My God, she was good. She had deflected anyone from possibly thinking about Deb's idea, put Deb in her place, and brought the team back together behind her with the joke about our rivalry with Broward County. All in a few simple words. I felt like applauding.

Except, of course, that I was on poor Deborah's team, and she had just been flattened. Her mouth opened for a moment, then closed, and I watched her jaw muscles knot as she carefully pushed her face back into Cop Neutral. In its own way, a fine performance, but truly, not even in the same league as LaGuerta's.

The rest of the meeting was uneventful. There was really nothing to talk about beyond what had been said. So very shortly after LaGuerta's masterful putdown, the meeting broke up and we were in the hall again.

“Damn her,” Deborah muttered under her breath. “Damn, damn, damn her!”

“Absolutely,” I agreed.

She glared at me. “Thanks, bro. Some help you were.”

I raised my eyebrows at her. “But we agreed I would stay out of it. So you would get the credit.”

She snarled. “Some credit. She made me look like an idiot.”

“With absolute respect, sister dear, you met her halfway.”

Deborah looked at me, looked away, threw up her hands with disgust. “What was I supposed to say? I'm not even on the team. I'm just there because the captain said they had to let me in.”

“And he didn't say they had to listen to you,” I said.

“And they don't. And they won't,” Deborah said bitterly. “Instead of getting me into homicide, this is going to kill my career. I'll die a meter maid, Dexter.”

“There is a way out, Deb,” I said, and the look she turned on me now was only about one-third hope.

“What,” she said.

I smiled at her, my most comforting, challenging, I'm-not-really-a-shark smile. “Find the truck,” I said. It was three days before I heard from my dear foster sister again, a longish period for her to go without talking to me. She came into my office just after lunch on Thursday, looking sour. “I found it,” she said, and I didn't know what she meant.

“Found what, Deb?” I asked. “The Fountain of Grumpiness?”

“The truck,” she said. “The refrigerated truck.”

“But that's great news,” I said. “Why do you look like you're searching for somebody to slap?”

“Because I am,” she said, and flung four or five stapled pages onto my desk. “Look at this.”

I picked it up and glanced at the top page. “Oh,” I said. “How many altogether?”

“Twenty-three,” she said. “In the last month, twenty-three refrigerator trucks have been reported stolen. The guys over on traffic say most of 'em turn up in canals, torched for the insurance money. Nobody pushes too hard to find them. So nobody's been pushing on these, and nobody's going to.”

“Welcome to Miami,” I said.

Deborah sighed and took the list back from me, slouching into my extra chair like she'd just lost all her bones. “There's no way I can check them all, not by myself. It would take months. Goddamn it, Dex,” she said. “Now what do we do?”