CHAPTER 7

THIS BODY IS STRETCHED OUT JUST THE WAY I LIKE it. The arms and legs are secure and the mouth is stopped with duct tape so there will be no noise and no spill into my work area. And my hand feels so steady with the knife that I am quite sure this will be a good one, very satisfying—

Except it's not a knife, it's some kind of—

Except it's not my hand. Even though my hand is moving with this hand, it's not mine that holds the blade. And the room really is sort of small, it's so narrow, which makes sense because it's—what?

And now here I am floating above this perfect tight work space and its tantalizing body and for the first time I feel the cold blowing around me and even through me somehow. And if I could only feel my teeth I am quite sure they would chatter. And my hand in perfect unison with that other hand goes up and arches back for a perfect cut—

And of course I wake up in my apartment. Standing somehow by the front door, completely naked. Sleepwalking I could understand, but sleep stripping? Really. I stumble back to my little trundle bed. The covers are in a heap on the floor. The air conditioner has kicked the temperature down close to sixty. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, last night, feeling a little estranged from it all after what had happened with Rita. Preposterous, if it had really happened. Dexter, the love bandit, stealing kisses. And so I had taken a long hot shower when I got home and shoved the thermostat all the way down as I climbed into bed. I don't pretend to understand why, but in my darker moments I find cold cleansing. Not refreshing so much as necessary.

And cold it was. Far too cold now, for coffee and the start of the day amid the last tattered pieces of the dream.

As a rule I don't remember my dreams, and don't attach any importance to them if I do. So it was ridiculous that this one was staying with me.

—floating above this perfect tight work space—my hand in perfect unison with that other hand goes up and arches back for a perfect cut—

I've read the books. Perhaps because I'll never be one, humans are interesting to me. So I know all the symbolism: Floating is a form of flying, meaning sex. And the knife—

Ja, Herr Doktor. The knife ist eine mother, ja?

Snap out of it, Dexter.

Just a stupid, meaningless dream.

The telephone rang and I almost jumped out of my skin.

“How about breakfast at Wolfie's?” said Deborah. “My treat.”

“It's Saturday morning,” I said. “We'll never get in.”

“I'll get there first and get a table,” she said. “Meet you there.”

Wolfie's Deli on Miami Beach was a Miami tradition. And because the Morgans are a Miami family, we had been eating there all our lives on those special deli occasions. Why Deborah thought today might be one of those occasions was beyond me, but I was sure she would enlighten me in time. So I took a shower, dressed in my casual Saturday best, and drove out to the Beach. Traffic was light over the new improved MacArthur Causeway, and soon I was politely elbowing my way through the teeming throngs at Wolfie's.

True to her word, Deborah had corralled a corner table. She was chatting with an ancient waitress, a woman even I recognized. “Rose, my love,” I said, bending to kiss her wrinkled cheek. She turned her permanent scowl on me. “My wild Irish Rose.”

“Dexter,” she rasped, with her thick middle-European accent. “Knock off with the kiss, like some faigelah.”

“Faigelah. Is that Irish for fiancé?” I asked her, and slid into my chair.

“Feh,” she said, trudging off to the kitchen and shaking her head at me.

“I think she likes me,” I told Deborah.

“Somebody should,” said Deb. “How was your date last night?”

“A lot of fun,” I said. “You should try it sometime.”

“Feh,” said Deborah.

“You can't spend all your nights standing on Tamiami Trail in your underwear, Deb. You need a life.”

“I need a transfer,” she snarled at me. “To Homicide Bureau. Then we'll see about a life.”

“I understand,” I said. “It would certainly sound better for the kids to say Mommie's in homicide.”

“Dexter, for Christ's sake,” she said.

“It's a natural thought, Deborah. Nephews and nieces. More little Morgans. Why not?”

She blew out a long breath. “I thought Mom was dead,” she said.

“I'm channeling her,” I said. “Through the cherry Danish.”

“Well, change the channel. What do you know about cell crystallization?”

I blinked. “Wow,” I said. “You just blew away all the competition in the Subject Changing Tournament.”

“I'm serious,” she said.

“Then I really am floored, Deb. What do you mean, cell crystallization?”

“From cold,” she said. “Cells that have crystallized from cold.”

Light flooded my brain. “Of course,” I said, “beautiful,” and somewhere deep inside small bells began to ring. Cold . . . Clean, pure cold and the cool knife almost sizzling as it slices into the warm flesh. Antiseptic clean coldness, the blood slowed and helpless, so absolutely right and totally necessary; cold. “Why didn't I—” I started to say. I shut up when I saw Deborah's face.

“What,” Deb demanded. “What of course?”

I shook my head. “First tell me why you want to know.”

She looked at me for a long hard moment and blew out another breath. “I think you know,” she said at last. “There's been another murder.”

“I know,” I said. “I passed it last night.”

“I heard you didn't actually pass it.”

I shrugged. Metro Dade is such a small family.

“So what did that ‘of course' mean?”

“Nothing,” I said, mildly irritated at last. “The flesh of the body just looked a little different. If it was subjected to cold—” I held out my hands. “That's all, okay? How cold?”

“Like meat-packing cold,” she said. “Why would he do that?”

Because it's beautiful, I thought. “It would slow the flow of blood,” I said.

She studied me. “Is that important?”

I took a long and perhaps slightly shaky breath. Not only could I never explain it, she would lock me up if I tried. “It's vital,” I said. For some reason I felt embarrassed.

