Darkly Dreaming Dexter

by Jeff Lindsay

  E I G H T

  The traffic on the 836 was backed up for half a mile right after the 395 from Miami Beach poured into it. We inched forward between exits until we could see the problem: a truckload of watermelons had emptied out onto the highway.

  There was a streak of red-and-green goo six inches thick across the road, dotted with a sprinkling of cars in various stages of destruction. An ambulance went past on the shoulder, followed by a procession of cars driven by people too important to wait in a traffic jam. Horns honked all along the line, people yelled and waved their fists, and somewhere ahead I heard a single gunshot. It was good to be back to normal life.

  By the time we fought our way through the traffic and onto surface streets, we had lost fifteen minutes and it took another fifteen to get back to work. Vince and I rode the elevator to the second floor in silence, but as the doors slid open and we stepped out, he stopped me. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said.

  “Yes, I am,” I said. “But if I don’t do it quickly Deborah will kill me.”

  He grabbed my arm. “I mean about Manny,” he said. “You’re going to love what he does. It will really make a difference.”

  DEXTER IN THE DARK

  59

  I was already aware that it would really make a difference in my bank account, but beyond that I still didn’t see the point. Would everyone truly have a better time if they were served a series of apparently alien objects of uncertain use and origin instead of cold cuts? There is a great deal I don’t understand about human beings, but this really seemed to take the cake—assuming we would have a cake at all, which in my opinion was not a sure thing.

  There was one thing I understood quite well, however, and that was Deborah’s attitude about punctuality. It was handed down from our father, and it said that lateness was disrespect and there were no excuses. So I pried Vince’s fingers off my arm and shook his hand. “I’m sure we’re all going to be very happy with the food,”

  I said.

  He held on to my hand. “It’s more than that,” he said.

  “Vince—”

  “You’re making a statement about the rest of your life,” he said.

  “A really good statement, that your and Rita’s life together—”

  “My life is in danger if I don’t go, Vince,” I said.

  “I’m really happy about this,” he said, and it was so unnerving to see him display an apparently authentic emotion that there was actually a little bit of panic to my flight away from him and down the hall to the conference room.

  The room was full, since this was becoming a somewhat high-profile case after the hysterical news stories of the evening before about two young women found burned and headless. Deborah glared at me as I slipped in and stood by the door, and I gave her what I hoped was a disarming smile. She cut off the speaker, one of the patrolmen who had been first on the scene.

  “All right,” she said. “We know we’re not going to find the heads on the scene.”

  I had thought that my late entrance and Deborah’s vicious glare at me would certainly win the award for Most Dramatic Entrance, but I was dead wrong. Because just as Debs tried to get the meeting moving again, I was upstaged as thoroughly as a candle at a fire-bombing.

  “Come on, people,” Sergeant Sister said. “Let’s have some ideas about this.”

  60

  JEFF LINDSAY

  “We could drag the lake,” Camilla Figg said. She was a thirty-five-year-old forensics geek and usually kept quiet, and it was rather surprising to hear her speak. Apparently some people preferred it that way, because a thin, intense cop named Corrigan jumped on her right away.

  “Bullshit,” said Corrigan. “Heads float.”

  “They don’t float—they’re solid bone,” Camilla insisted.

  “Some of ’em are,” Corrigan said, and he got his little laugh.

  Deborah frowned, and was about to step in with an authorita-tive word or two, when a noise in the hall stopped her.

  CLUMP.

  Not that loud, but somehow it commanded all the attention there was in the room.

  CLUMP.

  Closer, a little louder, for all the world approaching us now like something from a low-budget horror movie . . .

  CLUMP.

  For some reason I couldn’t hope to explain, everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath and turn slowly toward the door.

