“Hey, Vince,” Robert said. He stepped forward with his hand out and a manly smile on his face. “Pleased to meet you.”
Vince stared at the outstretched hand like he’d never seen one before. “Oh. Oh. Oh. Ohmygod,” Vince said. “Ohmygod. I mean …” He grabbed onto Chase’s hand as if he was drowning and it was a life jacket, and clutched it between both his hands while he stared at Chase and burbled madly on. “This is just unbelievable—I am soooo … I mean, forever— Oh, God, I can’t believe it—” And even odder, as he stood there clinging to Chase’s hand, his face began to flush, and he lowered his voice to a weird, husky whisper. “I absolutely loved you in Hard and Fast!” he said.
“Yeah, well—thanks,” Chase said, somehow prying his hand from the moist trap of Vince’s grip, and adding modestly, “That was a while ago.”
“I have the DVD,” Vince gushed. “I’ve watched it, like, a million times!”
“Hey, great,” Chase said. “Glad you like it.”
“I can’t believe this,” Vince said, and he hopped up and down again. “Oh my God!”
Chase just smiled. He had apparently seen this kind of behavior before, but even so, Vince’s seizure had to be getting a little bit uncomfortable. Still, he took it manfully in stride, and patted Vince on the shoulder. “Hey, well,” he said. “Derrick and me have to get going.” And he turned toward me, nudged me, and said, “But I am really looking forward to working with you. See you around!”
Chase clamped one hand on my elbow and urged me along the hall. I needed very little urging, since Vince had lapsed back into moaning “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod,” and it is never pleasant to linger in the presence of someone who has once been a friend and is now a poster boy for the tragedy of mental illness. So we left Vince in the hall and dodged into the shelter of my little office, where Chase leaned one haunch on the edge of my desk, crossed his arms, and shook his head.
“Well,” he said. “Wasn’t expecting that here. I mean, I thought cops were a little more, I dunno.” He shrugged. “Um, tougher? More macho? You know.”
“Vince isn’t actually a cop,” I said.
“Yeah, but still,” he said. “Is he gay? I mean, that’s fine and all; I was just wondering.”
I looked at Chase, startled, and to be truthful, a large part of my surprise was at myself. I had worked with Vince for years, and I had never actually asked myself that question. Of course, it was completely irrelevant, and none of my business. After all, I wouldn’t want him prying into my private life. “I don’t know,” I said. “But last year for Halloween he was Carmen Miranda. Again.”
Chase nodded. “One of the warning signs,” he said. “Well, shit, I don’t care. I mean, there’s, uh, fags everywhere these days.”
I wondered at his use of that word, “fags.” It seemed to me to be a word that was not actually au courant in more liberal circles, as I had thought the Hollywood community to be. But it may be that Robert just wanted to fit in, and he had assumed that I routinely said things that were not Politically Correct because I was a rough and macho member of the Miami Law Enforcement Community, and everyone knows we all talk that way.
In any case, I was more interested in his reaction to Vince’s attack of Teen Girl Syndrome. “Does that kind of thing happen to you a lot?” I asked Chase.
“What, the whole freaking-out-and-hopping-on-one-foot thing?” he said matter-of-factly. “Yeah,” he said. “Everywhere I go.” He poked at a file folder on my desk and flipped it open.
“That must make grocery shopping a little difficult,” I said.
He didn’t look up. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Somebody does that for me. Anyway”—he shrugged—“it’s different in L.A. Out there, everybody thinks they’re in the business with you, and nobody wants to look like a geek.” He began to flip through the pages of the report, which I found a little irritating.
“I have some lab work to do,” I said, and he looked up anxiously, which made me feel a little better.
“Is it, I mean,” he said, “um, a murder? Blood work?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “I need to work with some samples from a crime scene.” And because Dexter is actually not very nice sometimes, I added, “The killer slashed through the femoral artery, so there was blood everywhere.”
