He sat beside running water in the shade of a palm tree, dressed in baggy cotton shorts, the flimsy kind that have somehow become acceptable to wear in public recently, and he wore the rubber flip flops that invariably go with the shorts. He also had on a T-shirt that said, “I'm with Butthead” and he was draped with a camera and pensively clutching a bouquet. Although I say pensively, it was a very different kind of pensiveness, because his head had been neatly removed and replaced with a colorful spray of tropical flowers.
Instead of flowers the bouquet consisted of a bright and festive heap of intestines, topped by what was almost certainly a heart and surrounded by an appreciative cloud of flies.
“Son of a bitch,” Deborah said and it was hard to argue with her logic. “Son of a god damn bitch. Three of “em in one day”
“We don't know for sure that they're connected,” I said carefully, and she glared at me.
“You want to tell me we got two of these assholes running around at the same time?” she demanded.
“It doesn't seem very likely,” I admitted.
“You're goddamned right it doesn't. And I'm about to have Captain Matthews and every reporter on the Eastern Seaboard on my ass.”
“Sounds like quite a party,” I said.
“So what am I supposed to tell them?”
“We are pursuing a number of leads and hope to have something more definite to tell you shortly,” I said.
Deborah stared at me with the look of a large and very angry fish, all teeth and wide eyes. I can remember that shit without your help,” she said. “Even the reporters can remember that shit. And Captain Matthews invented that shit.”
“What kind of shit would you prefer?” I asked.
“The kind of shit that tells me what this is about, asshole.” I ignored my sister's term of endearment and looked again at our nature-loving friend. There was an air of studied ease to the position of the body that created a very large contrast to the fact that it was actually a very dead and headless former human being. It had apparently been posed with extreme care, and once again I got the distinct impression that this final diorama was more important than the actual killing had been.
It was a little bit disturbing, in spite of the mocking chuckle from the Dark Passenger. It was as if someone admitted they went through all the bother and mess of sex only to smoke a cigarette afterwards.
Equally disturbing was the fact that, as at the earlier scene, I was getting no hints at all from the Passenger, beyond a kind of disconnected and appreciative amusement.
“What this seems to be about,” I said hesitatingly, “is making some kind of statement.”
“Statement?” Deborah said. “What kind of statement?”
“I don't know.”
Deborah stared at me for a moment longer, then shook her head.
“Thank God you're here to help,” she said and before I could think of some suitable stinging remark in my defense, the forensic team bustled into our peaceful little glen and began to photograph, measure, dust, and peer into all the tiny places that might hold answers. Deborah immediately turned away to talk to Camilla Figg, one of the lab geeks, and I was left alone to suffer in the knowledge that I had failed my sister.
I am sure the suffering would have been terrible if I was capable of feeling remorse, or any other crippling human emotion, but I am not built for it, and so I didn't feel it —or anything else except hunger.
I went back out to the parking area and talked to Officer Meltzer until someone came along who could give me a ride back to the South Beach site. I had left my kit there, and had not even made a start on looking for any blood evidence.
I spent the rest of the morning shuttling back and forth between the two crime scenes. There was very little actual spatter work for me to do, no more than the few small, nearly dry spots in the sand that suggested the couple on the beach had been killed elsewhere and brought out onto the beach later. I was pretty sure we had all assumed this already, since it was very unlikely that somebody would do all that chopping and re-arranging quite so publicly, so I didn't bother to mention this to Deborah, who was already in a pointless frenzy, and I didn't want any more of it aimed at me.
The only real break I got all day was at almost one o'clock, when Angel-no-relation offered to drive me back to my cubicle, and stop along the way at Calle Ocho for lunch at his favorite Cuban restaurant, Habanita. I had a very nice Cuban steak with all the trimmings, and two cafecitas with my flan dessert, and I felt a whole lot better about myself as I headed into the building, flashed my credentials, and stepped into the elevator.
As the elevator doors slid shut I felt a small flutter of uncertainty from the Passenger, and I listened hard, wondering if this was a reaction to the morning's carnival of carnage, or perhaps the result of too many onions with my steak. But I could get nothing more from it beyond a certain tensing of invisible black wings, very often a sign that things were not what they should be.
How this could happen in an elevator I did not know, and I considered the idea that the Passenger's recent sabbatical in the face of Moloch might have left it in a mildly dithering and unsettled state. It would not do, of course, to have a less than effective Passenger, and I was pondering what to do about that when the elevator doors opened and all questions were answered.
As if he had known we would be aboard, Sergeant Doakes stood glaring and unblinking at the exact spot where we stood, and the shock was considerable. He had never liked me; had always had the unreasonable suspicion that I was some kind of monster, which of course I was, and he had been determined to prove it somehow. But an amateur surgeon had captured Doakes and removed his hands, feet, and tongue, and although I had endured considerable inconvenience in trying to save him —and really, I did help save most of him —he had decided his new, trimmed-down form was my fault, and he liked me even less.
Even the fact that without his tongue he was now incapable of saying anything that was minimally coherent was no help; he said it anyway, and the rest of us were forced to endure what sounded like a strange new language made up of all “G” and “N” sounds, and spoken with an urgent and threatening delivery that made you look for an emergency exit even while you strained to understand.
So I braced myself for some angry gibberish and he stood there looking at me with an expression that is usually reserved for grandmother-rapers, and I began to wonder if I could possibly just push past him, but then the elevator doors began to close automatically.
Before I could escape back downstairs, Doakes shot out his right hand —actually a gleaming steel claw —and stopped the doors from closing.
“Thank you,” I said, and took a tentative step forward. But he did not budge and he did not blink and without knocking him down, I did not see how I could get by.
Doakes kept his unblinking loathing stare on me and brought up a small silver thing about the size of a hardcover book. He flipped it open to reveal that it was a small hand-held computer or PDA and, still without looking away from me, he jabbed at it with his claw.
“Put it on my desk,” said a disjointed male voice from the PDA, and Doakes snarled a little more and jabbed again. “Black with two sugars,” the voice said, and he poked again. “Have a nice day,” it said in a very pleasant baritone that should have come from a happy, pudgy white American man, instead of this glowering dark cyborg so bent on revenge.
But at least he finally had to look away, down to the keyboard of the thing he held in his claw, and after staring for a moment at what was clearly a cluster of pre-recorded sentences, he found the right button.
“I am still watching you,” said the happy voice. Its cheerful, positive tone should have made me feel very good about myself, but the fact that it was Doakes saying it by proxy somehow spoiled the effect.