  And if only because I wanted to fit in, I began to turn for a peek into the hall myself, when I was stopped by the smallest possible interior tickle, just a hint of a twitch, and so I closed my eyes and listened. Hello? I said mentally, and after a very short pause there was a small, slightly hesitant sound, almost a clearing of the mental throat, and then—

  Somebody in the room muttered, “Holy sweet Jesus,” with the kind of reverent horror that was always guaranteed to pique my interest, and the small not-quite-sound within purred just a bit and then subsided. I opened my eyes.

  I can only say that I had been so happy to feel the Passenger stirring in the dark backseat that for a moment I had tuned out everything around me. This is always a dangerous slip, especially for artificial humans like me, and the point was driven home with an absolutely stunning impact when I opened my eyes.

  It was indeed low-budget horror, Night of the Living Dead, but in the flesh and not a movie at all, because standing in the doorway, DEXTER IN THE DARK

  61

  just to my right, staring at me, was a man who was really supposed to be dead.

  Sergeant Doakes.

  Doakes had never liked me. He seemed to be the only cop on the entire force who suspected that I might be what, in fact, I was. I had always thought he could see through my disguise because he was somewhat the same thing himself, a cold killer. He had tried and failed to prove that I was guilty of almost anything, and that failure had also failed to endear me to him.

  The last time I had seen Doakes the paramedics had been loading him into an ambulance. He had been unconscious, partly as the result of the shock and pain of having his tongue, feet, and hands removed by a very talented amateur surgeon who thought Doakes had done him wrong. Now it was true that I had gently encouraged that notion with the part-time doctor, but I had at least had the decency to persuade Doakes first to go along with the plan, in order to catch the inhuman fiend. And I had also very nearly saved Doakes at considerable risk to my own precious and irreplaceable life and limbs. I hadn’t quite pulled off the dashing and timely res-cue I’m sure Doakes had hoped for, but I had tried, and it was really and truly not my fault that he had been more dead than alive when they hauled him away.

  So I didn’t think it was asking too much for some small ac-knowledgment of the great hazard I had exposed myself to on his behalf. I didn’t need flowers, or a medal, or even a box of chocolates, but perhaps something along the lines of a hearty clap on the back and a murmured, “Thanks, old fellow.” Of course he would have some trouble murmuring coherently without a tongue, and the clap on the back with one of his new metal hands could prove painful, but he might at least try. Was that so unreasonable?

  Apparently it was. Doakes stared at me as if he was the hungri-est dog in the world and I was the very last steak. I had thought that he used to look at me with enough venom to lay low the entire en-dangered species list. But that had been the gentle laughter of a tousle-haired child on a sunny day compared to the way he was looking at me now. And I knew what had made the Dark Passenger 62

  JEFF LINDSAY

  clear its throat—it had been the scent of a familiar predator. I felt the slow flex of interior wings, coming back to full roaring life, rising to the challenge in Doakes’s eyes. And behind those dark eyes his own inner monster snarled and spat at mine. We stood like that for a long moment, on the outside simply staring but on the inside two predatory shadows screeching out a challenge.

  Someone was speaking, but the world had narrowed to just me and Doakes and the two black shadows inside us calling for battle, an
d neither one of us heard a word, just an annoying drone in the background.

  Deborah’s voice cut through the fog at last. “Sergeant Doakes,”

  she said, somewhat forcefully. Finally Doakes turned to face her and the spell was broken. And feeling somewhat smug in the power—joy and bliss!—of the Passenger, as well as the petty victory of having Doakes turn away first, I faded into the wallpaper, taking a small step back to survey the leftovers of my once-mighty nemesis.

  Sergeant Doakes still held the department record for bench press, but he did not look like he would defend his record anytime soon. He was gaunt and, except for the fire smoldering behind his eyes, he looked almost weak. He stood stiffly on his two prosthetic feet, his arms hanging straight down by his sides, with gleaming silver things that looked like a complicated kind of vise grip protruding from each wrist.

