POLICE POLITICS, AS I HAD TRIED SO HARD TO impress on Deborah, was a slippery and many-tentacled thing. And when you brought together two law enforcement organizations that really didn't care for each other, mutual operations tended to go very slowly, very much by the book, and with a good deal of foot-dragging, excuse-making, and veiled insults and threats. All great fun to watch, of course, but it did draw out the proceedings just a trifle more than necessary. Consequently it was several hours after Steban's dreadful yodeling exhibition before the jurisdictional squabbling was straightened out and our team actually began to examine the happy little surprise our new friend Steban had discovered when he opened the closet door.
During that time Deborah stood off to one side for the most part, working very hard at controlling her impatience but not terribly hard at hiding it. Captain Matthews arrived with Detective LaGuerta in tow.
They shook hands with their Broward County counterparts, Captain Moon and Detective McClellan.
There was a lot of barely polite sparring, which boiled down to this: Matthews was reasonably certain that the discovery of six arms and six legs in Broward was part of his department's investigation of three heads lacking the same pieces in Miami-Dade. He stated, in terms that were far too friendly and simple, that it seemed a bit farfetched to think that he would find three heads without bodies, and then three totally different bodies without heads would turn up here.
Moon and McClellan, with equal logic, pointed out that people found heads in Miami all the time, but in Broward it was a little more unusual, and so maybe they took it a bit more seriously, and anyway there was no way to know for sure they were connected until some preliminary work had been done, which clearly ought to be done by them, since it was in their jurisdiction. Of course they would cheerfully pass on the results.
And of course that was unacceptable to Matthews. He explained carefully that the Broward people didn't know what to look for and might miss something or destroy a piece of key evidence. Not, of course, through incompetence or stupidity; Matthews was quite sure the Broward people were perfectly competent, considering.
This was naturally not taken in a cheerful spirit of cooperation by Moon, who observed with a little bit of feeling that this seemed to imply that his department was full of second-rate morons. By this point Captain Matthews was mad enough to reply much too politely, oh, no, not second-rate at all. I'm sure it would have ended in a fistfight if the gentleman from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement had not arrived to referee.
The FDLE is a sort of state-level FBI. They have jurisdiction anywhere in the state at any time, and unlike the feds they are respected by most of the local cops. The officer in question was a man of average height and build with a shaved head and a close-cropped beard. He didn't really seem out of the ordinary to me, but when he stepped between the two much larger police captains they instantly shut up and took a step back. In short order he had things settled down and organized and we got quickly back to being the neat and well-ordered scene of a multiple homicide.
The man from FDLE had ruled that it was Miami-Dade's investigation unless and until tissue samples proved the body parts here and the heads down there were unrelated. In practical and immediate terms, this meant that Captain Matthews got to have his picture taken first by the mob of reporters already clustering outside.
Angel-no-relation arrived and went to work. I was not at all sure what to make of it, and I don't mean the jurisdictional squabbling. No, I was far more concerned with the event itself, which had left me with a great deal to think about—not merely the fact of the killings and the redistribution of the meat, which was piquant enough. But I had of course managed to sneak a peak into Steban's little closet of horrors earlier, before the troops arrived—can you blame me, really? I had only wanted to sample the carnage and try to understand why my dear unknown business associate had chosen to stack the leftovers there; truly, just a quick look-see.
So immediately after Steban had skidded out the door squealing and grunting like a pig choking on a grapefruit, I had skipped eagerly back to the closet to see what had set him off.
The parts were not wrapped carefully this time. Instead, they were laid out on the floor in four groups.
And as I looked closer I realized a wonderful thing.
One leg had been laid straight along the left-hand side of the closet. It was a pale, bloodless blue-white, and around the ankle there was even a small gold chain with a heart-shaped trinket. Very cute, really, unspoiled by awful bloodstains; truly elegant work. Two dark arms, equally well cut, had been bent at the elbow and placed alongside the leg, with the elbow pointing away. Right next to this the remaining limbs, all bent at the joint, had been arranged in two large circles.
It took me a moment. I blinked, and suddenly it swam into focus and I had to frown very hard to keep myself from giggling out loud like the schoolgirl Deb had accused me of being.
Because he had arranged the arms and legs in letters, and the letters spelled out a single small word: BOO.
The three torsos were carefully arranged below the BOO in a quarter-circle, making a cute little Halloween smile.
What a scamp.
But even as I admired the playful spirit this prank exposed, I wondered why he had chosen to put the display here, in a closet, instead of out on the ice where it could gain the recognition of a wider audience. It was a very spacious closet, granted, but still close quarters, just enough room for the display. So why?
And as I wondered, the outer door of the arena swung open with a clatter—the first of the arriving rescue team, no doubt. And the door crashing wide sent, a moment later, a draft of cool air over the ice and onto my back-
And before I could explore these strange revelations any further I was being urged by a squat young man in a blue uniform to step away and keep my hands in plain sight. No doubt he was the first of the arriving troops, and he was holding his weapon on me in a very convincing way. Since he had only one dark eyebrow running all the way across his face and no apparent forehead, I decided it would be a very good idea to go along with his wishes. He looked to be just the sort of dull-witted brute who might shoot an innocent person—or even me. I stepped away from the closet.
Unfortunately, my retreat revealed the little diorama in the closet, and the young man was suddenly very busy finding someplace to put his breakfast. He made it to a large trash can about ten feet away before commencing his ugly blargging sounds. I stood quite still and waited for him to finish. Nasty habit, hurling half- digested food around like that. So unsanitary. And this was a guardian of public safety, too.
More uniforms trotted in, and soon my simian friend had several buddies sharing the trash can with him. The noise was extremely unpleasant, to say nothing of the smell now wafting my way. But I waited politely for them to finish, since one of the fascinating things about a handgun is that it can be fired almost as well by someone who is throwing up. But one of the uniforms eventually straightened up, wiped his face on his sleeve, and began to question me. I was soon sorted out and pushed over to one side with instructions not to go anywhere or touch anything.
Captain Matthews and Detective LaGuerta had arrived soon after, and when they finally took over the scene I relaxed a bit. But now that I could actually go somewhere and touch something, I simply sat and thought. And the things I thought about were surprisingly troublesome.
Unless I was going to return to my idiocy of earlier in the day and persuade myself that I had done this, I was at a loss as to why it should seem so delightfully unsurprising. Of course I hadn't done it. I was already ashamed of the stupidity of that notion. Boo, indeed. It was not even worth taking the time to scoff at the idea. Ridiculous.
So, um—why did it seem familiar?
I sighed and experienced one more new feeling, befuddlement. I simply had no notion of what was going on, except that somehow I was a part of it. This did not seem a terribly helpful revelation, since it matched exactly all
