But this-
I know very well that we all feel sexual urges, to one degree or another, even those of us in the Dark Brotherhood. It may be the most basic and pervasive piece of the human clock; we all tick toward sex. But the hands move at different speeds for all of us, and the thing that sets off the chimes is almost always unique. Even so, this was well outside the range even of my understanding. I could not remember seeing something quite this uniquely lustful.
Semen in the eye socket: a release that was actual as well as metaphorical. What did that mean? Because it always means something. It is always a fundamental symbol in a world of personal meaning, a basic key to understanding who had done this. Semen left on dead bodies is actually very common, and the specific place where it is found is always important. It indicates a desire to control, degrade, conquer that particular spot. So it was quite possible that the killer had some very special issues with vision, or watching-or it could just as easily be a problem with blue eyes, or contact lenses, or someone winking.
Still, it was a starting point for someone with my special skills-the professional ones-and I pondered it as I worked. It was, after all, an area of real personal interest to me. And additionally, if this had been Deborah’s case, she would almost certainly have demanded some kind of special insight from Sick and Twisted Me. So I thought about it, and although I came up with nothing helpful, at least it passed the time.
Because we had arrived at the Dumpster so late in the day, after lunch, it was well past quitting time when we finally wrapped it up at the scene. I packed up my samples, grabbed my bag, and turned to go. Chase was standing at the yellow perimeter tape, chatting with a couple of uniformed officers. He was apparently no longer fighting to hold down his lunch; in fact, he seemed to be in the middle of some spellbinding narration, and the officers were following his every word with awestruck interest. Not really wanting to interrupt such a chummy little scene, I gave them a wide berth.
But Chase appeared at my elbow the moment I was under the tape. “What did you find?” he asked me. “Is it a serial killer?”
To be honest, I was getting a little bit annoyed at his obsession with serial killers. Why does everyone assume that Miami is overrun with serial killers? Besides, Robert made them sound like oddities, freaks, some kind of savage, ravening, subhuman beast, and as I could have told him, they really aren’t. They’re perfectly normal. I mean, most of the time.
But honesty is not always the best policy, no matter what the Boy Scouts may tell you. So I just shook my head at his inane question. “Too soon to tell,” I said.
He stayed with me all the way back to headquarters, asking questions that could easily have been answered directly if only he had watched me work: what had I done at the scene, what had I found, what kind of samples did I take, why did I want that, what would I do with it, what happened next. It was all extremely annoying and I couldn’t help thinking that Jackie Forrest would almost certainly have asked more intelligent questions-and looked a great deal better asking them, too.
Chase stayed with me all the way up to the lab, and watched as I hurried through the routine of logging in the samples I had brought from the crime scene. I was hungry, and his questions made things take longer than they should have, since I had to explain every single step of the process. At least he had heard of chain of evidence, which saved a few minutes. But when I finally finished and was ready to hustle down to my car and away into the weekend, he stopped me one last time.
“So that’s it, right?” he said. “I mean, Friday night. The weekend. So, um, nothing happens with all this until Monday morning?”
“That’s right,” I said, maintaining a wonderful balance between answering politely and edging for the door.
“So, okay,” he said. “So then, what. You, uh-you just, um …” He looked away, and then whipped his head back to me abruptly enough to startle me. “What do you do with your weekends?”
I really wanted to say that I looked for people like him and made them go away into neat bundles, carefully packed into heavy-duty garbage bags. But I realized that it was probably not the most politically correct answer. “I’m married,” I said. “I spend time with my wife and kids.”
“Married,” he said, as if I had told him I was an astronaut. “So, what, you take the kids to the park? Playdates with other children, that kind of thing? How old are your kids?”
Deep inside, very deep, in the snuggest, darkest corner of Fort Dexter, I heard a very small and leathery sound, a mere throat clearing, not even a rustle of wings-but definitely a sign that the Passenger had perked up ever so slightly for some reason, not as if there was any danger to me, not at all, but instead … what? Something.
I looked at Chase, hoping for some kind of clue about what might have tripped the Passenger’s almost-alarm. But he just stared back, and I felt no menace of any kind from him, even though he was looking at me just as intensely as he had when asking about forensic procedure. “Is this about your character?” I asked him.
He licked his lips and looked away. “No, I- Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I just, you know.” He shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. “I, um. I never got married. Came close once, but …” He took his hands out again and made a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. I never had kids, and I always wondered, you know. If I could have done it, been a father.” He looked up at me and quickly added, “I mean, not the physical-the biological part, because you know. Never any problem there.” He flashed me a quick, odd smile, then looked away and took a deep breath. “Just, the other stuff. Everyday things, like teaching her to ride a bicycle, and putting a Band-Aid on her knee, and, you know. The stuff you do all the time.” And he looked at me with that expression again, the one that said he wanted something but had no idea how to get it.
And once again I felt a small and hesitant murmur from the Basement, and once again I had no clue why. Chase was certainly not threatening me in any way-and the murmur from the Passenger had not indicated an immediate threat, just some kind of vague discomfort. But why?
So I looked at Robert and thought about what he had said. It was not dark and threatening, but it was slightly off in some way I could not pin down. If he truly liked kids, why not have a few? And if he was unsure, he could afford to rent half a dozen to try it out.
But I had no answer, and I got none from Chase, who had turned away and looked like he’d forgotten there was anybody else in the room with him. He was staring into the distance, slumped into his own thoughts and cocking his head as if he heard some faint music playing somewhere. He took a long ragged breath, and then abruptly jerked upright again and looked back to me, startled. He shook himself. “Anyway,” he said brightly. “You have a great weekend. With your wife … and kids.” He slapped me on the shoulder, squeezing just for a second, and then he strode away, out the door and downstairs into the lonely Miami night.
I thought about Chase and his odd performance all the way down to my car. There was clearly a little bit more to the man than I had suspected, a depth of feeling that he kept well hidden behind his everyday mask of self-involved inanity. Or his several masks, since he certainly hid all kinds of things about himself, like why he disliked Jackie so much. Probably all part of being a Leading Man. He would have to hide everything that didn’t fit perfectly with his macho-but-sensitive public image. So he couldn’t let anyone know it if he liked fluffy little white dogs, or liked to read romance novels. If the public learned about it, that sort of thing could cost him his career. They might think he was a sissy, or worse-even a Liberal! It wouldn’t do.