Chapter 12 Chapter 10 Ceramic Dry Firing Furnace

The next day passed without incident, and there was still no clue about the university murder.Life showed its unfair side again, and Deborah blamed me for the lack of progress in the case.She still believes that I have supernatural powers and can see through the secrets of this case at a glance, but I just don't tell her for some personal reasons. It really makes me feel very honored, but under the prestigious name, it is actually hard to live up to it.The only thing I can see is something that scares the Nightcrawler away, it can't be repeated.I made up my mind to stay away from this case. Since there was basically no blood on the scene, if it was a logical, reasonable and orderly world, it would be logical for me not to appear.

But, alas, that's not the world we live in.It is ruled by capricious impulses, and its inhabitants are people who have logic under their feet.At this moment, this is especially true of my sister.At noon that day she cornered me in my little cozy office and dragged me, involuntarily, to lunch with her boyfriend, Kyle Chutsky.I don't really dislike Chutsky, except for his always-know-it-all attitude.If you don't worry about it, he is very easy-going and friendly, like a cold-blooded killer usually does.With that in mind, it would be disingenuous of me to find fault with his character.In addition, he seemed to be able to make my sister happy, so I didn't say anything.

So I went to lunch with them, firstly to make my sister look good, and secondly, because my body needs constant fueling. My favorite is the midnight sandwich, and I always order fried plantains and a mami apple milkshake.I also don't know how this homely and intimate food plucks the strings of my life so gracefully like no other food, and nowhere else does Rela Pag's craft.The restaurant was just down the street from the police headquarters, and the Morgans used to eat there, and it was so delicious that even a curmudgeon like Deborah couldn't resist it. "Damn it!" she yelled at me with her mouth full of sandwiches.She's never been very polite, but now she spoke so viciously that a few crumbs of bread flew on me.I took a sip of my fabulous Manmi Apple Shake and waited for her to start the conversation, but she just repeated, "Damn it!"

"You're choked up again," I said, "but I'm your brother, and I can tell you're crazy right now." Chutsky snorted as he sliced ​​his Cuban steak. "No," he said.He was about to continue, but the fork slid aside on his prosthetic left hand. "Damn it!" he said, and I discovered they had more in common than I knew.Deborah reached over to help him straighten the fork. "Thanks," he said, forking a large piece of beef into his mouth. "Look, see?" I said brightly. "You need to do something else to distract yourself."

The table we sat at is where we come to sit almost every time.But Deborah was more irritable than usual; she sat up straight and slapped the plastic-covered table so hard that the sugar bowl jumped up. "I wonder who talked to that bastard Rick Sanger!" she said.Sango is a local TV reporter. He has always believed that the bloodier the story, the more room for the media to provide the audience with more bloody details.From the way she spoke, Deborah clearly imagined Rick as my new confidant. "Oh, that's not me," I said, "I don't think it's Doakes either."

"Ouch," cried Chutsky. "And," she said, "I'd like to find the heads of those hapless men!" "Neither have I," I said. "Did you ask the lost and found?" "Dexter, you just know something," she said, "well, why are you keeping it from me?" Chutsky looked at us and swallowed a mouthful of food. "Why must he know what you don't?" he asked. "There was a lot of blood at the scene?" "Not at all," I said. "The body was cooked, neat and dry." Chutsky nodded, trying to get some rice and beans onto the fork. "You're a crazy bastard, aren't you?"

"He's a lot more than a psycho," Deborah said. "He's hiding the truth." "Oh," Chutsky gulped his food, "is it related to his amateur research again?" This is a little invention of Deborah and me.We only told him that my hobby is research and analysis, not personal operation. "Yeah," Deborah said, "he found something, but he just didn't tell me." "It's hard to believe, girl, but I really don't know anything. It's just..." I shrugged, and she grabbed hold of it. "Just what! Say it, please."

I hesitated again.There was no way to tell her that Nightcrawler was taking a new and withdrawn approach to the case. "I just have a feeling," I said, "that something is wrong with this case." She hummed through her nose. "Two charred and headless corpses, he called that kind of wrong. Where's your old cleverness?" I took a bite of the sandwich, and Deborah frowned, refusing to eat the food. "Have you identified the two bodies?" I asked. "Come on, Dexter, no head, so no dental records. Burnt body, so no fingerprints. Damn, don't even know the color of their hair. What do you think I can do?"

