I looked at the heads, perched so carefully atop the lamps. They had of course been burned in the fire that had toasted the bodies, and there were no traces of blood visible. The necks appeared to have been cut very neatly. Other than that, I had no keen insight into anything at all-and yet there was Deborah, staring at me expectantly. It's difficult to have a reputation for being able to see into the still heart of the mystery when all that notoriety rests on the shadowy guidance of an interior voice that was, at the moment, somewhere else altogether. I felt like a ventriloquist's dummy, suddenly called upon to perform the whole act alone.

"Both the heads are here," I said, since I clearly had to say something. "Why not at the other girl's house? The one with the boyfriend?"

"Her family lives in Massachusetts," Deborah said. "This was easier."
"And you checked him out, right?"
"Who?"
"The dead girl's boyfriend," I said slowly and carefully. "The guy with the tattoo on his neck."

"Jesus Christ, Dexter, of course we're checking him out. We're checking out everybody who came within half a mile of these girls in their whole fucking sad little lives, and you-" She took a deep breath, but it didn't seem to calm her down very much. "Listen, I don't really need any help with the basic police work, okay? What I need help with is the weird creepy shit you're supposed to know about."

It was nice to confirm my identity as the Weird Creepy Shit King, but I did have to wonder how long it would last without my Dark Crown. Still, with my reputation on the line I had to venture some kind of insightful opinion, so I took a small bloodless stab at it.

"All right," I said. "Then from a weird creepy point of view, it doesn't make sense to have two different killers with the same ritual. So either Halpern killed 'em and somebody found the heads and thought, what the hell, I'll hang 'em up-or else the wrong guy is in jail."
"Fuck that," she said.

"Which part?" "All of it, goddamn it!" she said. "Neither one of those choices is any better."

"Well, shit," I said, surprising us both. And since I felt cranky beyond endurance with Deborah, and with myself, and with this whole burned-and-headless thing, I took the only logical, reasonable course. I kicked a coconut. Much better. Now my foot hurt, too.

"I'm checking Goldman's background," she said abruptly, nodding at the house. "So far, he's just a dentist. Owns an office building in Davie. But this-it smells like the cocaine cowboys. And that doesn't make sense, either. Goddamn it, Dexter," she said. "Give me something."