"Yes, sir," Hood said with a sarcastic little salute. Chambers watched him just long enough to make Hood squirm, before he started talking again.

"All right," he said. "Sergeant Morgan has the lead here in the Miami area. Anything points somewhere else, bring it to me first." Deborah nodded.

"Questions," Chambers said, looking around the room. Nobody said anything. "Okay," he said. "Sergeant Morgan is going to give you a summary of what we know so far."

Deborah stood up and walked over to where Chambers stood, and he sat down, yielding the floor to her. Debs cleared her throat and started on her summary. It was painful to watch; she is not a good public speaker, and aside from that she is extremely self-conscious. It seems to me that she has always felt ill at ease in the body of a beautiful woman, since she has a personality more suited to Dirty Harry, and she hates to have people looking at her. So for anyone who really cared about her, which was probably limited to me at the moment, it was an uncomfortable experience to see her stumble over words, repeatedly clear her throat, and lunge at cop-talk cliches as if she were drowning.

Still, everything has to end sometime, no matter how unpleasant it is, and after a long and nerve-racking interlude Debs finished up and said, "Questions?" And then she blushed and looked at Chambers, as if he would be upset that she had used his line.

Detective Weems raised a finger. "What you want us to do in the Everglades?" he said in a remarkably soft and high-pitched voice.

Deborah cleared her throat. Again. "Just, you know," she said, "put the word out. If anybody sees something out there, if these guys try to throw, you know, another party. Or if there's an old one we don't know about yet, a place that maybe there's some evidence on the site we could find." And she cleared her throat. I wondered if I should offer her a cough drop.

Luckily for Deborah's image as a two-fisted investigator, Chambers decided that enough was enough. He stood up before Deborah actually melted, and said, "All right. You all know what to do. The only thing I want to add is, keep your mouth shut. The press is having too much fun with this already, and I don't want to give them anything else to kick around. Got it?"

Everybody nodded, even Deborah.

"All right," Chambers said. "Let's go get the bad guys."

The meeting broke up to the sound of squeaking chairs, shuffling feet, and cop chatter, as everyone sitting stood up and formed into little conversation groups with those already standing-except for Major Nelson of the Highway Patrol, who just jammed his hat onto his closely cropped head and marched out the door as if the "Colonel Bogey March" was playing. The huge man from the tribal police, Weems, sauntered over to talk to Chambers, and Special Agent Recht sat by herself and looked around the room, quietly disapproving. Hood caught her eye and shook his head.

"Shit," he said. "I fucking hate the Fibbies."

"I bet that worries them," Alvarez said.

"Hey, Morgan, seriously," Hood said. "Is there some way we can twist that federal bitch's tail?"

"Sure," said Debs, in a tone of voice so reasonable that it could only mean trouble for somebody. "You can find the fucking girl, catch the fucking killer, and do your fucking job so she doesn't have an excuse to do it for you." She showed him some teeth; it was not a smile, although possibly Bobby Acosta might have thought so. "Think you can do that, Richard?"

Hood looked at her for a moment and then just shook his head. "Shit," he said.

"Hey, how about that, you were right," Alvarez said. "And she got more balls than you, too."

"Shit," Hood said again, and, clearly looking for an easy target to win back a few points, he said, "What about you, Deke?"

"What's that?" Deke said.

"What are you doing?" Hood said.

Deke shrugged. "Oh, you know," he said. "Captain wants me to stick with, uh, Morgan here."

"Wow," Alvarez said. "Really dangerous."

"We're partners," Deke said, looking slightly hurt.

"You be careful, Deke," Hood said. "Morgan is pretty hard on her partners."

"Yeah, she kind of loses 'em now and then," Alvarez said.

"You two assholes want me to hold your hand all the way to the DMV database?" Deborah said. "Or can you get your head out of your ass long enough to find it by yourself?"

Hood stood up and said, "On my way, boss," and headed for the door, and Alvarez followed. "Watch your back, Deke," he said as he left.

Deke watched them go with a slight frown, and as the door closed behind them he said, "Why they gotta bust my chops? 'Cause I'm the new guy, or what?" Deborah ignored him, and he turned to me. "I mean, what? What'd I do? Huh?"

I had no answer for him other than the obvious, which was that cops are like all other pack animals-they pick on any member of the herd that seems different or shows weakness. With his absurd good looks and somewhat limited mental abilities, Deke was both, and therefore an obvious target. Still, it seemed like a tough idea to get across without a lot of unpleasantness and groping for small words, so I just gave Deke a reassuring smile. "I'm sure they'll ease up when they see what you can do," I told him.

He shook his head slowly. "How'm I supposed to do anything?" he said, leaning his head toward Debs. "I gotta stick with her like a fuckin' shadow."

He watched me as if I was supposed to supply an answer, so I said, "Well, I'm sure a chance will come up for you to show some initiative."

"Initiative," he said, and for a moment I thought I would have to tell him what that meant. But happily for me, he just shook his head sourly and said, "Shit," and before we could explore any of the subtleties of that thought, Chambers came over and put a hand on Deborah's shoulder.

"All right, Morgan," he said. "You know what you gotta do. Downstairs, ninety minutes."

Debs looked at him with an expression that was closer to terror than anything I had ever seen on her face before. "I can't," she said. "I mean, I thought you were going to-Can't you do it?"

Chambers shook his head with something like malicious glee in his smile. It made him look like a wicked and very deadly elf. "Can't," he said. "You're the lead here. I'm just the coordinator. Your captain wants you to do this." He patted her shoulder again and moved away.

"Shit," Deborah said, and for a moment I felt intense irritation that this was the only word anyone could come up with this morning; and then she ran a hand through her hair and I noticed that her hand was shaking.

"What is it, Debs?" I said, wondering what on earth could cause my fearless sister to tremble like a fragile leaf in a storm.

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "Press conference," she said. "They want me to talk to the press." And she swallowed and then licked her lips as if everything inside her had just gone completely dry. "Shit," she said again.