"I might be able to help. You know," Chutsky said.He forked a piece of fried chicken into his mouth: "I can ask a few people." "I don't need your help," she said.He shrugged. "You accept that Dexter helps you," he said. "That's different." "Why is it different?" His question made sense. "Because he's just helping me, and you want to do it for me." They looked at each other and didn't speak for a long time.I've seen them both do this before, and it's eerily similar to Cody and Astor's nonverbal communication.It's nice to see them glued together, even though it reminds me of my own wedding, and the outrageously expensive fancy celebrity chef.Thankfully Deborah broke the eerie silence before I started gnashing my teeth.

"I'm not going to be the kind of woman who needs help," she said. "But I can get information you can't," he said, putting his good hand on her arm. "Like?" I asked him.I have to admit I've been curious about Chutsky's origins for a while, even before his amputation.I know he works for the government and he calls it OGA, but I don't know what that means. He turned around and looked at me kindly. “My friends and connections are all over the place,” he said. “Something like this leaves some trace somewhere else, and I can say hi and look it up.”

"You mean hello to your friends at OGA?" I said. he laughed. "Almost," he said. "For God's sake, Dexter," Deborah said, "OGA is just short for 'Agency of Some Government,' and there is no such thing as a casual joke among our own family." "Thanks for the tip," I said, "Can you get their files?" He shrugged. "I'm supposed to be on sick leave," he said. "So what can't be done?" I asked. He gave me a half-smile. "You better not know," he said, "the point is, they haven't figured out if I'm still fucking useful." He looked at the fork poking into his iron hand, turning his arm to watch the fork move. "Fuck!" he said. I felt that the atmosphere became heavy, so I quickly changed the subject. "Did you find anything in the kiln?" I asked. "Jewelry or something?" "What the hell is that?" she said. "Porcelain kilns," I said, "where corpses are burned." "What are you paying attention to? We didn't find out where the body was burned." "Oh," I said, "I think it's on campus, the ceramic studio." Judging by the shocked look on her face, I guess she was either suffering from indigestion or hadn't heard of Pottery Workshop. "Just half a mile from the lake where the body was found," I said. "You know, Pottery Workshop, where pottery is made?" Deborah stared at me for a moment, then suddenly jumped up from the table.I thought it was creative and dramatic to end the conversation like this.I didn't have time to react, so I just blinked blankly and watched her leave. "I don't think she's heard of the studio," Chutsky said. "I thought so too," I said. "Should we go with her?" He shrugged and put the last piece of steak into his mouth. "I'll have some flan, and coffee biscuits, and then I'll call the car away, because she won't let me help," he said, nodding at me, picking up some grains of rice and beans, "if you want If you're going back to work on foot, go first." I actually don't want to walk back to the office at all.However, I still have about half of my milkshake left, and I really don't want to waste it.I got up and followed Deborah out, came back and grabbed her untouched half sandwich, and stumbled after her out the door. We passed through the main entrance of the university campus in a blink of an eye.Deborah radioed people to meet us at the pottery studio on the way, and she gnashed her teeth for the rest of the trip. We turned left after entering the gate and drove along the winding path to the ceramic craft area.I took a pottery class there as a junior in college, trying to expand my skills, and found that I could make the most mundane vases, but not very good at original art, at least when it comes to pottery.But in my own field, I consider myself very creative, as I showed recently with the Zander thing. Angel has arrived, carefully and patiently inspecting the first drying oven, not letting go of any traces.Deborah crouched next to him, leaving me with the rest of her sandwich.I took a bite.The crowd around the yellow tape began to gather, perhaps hoping to see something too horrific to watch—I never understood how they would gather in such a large group, but it always did. Deborah was standing next to Angel now, poking his head into the first stove.Now some are waiting. I just took the last bite of my sandwich and got that watched feeling again.Of course, someone will look at me, no matter who is on this side of the yellow tape.But I don't like the feeling that I'm being stared at by someone, the Night Walker yelling to remind me that I'm being watched by something unfathomable.I swallowed the sandwich, turned to look, and the whisper in my body sizzled and seemed confused...and then everything fell silent. Then I felt that kind of