Chase took a long breath in through his teeth. He let the air back out again, took off his sunglasses and looked at them, then put them back on. I watched him for a moment, and it may not say good things about me, but I was enjoying the way he had gone slightly pale under his tan. Finally he swallowed and took in another long breath. “Well,” he said. “I guess I’d better tag along and watch.”
“I guess so,” I said.
Chase swallowed, took another breath, and stood up, trying very hard to look resolute.
“Okay,” he said. “I, uh. I’ll just look over your shoulder …?”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll try not to splatter too much.”
He closed his eyes, but he followed.
It was a small triumph, but it was just about the only one I got for the rest of the week. As I trudged through my daily routine, Robert trudged along with me. He did not really get directly in my way too often, but every time I turned around he was there, a frown of concentration on his face, and usually some kind of inane question: Why did I do that? Why was it important to do that? Did I do that often? How many killers had I caught by doing that? Were they serial killers? Were there a lot of serial killers in Miami? A lot of the time the questions were completely unrelated to whatever I was doing, which made the whole thing seem even more pointlessly annoying. I could understand that it was a little hard for someone like him to frame intelligent questions about gas chromatography, but then, why watch me do it in the first place? Why couldn’t he just go sit in a sports bar and text me his questions while he sipped a beer and watched a ball game?
The stupid questions were bad enough. But Wednesday, he took things to a new level of persecution.
We were in the lab once more, and I was looking into the microscope, where I had just found some very interesting similarities between tissue samples from two different crime scenes. I straightened up, turned around, and there was Chase, frowning thoughtfully, with one hand massaging the top of his head and the other covering his mouth. And before I could ask him why on earth he was making such a ridiculous gesture, I realized that I was doing exactly the same thing.
I dropped my hands. “Why are you doing that?” I said, keeping most of the irritation out of my voice.
Chase dropped his hands, too, and smiled, a cocky little smile of triumph. “That’s what you do,” he said. “When you find something significant. You do that with your hands.” He did it again briefly, one hand on his head and the other over his mouth. “You do that,” he said, letting his hands fall away, “and then you stand there and look really thoughtful.” And he made a half-frowning face that said quite clearly, I am being really thoughtful. “Like that,” he said.
I suppose I might well have been doing that and many other things my entire professional life without knowing it. There are very few mirrors in a forensics lab to show me what I looked like as I worked, and frankly I preferred it that way. We all have unconscious patterns of behavior, and I have always thought mine were just a little bit more restrained and logical than those exhibited by the mere mortals surrounding me.
But here was Chase, showing me quite clearly that my mannerisms were just as ridiculous as anyone else’s. It was unbelievably infuriating to have him copy me right back at me, and it still didn’t explain the most important part of the question. “Why do you have to do it, too?” I said.
He shook his head, one quick jerk to the side, as if I was the one asking stupid questions. “I’m learning you,” he said. “For my character.”
“Couldn’t you learn Vince instead?” I said, and even to me I sounded peevish.
Chase shook his head. “My character isn’t gay,” he said quite seriously.
By the end of work on Thursday, I was very willing to become gay myself if it meant that Chase would stop copying me. I watched him as he aped everything I did, each small unconscious tic, and I learned that I slurped my coffee, washed my hands too long, and stared at the ceiling pursing my lips when I was talking on the phone. I have never had any problems with my self-esteem; I like Dexter very much, just the way he is. But as Chase’s performing-monkey act went on and on, I discovered that even the healthiest self-image can erode under a barrage of constant, solemn mockery.
I did my best to soldier on. I told myself that I was following orders, and this was all part of the job and I really had no choice in the matter, but it didn’t help. Every time I turned around, there was a mirror image of whatever I was doing, but with a neat mustache and a perfect haircut. Worse than that, every now and then I would turn and see him simply staring at me, with an otherworldly expression of abstract longing on his face that I could not decipher.
