Well. Although I had to admit the display had a certain primitive vigor and an undeniable dramatic impact, it was really far too crude for my taste. Even though the heads apparently had been carefully cleaned, the eyelids were gone and the mouths had been forced into a strange smile by the heat, and it was not pleasant.
Certainly no one on-site asked my opinion, but I have always felt that there should be no leftovers. It’s untidy, and it shows a lack of a real workmanlike spirit. And for these heads to be left so conspicuously—this was mere showing off, and demonstrated an unrefined approach to the problem. Still, there’s no accounting for taste. I’m always willing to admit that my technique is not the only DEXTER IN THE DARK
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way. And as always in aesthetic matters, I waited for some small sibilant whisper of agreement from the Dark Passenger—but of course, there was nothing.
Not a murmur, not a twitch of the wing, not a peep. My com-pass was gone, leaving me in the very unsettling position of needing to hold my own hand.
Of course, I was not completely alone. There was Deborah beside me, and I became aware that as I was pondering the matter of my shadow companion’s disappearance, she was speaking to me.
“They were at the funeral this morning,” she said. “Came back and this was waiting for them.”
“Who are they?” I asked, nodding at the house.
Deborah jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow. It hurt. “The family, asshole. The Ortega family. What did I just say?”
“So this happened in daylight?” For some reason, that made it seem a little more disturbing.
“Most of the neighbors were at the funeral, too,” she said. “But we’re still looking for somebody who might have seen something.”
She shrugged. “We might get lucky. Who knows.”
I did not know, but for some reason I did not think that anything connected to this would bring us luck. “I guess this creates a little doubt about Halpern’s guilt,” I said.
“It damned well does not,” she said. “That asshole is guilty.”
“Ah,” I said. “So you think that somebody else found the heads, and, uh . . .”
“Fucking hell, I don’t know,” she said. “Somebody must be working with him.”
I just shook my head. That didn’t make any sense at all, and we both knew it. Somebody capable of conceiving and performing the elaborate ritual of the two murders would almost have to do it alone. Such acts were so highly personal, each small step the acting out of some unique inner need, that the idea of two people sharing the same vision was almost pure nonsense. In a weird way, the cer-emonial display of the heads fit in with the way the bodies had been left—two pieces of the same ritual.
“That doesn’t seem right,” I said.
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“Well then, what does?”
I looked at the heads, perched so carefully atop the lamps. They had of course been burned in the fire that had toasted the bodies, and there were no traces of blood visible. The necks appeared to have been cut very neatly. Other than that, I had no keen insight into anything at all—and yet there was Deborah, staring at me expectantly. It’s difficult to have a reputation for being able to see into the still heart of the mystery when all that notoriety rests on the shadowy guidance of an interior voice that was, at the moment, somewhere else altogether. I felt like a ventriloquist’s dummy, suddenly called upon to perform the whole act alone.
“Both the heads are here,” I said, since I clearly had to say something. “Why not at the other girl’s house? The one with the boyfriend?”
“Her family lives in Massachusetts,” Deborah said. “This was easier.”
“And you checked him out, right?”
“Who?”
“The dead girl’s boyfriend,” I said slowly and carefully. “The guy with the tattoo on his neck.”
“Jesus Christ, Dexter, of course we’re checking him out. We’re checking out everybody who came within half a mile of these girls in their whole fucking sad little lives, and you—” She took a deep breath, but it didn’t seem to calm her down very much. “Listen, I don’t really need any help with the basic police work, okay? What I need help with is the weird creepy shit you’re supposed to know about.”
It was nice to confirm my identity as the Weird Creepy Shit King, but I did have to wonder how long it would last without my Dark Crown. Still, with my reputation on the line I had to venture some kind of insightful opinion, so I took a small bloodless stab at it.
“All right,” I said. “Then from a weird creepy point of view, it doesn’t make sense to have two different killers with the same ritual. So either Halpern killed ’em and somebody found the heads and thought, what the hell, I’ll hang ’em up—or else the wrong guy is in jail.”