“Why vital?”

“It, ah—I don't know. I think he has a thing about blood, Deb. Just a feeling I got from—I don't know, no evidence, you know.”

She was giving me that look again. I tried to think of something to say, but I couldn't. Glib, silver-tongued Dexter, with a dry mouth and nothing to say.

“Shit,” she said at last. “That's it? Cold slows the blood, and that's vital? Come on. What the hell good is that, Dexter?”

“I don't do ‘good' before coffee, Deborah,” I said with a heroic effort at recovery. “Just accurate.”

“Shit,” she said again. Rose brought our coffee. Deborah sipped. “Last night I got an invite to the seventy-two-hour briefing,” she said.

I clapped my hands. “Wonderful. You've arrived. What do you need me for?” Metro Dade has a policy of pulling the homicide team together approximately seventy-two hours after a murder. The investigating officer and her team talk it over with the Medical Examiner and, sometimes, someone from the prosecutor's office. It keeps everyone on the same heading. If Deborah had been invited, she was on the case.

She scowled. “I'm not good at politics, Dexter. I can feel LaGuerta pushing me out, but I can't do anything about it.”

“Is she still looking for her mystery witness?”

Deborah nodded.

“Really. Even after the new kill last night?”

“She says that proves it. Because the new cuts were all complete.”

“But they were all different,” I protested.

She shrugged.

“And you suggested—?”

Deb looked away. “I told her I thought it was a waste of time to look for a witness when it was obvious that the killer wasn't interrupted, just unsatisfied.”

“Ouch,” I said. “You really don't know anything about politics.”

“Well, goddamn it, Dex,” she said. Two old ladies at the next table glared at her. She didn't notice. “What you said made sense. It is obvious, and she's ignoring me. And even worse.”

“What could be worse than being ignored?” I said.

She blushed. “I caught a couple of the uniforms snickering at me afterward. There's a joke going around, and I'm it.” She bit her lip and looked away. “Einstein,” she said.

“I'm afraid I don't get it.”

“If my tits were brains, I'd be Einstein,” she said bitterly. I cleared my throat instead of laughing. “That's what she's spreading about me,” Deb went on. “That kind of crappy little tag sticks to you, and then they don't promote you because they think nobody will respect you with a nickname like that. Goddamn it, Dex,” she said again, “she's ruining my career.”

I felt a little surge of protective warmth. “She's an idiot.”

“Should I tell her that, Dex? Would that be political?”

Our food arrived. Rose slammed the plates down in front of us as though she had been condemned by a corrupt judge to serve breakfast to baby killers. I gave her a gigantic smile and she trudged away, muttering to herself.

I took a bite and turned my thoughts to Deborah's problem. I had to try to think of it that way, Deborah's problem. Not “those fascinating murders.” Not “that amazingly attractive MO,” or “the thing so similar to what I would love to do someday.” I had to stay uninvolved, but this was pulling at me so very hard. Even last night's dream, with its cold air. Pure coincidence, of course, but unsettling anyway.

This killer had touched the heart of what my killing was about. In the way he worked, of course, and not in his selection of victims. He had to be stopped, certainly, no question. Those poor hookers.

Still . . . The need for cold . . . So very interesting to explore sometime. Find a nice dark, narrow place . . .

Narrow? Where had that come from?

My dream, naturally. But that was just saying that my unconscious wanted me to think about it, wasn't it? And narrow felt right somehow. Cold and narrow—

“Refrigerated truck,” I said.

I opened my eyes. Deborah struggled mightily with a mouthful of eggs before she could speak. “What?”

“Oh, just a guess. Not a real insight, I'm afraid. But wouldn't it make sense?”

“Wouldn't what make sense?” she asked.

I looked down at my plate and frowned, trying to picture how this would work. “He wants a cold environment. To slow the blood flow, and because it's, uh—cleaner.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so. And it has to be a narrow space—”

“Why? Where the hell did that come from, narrow?”

I chose not to hear that question. “So a refrigerated truck would fit those conditions, and it's mobile, which makes it much easier to dump the garbage afterward.”

Deborah took a bite of bagel and thought for a moment while she chewed. “So,” she said at last, and swallowed. “The killer might have access to one of these trucks? Or own one?”

“Mmm, maybe. Except the kill last night was the first that showed signs of cold.”

Deborah frowned. “So he went out and bought a truck?”

“Probably not. This is still experimental. It was probably an impulse to try cold.”

She nodded. “And we would never get lucky enough that he drives one for a living or something, right?”

I gave her my happy shark smile. “Ah, Deb. How quick you are this morning. No, I'm afraid our friend is much too smart to connect himself that way.”

Deborah sipped her coffee, put the cup down, and leaned back. “So we're looking for a stolen refrigerator truck,” she said at last.

“I'm afraid so,” I said. “But how many of those can there be in the last forty-eight hours?”

“In Miami?” She snorted. “Somebody steals one, word gets out that it's worth stealing, and suddenly every goddamn two-bit original gangsta, marielito, crackhead, and junior wise guy has to steal one, just to keep up.”

“Let's hope word isn't out yet,” I said.

Deborah swallowed the last of her bagel. “I'll check,” she said. And then she reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “I really appreciate this,” she said. She gave me a couple of seconds of a shy, hesitant smile. “But I worry about how you come up with this stuff, Dex. I just . . .” She looked down at the table and squeezed my hand again.

I squeezed back. “Leave the worrying to me,” I said. “You just find that truck.”