“No,” I said. “That’s because from this far away I can’t even read that shit.”
“Mr. Chin Dimple,” she said, indicating Deke, “went to interview the Spanos family.”
“Oh, hey,” Deke said.
“And he found me a suspect,” Debs said.
“Person of interest to the investigation,” Deke said very seriously in official reportese. “He’s not really a suspect.”
“He’s the only fucking lead we’ve got, and you sit on it all night,” Debs snarled. “I have to read it in the goddamn report at nine-fucking-thirty the next morning.”
“I had to type it,” he said, sounding slightly hurt.
“With two teenage girls missing, the captain on my ass, and the press about to blow up like Three Mile Island, you type it and don’t tell me first,” she said.
“Hey, well, wh
at the fuck,” Deke said with a shrug.
Deborah gnashed her teeth. I mean, really; it’s something I’d only read about before, mostly in fantasy stories, and I’d never believed it happened in real life, but there it was. I watched, fascinated, as she gnashed her teeth, started to say something very forceful, and instead threw the report on her desk. “Go get some coffee, Deke,” she said at last.
Deke straightened up, made a clicking noise as he pointed a finger at her, and said, “Cream and two sugars,” and sauntered away toward the coffeepot down the hall.
“I thought you liked your coffee black,” I said as Deke disappeared.
Deborah stood up. “If that’s his last fuckup, I am the happiest girl in the world,” she said. “Come on.”
She was already moving down the hall in the opposite direction from Deke, and so once again any protest I might have made was largely irrelevant. I sighed and followed, wondering if Deborah had learned this kind of behavior, perhaps from a book called The Management Style of Bulldozers.
I caught up with her at the elevator and said, “I suppose it would be too much to ask where we’re going?”
“Tiffany Spanos,” she said, hammering at the “down” button a second time, and then a third. “Tyler’s older sister.”
It took me a moment, but as the elevator doors slid open I remembered. “Tyler Spanos,” I said, following her into the elevator. “The girl who’s missing with, um, Samantha Aldovar.”
“Yeah,” she said. The doors slid shut and we lurched down. “Nimnut talked to Tiffany Spanos about her sister.” I assumed Nimnut meant Deke, so I just nodded. “Tiffany says that Tyler has been into that Goth shit for a while, and then she met this guy at a party who was, like, Goth squared.”
I suppose I lead a very innocent life, but I had thought that “Goth” was a sort of fashion statement for teenagers with bad complexions and a particularly repulsive form of angst. As far as I knew, the whole thing involved cultivating a look of black clothes and very pale skin, and perhaps listening to Euro-tech pop music while looking longingly at a DVD of Twilight. It seemed to me something that would be very hard to conceive of squared. But Deborah’s imagination knew no such boundary.
“Am I allowed to ask what ‘Goth squared’ means?” I said humbly.
Deborah glared at me. “Guy’s a vampire,” she said.
“Really,” I said, and I admit I was surprised. “In this day and age? In Miami?”
“Yeah,” she said, and the elevator doors slid open. “Even had his teeth filed,” she said, heading out the door.
I hurried after her again. “So we’re going to see this guy?” I asked. “What’s his name?”
“Vlad,” she said. “Catchy name, huh?”
“Vlad what?” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“But you know where he lives?” I said hopefully.
“We’ll find him,” she said, stalking toward the exit, and I finally decided that enough was enough. I grabbed her arm, and she turned to glare at me.