dizziness again, and my eyes were so golden that I couldn't see anything clearly.I swayed, every nerve in my body screamed for danger, but there was nothing I could do.This situation only lasted for a second, I tried to calm down, and looked around carefully again - there was nothing unusual.A small team is checking, the sun is shining brightly and a breeze is blowing through the trees.Just an average day in Miami, but in this paradise, the Viper turned its head.I closed my eyes and listened carefully, trying to discern a speck of the dangerous nature, but found nothing but the receding echo of the beast's footsteps. I opened my eyes and looked around again.There was a group of about fifteen spectators who pretended not to be waiting to see the excitement.None of them looked unusual.No one was furtive, glinting, or carrying a bazooka surreptitiously in their arms.In normal times, I would have expected the Dark Walker to see a shadow beside the obvious Predator, but I don't have the Night Walker to help me right now.In my opinion, there were no suspicious elements among the onlookers.What made the Nightwalker disappear?I know almost nothing about it.It comes uninvited, making sharp comments with a smirk.It had never been confused before, until it saw the two dead bodies by the lake.Now it was hemming and hawing again, less than half a mile from where it had been last time. Is it something in the water?Or something to do with those two bodies in this kiln? I walked over to where Deborah and Angel were.They didn't seem to find any valuable clues, and the road from there to the place where the Nightcrawler was hiding was calm and there was no sense of panic. If the second encounter just now was not caused by something in front of my eyes, what else?Could it be that I am being corroded within myself?Maybe my soon-to-be-promoted husband and stepfather are putting too much pressure on Nightcrawler?Am I becoming too normal to let the Nightcrawler continue to inhabit me?If that's the case, it's really worse than dying. I just realized I was standing inside the yellow cordon when I saw a big guy standing in front of me and looking at me. "Um, hi?" he said.He was a tall, muscular young specimen with medium-length hair and thin strands.He gasped with his mouth open. "How can I help you, Citizen?" I said. "You're, um, you know," he said, "the police?" "Almost." I said. He nodded, as if thinking for a moment, and looked back as if there might be some food there.On the back of his neck is an ugly but now very popular tattoo of what appears to be an oriental script that probably means "water in the brain".He scratched the tattoo as if he heard what I was saying, then turned to me and said suddenly, "I'm a little confused about Jessica." "Yeah," I said, "who isn't?" "Do they know if it's her?" he said. "I'm her boyfriend." The lad finally managed to spark my career interest. "Jessica is missing?" I asked. He nodded. "Well, you know, she's supposed to come out for a run with me every morning, you know. Laps on the playground, then abs. But she didn't come yesterday. Nor this morning. So I'm starting to feel like , ah..." He frowned, obviously thinking, and stopped. "What's your name?" I asked him. "Kurt," he said, "Kurt Wagner. What about you?" "Dexter," I said, "wait here, Kurt." I ran over to Deborah to give the boy a hard time thinking. "Deborah," I said, "we can take a break." "Well, it's not your precious stove," she hummed, "they're too small to burn corpses." "No," I said, "but the lad over there lost a girlfriend." Her head jerked up, and she was on her feet, swift as a hound.She looked over at the young man who claimed to be Jessica's boyfriend, who was looking the same way, shifting his weight between his feet. "Finally." She said and walked towards him. I look at Angel.He shrugged and stood up, as if about to say something.But at the end he shook his head, dusted his hands, and followed Deborah to see what Kurt had to say, leaving me alone with my black thoughts. Sometimes just looking is enough.Surely such viewing will inevitably lead to the rising tide and the spout of glorious blood, the great panic and emotional throbbing of the victim, the orderly and crazy cadenza at the end of the victim's life... These will all appear.At this moment, the observer only needs to watch and slowly chew the delicious mysterious and powerful sense of power.He could feel the other person's tension.The tension will increase, and it will turn into fear with the music, then panic, and then panic.These will come, when the time comes. The observer sees the other prowling the crowd, searching for a sense of blooming danger that sets his nerves.Of course he couldn't find anything.Not yet.He had to wait until he felt the time was up.He won't rest until he completely confuses the other party.Only then would he stop watching and take the final act. Until then... it's time to let the other party hear the melody of fear.