The days wore on and his presence became more and more exasperating. It was bad enough to have him following, watching, copying me—but even setting all that aside, I found it impossible to like Robert Chase. I admit that I rarely manage to achieve the kind of warm personal bond that humans routinely forge, mostly because I do not actually have human feelings. Even so, I fake it very well; I have survived among people my whole life and I know all of the rituals and tricks of social bonding. None of them worked with Chase, and for some reason I found myself reluctant to keep trying. Something about him was wrong, slightly off, unattractive, and although I could not have said why, I just didn’t like him.
But I had been commanded to tow him through the stormy waters of my life in forensics, and so tow I must. And I have to admit that at least Chase was diligent. He showed up every morning, almost exactly at the same time I did. Friday morning he even brought in a box of doughnuts. I must have looked surprised, because he smiled at me and said, “That’s what you do, right?”
“Sometimes I do,” I admitted.
He nodded. “I asked around about you,” he said. “They all told me, ‘Dexter does doughnuts.’ ” And he grinned at me as if alliteration was some kind of wonderfully clever form of wit.
If I had been irritated by him before, now I was positively seething. He had gone beyond mere mockery; now he was “asking around” about me, prying into my character, encouraging everyone around me to unload about all of Dexter’s quirks and peccadilloes. It made me so angry that I could calm myself only by picturing Robert duct-taped to a table, with me standing happily above him clutching a fillet knife. Still, I ate his doughnuts.
That afternoon provided the only relief I’d had all week. And it seemed only fitting that it came in the form of a homicide.
Robert and I had just returned from lunch. I had allowed him to persuade me to take him for some Real Cuban Food, and so we’d gone to my favorite place, Café Relampago. The Morgans had been going there for two generations—three now, if you counted the fact that I had taken my baby, Lily Anne. She loved the maduros.
In any case, Robert and I had dined lavishly on ropa vieja, yuca, maduros, and, of course, arroz con frijoles negros. We had washed it all down with Ironbeer, the Cuban version of Coke, and finished with flan and a barrage of cafecitas. Robert had insisted on paying, perhaps trying to buy his way into my affections, so I was in a slightly mellower mood when we returned to our job. But we didn’t get a chance to settle into our chairs to reflect and digest, because as we strolled in, Vince came rushing out clutching the canvas bag that held his kit.
“Get your stuff,” he said, hurrying past. “We got a wild one.”
Robert turned to watch him go, and his air of relaxed confidence seemed to drain out and puddle at his feet. “Is that … Does he mean, um—”
“It’s probably nothing,” I said. “Just a routine machete beheading or something.”
Chase goggled at me for a moment. Then he turned pale, gulped, and finally nodded. “Okay,” he said.
I went to fetch my gear, feeling a warm glow of satisfaction at Chase’s obvious distress. As I said, sometimes I am not a very nice person.
THREE
THE BODY WAS IN A DUMPSTER IN AN ALLEY ON THE EDGE OF the downtown campus of Miami-Dade Community College. The alley was dark, even in the midday sun, shaded by the surrounding buildings, and it had probably been even darker at night, when some wicked Someone had chosen the spot for his fun and games, most likely for that very reason. Judging by the condition of the body, that had been a very good idea. The things that had been done to what had once been an attractive young woman were best left unseen.
The Dumpster was at an angle in the back corner of the alley. One side of the lid was propped open, and even from ten feet away you could hear the buzz of the nine billion flies whirling around it in a huge dark cloud. Angel Batista-No-Relation was dusting the outside of the Dumpster for prints. He worked carefully along the top edge, dusting with one hand and waving flies away with the other.
Vince was on one knee on the near side, beside the Dumpster, where some of the sloppier garbage had spilled over onto the pavement. He was gingerly sifting through the filthy glop with his rubber-gloved fingers. He didn’t look happy. “Jesus,” he said to me without looking up. “I can’t breathe.”
“Breathing is overrated,” I told him. “Find anything?”
“Yes,” he said, and he was almost snarling. “I found some garbage.” He gritted his teeth and brushed at something that clung to his gloves. “If we get another one like this, I’m transferring to Code Enforcement.”
