“All right,” I said, since there wasn’t much else to say. “But I don’t know if I can show you how blood spatter works without showing you blood.”
He looked at his feet again and sighed. “I know,” he said.
“Oh. My. God!” said an awestruck voice behind me, and I turned to look. Vince Masuoka was standing there, both hands on his face and his mouth wide-open, looking for all the world like a twelve-year-old girl who had just run into the entire cast of Glee.
“Vince. It’s me,” I said. But apparently it wasn’t; Vince ignored me and pointed one trembling hand at Chase.
“Robert Chase, oh my God oh my God!” he said, and he bounced up and down as if he had to go to the bathroom badly. “It’s you; it’s really you!” he added, and even though I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to convince himself or Chase, I found his performance profoundly irritating. But it seemed to be exactly what Chase needed; he straightened up, instantly looking serene, in command, and more perfect than a mere human being should ever be.
“How are you?” he said to Vince, although it must have been obvious that the answer was, “Completely insane.”
“Oh my God,” Vince said again, and I wondered if I could get him to stop saying it if I slapped him a few times. But such logical and rewarding actions are discouraged in the workplace, even when they make perfect sense, so I reached deep inside and found enough iron control to stifle my wholly natural urge.
“I see you know Robert,” I said to Vince. “And, Robert, this is Vince Masuoka. He used to do forensics before he lost his mind.”
“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.