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wheel, give it a little bit of gas, and skid through a quick circle on the lawn of a house across the street from the park. Then I was back onto the road in a cloud of crabgrass, and after the Avalon, now farther ahead.
The distance stayed about the same for several more blocks before I got my lucky break. Ahead of me the Avalon roared through another stop sign, but this time a police cruiser pulled out after it, turned on the siren, and gave chase. I wasn’t sure if I should be glad of the company or jealous of the competition, but in any case it was much easier to follow the flashing lights and siren, so I continued to slog along in the rear.
The two other cars went through a quick series of turns, and I thought I might be getting a little closer, when suddenly the Avalon disappeared and the cop car slid to a halt. In just a few seconds I was up beside the cruiser and getting out of my car.
In front of me the cop was running across a close-cropped lawn marked with tire tracks that led around behind a house and into a canal. The Avalon was settling down into the water by the far side and, as I watched, a man climbed out of the car through the window and swam the few yards to the opposite bank of the canal. The cop hesitated on our side and then jumped in and swam to the half-sunk car. As he did, I heard the sound of heavy tires braking fast behind me. I turned to look.
A yellow Hummer rocked to a stop behind my car and a red-faced man with sandy hair jumped out and started to yell at me.
“You cocksucker son of a bitch!” he hollered. “You dinged up my car! What the hell you think you’re doing?”
Before I could answer, my cell phone rang. “Excuse me,” I said, and oddly enough the sandy-haired man stood there quietly as I answered the phone.
“Where the hell are you?” Deborah demanded.
“Cutler Ridge, looking at a canal,” I said.
It gave her pause for a full second before she said, “Well, dry off and get your ass over to the campus. We got another body.”
T W E N T Y - O N E
It took me a few minutes to disengage myself from the driver of the yellow Hummer, and I might have been there still if not for the cop who had jumped into the canal. He finally climbed out of the water and came over to where I stood listening to a nonstop stream of threats and obscenities, none very original. I tried to be polite about it—the man obviously had a great deal to get off his chest, and I certainly didn’t want him to sustain psychological damage by repressing it—but I did have some urgent police business to attend to, after all. I tried to point that out, but apparently he was one of those individuals who could not yell and listen to reason at the same time.
So the appearance of an unhappy and extremely wet cop was a welcome interruption to a conversation that was verging on tedious and one-sided. “I would really like to know what you find out about the driver of that car,” I said to the cop.
“I bet you would,” he said. “Can I see some ID, please?”
“I have to get to a crime scene,” I said.
“You’re at one,” he told me. So I showed him my credentials and he looked at them very carefully, dripping canal water onto the 160
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laminated picture. Finally he nodded and said, “Okay, Morgan, you’re out of here.”
From the Hummer driver’s reaction you might have thought the cop had suggested setting the Pope on fire. “You can’t let that son of a bitch just go like that!” he screeched. “That goddamn asshole dinged up my car!”
And the cop, bless him, simply stared at the man, dripped a little more water, and said, “May I see your license and registration, sir?” It seemed like a wonderful exit line, and I took advantage of it.
My poor battered car was making very unhappy noises, but I put it on the road to the university anyway—there really was no other choice. No matter how badly damaged it was, it would have to get me there. And it made me feel a certain kinship with my car.
Here we were, two splendidly built pieces of machinery, hammered out of our original beautiful condition by circumstances beyond our control. It was a wonderful theme for self-pity, and I indulged it for several minutes. The anger I had felt only a few minutes ago had leeched away, dripped onto the lawn like canal water off the cop.
Watching the Avalon’s driver swim to the far side, climb out, and walk away had been in the same spirit as everything else lately; get a little bit close and then have the rug pulled out from under your feet.
And now there was a new body, and we hadn’t even figured out what to do about the others yet. It was making us look like the grey-hounds at a dog track, chasing after a fake rabbit that is always just a little bit too far ahead, jerked tantalizingly away every time the poor dog thinks he’s about to get it in his teeth.
There were two squad cars at the university ahead of me, and the four officers had already cordoned off the area around the Lowe Art Museum and pushed back the growing crowd. A squat, powerful-looking cop with a shaved head came over to meet me, and pointed toward the back of the building.
The body was in a clump of vegetation behind the gallery. Deborah was talking to someone who looked like a student, and Vince Masuoka was squatting beside the left leg of the body and poking DEXTER IN THE DARK
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carefully with a ballpoint pen at something on the ankle. The body could not be seen from the road, but even so you could not really say it had been hidden. It had obviously been roasted like the others, and it was laid out just like the first two, in a stiff formal position, with the head replaced by a ceramic bull’s head. And once again, as I looked at it I waited by reflex for some reaction from within. But I heard nothing except the gentle tropical wind blowing through my brain. I was still alone.
As I stood in huffish thought, Deborah came roaring over to me at full volume. “Took you long enough,” she snarled. “Where have you been?”