I felt a small dark tickle of interest from the Passenger. “Another?” I asked. “Are we likely to get another one?”
Vince cleared his throat and spit to one side. “Doesn’t look like a casual kill,” he said. “Definitely not a fight with the boyfriend. Jesus, I hate garbage.”
“What does that mean, another?” Chase asked from his position at my elbow. “Do you mean it could be, like, a serial killer?”
For a moment, Vince forgot that he was on his knees in garbage, and he beamed up at Chase with sheer adoration. “Hi, Robert,” he said. After a full week of seeing Chase every day, Vince still came close to swooning in his presence. But at least he wasn’t moaning “ohmygod” anymore.
“So why do you think that?” Chase said. “That, you know, it’s not casual?”
“Oh,” Vince said. “It’s just, you know. A little bit … baroque?” He waved one hand merrily, sending a small glob of garbage flying through the air and onto my shoe. “Oops,” he said.
“Baroque,” Chase said thoughtfully. “Like what. You mean, um … what?”
Vince kept smiling. Nothing Chase said, no matter how stupid, could put a dent in his bright and shiny armor. “Complicated,” Vince said. “Like, you know. He didn’t just want to kill her. He had to do stuff to her.”
Chase nodded, and even in the shadows of the alley, I thought he turned a few shades paler. “What, um,” he said, and he swallowed. “What kind of stuff?”
“Take a look,” Vince said. “It’s kind of hard to describe.”
Chase shifted his weight from one foot to the other, clearly wishing he was almost anywhere else. But for my part, I could wait no longer. I would like to say that I felt an urgent sense of duty to the city of Miami, which paid me to investigate these things. But in truth, the weight of my professional obligations was nothing compared to the rising tide of eager whispers from the deepest basement of Dexter’s Dark Keep, urging me to peek into the Dumpster and delight in what we might find. So I stepped around Vince to where Angel No-Relation was meticulously photographing the dozens of smudged fingerprints he had found.
“Angel,” I said. “What have we got?”
He didn’t look up; he just made a face of terrible disgust and nodded at the Dumpster. “Mira,” he said.
I looked inside. The Dumpster was two-thirds filled with a delightful medley of paper, plastic, and rotting food scraps. Sprawled
across the top of the fragrant mess was the nude and mutilated body of a young woman. I stepped forward for a closer look, and even before any of the details registered with me consciously, the picture clicked into focus in a dim dry place inside and I felt the Dark Passenger slither up out of its slumber with a stirring of leather wings and a rising sibilance of not-quite-words, whispering its way up the shadowed staircase from the deepest basement of Castle Dexter and onto the ramparts for a ringside view and softly saying, Yes, Oh, yes, yes, Indeed, and with a new sense of respect, I looked very carefully to see what had awakened the Passenger from its dark dreams.
She was turned half away from me, slipping partway down the slope of the heaped-up garbage, but from what I could see in profile, her death had not been an easy one. A large handful of golden hair on the side of her head had been ripped out by the roots, revealing a partially chewed-off ear.
The visible part of her face was so savagely damaged that her own mother would never recognize what was left. Her lips had been hacked off clumsily, leaving only a jagged red ruin. Her nose was mashed into a flat red pulp, and the visible eye socket was empty.
The rest of her seemed to be just as thoroughly ravaged; her nipple was missing, apparently chewed away like the ear, and her stomach had been slit open right below the navel. I could see at least three wounds that might have killed her, and a dozen more that would have been horrible enough to make death seem like a good idea.
But before I could take more than one quick glance, I heard a dreadful sound behind me, as if someone was strangling a large animal, and I turned to see Chase backing rapidly away with both hands clamped over his mouth, his face turning pale green almost as fast as he retreated. With a feeling of real pleasure, I watched him sprint for the perimeter. It was a common reaction to seeing messy death for the first time, but in this case it was very satisfying. It also left me in peace to take a longer look at a more leisurely pace, and I did.