“Yeah,” said Hood. “I think he can be too fucking funny, too.” And he flipped one last photo onto the desk. “Laugh this one off, funny boy.”
I picked up the picture. It showed me again, but this time standing face-to-face with Camilla Figg. There was an expression of startled adoration on her face, a look of such fond longing that even a dolt like Hood could read it without help. I stared, scanning for clues, and finally recognized the background. This had been taken at the Torch, where Officer Gunther had been found. But so what? Why was this large and stupid thug showing me pictures of me, nice as they were?
I flipped the photo back onto the desk with the others. “I had no idea I was so photogenic,” I said. “Do I get to keep them?”
“No,” Hood said. He leaned over me to the desk and the odor of unwashed detective overlaid with cheap cologne almost made me gag. Hood scooped up the photos and straightened as he stuffed them back into the envelope.
With Hood a few feet away from me once more, I managed to breathe again, and since my curiosity was coming to a boil, I used the breath for something practical. “They’re all very nice pictures,” I said. “But so what?”
“So what?” Hood said, and Doakes made another one of his tongueless but joyful sounds; there were no actual words to it, but the garbled syllables had a distinct overtone of gotcha that I did not like at all. “Is that all you got to say about your girlfriend’s photo collection?”
“I’m married,” I said. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Not anymore you don’t,” Hood said. “She’s dead.” And as if they were wired together and controlled from offstage, Hood and Doakes showed all their teeth in unison in a blinding display of enamel and carnivorous happiness. “These were in Camilla Figg’s apartment,” Hood said. “And there’s hundreds more of ’em.”
He pointed a finger the size of a banana right between my eyes. “All of you,” he said.
TWENTY
SOMEWHERE IN THIS WORLD IT IS QUITE POSSIBLE THAT children laughed without a care and played with unworried joy. Somewhere, gentle breezes probably blew across a field of grass as innocent young lovers held hands and strolled through the sunlight. And somewhere on this grubby little globe it is even remotely possible that peace, love, and happiness were abounding in the hearts and minds of the righteous. But right now, in the present location, Dexter was Deep in the Doo-doo, and happiness of any kind was a bitter, mocking fable—unless your name was Hood or Doakes, in which case you were in the best of all possible worlds. See the funny Dexter? See him squirm? See the sweat pop out on his forehead? Ha, ha, ha. What a funny, funny guy. Oh, look—his mouth is moving, but nothing is coming out except meaningless vowels. Sweat, Dexter. Stutter and sweat. Ha, ha, ha. Dexter is funny.
I was still struggling to find a consonant when my sister spoke up. “What the fuck are you trying to pull here, shithead?” she said, and I realized that those were the exact words I had been searching for, so I closed my mouth and nodded.
Hood raised his eyebrows, and his forehead was so low they almost merged with his hair. “Pull?” he said with exaggerated innocence. “I’m not pulling nothing. I’m investigating a murder.”
“With a couple of bullshit pictures?” Deborah said with heartwarming scorn.
Hood leaned toward her and said, “Couple?” He snorted. “Like I said, there’s hundreds of ’em.” He shoved his gigantic finger toward my head again. “Every one of ’em a picture of laughing boy here,” he said.
“That doesn’t mean shit,” Deborah said.
“Framed and hanging on the walls,” Hood said relentlessly. “Taped to the refrigerator. Stacked on the bedside table. In boxes in the closet. In a binder on the back of the toilet,” he said with a leer. “Hundreds of pictures of your brother, sweetheart.” He took a half step toward Debs and winked. “And I may not get to go on the Today show to talk about it, like some losers who arrest the wrong guy?” he said. “But I am in charge of this investigation now, and I think all those pictures do mean shit, and maybe a lot more than shit. I think they mean he was banging Camilla, and I think she was going to tell his pretty little wifey, and he didn’t want her to. So lemme ask this one more time real polite and official,” he said, stepping back from Debs. He leaned over me now, and as he spoke the smell of his unwashed armpits mingled with his rotten breath and made my eyes water. “You got anything you want to tell me about these pictures, Dexter?” he said. “And maybe about your relationship with Camilla Figg?”
“I don’t know anything about the pictures,” I said. “And I didn’t have any relationship with Camilla except that I worked with her. I barely knew her.”
“Uh-huh,” Hood said, still bent over and in my face. “That all you got to say?”
“Well,” I said, “I’d also like to say that you really need to brush your teeth.”
He didn’t move at all for a few long seconds, made even longer by the fact that he exhaled again. But finally he nodded, straightened up slowly, and said, “This is going to be fun.” He nodded at me, and his nasty smile got bigger. “As of five o’clock today, you are suspended, pending the results of this investigation. If you wish to appeal this decision, you may contact the administrative coordinator for personnel.” He turned to Sergeant Doakes and nodded cheerfully, and I felt a cold knot form in my stomach even before he added the inevitable clincher. “That would be Sergeant Doakes,” he said.
“Of course it would,” I said. Nothing could be more perfect. The two of them smiled at me with genuine, heartfelt happiness, and when Hood had done all the smiling his system could stand without melting, he turned away and stepped to the door. He spun around there, and pointed his finger at Deborah, making a clicking sound as he dropped his thumb like he was shooting her. “See you later, loser,” he told her, and he sauntered out, smiling like he was going to his own birthday party.
Sergeant Doakes hadn’t taken his eyes off me the whole time, and he didn’t now. He just smiled at me, clearly having more fun than he’d had in a very long while, and then finally, just as I was thinking about throwing a chair at his head, he made his horrible, gargling, tongueless-laughing sound, and followed Hood out into the hall.
There was silence in my office for what seemed like a very long time. It was not by any means a peaceful, contemplative silence. It was, instead, the kind of quiet that comes right after an explosion, when the survivors are looking around at all the dead bodies and wondering if another bomb is going to go off, and the eerie silence did not end until Deborah finally shook her head and said, “Jesus Christ.” That seemed to sum things up pretty well, so I didn’t say anything, and Deborah said it again and then added, “Dexter—I have to know.”
I looked at her with surprise. She seemed to be very serious, but I couldn’t imagine what she was thinking. “Know what, Debs?” I said.
“Did you sleep with Camilla?” she said.
And now it was my turn to say it. “Jesus Christ, Debs,” I said, and I was genuinely shocked. “Do you think I killed her, too?”
She hesitated half a second too long. “No-o,” she said, and it was not very convincing. “But you gotta see how it looks.”
“To me it looks like you’re playing Pile On Dexter,” I said. “This is crazy—I barely spoke twenty words to Camilla in my entire life.”
“Yeah, but come on,” Deborah said. “All those fucking pictures.”