Free Double Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

blank. And three minutes later, here she was, striding into our lab like avenging fury.
    “Goddamn it,” she said before she was even all the way in the room, “I need something from you!”
    “Maybe a sedative?” Vince suggested, and for once I thought he was right on the money.
    Deborah looked at him, and then at me, and I wondered whether I could make it to the bomb shelter in time. But before my sister could inflict any grievous bodily harm, there was a scuffling sound at the door, and we all turned to look; Camilla Figg stood in the doorway. She stared at me, blushed, looked around the room, and said, “Oh. I didn’t even sorry.” She cleared her throat, and then scurried away down the hall before anyone could decide what she’d said or what to do about it.
    I looked back at Deborah, expecting her to resume her eruption. But to my surprise she did not reach for her weapon, or even wind up to throw a blistering arm punch. Instead, she took a deep breath and visibly calmed herself down. “Guys,” she said, “I got a really bad feeling about this guy. This psycho that smashed up Marty Klein.”
    Vince opened his mouth, presumably to say something he thought of as witty. Deborah looked at him, and he thought better of it and closed his mouth.
    “I think he’s going to do it again, and soon,” Debs said. “The whole force thinks so, too. They think this guy is some kind of spook, like Freddy Krueger or something. Everybody is freaking out, and everybody is looking at me to find the killer. And all I got is just this one small lead—a crappy little taco wrapper.” She shrugged and shook her head. “I know it’s not much, but it’s what there is, and I … Please, guys—Dex—isn’t there something else you can do? Anything?”
    There was real need in her face, and it was clear that she was really and truly pleading with us. Vince looked at me with a very uncomfortable expression. He was not good at sincerity, and it obviouslymade him too nervous to speak, which meant it was my problem. “Debs,” I said, “we’d like to catch this guy, too. But we’ve hit the wall. The wrapper is standard, from a restaurant supply place. There’s not enough left of the tacos to say anything except that they were tacos, and even that I couldn’t swear to on the stand. No prints, no trace evidence, nothing. We don’t have any magic tricks,” I said, and as I said “magic tricks” the image of a clown secured to a table with duct tape popped into my mind. But I pushed the happy memory firmly out of my head and tried to concentrate on Deborah. “I’m sorry,” I said, and my sincerity was no more than half-artificial, which was pretty good for me. “But we’ve done everything we can think of.”
    Deborah looked at me for a long moment. She took another deep breath, looked at Vince, and then shook her head slowly. “All right,” she said. “Then I guess we just wait for him to hit again, and hope we get lucky next time.” And she turned away and walked out of the lab at about one-quarter the speed she’d come in.
    “Wow,” said Vince in a hushed voice when Deborah was gone. “I’ve never seen her like that.” He shook his head. “Very scary,” he said.
    “I guess this really bothers her,” I said.
    Vince shook his head. “No, it’s her; she’s changed,” he said. “I think motherhood has made her all mushy inside.”
    I could have said that she was not nearly as mushy as Detective Klein, but that might have hit the wrong note, and anyway it was true. Deborah had softened since the birth of her son, Nicholas. The child had been a parting gift from Kyle Chutsky, her live-in boyfriend of several years who had vanished in a fit of low self-esteem. Nicholas was a few months younger than Lily Anne, and a nice enough little chap, although next to Lily Anne he did seem to be a bit slow and not nearly as attractive.
    But Deborah doted on him, which was natural enough, and she really had seemed to