Vince cleared his throat and spit to one side. “Doesn’t look like a casual kill,” he said. “Definitely not a fight with the boyfriend. Jesus, I hate garbage.”
“What does that mean, another?” Chase asked from his position at my elbow. “Do you mean it could be, like, a serial killer?”
For a moment, Vince forgot that he was on his knees in garbage, and he beamed up at Chase with sheer adoration. “Hi, Robert,” he said. After a full week of seeing Chase every day, Vince still came close to swooning in his presence. But at least he wasn’t moaning “ohmygod” anymore.
“So why do you think that?” Chase said. “That, you know, it’s not casual?”
“Oh,” Vince said. “It’s just, you know. A little bit … baroque?” He waved one hand merrily, sending a small glob of garbage flying through the air and onto my shoe. “Oops,” he said.
“Baroque,” Chase said thoughtfully. “Like what. You mean, um … what?”
Vince kept smiling. Nothing Chase said, no matter how stupid, could put a dent in his bright and shiny armor. “Complicated,” Vince said. “Like, you know. He didn’t just want to kill her. He had to do stuff to her.”
Chase nodded, and even in the shadows of the alley, I thought he turned a few shades paler. “What, um,” he said, and he swallowed. “What kind of stuff?”
“Take a look,” Vince said. “It’s kind of hard to describe.”
Chase shifted his weight from one foot to the other, clearly wishing he was almost anywhere else. But for my part, I could wait no longer. I would like to say that I felt an urgent sense of duty to the city of Miami, which paid me to investigate these things. But in truth, the weight of my professional obligations was nothing compared to the rising tide of eager whispers from the deepest basement of Dexter’s Dark Keep, urging me to peek into the Dumpster and delight in what we might find. So I stepped around Vince to where Angel No-Relation was meticulously photographing the dozens of smudged fingerprints he had found.
“Angel,” I said. “What have we got?”
He didn’t look up; he just made a face of terrible disgust and nodded at the Dumpster. “Mira,” he said.
I looked inside. The Dumpster was two-thirds filled with a delightful medley of paper, plastic, and rotting food scraps. Sprawled across the top of the fragrant mess was the nude and mutilated body of a young woman. I stepped forward for a closer look, and even before any of the details registered with me consciously, the picture clicked into focus in a dim dry place inside and I felt the Dark Passenger slither up out of its slumber with a stirring of leather wings and a rising sibilance of not-quite-words, whispering its way up the shadowed staircase from the deepest basement of Castle Dexter and onto the ramparts for a ringside view and softly saying, Yes, Oh, yes, yes, Indeed, and with a new sense of respect, I looked very carefully to see what had awakened the Passenger from its dark dreams.
She was turned half away from me, slipping partway down the slope of the heaped-up garbage, but from what I could see in profile, her death had not been an easy one. A large handful of golden hair on the side of her head had been ripped out by the roots, revealing a partially chewed-off ear.
The visible part of her face was so savagely damaged that her own mother would never recognize what was left. Her lips had been hacked off clumsily, leaving only a jagged red ruin. Her nose was mashed into a flat red pulp, and the visible eye socket was empty.
The rest of her seemed to be just as thoroughly ravaged; her nipple was missing, apparently chewed away like the ear, and her stomach had been slit open right below the navel. I could see at least three wounds that might have killed her, and a dozen more that would have been horrible enough to make death seem like a good idea.
But before I could take more than one quick glance, I heard a dreadful sound behind me, as if someone was strangling a large animal, and I turned to see Chase backing rapidly away with both hands clamped over his mouth, his face turning pale green almost as fast as he retreated. With a feeling of real pleasure, I watched him sprint for the perimeter. It was a common reaction to seeing messy death for the first time, but in this case it was very satisfying. It also left me in peace to take a longer look at a more leisurely pace, and I did.
I scanned the body head to toe, marveling at the thoroughness of the devastation, and the Passenger murmured its appreciation. Someone had spent a great deal of time and effort doing this, and although the results were certainly not up to my high artistic standards, they still showed a certain primitive vigor and abandon that were admirable, even infectious. The technique was clumsy, inefficient, even brutal, but it spoke of a wild experimental joy in the work that was a pleasure to see. After all, so very few of us seem to enjoy our jobs nowadays. Whoever did this clearly did enjoy it. Just as clearly-at least to me-the killer was exploring, seeking something he had not quite found, in spite of a very thorough search.
I took one more long, studious look at the whittled-away remains of the young woman, and I did not need the Passenger’s whispered endorsement to agree with Vince. This might be the very first time Our Perp had done this, but it would not be the last. Things being what they were, it would be a very good thing to catch him before he turned too many more young women into fish bait, and that meant it was time for Dexter to push his mighty brain online and get busy. There was real and compelling work to do, and with Chase in exile at the perimeter tape, I was at last free to do it.
But I had done no more than find a relatively clean place to set down my bag when I heard what sounded like a spatter of applause coming from the perimeter. I have been at the scene of hundreds of homicides, both professionally and in pursuit of my hobby, and I have seen and heard many surprising things. I can truthfully say, however, that I had never before heard a mutilated body receive a standing ovation. I turned to look with more than a little curiosity.
Deborah was just ducking under the yellow tape, and for half a second I wondered whether she was somehow finally getting the public appreciation she so richly deserved for her years of hard toil in the service of Justice. But no-a few steps behind my sister, a perfectly tousled golden head bobbed into view, and I realized that the eager spatter of approval was actually directed at Deborah’s shadow, Jackie Forrest. She paused at the tape to give the crowd a wave of the hand and a dazzling smile, and the people around her pushed forward-not as if they meant to grab her or touch her, but more like they couldn’t help themselves, that there was just something about her that made them move closer.
I watched as Jackie traded words with a few of the eagerly, mindlessly smiling people, and I found it strangely fascinating. What was it about her that acted like catnip on these people? She was famous, yes, but so was Robert, and the crowd’s reaction hadn’t been anything like this. And she was pretty-but I could see at least three women in the crowd around her who were, quite frankly, better-looking. And yet they all surged forward toward Jackie, apparently without knowing why.
I watched as Jackie gave the crowd a few final words, a last smile, and then ducked under the tape and moved toward the Dumpster. They watched her go, unable to take their eyes off her, and I realized that I was no better. Now that I had seen a brainless and drooling crowd staring at a TV actor, I felt compelled to watch her, too. I told myself that I was just trying to understand why the unwashed mob found her so mesmerizing, but myself didn’t seem to believe it.
I finally peeled my eyes away and went to join my sister. Debs was already peering into the Dumpster with a very hard look on her face. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “Jesus Fucking Christ.” She shook her head. “You got anything yet?”
“I just got here,” I said.