Deke shrugged. “Oh, you know,” he said. “Captain wants me to stick with, uh, Morgan here.”
“Wow,” Alvarez said. “Really dangerous.”
“We’re partners,” Deke said, looking slightly hurt.
“You be careful, Deke,” Hood said. “Morgan is pretty hard on her partners.”
“Yeah, she kind of loses ’em now and then,” Alvarez said.
“You two assholes want me to hold your hand all the way to the DMV database?” Deborah said. “Or can you get your head out of your ass long enough to find it by yourself?”
Hood stood up and said, “On my way, boss,” and headed for the door, and Alvarez followed. “Watch your back, Deke,” he said as he left.
Deke watched them go with a slight frown, and as the door closed behind them he said, “Why they gotta bust my chops? ’Cause I’m the new guy, or what?” Deborah ignored him, and he turned to me. “I mean, what? What’d I do? Huh?”
I had no answer for him other than the obvious, which was that cops are like all other pack animals—they pick on any member of the herd that seems different or shows weakness. With his absurd good looks and somewhat limited mental abilities, Deke was both, and therefore an obvious target. Still, it seemed like a tough idea to get across without a lot of unpleasantness and groping for small words, so I just gave Deke a reassuring smile. “I’m sure they’ll ease up when they see what you can do,” I told him.
He shook his head slowly. “How’m I supposed to do anything?” he said, leaning his head toward Debs. “I gotta stick with her like a fuckin’ shadow.”
He watched me as if I was supposed to supply an answer, so I said, “Well, I’m sure a chance will come up for you to show some initiative.”
“Initiative,” he said, and for a moment I thought I would have to tell him what that meant. But happily for me, he just shook his head sourly and said, “Shit,” and before we could explore any of the subtleties of that th
ought, Chambers came over and put a hand on Deborah’s shoulder.
“All right, Morgan,” he said. “You know what you gotta do. Downstairs, ninety minutes.”
Debs looked at him with an expression that was closer to terror than anything I had ever seen on her face before. “I can’t,” she said. “I mean, I thought you were going to—Can’t you do it?”
Chambers shook his head with something like malicious glee in his smile. It made him look like a wicked and very deadly elf. “Can’t,” he said. “You’re the lead here. I’m just the coordinator. Your captain wants you to do this.” He patted her shoulder again and moved away.
“Shit,” Deborah said, and for a moment I felt intense irritation that this was the only word anyone could come up with this morning; and then she ran a hand through her hair and I noticed that her hand was shaking.
“What is it, Debs?” I said, wondering what on earth could cause my fearless sister to tremble like a fragile leaf in a storm.
She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Press conference,” she said. “They want me to talk to the press.” And she swallowed and then licked her lips as if everything inside her had just gone completely dry. “Shit,” she said again.
SEVENTEEN
ONE OF THE THINGS I FIND MOST REWARDING ABOUT MY job is that there is always a certain amount of variety. Some days I get to use large and expensive machinery to run very modern scientific tests; some days I simply peer into a microscope. And if nothing else, the scenery changes when I go out to crime scenes. Of course, the crimes are all different, too, ranging from the common and vulgar wife slashing to some really quite interesting eviscerations from time to time.
But in all my vast and varied experience with the department, I had never before been asked to use my scientific training and acumen to prepare my terrified sister for a press conference, and I have to say this was a good thing, because if it had been a regular part of my job, I would have seriously considered quitting forensics and getting a job teaching middle school physical education.
Deborah dragged me off to her cubicle and immediately burst into a very unattractive cold sweat; she sat down, stood up, paced three steps in each direction, sat down again, and began to squeeze her hands together. And just to add to an already sky-high Irritant Quotient, she began to say, “Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit,” over and over in various volumes and inflections, until I began to think she had lost the power of intelligent speech altogether.
“Debs,” I said at last, “if that’s your statement, Captain Matthews is going to be very unhappy.”
“Shit,” she said, and I wondered if I should slap her. “Dexter, Jesus, please, what am I supposed to say?”
“Anything but ‘shit,’ ” I said.
She stood up again and walked to the window, still mangling her hands. Every little girl who has ever lived has grown up wanting to be an actress or dancer or some kind of performer—all of them except Deborah. All she ever wanted out of life, even at the tender age of five, was a badge and a gun. And through hard work, dogged intelligence, and really painful arm punches, she had achieved her goal—only to find that in order to keep it, she now had to be an actress. The word “irony” is terribly overused, but still, the situation seemed to call for a bit of wry amusement at the very least.
But it also called for a certain amount of Dexter’s newfound Lily Anne–born compassion, since I could tell that without my help, my sister was going to prove once and for all that there really was something to the idea of spontaneous combustion. So when I decided that Debs had suffered enough, I got up from my rickety little chair and went to stand beside her. “Debs,” I said. “This is something so easy that Captain Matthews is good at it.”
I think she almost said “shit” again, but she caught herself and just bit her lip instead. “I can’t do it,” she said. “All those people—and reporters—cameras—I just can’t, Dexter.”
I was glad to see that she had recovered a little, enough to separate “people” from “reporters,” but clearly I still had work to do. “You can, Deborah,” I told her firmly. “And it will be a lot easier than you think. You may even get to like it.”