  I could hear the others in the room breathing, but aside from that there was not a sound. Everyone simply stared at the thing that had once been Doakes, and he stared at Deborah, who licked her lips, apparently trying to think of something coherent to say, and finally came up with, “Have a seat, Doakes. Um. I’ll bring you up to date?”

  Doakes looked at her for a long moment. Then he turned awkwardly around, glared at me, and clumped out of the room, his strange, measured footsteps echoing down the hall until they were gone.

  On the whole, cops don’t like to give the impression that they are ever impressed or intimidated, so it was several seconds before anyone risked giving away any unwanted emotion by breathing DEXTER IN THE DARK

  63

  again. Naturally enough, it was Deborah who finally broke the un-natural silence. “All right,” she said, and suddenly everyone was clearing their throats and shifting in their chairs.

  “All right,” she repeated, “so we won’t find the heads at the scene.”

  “Heads don’t float,” Camilla Figg insisted scornfully, and we were back to where we had been before the sudden semi-appearance of Sergeant Doakes. And they droned on for another ten minutes or so, tirelessly fighting crime by arguing about who was supposed to fill out the paperwork, when we were rudely interrupted once again by the door beside me swinging open.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Captain Matthews said. “I’ve got some—ah—really great news, I think.” He looked around the room frowning, which even I could have told him was not the proper face for delivering great news. “It’s, uh, ahem. Sergeant Doakes has come back, and he’s, uh— It’s important for you people to realize that he’s been badly, uh, damaged. He has only a couple of years left before he’s eligible for full pension, so the lawyers, ah—we thought, under the circumstances, um . . .” He trailed off and looked around the room. “Did somebody already tell you people?”

  “Sergeant Doakes was just here,” Deborah said.

  “Oh,” Matthews said. “Well, then—” He shrugged. “That’s fine.

  All right then. I’ll let you get on with the meeting then. Anything to report?”

  “No real progress yet, Captain,” Deborah said.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll get this thing wrapped up before the press—I mean, in a timely fashion.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “All right then,” he said again. And he looked around the room once, squared his shoulders, and left the room.

  “Heads don’t float,” somebody else said, and a small snort of laughter went around the room.

  “Jesus,” Deborah said. “Can we focus on this, please? We got two bodies here.”

  And more to come, I thought, and the Dark Passenger quivered slightly, as if trying very bravely not to run away, but that was all, and I thought no more about it.

  N I N E

  Idon’t dream. I mean, I’m sure that at some point during my normal sleep, there must be images and fragments of nonsense parading through my subconscious. After all, they tell me that happens with everyone. But I never seem to remember dreams if I do have them, which they tell me happens to nobody at all. So I assume that I do not dream.

  It was therefore something of a shock to discover myself late that night, cradled in Rita’s arms, shouting something I could not quite hear; just the echo of my own strangled voice coming back at me out of the cottony dark, and Rita’s cool hand on my forehead, her voice murmuring, “All right, sweetheart, I won’t leave you.”

  “Thank you very much,” I said in a croaking voice. I cleared my throat and sat up.

  “You had a bad dream,” she told me.

  “Really? What was it?” I still didn’t remember anything but my shouting and a vague sense of danger crowding in on me, and me all alone.

  “I don’t know,” Rita said. “You were shouting, ‘Come back!

  Don’t leave me alone.’ ” She cleared her throat. “Dexter—I know you’re feeling some stress about our wedding—”

  DEXTER IN THE DARK

  65

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “But I want you to know. I will never leave you.” She reached for my hand again. “This is forever with me, big man. I am holding on to you.” She scooted over and put her head on my shoulder.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t ever leave you, Dexter.”

  Even though I lack experience with dreams, I was fairly sure that my subconscious was not terribly worried about Rita leaving me. I mean, it hadn’t occurred to me that she would, which was not really a sign of trust on my part. I just hadn’t thought about it. Truly, I had no idea why she wanted to hang on to me in the first place, so any hypothetical leave-taking was just as mysterious.

