“Wow,” I said, and I thought about it for a moment. “The list from the dentist? The guys who got the vampire fangs?”
Deborah nodded, steering around a battered pickup hauling a trailer. “That’s right,” she said.
“And you didn’t check all of them with Deke?”
She looked at me, which I thought was a bad idea, since we were going ninety miles an hour. “One left,” she said. “But this is the one; I know it.”
“Look out,” I said, and Debs glanced at the road just in time to steer us around a large gasoline tanker that had decided to switch lanes for no apparent reason.
“So you think this last name on the list can tell us how to find Bobby Acosta?” I said, and Deborah nodded vigorously.
“I had a gut feeling about this one, right from the start,” she said, steering into the far right lane with one finger.
“And so you saved it for last? Deborah!” I said as a pair of motorcycles cut in front of us and began to brake for the exit.
“Yeah,” she said, gliding back into the middle lane.
“Because you wanted to build the suspense?”
“It’s Deke,” Deborah said, and I was thrilled to see that she was watching the road now. “He’s just …” She hesitated for a moment, and then blurted out, “He’s bad luck.”
I have spent my life around cops so far, and I expect that the rest of my life I’ll do the same, especially if I get caught someday. So I know that superstitions can pop up at some odd times and places. Even so, I was surprised to hear them from my sister. “Bad luck?” I said. “Debs, do you want me to call a santero? Maybe he can kill a chicken, and—”
“I know how it sounds, goddamn it,” she said. “But what the hell else can it be?”
I could think of a lot of other things it could be, but it didn’t seem politic to say so, and after a moment Deborah went on.
“All right, maybe I’m full of shit,” she said. “But I need some luck on this thing. There’s a clock ticking here, and that girl …” She paused almost as if she were feeling strong emotion, and I looked at her with surprise. Emotion? Sergeant Iron Heart?
Deborah didn’t look back at me. She just shook her head. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “I shouldn’t let it get to me. It’s just …” She shrugged and looked grumpy again, which was a bit of a relief. “I guess I’ve been a little … I dunno. Weird lately.”
I thought about the last few days, and realized that it was true: My sister had been uncharacteristically vulnerable and emotional. “Yes, you have,” I said. “Why do you think that is?”
Deborah sighed heavily, another action that was very unlike her. “I think … I dunno,” she said. “Chutsky says it’s the knife wound.” She shook her head. “He says it’s like postpartum depression, that you always feel bad for a while after a major injury.”
I nodded. It made a certain amount of sense. Deborah had recently been stabbed, and had come so close to death from blood loss that the difference was a matter of a few seconds in the ambulance. And certainly Chutsky, her boyfriend, would know about that—he had been some kind of intelligence operative before being disabled, and his body was a raised-relief road map of scar tissue.
“Even so,” I said, “you can’t let this case get under your skin.” As soon as I said it I braced myself, since it was a surefire setup line for an arm punch, but once again Debs surprised me.
“I know,” she said softly, “but I can’t help it. She’s just a girl. A kid. Good grades, nice family, and these guys—cannibals …” She trickled off into a moody and reflective silence, which was a really striking contrast to the fact that we were speeding through heavy traffic. “It’s complicated, Dexter,” she said at last.
“I guess so,” I said.
“I think I empathize with the kid,” she said. “Maybe because she’s so vulnerable at the same time I am.” She stared straight ahead at the road, but didn’t really seem to see it, which was a little bit alarming. “And all this other stuff. I dunno.”
It might have been because I was hanging on for dear life in a vehicle that was careening through traffic at breakneck speed, but I didn’t quite get her point. “What other stuff?” I said.
“Ah, you know,” she said, even though I had said quite clearly that I did not know. “The family shit. I mean …” She scowled suddenly and looked at me again. “If you say one fucking word to Vince or anybody else about my bio clock ticking, I swear I’ll kill you.”
“But it is ticking?” I said, feeling mildly astonished.
Deborah glared at me for a moment and then, happily for life and limb, looked back at the road again. “Yeah,” she said. “I think it is. I really want a family, Dex.”
I suppose I could have told her something comforting based on my experience: perhaps that families were overrated and kids were really just a sinister device to make us all prematurely old and crazy. But instead, I thought of Lily Anne, and I suddenly wanted my sister to have her family so she could feel all the things I was learning to feel. “Well,” I said.
“Shit, that’s the exit,” Deborah said, swerving hard for the off-ramp and effectively killing the mood, as well as guaranteeing that I lost all sense of what I had been about to say. The sign that flashed by, seemingly just a few inches from my head, told me we were heading for North Miami Beach, into an area of modest houses and shops that had changed very little in the last twenty years. It seemed like a very odd neighborhood for a cannibal.
Deborah slowed down and nosed into traffic at the end of the off-ramp, still moving too fast. She took us several blocks east, then a few more north, and then steered into six or seven blocks of houses where the residents had planted rows of hedges to seal off all the roads leading in, except one main entry street. It was a practice that had become common in this part of town, and was supposed to cut down crime. Nobody had told me whether it worked.