Jeff Lindsay - Dexter is delicious

But as interesting as it was to see a real giant, it was not enough to hold my attention, and I looked to the other side of the clearing. Across from the small clot of cops there was a clean area of the clearing, where several detectives were standing around. I went there and set my kit down, thinking hard. I knew of a young female who was missing, and I knew someone looking for a young female who would be very interested in making this connection. But what was the right way to do this? I am not really a political animal, although I understand it well enough-politics is just a way to indulge in my former hobby using metaphorical knives instead of real ones. But it seemed like no fun at all to me. All the careful maneuvering and backstabbing were so obvious and pointless and didn't really lead to anything all that exciting. Still, I knew it was important in a structured environment like the Miami-Dade Police Department. And Deborah was not very good at it, although she usually managed to bull her way through with a combination of toughness and good results.

But Deborah had been so very unlike herself of late, with her pouting and self-pity, and I didn't know if she was up to a confrontation that was likely to prove extremely political-a different detective was leading on this, and for her to try to yank it away would be difficult, even when she was at her best. Still, maybe a good challenge was just what she needed to bring her back to herself. So perhaps the best thing to do was simply to call her and tell her-let loose the dogs of war and let the chips fall where they may. It was a wonderfully mangled metaphor, which made it seem even more convincing, so I stepped away from the group of cops and reached for my cell phone.

Deborah let it ring several times; again, this was very unlike her. Just when I was ready to give up, she answered. "What," she said.

"I'm in the Everglades at a crime scene," I said.

"Good for you," she said.

"Debs, I think the victim was killed, cooked, and eaten in front of a crowd."

"Wow, awful," she said, with no real enthusiasm, which I found a little bit irritating.

"Did I mention that this victim appears to be young and female?" I said.

She didn't say anything at all for a moment. "Debs?" I said.

"I'm on my way," she said, with a little bit of the old fire in her voice, and I closed my phone with satisfaction. But before I could put it away and get to work, I heard someone behind me scream, "Fuuuuuck!" and then a volley of gunshots broke out. I ducked down and tried to hide behind my blood-spatter kit, rather difficult considering it was about the size of the average lunch box. But I took what cover I could get and peeked over the top toward the gunfire, half expecting to see a horde of Maori warriors charging at us with their spears raised and their tongues out. What I saw instead was almost as unlikely.

The officers who had been standing around a moment earlier were now all crouched in combat firing position and frantically shooting their weapons into a nearby bush. Contrary to the very best of established police procedure, their faces were not set in cold and grim masks, but looked wild and wide-eyed. One of the detectives was already ejecting an empty clip from his pistol and frantically trying to fumble in a spare, and the others just kept firing with berserk abandon.

And the bush they were apparently trying to kill began to thrash about spastically, and I saw the glint of something silver-yellow. It flashed in the sunlight one time, and then was gone, but the officers kept firing for several more seconds, until finally Lieutenant Keane ran over, yelling at them to hold their fire. "What the fuck is wrong with you idiots?!" Keane yelled at them.

"Lieutenant, I swear to God," one of them said.

"A snake!" said the second guy. "Fucking huge snake!"

"A snake," Keane said. "You want me to step on it for you?"

"You got really big feet?" the third guy said. " 'Cause it was a Burmese python, about eighteen feet long."

"Aw, shit," Keane said. "Are those protected?"

I realized I was still crouched down, and I stood up as the FDLE man sauntered over. "Actually, they're thinking about a bounty on those bad boys," the FDLE guy said, "if any of you Wyatt Earps was lucky enough to hit it."

"I hit it," the third guy said sullenly.

"Bullshit," said one of the others. "You couldn't hit shit with a shoe."

The giant black man wandered over to the bush and looked, then turned to the group of nonmarksmen, shaking his head, and, realizing that the excitement was over, I picked up my kit and went back to the fire pit.

There was a surprising amount of blood spatter for me, and in just a few moments I was happily at work, making sense of the nasty stuff. It was not yet completely dry, probably because of the humidity, but a great deal of it had soaked into the ground, since it had not rained for quite some time, and in spite of the moisture in the air, things on the ground were relatively parched at the moment. I got a couple of good samples to take back with me for analysis, and I also began to get a picture of what had probably happened.

The majority of the blood was in one area, right by the fire pit. I cast about in ever-widening circles, but the only traces of it I found more than six feet away appeared to have been tracked there on someone's shoes. I marked these spots in the forlorn hope that somebody might be able to get an identifiable footprint from them and went back to the main spatter. The blood had poured out of the victim, not spurted, as it would have from a slash wound. And there were no secondary splashes anywhere nearby, which meant that there had been only one wound, like bleeding out a deer-nobody else in the crowd had jumped in and stabbed or slashed. This had been a slow, deliberate killing, a literal butchering, performed by one person, very controlled and businesslike, and I found myself reluctantly admiring the professionalism of the work. That kind of restraint was very difficult, as I well knew-and with a crowd watching, too, presumably shouting drunken encouragement, offering rude suggestions. It was impressive, and I took my time, giving it the kind of reciprocal professionalism it deserved.

I was on one knee, just finishing an examination of a last probable footprint, when I heard raised voices, threats of unpleasant and intimate dismemberment, and assorted profane expressions of anatomical impossibility. It could only mean one thing. I stood up and looked over toward the trailhead, and sure enough, I was right.

Deborah had arrived.

It was a pretty good fight, as these things go, and it would have lasted a whole lot longer if not for the FDLE man. He was a guy I knew about by reputation, named Chambers, and he literally stepped in between Deborah and the other detective, a large man named Burris. Putting one hand out onto Burris's chest, and the other politely in the air in front of Deborah, Chambers said, "Cut it out." Burris shut up immediately. I saw Debs take a breath to say something, and Chambers looked at her. She looked back and held her breath, and then just let it out silently.

I was impressed, and I edged around to get a better look at the man from the FDLE. He had a shaved head and he was not tall, but as he swung around I could see his face, and I knew why Debs had buttoned her lip, even without the small warning flutter from the Passenger. The man had gunfighter's eyes, the kind you see on the old pictures of Wild West lawmen. You did not argue with those eyes. It was like looking into two cold, blue pistol barrels.

"Lookit," Chambers was saying. "We want to solve this thing, not fight about it." Burris nodded, and Deborah said nothing. "So let Forensics finish up, try to get an ID on the victim. If the lab work says it's your girl," he said, nodding at Deborah, "it's your case. If not"-and he tilted his head to Burris-"go crazy. It's all yours. Until then"-he looked straight at Debs and, to her great credit, she looked back without whimpering-"you stay quiet and let Burris work. All right?"