“Run the print,” Deborah said. “I want a name.”
“And maybe a GPS reading?” Vince said.
Deborah glared at him, but instead of ripping him into small and bloody shreds she just looked back at me and said, “Run the print, Dexter,” and then she turned around and whirled away out of the lab.
Alex Duarte straightened up as she hustled past him. “Au ’voir,” I told him politely.
He nodded. “Mange merde,” he said, and he followed Deborah out the door. His French accent was much better than mine.
I looked at Vince. He closed his laptop and stood up. “Let’s run it,” he said.
We ran it. As I had thought, the bloody smudge was too badly degraded to get any kind of usable DNA sample, but we did get a picture of the fingerprint, and after computer enhancement the image was clear enough to send to the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System with some hope that we might get a match. It was a national database of felons’ fingerprints, and if our hammer-loving friend was in it, a name would pop out, and Deborah would get him.
We sent the print in, and then there was nothing to do but wait for the results. Vince scurried away on some other errand, and I just sat for a few minutes. Deborah seemed excited, and as close to happy as she got on the job. She was always very upbeat when she thought she was closing in on a bad guy. For just a second I almost wished I had feelings, so I could get that kind of positive surge of purpose and fulfillment. I never got any sort of glow from my work, just a kind of dull satisfaction when things went well. My only real sense of happy self-affirmation came from my hobby, and I was trying not to think about that right now. But that slender file at home in my study contained three names. Three very intriguing candidates for oblivion, Dexter style, and pursuing any one of them would almost certainly relieve my feelings of low self-worth and bring a bright synthetic smile to my face.
But this was not
the time for that, not with an unknown Witness closing in on me, and the entire police force on edge over the untimely and unpleasant demise of Klein, and now Gunther. Every cop in the greater Miami area would be working each shift with extra diligence in hopes of becoming the Hero of the Day, the cop who caught the killer, and although all that extra watchfulness would make the streets temporarily a little safer for most of us, it would also make things a little too risky for a Dexter Dalliance.
No, a recreational side trip was not the answer, not in this climate of frenzied, hostile police vigilance. I had to find my Witness, and until then just resign myself to being paranoid, grumpy, unhappy, and unfulfilled.
But when you came right down to it—so what? From what I could learn by watching my fellow inhabitants of this vale of tears, everybody else was just as wretched at least two-thirds of the time. Why should I be exempt merely because I had an empty heart? After all, even though Lily Anne made being human thoroughly worthwhile, there were bound to be less rewarding aspects of personhood, and it was only fair that I should have to suffer through the bad parts, too. Of course, I had never been a big believer in fairness, but I was clearly stuck with it for now.
My sister, however, was not. Just as I was concluding that everything was horrible and it truly served me right, she burst into my office like the Charge of the Light Brigade. “Have you got anything yet?” she said.
“Debs, we just sent it off,” I said. “It’s going to take a little time.”
“How long?” she said.
I sighed. “It’s one partial print, sis,” I said. “It could take a few days, maybe up to a week.”
“That’s bullshit,” she said. “I don’t have a week.”
“It’s a huge database,” I said. “And they get requests from all over the country. We have to wait our turn.”
Deborah ground her teeth at me, so hard I could almost hear enamel flaking off. “I need the results,” she said through a clenched jaw, “and I need them now.”
“Well,” I said pleasantly, “if you know a way to make a database hurry up, I’m sure we’d all love to hear it.”
“Goddamn it, you’re not even trying!” she said.
I will freely admit that nine times out of ten, I would have had a little more patience with Deborah’s patently impossible request and rotten attitude. But with things as they were lately, I really didn’t want to knuckle my forehead and leap into worshipful compliance. I took a deep breath instead and spoke with audible patience and steely control. “Deborah. I am doing my job the best I can. If you think you can do it better, then please feel free to try.”
She ground her teeth even harder, and for a moment I thought the canines might splinter and burst through her cheeks. But happily for her dental bill, they did not. She just glared at me instead, and then nodded her head twice, very hard. “All right,” she said. And then she turned around and walked rapidly away without even looking back at me to snarl one last time.
I sighed. Perhaps I should have stayed home in bed, or at least checked my horoscope. Nothing seemed to be going right. The whole world was slightly off-kilter, leaning just a bit out of its normal axis. It had a strange and mean tint to it, too, as if it had sniffed out my fragile mood and was probing for further weakness.
Ah, well. If only I’d had a mother, I’m sure she would have told me there would be days like this. And the kind of mother who could say that with a straight face would probably have added, An idle mind is the devil’s playground. I certainly didn’t want to upset Hypothetical Mom, and I didn’t want to go on the swing set with Satan either, so I got out of my chair and tidied up the lab.
Vince stuck his head in a minute later and watched me with puzzled concentration as I wiped down the counter with some cleaner and paper towels. He shook his head. “Such a neatnik,” he said. “If I didn’t know you were married, I would wonder about you.”
I lifted a small stack of case files off the counter. “These all need to be filed,” I said.
He held up a hand and backed away. “My back is acting up again,” he said. “No heavy lifting, doctor’s orders.” And he disappeared down the hall. Dexter Deserted—but it fit the general trend of recent events, and I was sure I would get used to it sooner or later. In any case, I managed to finish cleaning up without bursting into tears, which was probably the best I could hope for, the way things were going.
ELEVEN
I WAS JUST SITTING DOWN TO DINNER THAT NIGHT WHEN MY cell phone began to chime. It was leftover night, which was not a bad thing at our house, since it allowed me to sample two or three of Rita’s tasty concoctions at one sitting, and I stared at the phone for several seconds and thought very hard about the last piece of Rita’s Tropical Chicken sitting there on the platter before I finally picked up my phone and answered.