Darkly Dreaming Dexter

by Jeff Lindsay

  The music stopped. The heat was just the Miami sun, with the 252

  JEFF LINDSAY

  wind whipping in the clouds of an afternoon squall. Deborah held both my elbows and shook me, saying my name over and over patiently.

  “Dexter,” she said. “Hey Dex, come on. Dexter. Dexter.”

  “Here I am,” I said, although I was not entirely sure of that.

  “You okay, Dex?” she said.

  “I think I stood up too fast,” I said.

  She looked dubious. “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “Really, Debs, I’m fine now,” I said. “I mean, I think so.”

  “You think so,” she said.

  “Yes. I mean, I just stood up too fast.”

  She looked at me a moment longer, then let go and stepped back. “Okay,” she said. “Then if you can make it to the boat, let’s get back.”

  It may be that I was still dizzy, but there seemed to be no sense in her words, almost as if they were just made-up syllables. “Get back?” I said.

  “Dexter,” she said. “We got six bodies, and our only suspect is on the ground here with no head.”

  “Right,” I said, and I heard a faint drumbeat under my voice.

  “So where are we going?”

  Deborah balled up her fists and clenched her teeth. She looked down at the body, and for a moment I thought she was actually going to spit. “What about the guy you chased into the canal?” she said at last.

  “Starzak? No, he said . . .” I stopped myself from finishing, but not quite soon enough, because Deborah pounced.

  “He said? When did you talk to him, goddamn it?”

  To be fair to me, I really was still a little bit dizzy, and I had not thought before I spoke, and now I was in a somewhat awkward spot. I could not very well tell my sister that I had spoken to him just the other night when I had taped him to his workbench and tried to cut him up into small neat pieces. But the blood must have been flowing back into my brain, because I very quickly said, “I mean, he seemed,” I said. “He seemed to be just a . . . I don’t know,”

  I said. “I think it was personal, like I cut him off in traffic.”

  DEXTER IN THE DARK

  253

  Deborah looked at me angrily for a moment, but then she seemed to accept what I had said, and she turned away and kicked at the sand. “Well, we got nothing else,” she said. “It won’t hurt to check him out.”

  It didn’t seem like a really good idea to tell her that I already had checked him out quite thoroughly, far beyond the boundaries of normal police routine, so I just nodded in agreement.

  T H I R T Y - F O U R

  There was not a great deal more worth seeing on the little island. Vince and the other forensic nerds would spot anything else worth the trouble, and our presence would only hamper them. Deborah was impatient and wanted to rush back to the mainland to intimidate suspects. So we walked to the beach and boarded the police launch for the short trip back across the harbor to the dock. I felt a little better when I climbed onto the dock and walked back to the parking lot.

  I didn’t see Cody and Astor, so I went over to Officer Low Forehead. “The kids are in the car,” he told me before I could speak.

  “They wanted to play cops and robbers with me, and I didn’t sign up for day care.”

  Apparently he was convinced that his line about day care was so sidesplittingly funny that it was worth repeating, so rather than risk having him say it again, I simply nodded, thanked him, and went over to Deborah’s car. Cody and Astor were not visible until I was practically on top of the car, and for a moment I wondered which car they were in. But then I saw them, crouching down in the backseat, looking at me with very wide eyes. I tried to open DEXTER IN THE DARK

  255

  the door, but it was locked. “Can I come in?” I called through the glass.

  Cody fumbled with the lock, and then swung the door open.

  “What’s up?” I asked them.

  “We saw the scary guy,” Astor said.

  At first I had no idea what she meant by that, and so I really couldn’t say why I felt the sweat start rolling down my back. “What do you mean, the scary guy?” I said. “You mean that policeman over there?”

  “Dex-terrr,” Astor said. “Not dumb, scary. Like when we saw the heads.”

  “The same scary guy?”

  They exchanged another look, and Cody shrugged. “Kind of,”

  Astor said.

  “He saw my shadow,” Cody said in his soft, husky voice.

  It was good to hear the boy open up like this, and even better, now I knew why the sweat was running down my back. He had said something about his shadow before, and I had ignored it. Now it was time to listen. I climbed into the backseat with them.

  “How do you know he saw your shadow, Cody?”

  “He said so,” Astor said. “And Cody could see his.”

  Cody nodded, without taking his eyes off my face, looking at me with his usual guarded expression that showed nothing. And yet I could tell that he trusted me to take care of whatever this was.

  I wished I could share his optimism.

  “When you say your shadow,” I asked him carefully, “do you mean the one on the ground that the sun makes?”

  Cody shook his head.

  “You have another shadow besides that,” I said.

  Cody looked at me like I had asked him if was wearing pants, but he nodded. “Inside,” he said. “Like you used to have.”

  I sat back against the seat and pretended to breathe. “Inside shadow.” It was a perfect description—elegant, economical, and accurate. And to add that I used to have one gave it a poignancy which I found quite moving.

