This time the large, bare concrete room was unnaturally quiet. The officers and technicians stood in silent groups of two and three, as if afraid to be alone, and simply looked at what had been displayed at the far end of the room. If anybody accidentally made a small sound, everyone jumped and glared at the noisemaker. The whole scene was so positively comically strange that I certainly would have laughed out loud if I hadn't been just as busy staring as all the other geeks.

Had I done this? It was beautiful—in a terrible sort of way, of course. But still, the arrangement was perfect, compelling, beautifully bloodless. It showed great wit and a wonderful sense of composition. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to make this into a real work of art. Somebody with style, talent, and a morbid sense of playfulness. In my whole life I had only known of one such somebody.

Could that somebody possibly be darkly dreaming Dexter?CHAPTER 20

I STOOD AS CLOSE AS I COULD GET TO THE TABLEAU without actually touching it, just looking. The little altar had not been dusted for prints yet; nothing had been done to it at all, although I assumed pictures had been taken. And oh how I wanted a copy of one of those pictures to take home. Poster sized, and in full, bloodless color. If I had done this, I was a much better artist than I had ever suspected. Even from this close the heads seemed to float in space, suspended above the mortal earth in a timeless, bloodless parody of paradise, literally cut off from their bodies—

Their bodies: I glanced around. There was no sign of them, no telltale stack of carefully wrapped packages. There was only the pyramid of heads. I stared some more. After a few moments Vince Masuoka swam slowly over, his mouth open, his face pale. “Dexter,” he said, and shook his head. “Hello, Vince,” I said. He shook his head again. “Where are the bodies?” He just stared at the heads for a long moment. Then he looked at me with a face full of lost innocence. “Somewhere else,” he said.

There was a clatter on the stairs and the spell was broken. I moved away from the tableau as LaGuerta came in with a few carefully selected reporters—Nick Something and Rick Sangre from local TV, and Eric the Viking, a strange and respected columnist from the newspaper. For a moment the room was very busy. Nick and Eric took one look and ran back down the stairs with their hands covering their mouths. Rick Sangre frowned deeply, looked at the lights, and then turned to LaGuerta.

“Is there a power outlet? I gotta get my camera guy,” he said. LaGuerta shook her head. “Wait for those other guys,” she said. “I need pictures,” Rick Sangre insisted.