Even in the early morning, Miami traffic has an edge to it that you don’t find in other cities. Miami drivers seem to wake up faster and meaner than others. Maybe it’s because the bright and relentless sunlight makes everyone realize that they could be out fishing, or at the beach, instead of crawling along the highway to a boring, soul-crushing, dead-end job that doesn’t pay them anything near what they are really worth. Or maybe it’s just the added jolt we get from our extra-strong Miami coffee.
Whatever the reason, I have never seen a morning drive without a full edge of homicidal mania, and this morning was no exception. People honked, yelled threats, and waved middle fingers, and at the interchange for the Palmetto Expressway an old Buick had rear-ended a new BMW. A fistfight had broken out on the shoulder, and everyone else slowed down to watch, or to shout at the fighters, and it took an extra ten minutes for me to get past the mess and in to work. That was just as well, considering what was waiting for me when I got there.
Since I was still feeling stupidly bright and chipper, I did not stop for a cup of the lethal coffee that might, after all, kill the buzz—or even me. Instead I went directly to my desk, where I found Deborah waiting for me, slumped into my chair and looking like the poster girl for the National Brooding Outrage Foundation. Her left arm was still in a sling, but her cast had lost its clean and bright patina, and she had leaned it against my desk blotter and knocked over my pencil holder. But nobody is perfect, and it was such a happy morning, so I let it go.
“Good morning, sis,” I said cheerfully, which seemed to offend her more than it should have. She made a face and shook her head dismissively, as if the goodness or badness of the morning was irritating and irrelevant.
“What happened last night?” she said, in a voice that was harsher than usual. “Was it the same as the others?”
“You mean Camilla Figg?” I said, and now she very nearly snarled.
“What the fuck else would I mean?” she said. “Goddamn it, Dex, I need to know—was it the same?”
I sat down in the folding chair opposite my desk, which I thought was quite noble of me, considering that Debs was in my very own chair and this other one was not terribly comf
ortable. “I don’t think so,” I said, and Deborah hissed out a very long breath.
“Fuck it; I knew it,” she said, and she straightened up and looked at me with an eager gleam in her eye. “What’s different?”
I raised a hand to slow her down. “It’s nothing really compelling,” I said. “At least, Detective Hood didn’t think so.”
“That stupid asshole couldn’t find the floor using both feet,” she snapped. “What did you get?”
“Well,” I said, “just that the skin was broken in two places. So there was some blood at the scene. Uh, the body wasn’t arranged quite right, either.” She looked at me expectantly, so I said, “The, um, I think the trauma wounds were different.”
“Different how?” she said.
“I think they were made with something else,” I said. “Like, not a hammer.”
“With what,” she said. “With a golf club? A Buick? What?”
“I couldn’t tell,” I said. “But probably something with a round surface. Maybe …” I hesitated for a half-second; even saying it out loud made me feel like I was being paranoid. But Debs was looking at me with an expression of eagerness-ready-to-turn-cranky, so I said it. “Maybe a baseball bat.”
“Okay,” she said, and she kept that same expression focused on me.
“Um, the body wasn’t really arranged the same,” I said. Deborah kept staring, and when I didn’t say anything else she frowned. “That’s it?” she said.
“Almost,” I said. “We’ll have to wait for the autopsy, to be sure, but one of the wounds was on her head, and I think Camilla was unconscious or even dead when the wounds were made.”
“That doesn’t mean shit,” she said.
“Deborah, there was no blood at all with the others. And the first two times the killer was incredibly careful to keep them awake the whole time—he never even broke the skin.”
“You’ll never sell that to the captain,” she said. “The whole fucking department wants my head on a stick, and if I can’t prove I got the right guy locked up, he’s going to give it to them.”
“I can’t prove anything,” I said. “But I know I’m right.” She cocked her head to one side and looked at me quizzically. “One of your voices?” she said carefully. “Can you make it tell you anything more?”
When Deborah had finally found out what I really am, I had tried to explain the Dark Passenger to her. I had told her that the many times I’d had “hunches” about a killer were actually hints from a kindred spirit inside me. Apparently I’d made a clumsy mess of it, because she still seemed to think I went into some kind of trance and chatted long-distance with somebody in the Great Beyond.
“It’s not really like a Ouija board,” I said.
“I don’t care if it’s talking tea leaves,” she said. “Get it to tell us something I can use.”
Before I could open my mouth and let out the cranky comeback that was lurking there, a massive foot clomped at the doorway, and a large dark shadow fell over the shreds of my pleasant morning. I looked around, and there, in person, was the end of all happy thoughts.
Detective Hood leaned against the doorframe and gave us his very best mean smile. “Looka this,” he said. “Wall-to-wall loser.”
“Looka that,” Debs snapped back at him. “Talking asshole.”