Jeff Lindsay - Dexter is delicious

"Rita," I said.

"I know," she said, knuckling away the tear. "It's just hormones, I'm sure, because-And I don't really…" She sniffled. "It's just the baby," she said. "And now somebody else's little girl-Go on, Dexter. This is important."

I went. I was not really awake yet, and still suffering from psychological whiplash from my treatment at the hands of Rita and Debs, but I went. And oddly enough, I was surprised as much by what Rita had said as by her tears. Cannibals. It seems very stupid to say so, but I had not really thought of that word yet. I mean, Dexter is not dull: I knew the poor girl had been eaten by people, and I knew that people who ate other people were called cannibals. But to put those thoughts together and say cannibals had eaten Tyler Spanos-it brought the whole thing onto a level of everyday, toe-stubbing reality that was somehow a little bit strange and scary. I know that the world is full of bad people: After all, I am one of them. But a whole group of partygoers eating a young girl at an outdoor barbecue? That made them real cannibals-contemporary, modern-day, right-here-in-Miami cannibals-and it felt like the level of badness had just gone up a few notches.

And there was an additional tinge of quaintness to the whole thing, too, as if a book of frightening fairy tales had come to life: first vampires and now cannibals. What a very interesting place Miami had suddenly become. Perhaps next I would meet a centaur or a dragon, or even an honest man.

I drove to work in darkness and light traffic. A large chunk of moon hung in the sky, scolding me for my sloth. Get to work, Dexter, it whispered. Slice something up. I gave it the finger and drove on.

One of the conference rooms on the second floor had been set aside to make a command center for Deborah's task force, and it was already buzzing with activity when I strolled in. Chambers, the shaven-headed man from FDLE, sat at a large table that was already heaped with folders, lab reports, maps, and coffee cups. He had a pile of six or seven cell phones beside him, and he was talking into another one.

And, unfortunately for all concerned-except possibly the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover, who must have been hovering protectively in a spectral house frock-sitting next to Chambers was Special Agent Brenda Recht. She had a pair of very chic reading glasses on the end of her nose that she pushed down even farther in order to look at me with disapproval. I smiled back at her and looked to the far end of the room, where a man in a state trooper uniform was standing next to the giant black man I had seen at the crime scene. He turned to stare at me, so I just nodded and moved on.

Deborah was briefing two Miami-Dade detectives, with her partner, Deke, sitting beside her, flossing his teeth. She looked up at me and beckoned for me to join her. I pulled a chair over next to her group and sat as one of the detectives, a guy named Ray Alvarez, interrupted her.

"Yeah, hey, listen," he said. "I don't like it at all. I mean, the guy is fucking city hall-you been called off once already."

"It's different now," Deborah told him. "We got a murder like nobody's ever seen, and the press is going nuts."

"Yeah, sure," Alvarez said, "but you know fucking well Acosta is just waiting to bust somebody's balls."

"Don't worry about it," Deborah said.

"Easy for you," Alvarez said. "No balls to bust."

"That's what you think," said Hood, the other detective, a hulking brute I knew a little. "She got twice your balls, Ray."

"Fuck you," Alvarez said. Deke snorted, either a laugh, or perhaps some small particle of food had gotten flossed out and become lodged in his nose.

"You just find Bobby Acosta," Debs said sharply, "or you won't have any balls to worry about." She glared at him, and he shrugged, looking up at the ceiling as if to ask why God was picking on him. "Start with the motorcycle," she said. She glanced at a folder in her lap. "It's a red Suzuki Hayabusa, one year old."

Deke whistled and Alvarez said, "A what?"

"Hayabusa," Deke said, looking suitably impressed. "Very hot bike."

"Right, got it," Alvarez said, looking at Deke with weary resignation, and Debs turned to Hood.

"You get on Tyler Spanos's car," she said. "It's a 2009 Porsche, blue, convertible. It's gotta turn up somewhere."

"Probably Colombia," Hood said, and as Deborah opened her mouth to scold him he added, "Yeah, I know; I'll find it if it isn't gone already." He shrugged. "Not that it'll do any good."

"Hey," Deke said. "Gotta do the routine stuff, you know?"

Hood looked at him with amusement. "Yeah, Deke," he said. "I know."

"All right," Chambers said in a loud voice, and all eyes in the room clicked over to him as if they were on the same switch. "If I could have your attention over here for a minute."

Chambers stood up and backed to a spot where he could see everybody. "First, I want to thank Major Nelson"-he nodded at the man in the trooper uniform-"and Detective Weems from the Miccosukee Tribal Police." And the giant man raised a hand to wave and, oddly, smiled at everyone.

I nudged Deborah and whispered, "Watch and learn, Debs. Politics."

She elbowed me hard and whispered, "Shut up."

Chambers went on. "They're here because this thing is turning into an A-one, world-class, top-of-the-line screamer, and we might need their help. We got a possible connection into the Everglades," he said, nodding again to Weems, "and we're gonna need all the help we can get covering the roads statewide." Major Nelson didn't even blink at this.

"What about the Fibby?" Hood said, pointing at Special Agent Recht, and Chambers stared at him for a moment.

"The FBI is here," Chambers said carefully, "because this is a group we're looking for, and if it's at all organized, maybe national, they want to know about it. Besides, we still got one girl missing, and it may turn out to be kidnapping. And frankly, since this is such a freaking mess, you are damned lucky you don't have Treasury, ATF, and Naval Intelligence in here, too, so shut up and cowboy on."

"Yes, sir," Hood said with a sarcastic little salute. Chambers watched him just long enough to make Hood squirm, before he started talking again.

"All right," he said. "Sergeant Morgan has the lead here in the Miami area. Anything points somewhere else, bring it to me first." Deborah nodded.

"Questions," Chambers said, looking around the room. Nobody said anything. "Okay," he said. "Sergeant Morgan is going to give you a summary of what we know so far."

Deborah stood up and walked over to where Chambers stood, and he sat down, yielding the floor to her. Debs cleared her throat and started on her summary. It was painful to watch; she is not a good public speaker, and aside from that she is extremely self-conscious. It seems to me that she has always felt ill at ease in the body of a beautiful woman, since she has a personality more suited to Dirty Harry, and she hates to have people looking at her. So for anyone who really cared about her, which was probably limited to me at the moment, it was an uncomfortable experience to see her stumble over words, repeatedly clear her throat, and lunge at cop-talk cliches as if she were drowning.

Still, everything has to end sometime, no matter how unpleasant it is, and after a long and nerve-racking interlude Debs finished up and said, "Questions?" And then she blushed and looked at Chambers, as if he would be upset that she had used his line.

Detective Weems raised a finger. "What you want us to do in the Everglades?" he said in a remarkably soft and high-pitched voice.

Deborah cleared her throat. Again. "Just, you know," she said, "put the word out. If anybody sees something out there, if these guys try to throw, you know, another party. Or if there's an old one we don't know about yet, a place that maybe there's some evidence on the site we could find." And she cleared her throat. I wondered if I should offer her a cough drop.