  No, this was my subconscious. If it was crying out in pain at the threat of abandonment, I knew exactly what it feared losing: the Dark Passenger. My bosom buddy, my constant companion on my journey through life’s sorrows and sharp pleasures. That was the fear behind the dream: losing the thing that had been so very much a part of me, had actually defined me, for my whole life.

  When it scuttled into hiding at the university crime scene it had clearly shaken me badly, more than I had known at the time. The sudden and very scary reappearance of 65 percent of Sergeant Doakes supplied the sense of danger, and the rest was easy. My subconscious had kicked in and supplied a dream on the subject. Perfectly clear—Psych 101, a textbook case, nothing to worry about.

  So why was I still worrying?

  Because the Passenger had never even flinched before, and I still didn’t know why it had chosen now. Was Rita right about the stress of the approaching wedding? Or was there really something about the two headless bodies by the university lake that just plain scared the Dark out of me?

  I didn’t know—and, since it seemed like Rita’s ideas about comforting me had begun to take a more active turn, it did not look like I was going to find out anytime soon.

  “Come here, baby,” Rita whispered.

  And after all, there really isn’t any place to run in a queen-size bed, is there?

  66

  JEFF LINDSAY

  The next morning found Deborah obsessed with finding the missing heads from the two bodies at the university. Somehow word had leaked out to the press that the department was interested in finding a couple of skulls that had wandered away. This was Miami, and I really would have thought that a missing head would get less press coverage than a traffic tie-up on I-95, but something about the fact that there were two of them, and that they apparently belonged to young women, created quite a stir. Captain Matthews was a man who knew the value of being mentioned in the press, but even he was not pleased with the note of surly hysteria that attached itself to this story.

  And so pressure came down on all of us from above; from the captain to Deborah, who wasted no time passing it on down to the rest of us. Vince Masuoka became convinced that he could provide Deborah with the key to the whole matter by finding out which bizarre religious sect was responsible. This led to him sticking his head in my door that morning and, without any kind of warning, giving me his best fake smile and saying, firmly and distinctl
y,

  “Candomblé.”

  “Shame on you,” I said. “This is no time for that kind of language.”

  “Ha,” he said, with his terrible artificial laugh. “But it is, I’m sure of it. Candomblé is like Santeria, but it’s Brazilian.”

  “Vince, I have no reason to doubt you on that. My question is, what the hell are you talking about?”

  He came two steps into the room in a kind of prance, as if his body wanted to take off and he couldn’t quite fight it down. “They have a thing about animal heads in some of their rituals,” he said.

  “It’s on the Internet.”

  “Really,” I said. “Does it say on the Internet that this Brazilian thing barbecues humans, cuts off their heads, and replaces them with ceramic bulls’ heads?”

  Vince wilted just a bit. “No,” he admitted, and he raised his eyebrows hopefully. “But they use animals.”

  “How do they use them, Vince?” I asked.

  “Well,” he said, and he looked around my little room, possibly DEXTER IN THE DARK

  67

  for another topic of conversation. “Sometimes they, you know, offer a part to the gods, and then they eat the rest.”

  “Vince,” I said, “are you suggesting that somebody ate the missing heads?”

  “No,” he said, turning sullen, almost like Cody and Astor might have done. “But they could have.”

  “It would be very crunchy, wouldn’t it?”

  “All right,” he said, exceedingly sulky now. “I’m just trying to help.” And he stalked away, without even a small fake smile.

  But the chaos had only begun. As my unwanted trip to dream-land indicated, I was already under enough pressure without the added strain of a rampaging sister. But only a few minutes later, my small oasis of peace was ripped asunder once again, this time by Deborah, who came roaring into my office as if pursued by killer bees.

  “Come on,” she snarled at me.

  “Come on where?” I asked, quite a reasonable question, I thought, but you would have thought I had asked her to shave her head and paint her skull blue.