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talking about. In a city the size of Miami, couldn’t she find somebody who was at least human? And what was her rush to get married again anyway? It hadn’t worked out terribly well for her the first time, but she was apparently willing to plunge right back into it again. Were women really this desperate to get married?
Of course there were the children to think about. Conventional wisdom would say they needed a father, and there was something to that, because where would I have been without Harry? And Astor and Cody had looked so happy. Even if I made Rita see that a comical mistake had happened, would the kids ever understand?
I was on my second cup of coffee when the paper came. I glanced through the main sections, relieved to find that terrible things were still happening almost everywhere. At least the rest of the world hadn’t gone crazy.
By seven o’clock I thought it would be safe to call Deborah on her cell phone. There was no answer; I left a message, and fifteen minutes later she called back. “Good morning, Sis,” I said, and I marveled at the way I managed to sound cheerful.
“Did you get some sleep?”
“A little,” she grumbled. “I woke up around four yesterday.
I traced the package to a place in Hialeah. I drove around the area most of the night looking for the white van.”
“If he dropped the package way up in Hialeah, he probably drove in from Key West to do it,” I said.
“I know that, goddamn it,” she snapped. “But what the hell else am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But doesn’t the guy from Washington
get here today?”
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“We don’t know anything about him,” she said. “Just because Kyle is good, doesn’t mean this guy will be.”
She apparently didn’t remember that Kyle had not shown himself to be particularly good, at least in public. He’d done nothing at all, in fact, except get himself captured and have his finger nipped off. But it didn’t seem politic for me to comment on how good he was, so I simply said, “Well, we have to assume the new guy knows something about this that we don’t know.”
Deborah snorted. “That wouldn’t be too hard,” she said.
“I’ll call you when he gets in.” She hung up, and I got ready for work.
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At 12:30 deb stalked into my modest retreat off the forensics lab and threw a cassette tape on my desk. I looked up at her; she didn’t seem happy, but that really wasn’t much of a novelty. “From my answering machine at home,” she said. “Listen to it.”
I lifted the hatch on my boom box and put in the tape Deb had flung at me. I pushed play: the tape beeped loudly, and then an unfamiliar voice said, “Sergeant, um, Morgan. Right?
This is Dan Burdett, from uh— Kyle Chutsky said I should call you. I’m on the ground at the airport, and I’ll call you about getting together when I get to my hotel, which is—”
There was a rustling sound and he obviously moved the cell phone away from his mouth, since his voice got fainter.
“What? Oh, hey, that’s nice. All right, thanks.” His voice got louder again. “I just met your driver. Thanks for sending somebody. All right, I’ll call from the hotel.”
Deborah reached across my desk and switched off the machine. “I didn’t send anybody to the fucking airport,” she D E A R LY D E V O T E D D E X T E R
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said. “And Captain Matthews damn sure didn’t either. Did you send somebody to the fucking airport, Dexter?”
“My limo was out of gas,” I said.
“Well then GOD DAMN it!” she said, and I had to agree with her analysis.
“Anyway,” I said, “at least we found out how good Kyle’s replacement is.”
Deborah slumped into the folding chair by my desk.
