talk to you about Jeremy. We have some things to discuss.
Carson?'
The message beeped to an end. I pressed Erase and fell into bed.
CHAPTER 8
'Is Piss-it coordinating this case or not,' I asked Lieutenant Tom Mason when he arrived at 7:30 the next morning. 'We've got two headless corpses. Are we waiting for the killer's shrink to call and say, 'Yes, Cutter's wacko, yours truly, Dr. Igor Hassenpfeffer'?'
I sat heavily on my desk, upending a mug of pencils.
'Hassenpfeffer? Is that a real name?' Tom asked, bending to retrieve pencils from the floor. Tom's head of the Crimes Against Persons unit and our main line of defense against the brass. He's a rail-thin fifty, has a face like a suicidal bloodhound, and is utterly without guile. I'd been stewing about last night's confrontation when Tom walked up. Harry, just in and peeling off his chartreuse suit coat, was right behind.
'Listen to this,' I said, lifting the revised procedures manual from my desk and declaiming the PSIT section with the zeal of a jailhouse lawyer.
Tom nodded. 'Read that this morning myself.'
'Is it pud-pulling, or is it for real?'
Harry sat down with a cup of coffee and gave me his indulgent look. Tom said, 'Harry, you remember that rotten oP scow our river-patrol boys used to have? That itty-bitty boat?' It took Tom most of a minute to say the sentence. He'd come up on a watermelon farm near the Mississippi border, in the deep-back country, where folks talked about as fast as melons grew; if Tom talked any slower he'd talk backward.
Harry nodded. 'The leaky tub with the iffy bilge pump.'
Tom put his foot on a chair and crossed his arms over his knee.
'Carson, back around '99 we got us a brand-new boat donated by Mabry's Marine. Twenty-four foot. Hundred-fifty-horse motor. Stable as a granite Cadillac. Even had life jackets.'
I sat tight and waited it out. Tom couldn't bless-you a sneeze in under five minutes.
'Comes the day to dedicate that boat, Carson, y'know, christen it. A big ol' to-do. Told the politicos, called the newsies. Except nobody's told the chaplain. The band played, the politicians yapped.
The people stood and stared. But no christening.'
My attention started to drift. Harry nudged my arm, pointed at Tom, Listen up.
'The very next night some dope-boater comes hauling weed through the fog and slams a log north of the causeway. Rain. Heavy chop.
Waterspouts in the bay. But we still had to fish bales from the water before the tide sucked them away. You
