Dexter by Design (Dexter 4)

“What, goddamn it?” she said.

“What if this is what they want?” I said.

She stared at me for a moment, looking quite a bit like Cody and Astor when they’ve just woken up. “What’s that mean?” she finally said.

“The first thing I thought about the bodies was that it wasn’t about killing them. It was about playing with them afterward. Displaying them.”

Debs snorted. “I remember. It STILL doesn’t make any sense.”

“But it does,” I said. “If somebody is trying to create an effect. To have an impact in some way. So look at it backward—what impact has this already had?”

“Aside from getting media attention all over the world—”

“No, NOT aside from that. That is exactly what I mean.”

She shook her head. “What?”

“What’s wrong with media attention, sis? The whole world is looking at the Sunshine State—at Miami, tourist beacon to the world—”

“They’re looking, and they’re saying no fucking way am I going anywhere near that slaughterhouse,” Debs said. “Come on, Dex, what’s the fucking point? I told you … Oh.” She frowned.

“You’re saying somebody did this to attack the tourist industry? The whole fucking state? That’s fucking nuts.”

“You think somebody did this who isn’t nuts, sis?”

“But who the hell would do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “California?”

“Come on, Dexter,” she snarled. “It has to make sense. If somebody does this, they have to have SOME kind of motive.”

“Somebody with a grudge,” I said, sounding a lot more certain than I felt.

“A grudge against the whole fucking state?” she said. “Is that supposed to make sense?”

“Well, not really,” I said.

“Then how about if you come up with something that does make sense? And like, right now? Because I don’t see how this could get much worse.”

If life teaches us anything, it is to flinch away and roll under the furniture whenever anyone is foolish enough to utter those fell words. And sure enough, the dreadful syllables were barely out of Deborah’s mouth when the phone on her desk buzzed for her attention, and some small and rather nasty voice whispered in my ear that this would be a great time to wedge myself under the desk in the fetal position.

Deborah snatched up the phone, still glaring at me, and then suddenly turned away and hunched over. She muttered a few shocked syllables that sounded like, “When? Jesus. Right,” and then she hung up and turned a look on me that made her previous glare seem like the first kiss of springtime. “You motherfucker,” she said.

“What did I do?” I said, rather surprised by the cold fury in her voice.

“That’s what I want to know,” she said.

Even a monster reaches a point at which irritation begins to trickle in, and I believe I was very close to that point. “Deborah, either you start speaking complete sentences that actually make sense, or I’m going back to the lab to polish the spectrometer.”

“There’s a break in the case,” she said.

“Then why aren’t we happy?”

“It’s at the Tourist Board,” she said.

I opened my mouth to say something witty and cutting, and then I closed it again.

“Yeah,” Deborah said. “Almost like somebody had a grudge against the whole state.”