But end it did, at last. Nichole held up the notebook for the two men to study, and the one who spoke no English looked hard and then began to nod. "Oui," he said.

"That is him," the other said, and he gave Nichole a sudden very large smile. "Like magic." He said majeek, but the meaning was clear.

Deborah had been leaning back in her chair and letting Nichole work. Now she stood and walked around the conference table, looking in over Nichole to look at the drawing. "Son of a bitch," she said. She looked up at Hood, who was still lounging around by the door with a faintly sleazy smirk still on his face. "Get that file over there," Debs said to him. "The one with the photos."

Hood stepped over to the far end of the table, where a stack of folders teetered beside the telephone. He flipped through the top five or six while Deborah fidgeted. "Come on, goddamn it," she said to him, and Hood nodded, held up one folder, and brought it over to her.

Deborah scattered a pile of photographs on the table, sorted through them quickly, and nudged one out and over to Nichole. "Not bad," she said, as the artist picked up the photo and held it beside her sketch, and Nichole nodded.

"Yeah, not bad at all," Nichole said. She looked up at Deborah with a happy smile. "Damn, I am good." She flipped the photo back to Deborah, who grabbed it and held it up for the two Haitians to see.

"Is this the man who sold you the Porsche?" Deborah asked them.

The man with the swollen eye was already nodding and saying, "Oui." His cousin made a great show of staring at the picture, leaning forward to study it carefully, before finally saying with complete authority, "Yes. Absolutely. That is him."

Deborah looked at the two of them and said, "You are positive? Both of you?" And both of them nodded vigorously.

"Bon," Debs said. "Tres beaucoup bon." The two Haitians smiled, and the one with the swollen eye said something in Creole.

Deborah looked at the cousin for a translation.

"He says, will you please speak English, so he can understand you," the man said with an even bigger smile, and Vince and Hood both snickered.

But Deborah was far too happy with the picture to let a minor jab bother her. "It's Bobby Acosta," she said, and she looked at me. "We got the little bastard."

The uniformed cop led the two prisoners away to a holding cell. Nichole gathered her things and left, and Deborah sat back down and stared at the picture of Bobby Acosta. Vince looked at me with a shrug and an expression of, Now what? and Deborah looked up at him. "Are you still here?" she said.

"No, I left ten minutes ago," Vince said.

"Beat it," Deborah said.

"I wouldn't have to beat it if you'd just hold it for a minute," Vince said.

"Go shit in your ear," Debs said, and Vince walked out with one of his horrible artificial laughs trailing behind him. Deborah watched him go and, since I know her very well, I knew what was coming, so I was not surprised when it came. "All right," she said to me when Vince had been gone for about thirty seconds. "Let's go."

"Oh," I said, trying very hard to look like I had not expected this, "do you mean you're not going to wait for your partner, as department policy and a specific order from Captain Matthews have suggested?"

"Just get your ass out the door," she said.

"What about my ass?" Hood said.

"Go boil it," Deborah said, snapping up out of her chair toward the door.

"What do I tell your partner?" Hood said.

"Tell him to check the salvia dealers," she said. "Come on, Dex."

It occurred to me that I spent far too much of my time obediently following my sister around. But it did not occur to me how I could avoid doing so again, so I followed.

In the car, Deborah drove us up onto the Dolphin Expressway and then north on 95. She did not volunteer any information, but it was not terribly hard to figure out where we were going, so just for the sake of small talk, I said, "Have you somehow figured out a way to find Bobby Acosta, just by staring at his picture?"

"Yeah," she snapped, very grumpy again. Deborah had never been very good with sarcasm. "As a matter of fact, I have."

"Wow," I said, and I thought about it for a moment. "The list from the dentist? The guys who got the vampire fangs?"

Deborah nodded, steering around a battered pickup hauling a trailer. "That's right," she said.

"And you didn't check all of them with Deke?"

She looked at me, which I thought was a bad idea, since we were going ninety miles an hour. "One left," she said. "But this is the one; I know it."

"Look out," I said, and Debs glanced at the road just in time to steer us around a large gasoline tanker that had decided to switch lanes for no apparent reason.

"So you think this last name on the list can tell us how to find Bobby Acosta?" I said, and Deborah nodded vigorously.

"I had a gut feeling about this one, right from the start," she said, steering into the far right lane with one finger.

"And so you saved it for last? Deborah!" I said as a pair of motorcycles cut in front of us and began to brake for the exit.

"Yeah," she said, gliding back into the middle lane.

"Because you wanted to build the suspense?"

"It's Deke," Deborah said, and I was thrilled to see that she was watching the road now. "He's just…" She hesitated for a moment, and then blurted out, "He's bad luck."

I have spent my life around cops so far, and I expect that the rest of my life I'll do the same, especially if I get caught someday. So I know that superstitions can pop up at some odd times and places. Even so, I was surprised to hear them from my sister. "Bad luck?" I said. "Debs, do you want me to call a santero? Maybe he can kill a chicken, and-"

"I know how it sounds, goddamn it," she said. "But what the hell else can it be?"

I could think of a lot of other things it could be, but it didn't seem politic to say so, and after a moment Deborah went on.

"All right, maybe I'm full of shit," she said. "But I need some luck on this thing. There's a clock ticking here, and that girl…" She paused almost as if she were feeling strong emotion, and I looked at her with surprise. Emotion? Sergeant Iron Heart?

Deborah didn't look back at me. She just shook her head. "Yeah, I know," she said. "I shouldn't let it get to me. It's just…" She shrugged and looked grumpy again, which was a bit of a relief. "I guess I've been a little… I dunno. Weird lately."

I thought about the last few days, and realized that it was true: My sister had been uncharacteristically vulnerable and emotional. "Yes, you have," I said. "Why do you think that is?"

Deborah sighed heavily, another action that was very unlike her. "I think… I dunno," she said. "Chutsky says it's the knife wound." She shook her head. "He says it's like postpartum depression, that you always feel bad for a while after a major injury."

I nodded. It made a certain amount of sense. Deborah had recently been stabbed, and had come so close to death from blood loss that the difference was a matter of a few seconds in the ambulance. And certainly Chutsky, her boyfriend, would know about that-he had been some kind of intelligence operative before being disabled, and his body was a raised-relief road map of scar tissue.

"Even so," I said, "you can't let this case get under your skin." As soon as I said it I braced myself, since it was a surefire setup line for an arm punch, but once again Debs surprised me.

"I know," she said softly, "but I can't help it. She's just a girl. A kid. Good grades, nice family, and these guys-cannibals…" She trickled off into a moody and reflective silence, which was a really striking contrast to the fact that we were speeding through heavy traffic. "It's complicated, Dexter," she said at last.