Dexter 4 - Dexter by Design Read Online Free PDF Page A

Butthead” and he was draped with a camera and pensively clutching a bouquet. Although I say pensively, it was a very different kind of pensiveness, because his head had been neatly removed and replaced with a colorful spray of tropical flowers.
    Instead of flowers the bouquet consisted of a bright and festive heap of intestines, topped by what was almost certainly a heart and surrounded by an appreciative cloud of flies.
    “Son of a bitch,” Deborah said and it was hard to argue with her logic. “Son of a god damn bitch. Three of “em in one day”
    “We don't know for sure that they're connected,” I said carefully, and she glared at me.
    “You want to tell me we got two of these assholes running around at the same time?” she demanded.
    “It doesn't seem very likely,” I admitted.
    “You're goddamned right it doesn't. And I'm about to have Captain Matthews and every reporter on the Eastern Seaboard on my ass.”
    “Sounds like quite a party,” I said.
    “So what am I supposed to tell them?”
    “We are pursuing a number of leads and hope to have something more definite to tell you shortly,” I said.
    Deborah stared at me with the look of a large and very angry fish, all teeth and wide eyes. I can remember that shit without your help,” she said. “Even the reporters can remember that shit. And Captain Matthews invented that shit.”
    “What kind of shit would you prefer?” I asked.
    “The kind of shit that tells me what this is about, asshole.” I ignored my sister's term of endearment and looked again at our nature-loving friend. There was an air of studied ease to the position of the body that created a very large contrast to the fact that it was actually a very dead and headless former human being. It had apparently been posed with extreme care, and once again I got the distinct impression that this final diorama was more important than the actual killing had been.
    It was a little bit disturbing, in spite of the mocking chuckle from the Dark Passenger. It was as if someone admitted they went through all the bother and mess of sex only to smoke a cigarette afterwards.
    Equally disturbing was the fact that, as at the earlier scene, I was getting no hints at all from the Passenger, beyond a kind of disconnected and appreciative amusement.
    “What this seems to be about,” I said hesitatingly, “is making some kind of statement.”
    “Statement?” Deborah said. “What kind of statement?”
    “I don't know.”
    Deborah stared at me for a moment longer, then shook her head.
    “Thank God you're here to help,” she said and before I could think of some suitable stinging remark in my defense, the forensic team bustled into our peaceful little glen and began to photograph, measure, dust, and peer into all the tiny places that might hold answers. Deborah immediately turned away to talk to Camilla Figg, one of the lab geeks, and I was left alone to suffer in the knowledge that I had failed my sister.
    I am sure the suffering would have been terrible if I was capable of feeling remorse, or any other crippling human emotion, but I am not built for it, and so I didn't feel it —or anything else except hunger.
    I went back out to the parking area and talked to Officer Meltzer until someone came along who could give me a ride back to the South Beach site. I had left my kit there, and had not even made a start on looking for any blood evidence.
    I spent the rest of the morning shuttling back and forth between the two crime scenes. There was very little actual spatter work for me to do, no more than the few small, nearly dry spots in the sand that suggested the couple on the beach had been killed elsewhere and brought out onto the beach later. I was pretty sure we had all assumed this already, since it was very unlikely that somebody would do all that chopping and re-arranging quite so publicly, so I didn't bother to mention this to Deborah, who was already in a pointless frenzy, and I didn't want any more