Read Dexter 3 - Dexter in the Dark for Free Online Page B

job seriously.
    “The guy is very big,” Vince said. “He
did the MTV Awards, and all those showbiz parties and stuff.”
    “He sounds delightfully expensive,” I said.
    “Well, he owes me a favor,” Vince said.
“I think we can get him down on the price. Maybe like a hundred and fifty
bucks a plate.”
    “Actually, Vince, I had hoped we could afford
more than one plate.”
    “He was in that South Beach magazine,” he
said, sounding a little hurt. “You should at least talk to him.”
    “To be honest,” I said, which of course meant I was lying,
“I think Rita wants something simple. Like a buffet.”
    Vince was definitely sulking now. “At least talk
to him,” he repeated.
    “I'll talk to Rita about it,” I said, wishing that would make
the whole thing go away. And during the trip to the crime scene Vince said no
more about it, so maybe it had.
    The scene turned out to be a lot easier for me than I
had anticipated, and I cheered up quite a bit when I got there. In the first
place, it was on the University of Miami campus, which was my dear old alma
mater, and in keeping with my lifelong attempt to appear human, I always tried
to remember to pretend I felt a warm, fuzzy fondness for the place when I was
there. Secondly, there was apparently very little raw blood to deal with, which
might mean that I could be done with it in a reasonable amount of time. It also
meant freedom from the nasty wet red stuff-I really don't like blood, which may
seem odd, but there it is. I do, however, find great satisfaction in organizing
it at a crime scene, forcing it to fit a decent pattern and behave itself. In
this case, from what I learned on the way there, that would hardly be a
challenge.
    And so it was with my usual cheerful good spirits that I sauntered over
toward the yellow crime-scene tape, certain of a charming interlude in a hectic
workday-
    And came to a dead stop with one foot just inside the
tape.
    For a moment the world turned bright yellow and there was a sickening sensation
of lurching weightless through space. I could see nothing except the
knife-edged glare. There was a silent sound from the dark backseat, the feeling
of subliminal nausea mixed with the blind panic of a butcher knife squealing
across a chalkboard. A skittering, a nervousness, a wild certainty that
something was very badly wrong, and no hint of what or where it was.
    My sight came back and I looked around me. I saw
nothing I didn't expect to see at a crime scene: a small crowd gathered at the
yellow tape, some uniforms guarding the perimeter, a few cheap-suited
detectives, and my team, the forensic geeks, scrabbling through the bushes on
their hands and knees. All perfectly normal to the naked eye. And so I turned
to my infallible fully clothed interior eye for an answer.
    What is it? I asked
silently, closing my eyes again and searching for some answer from the
Passenger to this unprecedented display of discomfort. I was accustomed to
commentary from my Dark Associate, and quite often my first sight of a crime
scene would be punctuated by sly whispers of admiration or
     
    amusement, but this-it was clearly a sound of
distress, and I did not know what to make of it.
    What? I asked again. But there was no answer beyond the uneasy rustle
of invisible wings, so I shook it off and walked over to the site.
    The two bodies had clearly been burned somewhere else,
since there was no sign of any barbecue large enough to bake two medium-size
females quite so thoroughly. They had been dumped beside the lake that runs
through the UM campus, just off the path that ran around it, and discovered by
a pair of early-morning joggers. It was my opinion from the state of the small
amount of blood evidence I found that the heads had been removed after the two
had burned to death.
    One small detail gave me pause. The bodies were laid
out neatly, almost reverently, with the charred arms folded across the chests.
And in place of the severed heads, a ceramic bull's