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“I’m sure they did something,” I said. “Just not as much.”
“Where did this come from?” she asked.
“New York,” I told her, and I realized that this was a wonderful opportunity to further her forensic education. And to be truthful, I didn’t want her to move away, either. So I added, “How many things do you see that are different?”
She glanced up at me and gave me a quizzical half smile. “What, like one of those puzzles for kids? How many things are not the same?”
“This is the homicide version,” I said. “For grown-ups.”
“All right,” she said, and she began to study the picture in earnest. She bent her head forward so that her hair brushed against my bare arm. She pulled it back and tucked it behind her ear, revealing her neck, and I could see the pulse fluttering in her carotid artery.
“Vegas,” Deborah said. She said it softly, under her breath, but I still jumped; I’d forgotten there was someone else in the room. Debs gave the keyboard a few more irritated pokes and the second file began to print. Once again the first few pages were the report, and they whirred out quickly. When the photograph finally slid out I stepped around Jackie and grabbed it, and it was just like the other two: a young woman with a good, athletic figure and shoulder-length golden hair. There could no longer be any question about the pattern; now it was a matter of trying to figure out why this specific type was necessary.
“I found something,” Jackie said, pointing at the picture. I looked at where her finger rested on the victim’s face. There was nothing there but smooth skin.
“What?” I said.
“Well,” Jackie said, “the Miami victim has a slash mark here. Lemme see Vegas.” She held out her hand, and I gave her the second picture, leaning in to look with her. “Yeah, see? This one has it, too. Just one quick slash, right across the face.” She looked up at me, her violet eyes bright. “What does that mean?”
“Anger,” I said.
“About what?” she said. “Because right there on the face is like—”
But before she could say anything more, Robert came bustling back into the room.
“I’m going to have to wrap up here early,” he said happily. “I got Screen Time magazine in ninety minutes.” He waited for somebody to congratulate him, but nobody did, so he nodded at the papers Deborah held, frowned, and said, “Is there anything in the report? You think it’s our guy?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Deborah said. “It’s pretty much the same handwriting.” And maybe because I had already complimented her on her wicked streak, she added, “Take a look at the pictures; see for yourself.”
Jackie looked up at him expectantly and held out the pictures. Robert stared at her, and then his jaw muscles tightened and he leaned forward and took them. He swallowed, visibly steeled himself, and began to look them over. “Jesus,” he said. “Oh, my God.” He handed the pictures back to Jackie. “Sure looks like the same guy. I mean, there couldn’t be two guys doing like that, right?”
“Probably not,” Deborah said.
“So, what do we do with this stuff?” Robert said.
“We compare all three,” I said.
“Right,” Robert said, nodding. “What are we looking for?”
“We don’t know until we see it,” I said. “But he’s done this three times, and every time the odds increase that he made a mistake, left some kind of clue.”
“Okay,” Robert said. He raised his eyebrows and added, “Hey, I did this feature a few years back? I played an alcoholic detective, and there’s a serial killer killing young girls. And this guy, my character, he’s divorced? But he has a daughter, and it turns out the killer is stalking her, so I have to go sober and catch the killer before my daughter is killed.” He shrugged. “Low-budget thing, Israeli money. But very authentic, and it got great reviews.” Deborah cleared her throat and Robert flashed her a quick smile. “Right. Sorry. Anyway,” he said, “he looks at when the serial killer strikes, you know. He sets up a time line, and it turns out he kills somebody every six weeks? So I set up a trap for the guy at the right time, and that’s how I catch him.” He looked at Deborah, and when she didn’t say anything, he looked at me. “So I thought, maybe it turns out to be nothing, but should we do that with this one?”
“Why?” Jackie said. “We don’t even know what city he’ll do it in next time. So how does it help to know when?”
“We could just look,” Robert said stubbornly. He raised an eyebrow at me and said, with a kind of boyish eagerness, “Whaddaya say, Dexter?”
I couldn’t think of any way that knowing the interval between kills could possibly tell Robert anything useful. On the other hand, Robert happy and busy was a lot easier to take than Robert sulking. “All right,” I said. “It can’t actually hurt anything.”
Deborah shrugged and held out the two reports. “Knock yourself out,” she told me.
I took the reports from Debs, and Robert came over and stood beside me, forcing Jackie to step away. She moved to Deborah’s desk and leaned one haunch on the corner, while Robert bent over the pages I was holding. He didn’t smell nearly as good as Jackie.
“All right,” he mumbled, and he scrabbled at the pages, trying to see all of them at the same time.
I pushed the papers at him. “Here,” I said. “Vegas is on top, New York under that.” He grabbed the papers and leaned on the windowsill again, studying them.
“Right, right,” he said softly, and then he frowned and shook his head. “No, that doesn’t make sense. September 2012 in New York, then Las Vegas in June 2013, and now October in Miami.” He looked up, disappointment visible on his face. “It doesn’t work out,” he said. “The interval is different.”
