And the Passenger chuckled and answered. Yes, it said. Oh, absolutely. Dancing, singing, carrying on. Plenty of beer, plenty of food. A good old-fashioned barbecue.

"Hey," I said to Camilla, opening my eyes. "Is there anything on the bones that looks like teeth marks?"

Camilla flinched and looked around at me with an expression that was very close to fear. "How did you know?" she said.

"Oh, just a lucky hunch," I said, but she did not look convinced, so I added, "Any guess at the gender?"

She stared at me for a moment longer, and then appeared to hear my question at last. "Um," she said, turning back to the bones with a jerk. She raised a gloved finger and pointed it at one of the larger bones. "Pelvic girdle indicates a female. Probably young," she said.

A little something clicked inside the mighty supercomputer that was Dexter's brain and a card slid into the out-tray. Young female, the card read. "Oh, um, thanks," I said to Camilla, backing away to look at this small and interesting idea. Camilla just nodded and bent over the bones.

I looked around the clearing. Over where the trail disappeared deeper into the swamp I saw Lieutenant Keane, chatting with a man I recognized from FDLE, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which is sort of a state-level version of the FBI; they have jurisdiction everywhere in Florida. And standing with them was one of the largest men I have ever seen. He was black, about six and a half feet tall, and at least five hundred pounds, which on him did not look particularly fat somehow-possibly because of the focused ferocity of his stare. But since the FDLE guy was talking to him and not calling for backup, I had to assume he belonged here, too, although I had no idea why. If he was representing either the Sheriff's Department or Broward County I was sure I would have seen him before, or at least heard rumors about someone that large.

But as interesting as it was to see a real giant, it was not enough to hold my attention, and I looked to the other side of the clearing. Across from the small clot of cops there was a clean area of the clearing, where several detectives were standing around. I went there and set my kit down, thinking hard. I knew of a young female who was missing, and I knew someone looking for a young female who would be very interested in making this connection. But what was the right way to do this? I am not really a political animal, although I understand it well enough-politics is just a way to indulge in my former hobby using metaphorical knives instead of real ones. But it seemed like no fun at all to me. All the careful maneuvering and backstabbing were so obvious and pointless and didn't really lead to anything all that exciting. Still, I knew it was important in a structured environment like the Miami-Dade Police Department. And Deborah was not very good at it, although she usually managed to bull her way through with a combination of toughness and good results.

But Deborah had been so very unlike herself of late, with her pouting and self-pity, and I didn't know if she was up to a confrontation that was likely to prove extremely political-a different detective was leading on this, and for her to try to yank it away would be difficult, even when she was at her best. Still, maybe a good challenge was just what she needed to bring her back to herself. So perhaps the best thing to do was simply to call her and tell her-let loose the dogs of war and let the chips fall where they may. It was a wonderfully mangled metaphor, which made it seem even more convincing, so I stepped away from the group of cops and reached for my cell phone.

Deborah let it ring several times; again, this was very unlike her. Just when I was ready to give up, she answered. "What," she said.

"I'm in the Everglades at a crime scene," I said.

"Good for you," she said.

"Debs, I think the victim was killed, cooked, and eaten in front of a crowd."

"Wow, awful," she said, with no real enthusiasm, which I found a little bit irritating.

"Did I mention that this victim appears to be young and female?" I said.

She didn't say anything at all for a moment. "Debs?" I said.

"I'm on my way," she said, with a little bit of the old fire in her voice, and I closed my phone with satisfaction. But before I could put it away and get to work, I heard someone behind me scream, "Fuuuuuck!" and then a volley of gunshots broke out. I ducked down and tried to hide behind my blood-spatter kit, rather difficult considering it was about the size of the average lunch box. But I took what cover I could get and peeked over the top toward the gunfire, half expecting to see a horde of Maori warriors charging at us with their spears raised and their tongues out. What I saw instead was almost as unlikely.

The officers who had been standing around a moment earlier were now all crouched in combat firing position and frantically shooting their weapons into a nearby bush. Contrary to the very best of established police procedure, their faces were not set in cold and grim masks, but looked wild and wide-eyed. One of the detectives was already ejecting an empty clip from his pistol and frantically trying to fumble in a spare, and the others just kept firing with berserk abandon.

And the bush they were apparently trying to kill began to thrash about spastically, and I saw the glint of something silver-yellow. It flashed in the sunlight one time, and then was gone, but the officers kept firing for several more seconds, until finally Lieutenant Keane ran over, yelling at them to hold their fire. "What the fuck is wrong with you idiots?!" Keane yelled at them.

"Lieutenant, I swear to God," one of them said.

"A snake!" said the second guy. "Fucking huge snake!"

"A snake," Keane said. "You want me to step on it for you?"

"You got really big feet?" the third guy said. " 'Cause it was a Burmese python, about eighteen feet long."

"Aw, shit," Keane said. "Are those protected?"

I realized I was still crouched down, and I stood up as the FDLE man sauntered over. "Actually, they're thinking about a bounty on those bad boys," the FDLE guy said, "if any of you Wyatt Earps was lucky enough to hit it."

"I hit it," the third guy said sullenly.

"Bullshit," said one of the others. "You couldn't hit shit with a shoe."

The giant black man wandered over to the bush and looked, then turned to the group of nonmarksmen, shaking his head, and, realizing that the excitement was over, I picked up my kit and went back to the fire pit.

There was a surprising amount of blood spatter for me, and in just a few moments I was happily at work, making sense of the nasty stuff. It was not yet completely dry, probably because of the humidity, but a great deal of it had soaked into the ground, since it had not rained for quite some time, and in spite of the moisture in the air, things on the ground were relatively parched at the moment. I got a couple of good samples to take back with me for analysis, and I also began to get a picture of what had probably happened.

The majority of the blood was in one area, right by the fire pit. I cast about in ever-widening circles, but the only traces of it I found more than six feet away appeared to have been tracked there on someone's shoes. I marked these spots in the forlorn hope that somebody might be able to get an identifiable footprint from them and went back to the main spatter. The blood had poured out of the victim, not spurted, as it would have from a slash wound. And there were no secondary splashes anywhere nearby, which meant that there had been only one wound, like bleeding out a deer-nobody else in the crowd had jumped in and stabbed or slashed. This had been a slow, deliberate killing, a literal butchering, performed by one person, very controlled and businesslike, and I found myself reluctantly admiring the professionalism of the work. That kind of restraint was very difficult, as I well knew-and with a crowd watching, too, presumably shouting drunken encouragement, offering rude suggestions. It was impressive, and I took my time, giving it the kind of reciprocal professionalism it deserved.