Our food arrived. Rose slammed the plates down in front of us as though she had been condemned by a corrupt judge to serve breakfast to baby killers. I gave her a gigantic smile and she trudged away, muttering to herself.
I took a bite and turned my thoughts to Deborah's problem. I had to try to think of it that way, Deborah's problem. Not “those fascinating murders.” Not “that amazingly attractive MO,” or “the thing so similar to what I would love to do someday.” I had to stay uninvolved, but this was pulling at me so very hard. Even last night's dream, with its cold air. Pure coincidence, of course, but unsettling anyway.
This killer had touched the heart of what my killing was about. In the way he worked, of course, and not in his selection of victims. He had to be stopped, certainly, no question. Those poor hookers.
Still . . . The need for cold . . . So very interesting to explore sometime. Find a nice dark, narrow place
. . .
Narrow? Where had that come from?
My dream, naturally. But that was just saying that my unconscious wanted me to think about it, wasn't it? And narrow felt right somehow. Cold and narrow-“Refrigerated truck,” I said.
I opened my eyes. Deborah struggled mightily with a mouthful of eggs before she could speak.
“What?”
“Oh, just a guess. Not a real insight, I'm afraid. But wouldn't it make sense?”
“Wouldn't what make sense?” she asked.
I looked down at my plate and frowned, trying to picture how this would work. “He wants a cold environment. To slow the blood flow, and because it's, uh—cleaner.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so. And it has to be a narrow space—”
“Why? Where the hell did that come from, narrow?”
I chose not to hear that question. “So a refrigerated truck would fit those conditions, and it's mobile, which makes it much easier to dump the garbage afterward.”
Deborah took a bite of bagel and thought for a moment while she chewed. “So,” she said at last, and swallowed. “The killer might have access to one of these trucks? Or own one?”
“Mmm, maybe. Except the kill last night was the first that showed signs of cold.”
Deborah frowned. “So he went out and bought a truck?”
“Probably not. This is still experimental. It was probably an impulse to try cold.”
She nodded. “And we would never get lucky enough that he drives one for a living or something, right?”
I gave her my happy shark smile. “Ah, Deb. How quick you are this morning. No, I'm afraid our friend is much too smart to connect himself that way.”
Deborah sipped her coffee, put the cup down, and leaned back. “So we're looking for a stolen refrigerator truck,” she said at last.
“I'm afraid so,” I said. “But how many of those can there be in the last forty-eight hours?”
“In Miami?” She snorted. “Somebody steals one, word gets out that it's worth stealing, and suddenly every goddamn two-bit original gangsta, marielito, crackhead, and junior wise guy has to steal one, just to keep up.”
“Let's hope word isn't out yet,” I said.
Deborah swallowed the last of her bagel. “I'll check,” she said. And then she reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “I really appreciate this,” she said. She gave me a couple of seconds of a shy, hesitant smile. “But I worry about how you come up with this stuff, Dex. I just . . .” She looked down at the table and squeezed my hand again.
I squeezed back. “Leave the worrying to me,” I said. “You just find that truck.”
CHAPTER 8
IN THEORY, METRO'S SEVENTY-TWO-HOUR MEETING gives everyone enough time to get somewhere with a case, but is soon enough that the leads are still warm. And so Monday morning, in a conference room on the second floor, the crack crime-fighting team led by the indomitable Detective LaGuerta assembled once again for the seventy-two-hour. I assembled with them. I got some looks, and a few good-hearted remarks from the cops who knew me. Just simple, cheerful wit, like, “Hey, blood boy, where's your squeegee?” Salt of the earth, these people, and soon my Deborah would be one of them. I felt proud and humble to be in the same room.
Unfortunately, these feelings were not shared by all present. “The fuck you doing here?” grunted Sergeant Doakes. He was a very large black man with an injured air of permanent hostility. He had a cold ferocity to him that would certainly come in handy for somebody with my hobby. It was a shame we couldn't be friends. But for some reason he hated all lab techs, and for some additional reason that had always meant especially Dexter. He also held the Metro Dade record for the bench press. So he rated my political smile.
“I just dropped in to listen, Sergeant,” I told him.
“Got no fucking call to be here,” he said. “The fuck outta here.”
“He can stay, Sergeant,” LaGuerta said.
Doakes scowled at her. “The fuck for?”
“I don't want to make anybody unhappy,” I said, edging for the door without any real conviction.
“It's perfectly all right,” LaGuerta said with an actual smile for me. She turned to Doakes. “He can stay,” she repeated.
“Gimme the fucking creeps,” Doakes grumbled. I began to appreciate the man's finer qualities. Of course I gave him the fucking creeps. The only real question was why he was the only one in a room filled with cops who had the insight to get the fucking creeps from my presence.
“Let's get started,” LaGuerta said, cracking her whip gently, leaving no room for doubt that she was in charge. Doakes slouched back in his chair with a last scowl at me.
The first part of the meeting was a matter of routine; reports, political maneuvers, all the little things that make us human. Those of us who are human, anyway. LaGuerta briefed the information officers on what they could and could not release to the press. Things they could release included a new glossy photo of LaGuerta she'd made up for the occasion. It was serious and yet glamorous; intense but refined. You could almost see her making lieutenant in that picture. If only Deborah had that kind of PR smarts.
It took most of an hour before we got around to the actual murders. But finally LaGuerta asked for reports on the progress in finding her mystery witness. Nobody had anything to report. I tried hard to look surprised.
LaGuerta gave the group a frown of command. “Come on, people,” she said. “Somebody needs to find something here.” But nobody did, and there was a pause while the group studied their fingernails, the floor, the acoustic tiles in the ceiling.
Deborah cleared her throat. “I, uh,” she said and cleared her throat again. “I had a, um, an idea. A different idea. About trying something in a slightly different direction.” She said it like it was in quotation marks, and indeed it was. All my careful coaching couldn't make her sound natural when she said it, but she had at least stuck to my carefully worded politically correct phrasing.
LaGuerta raised an artificially perfect eyebrow. “An idea? Really?” She made a face to show how surprised and delighted she was. “Please, by all means, share it with us, Officer Ein—I mean, Officer Morgan.”
Doakes snickered. A delightful man.
Deborah flushed, but slogged on. “The, um, cell crystallization. On the last victim. I'd like to check and see if any refrigerated trucks have been reported stolen in the last week or so.”
Silence. Utter, dumb silence. The silence of the cows. They didn't get it, the brickheads, and Deborah was not making them see it. She let the silence grow, a silence LaGuerta milked with a pretty frown, a puzzled glance around the room to see if anybody else was following this, then a polite look at Deborah.
“Refrigerated . . . trucks?” LaGuerta said.
Deborah looked completely flustered, the poor child. This was not a girl who enjoyed public speaking.
“That's right,” she said.
LaGuerta let it hang, enjoying it. “Mm-hmm,” she said.
