“I said important,” Debs said. “That’s all standard crap.”
“Well,” I said, “there’s nothing on her, nothing in the Dumpster or the immediate vicinity to give any clue about who she was.”
“And that’s what we need the most,” Deborah said. “To get an ID on the victim.”
“Why is that so important?” Robert asked, and the two women swiveled their heads and gave him matching expressions of disdain. Robert looked very uncomfortable. “I mean,” he said, “the forensic evidence is, you know. There’s a lot of stuff there.” He nodded at the folder. “We might get like, you know. A fingerprint.”
“We did,” Deborah said. “In fact, we got about three dozen fingerprints. We always get lots of fingerprints. You know how many times we caught somebody from a fingerprint?”
“No,” Robert said. “How many?”
“In round numbers? Zero,” Debs said. “Even when it’s a match with the perp, a decent lawyer will get it thrown out. Fingerprints are for Sherlock Holmes.”
“I’m not sure he actually used them,” I said helpfully.
“Oh, he did,” Jackie said. “There was one story—I forget the name? But he caught the guy from his fingerprint.”
“To catch a killer in real life,” Deborah went on patiently, “you need to backtrack from the victim. Because ninety-nine percent of the time they knew each other; they were seen together; they got some connection. So first we need to know who the victim is.”
“Oh, okay,” Robert said. “Well, so how do we find that out? I mean, if we can’t use fingerprints, and the lab work is bullshit—what do we do?”
“Yeah,” Debs said. “Good question.” And even before she turned to look at me, I knew what was coming, because although she would never admit it, whenever my sister was stuck, it somehow became my problem. I sometimes thought she must have a secret tattoo somewhere on her body: “WWDD?” What Would Dexter Do? And sure enough, as Robert’s question was still echoing in the air, her head swiveled my way.
“Dex?” she said expectantly.
Oddly enough, it was Robert who managed to say what I was thinking. “Why Dexter?” he said, and I felt like applauding. “I mean, he does the lab stuff, and you said it was useless, so—you know,” he said, looking at me. “Not that I think you’re useless, or anything, buddy. But what is he supposed to do?”
Deborah stared at Robert, just long enough to make him uncomfortable, before she answered. “Sometimes Dexter gets these … insights,” she said. “About the killer.”
It is a scientific fact that most situations in life go from bad to worse—I believe it’s called entropy. Any scientists who happened to be observing us at this moment would have been quietly satisfied to see that this natural law held true. As Deborah had said, I really did get insights into the sick and twisted creatures of the night. But that was because I was one of them. Deborah was the only living person I had ever talked to on the subject. After all, I didn’t want people walking around and saying things like, “Gee, Dexter thinks just like a killer. Wonder why?” Additionally, since these thoughts came from a private place, deep inside Dexter’s Dungeon, discussing it always made me feel slightly naked. I thought my sister understood that, but every now and then, like now, she dragged me stripped and flinching into the spotlight.
Robert and Jackie both looked at me, and I began to feel even more uncomfortable. “What,” Robert said. “Like he, uh, profiles?” I’d never heard it used as a verb before. It didn’t make me feel any more at ease.
“Kind of,” Deborah said.
“Wow,” Jackie said, and she looked at me with new respect. “How did you learn to do that?”
Of course, that was exactly the question I did not want to answer. The only honest reply was not something I felt I could profitably discuss with Jackie. So I did my best to steer the conversation onto something a little less personal. “Oh,” I said modestly, “I took a psychology course in college. I assume you ran a missing-persons check, sis?”
Deborah flipped her hand dismissively at that. “First thing we did,” she said. “Come on, Dex; let’s get serious.” She put her arms on her thighs and leaned toward me. “I really want to collar this bastard, and I want him before Anderson fucks up the trail. And before this guy does it again. Because you know he’s going to do it again.”
“Probably,” I said, overriding the mean little voice inside me that was chortling, Almost Certainly.
“So come on,” she said. “Give me something to go on.” She stared at me intently, without blinking, and even more unsettling, Jackie leaned toward me and did exactly the same thing. I was surrounded by Deborahs, all of them impatiently waiting for me to perform a miracle. It was an awful lot of expectation for one lonely Dark Dabbler, no matter how righteously wicked. Luckily for me, Robert provided a perfect counterbalance by recrossing his arms and leaning back again with a skeptical expression on his face.
“Hey, come on,” he said. “Profiling is serious shit. I mean, these FBI guys who do it, it takes years, and they’re still only right, like, fifty percent of the time.” Everybody looked at him, which was a great relief to me. He shrugged. “Well, so, I’m just saying,” he said.
“Dexter does a little better than that,” Deborah said.
“Very cool,” Jackie said. She gave me an encouraging smile, and I couldn’t decide whether to crouch at her feet and let her scratch behind my ear, or slap my sister for bringing it up in the first place.
“All right, well, so,” Robert said. He sounded a little defiant, as if he’d decided that we were all against him, so he might as well push back. He jutted his chin at me. “Let’s see something.”
It was really very thoughtful of him to provide me with a motivation to do something besides wishing I was somewhere else. His Show Me attitude was so annoying it made me forget that I was hesitant to talk about something this intimate, because I wanted so much to say something wonderful that would push his face in the dirt.
“Well,” I said. I thought about the body as I’d seen it: the degree of damage, the strange variety of slash, bite, smash—and, of course, that final optical assault. Everyone was still looking at me, and I realized I had to say something.
“It, um …” I said. “It starts with the eyes.…”