that looked like they were facing off for a tag-team wrestling match. Clearly the main event would be Debs versus Special Agent Recht; they were already nose-to-nose and exchanging rather heated opinions. Their respective partners, Deke and the Generic Fed, stood to one side of the main couple like good wingmen, glaring at each other coldly, and to Deborah’s other side was a large, distraught woman of around forty-five who was apparently trying to decide what to do with her hands. She raised them, and then dropped one, and then hugged herself, and then raised the left one again, so I could see that she was clutching a sheet of paper. She fluttered it, then dropped both hands again, all in the span of the three seconds it took me to cross the floor to join the happy little group.
“I don’t have time for you, Recht,” Debs was snarling. “So let me say it for you in one-syllable words: If I got that much blood, I got assault and attempted murder at the least.” She glanced at me, and then back to Recht. “That’s what my expert says, and that’s what my experience says.”
“Expert,” Recht said, with very nice federally provided irony in her voice. “You mean your brother? He’s your expert?” She said “brother” as if it was something that ate garbage and lived under a rock.
“You got a better one?” Debs said with real heat, and it was very flattering to see her go to bat for me.
“I don’t need one; I have a missing teenage girl,” Recht said, with a certain amount of her own heat, “and that’s kidnapping until further notice.”
“Excuse me,” the fluttering woman said. Debs and Recht ignored her.
“Bullshit,” Deborah said. “There’s no note, no phone call, nothing but a room full of blood, and that’s not kidnapping.”
“It is if it’s her blood,” Recht said.
“Excuse—If I … Officer?” the fidgeting woman said, fluttering the piece of paper.
Deborah held her glare on Recht for a moment, then turned to face the woman. “Yes, Mrs. Aldovar,” she said, and I looked at the woman with interest. If she was the missing girl’s mother, it would explain the eccentric hand movements.
“This could … I … I found it,” Mrs. Aldovar said, and both of her hands went up helplessly for a moment. Then the right one fell to her side, leaving the left in the air with the sheet of paper.
“You found what, ma’am?” Deborah said, already looking back at Recht as if she might lunge forward and grab the paper.
“This is … You said to look, um … medical report,” she said, and she twitched the piece of paper. “I found it. With Samantha’s blood type.”
Deborah made a wonderful move that looked like she had been playing professional basketball her whole life. She stepped between the woman and the feds and got her backside directly in front of Recht, effectively screening her out from any chance of seeing the paper, all while reaching out and plucking the paper politely from Mrs. Aldovar’s hand. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said, running a finger down the page. After only a few seconds she looked up and glared at me.
“You said type O,” she said.
“That’s right,” I said.
She flipped the page with a fingertip. “This says AB positive.”
“Let me see that,” Recht demanded, trying to lurch forward and get at the paper, but Deborah’s NBA butt-block was too much for her.
“What the fuck, Dexter,” Deborah said accusingly, as if it were my fault the two blood types were different.
“I’m sorry,” I said, not at all sure what I was apologizing for, but quite certain from her tone of voice that I should.
“This girl, Samantha—she has AB-positive blood,” she said. “Who has type O?”
“Lots of people,” I reassured her. “It’s very common.”
“Are you saying—” Mrs. Aldovar tried to say, but Deborah plowed on.
“This is no help,” Debs said. “If it’s not her blood in there, then … who the hell flings somebody else’s blood on the wall?”
“A kidnapper,” Special Agent Recht said. “Trying to cover his tracks.”
Deborah turned and looked at her, and the expression on her face was truly wonderful to see. With just a few rearranged facial muscles and one small raised eyebrow, Debs managed to say, How is it possible that someone this stupid can tie her own shoes and walk among us?
“Tell me,” Deborah said, looking her over with disbelief, “is ‘special agent’ kind of like ‘special education’?” Deborah’s new partner, Deke, give a vacuous syllable of