  Of course, being moved really serves no useful purpose, and I 256

  JEFF LINDSAY

  usually manage to avoid it. In this case, I mentally shook myself and wondered what had happened to the proud towers of Castle Dexter, once so lofty and festooned with silk banners of pure reason. I remembered very well that I used to be smart, and yet here I was ignoring something important, ignoring it for far too long. Because the question was not what was Cody talking about. The real puzzle was why I had failed to understand him before.

  Cody had seen another predator and recognized him when the dark thing inside him heard the roar of a fellow monster, just as I had known others when my Passenger was at home. And this other had recognized Cody for what he was in exactly the same way. But why that should frighten Cody and Astor into hiding in the car—

  “Did the man say anything to you?” I asked them.

  “He gave me this,” Cody said. He held out a buff-colored business card and I took it from him.

  On the card was a stylized picture of a bull’s head, exactly like the one I had just seen around the neck of Kurt’s body out on the island. And underneath it was a perfect copy of Kurt’s tattoo: mlk.

  The front door of the car opened and Deborah hurled herself behind the wheel. “Let’s go,” she said. “Get in your seat.” She slammed the key into the ignition and had the car started before I could even inhale to speak.

  “Wait a minute,” I said after I managed to find a little air to work with.

  “I don’t have a goddamned minute,” she said. “Come on.”

  “He was here, Debs,” I said.

  “For Christ’s sake, Dex, who was here?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “Then how the fuck do you know he was here?”

  I leaned forward and handed her the card. “He left this,” I said.

  Deborah took the card, glanced at it, and then dropped it on the seat as if it was made out of cobra venom. “Shit,” she said. She turned off the car’s engine. “Where did he leave it?”

  “With Cody,” I said.

  She swiveled her head around and looked at the three of us, one after the other. “Why would he leave it with a kid?” she asked.

  DEXTER IN THE DARK

  257

&nb
sp; “Because—” Astor said, and I put a hand on her mouth.

  “Don’t interrupt, Astor,” I said, before she could say anything about seeing shadows.

  She took a breath, but then she thought better of it and just sat there, unhappy at being muzzled but going along with it for the time being. We sat there for a moment, the four of us, one big unhappy extended family.

  “Why not stick it on the windshield, or send it in the mail?”

  Deborah said. “For that matter, why the hell give us the damn thing at all? Why even have it printed, for Christ’s sake?”

  “He gave it to Cody to intimidate us,” I said. “He’s saying, ‘See?

  I can get to you where you’re vulnerable.’ ”

  “Showing off,” Deborah said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think so.”

  “Well goddamn it, that’s the first thing he’s done that made any sense at all.” She slapped the heels of her hands on the steering wheel. “He wants to play catch-me-if-you-can like all the other psychos, then by God I can play that game, too. And I’ll catch the son of a bitch.” She looked back at me. “Put that card in an evidence bag,” she said, “and try to get a description from the kids.” She opened the car door, vaulted out, and went over to talk to the big cop, Suchinsky.

  “Well,” I said to Cody and Astor, “can you remember what this man looked like?”

  “Yes,” said Astor. “Are we really going to play with him like your sister said?”

  “She didn’t mean ‘play’ like you play kick the can,” I said. “It’s more like he’s daring us to try to catch him.”

  “Then how is that different from kick the can?” she said.

  “Nobody gets killed playing kick the can,” I told her. “What did this man look like?”

  She shrugged. “He was old.”

  “You mean, really old? White hair and wrinkles?”

  “No, you know. Old like you,” she said.

  “Ah, you mean old,” I said, feeling the icy hand of mortality brush its fingers across my forehead and leave feebleness and shaky 258

  JEFF LINDSAY

  hands in its wake. It was not a promising start toward getting a real description, but after all, she was ten years old and all grown-ups are equally uninteresting. It was clear that Deborah had made the smart move by choosing to speak to Officer Dim instead. This was hopeless. Still, I had to try.

  A sudden inspiration hit me—or at any rate, considering my current lack of brain power, something that would have to stand in for inspiration. It would at least make sense if the scary guy had been Starzak, coming back after me. “Anything else about him you remember? Did he have an accent when he spoke?”

  She shook her head. “You mean like French or something? No, he just talked regular. Who’s Kurt?”

  It would be an exaggeration to say that my little heart went flip-flop at her words, but I certainly felt some kind of internal quiver.

  “Kurt is the dead guy I just looked at. Why do you want to know?”

  “The man said,” Astor said. “He said someday Cody would be a much better helper than Kurt.”

  A sudden, very cold chill rolled through Dexter’s interior cli-mate. “Really,” I said. “What a nice man.”

  “He wasn’t nice at all, Dexter, we told you. He was scary.”

  “But what did he look like, Astor?” I said without any real hope.

  “How can we find him if we don’t know what he looks like?”

  “You don’t have to catch him, Dexter,” she said, with the same mildly irritated tone of voice. “He said you’ll find him when the time is right.”

  The world stopped for a moment, just long enough for me to feel drops of ice water shoot out of all my pores as if they were spring-loaded. “What exactly did he say?” I asked her when things started up again.

  “He said to tell you you’ll find him when the time is right,” she said. “I just said.”

