“Probably Colombia,” Hood said, and as Deborah opened her mouth to scold him he added, “Yeah, I know; I’ll find it if it isn’t gone already.” He shrugged. “Not that it’ll do any good.”
“Hey,” Deke said. “Gotta do the routine stuff, you know?”
Hood looked at him with amusement. “Yeah, Deke,” he said. “I know.”
“All right,” Chambers said in a loud voice, and all eyes in the room clicked over to him as if they were on the same switch. “If I could have your attention over here for a minute.”
Chambers stood up and backed to a spot where he could see everybody. “First, I want to thank Major Nelson”—he nodded at the man in the trooper uniform—“and Detective Weems from the Miccosukee Tribal Police.” And the giant man raised a hand to wave and, oddly, smiled at everyone.
I nudged Deborah and whispered, “Watch and learn, Debs. Politics.”
She elbowed me hard and whispered, “Shut up.”
Chambers went on. “They’re here because this thing is turning into an A-one, world-class, top-of-the-line screamer, and we might need their help. We got a possible connection into the Everglades,” he said, nodding again to Weems, “and we’re gonna need all the help we can get covering the roads statewide.” Major Nelson didn’t even blink at this.
“What about the Fibby?” Hood said, pointing at Special Agent Recht, and Chambers stared at him for a moment.
“The FBI is here,” Chambers said carefully, “because this is a group we’re looking for, and if it’s at all organized, maybe national, they want to know about it. Besides, we still got one girl missing, and it may turn out to be kidnapping. And frankly, since this is such a freaking mess, you are damned lucky you don’t have Treasury, ATF, and Naval Intelligence in here, too, so shut up and cowboy on.”
“Yes, sir,” Hood said with a sarcastic little salute. Chambers watched him just long enough to make Hood squirm, before he started talking again.
“All right,” he said. “Sergeant Morgan has the lead here in the Miami area. Anything points somewhere else, bring it to me first.” Deborah nodded.
“Questions,” Chambers said, looking around the room. Nobody said anything. “Okay,” he said. “Sergeant Morgan is going to give you a summary of what we know so far.”
Deborah stood up and walked over to where Chambers stood, and he sat down, yielding the floor to her. Debs cleared her throat and started on her summary. It was painful to watch; she is not a good public speaker, and aside from that she is extremely self-conscious. It seems to me that she has always felt ill at ease in the body of a beautiful woman, since she has a personality more suited to Dirty Harry, and she hates to have people looking at her. So for anyone who really cared about her, which was probably limited to me at the moment, it was an uncomfortable experience to see her stumble over words, repeatedly clear her throat, and lunge at cop-talk clichés as if she were drowning.
Still, everything has to end sometime, no matter how unpleasant it is, and after a long and nerve-racking interlude Debs finished up and said, “Questions?” And then she blushed and looked at Chambers, as if he would be upset that she had used his line.
Detective Weems raised a finger. “What you want us to do in the Everglades?” he said in a remarkably soft and high-pitched voice.
Deborah cleared her throat. Again. “Just, you know,” she said, “put the word out. If anybody sees something out there, if these guys try to throw, you know, another party. Or if there’s an old one we don’t know about yet, a place that maybe there’s some evidence on the site we could find.” And she cleared her throat. I wondered if I should offer her a cough drop.
Luckily for Deborah’s image as a two-fisted investigator, Chambers decided that enough was enough. He stood up before Deborah actually melted, and said, “All right. You all know what to do. The only thing I want to add is, keep your mouth shut. The press is having too much fun with this already, and I don’t want to give them anything else to kick around. Got it?”
Everybody nodded, even Deborah.
“All right,” Chambers said. “Let’s go get the bad guys.”
The meeting broke up to the sound of squeaking chairs, shuffling feet, and cop chatter, as everyone sitting stood up and formed into little conversation groups with those already standing—except for Major Nelson of the Highway Patrol, who just jammed his hat onto his closely cropped head and marched out the door as if the “Colonel Bogey March” was playing. The huge man from the tribal police, Weems, sauntered over to talk to Chambers, and Special Agent Recht sat by herself and looked around the room, quietly disapproving. Hood caught her eye and shook his head.
“Shit,” he said. “I fucking hate the Fibbies.”
“I bet that worries them,” Alvarez said.
“Hey, Morgan, seriously,” Hood said. “Is there some way we can twist that federal bitch’s tail?”
“Sure,” said Debs, in a tone of voice so reasonable that it could only mean trouble for somebody. “You can find the fucking girl, catch the fucking killer, and do your fucking job so she doesn’t have an excuse to do it for you.” She showed him some teeth; it was not a smile, although possibly Bobby Acosta might have thought so. “Think you can do that, Richard?”
Hood looked at her for a moment and then just shook his head. “Shit,” he said.
“Hey, how about that, you were right,” Alvarez said. “And she got more balls than you, too.”
“Shit,” Hood said again, and, clearly looking for an easy target to win back a few points, he said, “What about you, Deke?”
“What’s that?” Deke said.
“What are you doing?” Hood said.