  “How did he say it?” I said. “ ‘Tell Daddy?’ ‘Tell that man?’

  What?”

  She sighed again. “Tell Dexter,” she said, slowly so I would understand. “That’s you. He said, ‘Tell Dexter he’ll find me when the time is right.’ ”

  DEXTER IN THE DARK

  259

  I suppose I should have been even more scared. But strangely enough, I wasn’t. Instead, I felt better. Now I knew for sure—someone really was stalking me. Whether a god or a mortal, it didn’t matter anymore, and he would come get me when the time was right, whatever that meant.

  Unless I got him first.

  It was a silly thought, straight out of a high-school locker room.

  I had so far shown absolutely no ability to stay even half a step ahead of whoever this was, let alone find him. I’d done nothing but watch as he stalked me, scared me, chased me, and drove me into a state of dark dithering unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

  He knew who, what, and where I was. I didn’t even know what he looked like. “Please, Astor, this is important,” I said. “Was he real tall? Did he have a beard? Was he Cuban? Black?”

  She shrugged. “Just, you know,” she said, “a white man. He had glasses. Just a regular man. You know.”

  I didn’t know, but I was saved from admitting it when Deborah yanked open the driver’s door and slid back into the car. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “How can a man be that dumb and still tie his own shoes?”

  “Does that mean Officer Suchinsky didn’t have a lot to say?” I asked her.

  “He had plenty to say,” Deborah said. “But it was all brain-dead bullshit. He thought the guy might have been driving a green car, and that’s about it.”

  “Blue,” Cody said, and we all looked at him. “It was blue.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked him, and he nodded.

  “So do I believe a little kid?” Deborah asked. “Or a cop with fifteen years on the force and nothing in his head but shit?”

  “You shouldn’t keep saying those bad words,” Astor said.

  “That’s five and a half dollars you owe me. And anyway, Cody’s right, it was a blue car. I saw it, too, and it was blue.”

  I looked at Astor, but I could feel the pressure of Deborah’s stare on me and I turned back to her.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Well,” I said. “Without the bad words, these are two very 260

  JEFF LINDSAY

  sharp kids, and Officer Suchinsky will never be invited to join Mensa.”

  “So I’m supposed to believe them,” she said.

  “I do.”

  Deborah chewed on that for a moment, literally moving her mouth around as if she was grinding some very tough food.

  “Okay,” she said at last. “So now I know he’s driving a blue car, just like one out of every three people in Miami. Tell me how that helps me.”

  “Wilkins drives a blue car,” I said.

  “Wilkins is under surveillance, goddamn it,” she said.

  “Call them.”

  She looked at me, chewed on her lip, and then picked up her radio and stepped out of the car. She talked for a moment, and I heard her voice rising. Then she said another of her very bad words, and Astor looked at me and shook her head. And then Deborah slammed herself back into the car.

  “Son of a bitch,” she said.

  “They lost him?”

  “No, he’s right there, at his house,” she said. “He just pulled in and went in the house.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “They don’t know,” she said. “They lost him on the shift change.”

  “What?”

  “DeMarco was coming in as Balfour was punching out,” she said. “He slipped away while they were changing. They swear he wasn’t gone more than ten minutes.”

  “His house is a five-minute drive from here.”

  “I know that,” she said bitterly. “So what do we do?”

  “Keep them watching Wilkins,” I said. “And in the meantime, you go talk to Starzak
.”

  “You’re coming with me, right?” she said.

  “No,” I said, thinking that I certainly didn’t want to see Starzak, and that for once I had a perfect excuse in place. “I have to get the kids home.”

  DEXTER IN THE DARK

  261

  She gave me a sour look. “And what if it isn’t Starzak?” she said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I don’t know either.” She started the engine.

  “Get in your seat.”

  T H I R T Y - F I V E

  It was well past five o’clock by the time we got back to headquarters and so, in spite of some very sour looks from Deborah, I loaded Cody and Astor into my own humble vehicle and headed for home. They remained subdued for most of the ride, apparently still a little bit shaken by their encounter with the scary guy. But they were resilient children, which was amply demonstrated by the fact that they could still talk at all, considering what their biological father had done to them. So when we were only about ten minutes from the house Astor began to return to normal.

  “I wish you would drive like Sergeant Debbie,” she said.

  “I would rather live a little longer,” I told her.

  “Why don’t you have a siren?” she demanded. “Didn’t you want one?”

  “You don’t get a siren in forensics,” I said. “And no, I never wanted one. I would rather keep a low profile.”

  In the rearview mirror I could see her frown. “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “It means I don’t want to draw attention to myself,” I said. “I DEXTER IN THE DARK

  263

  don’t want people to notice me. That’s something you two have to learn about,” I added.

  “Everybody else wants to be noticed,” she said. “It’s like all they ever do, is do stuff so everybody will look at them.”

  “You two are different,” I said. “You will always be different, and you will never be like everybody else.” She didn’t say anything for a long time and I glanced at her in the mirror. She was looking at her feet. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” I said. “What’s another word for normal?”