Dearly devoted Dexter

by Jeffry P. Lindsay

  “You gave up your own guy to be killed?” I asked. It hardly seemed fair-I mean, I may be untroubled by a sense of morals, but at least I play by the rules.

  Kyle was silent for a long moment. “I told you we sold our souls, buddy,” he said at last. He smiled again, a little longer this time. “Yeah, we set him up and they took him down.”

  “But he’s not dead,” Deborah said, always practical.

  “We got scammed,” Chutsky said. “The Cubans took him.”

  “What Cubans?” Deborah asked. “You said El Salvador.”

  “Back in the day, anytime there was trouble in the Americas, there were Cubans. They were propping up one side, just like we did with the other. And they wanted our doctor. I told you, he was special. So they took him, tried to turn him. Put him in the Isle of Pines.”

  “Is that a resort?” I asked.

  Chutsky gave a single small snort of a laugh. “The last resort, maybe. Isle of Pines is one of the hardest prisons in the world. Dr. Danco spent some real quality time there. They let him know his own side had given him up, and they really put him through it. And a few years later, one of our guys gets caught and turns up like that. No arms or legs, the whole deal. Danco is working for them. And now-” He shrugged. “Either they turned him loose or he skipped. Doesn’t matter which. He knows who set him up, and he’s got a list.”

  “Is your name on that list?” Deborah demanded.

  “Maybe,” Chutsky said.

  “Is Doakes’s?” I asked. After all, I can be practical, too.

  “Maybe,” he said again, which didn’t seem very helpful. All the stuff about Danco was interesting, of course, but I was here for a reason. “Anyway,” Chutsky said, “that’s what we’re up against.”

  Nobody seemed to have much to say to that, including me. I turned the things I’d heard from side to side, looking for some way to make it help me with my Doakes infestation. I will admit that I saw nothing at the moment, which was humbling. But I did seem to have a slightly better understanding of dear Dr. Danco. So he was empty inside, too, was he? A raptor in sheep’s clothing. And he, too, had found a way to use his talent for the greater good-again, just like dear old Dexter. But now he had come off the rails, and he began to seem a little bit more like just another predator, no matter the unsettling direction his technique took him.

  And oddly enough, with that insight, another thought nosed its way back into the bubbling cauldron of Dexter’s dark underbrain. It had been a passing fancy before-now it began to seem like a very good idea. Why not find Dr. Danco myself, and do a little Dark Dance with him? He was a predator gone bad, just like all the others on my list. No one, not even Doakes, could possibly object to his demise. If I had wondered casually about finding the Doctor before, now it began to take on an urgency that drove away my frustration with missing out on Reiker. So he was like me, was he? We would see about that. A jolt of something cold bristled up my spine and I found that I truly looked forward to meeting the Doctor and discussing his work in depth.

  In the distance I heard the first rumble of thunder as the afternoon storm moved in. “Shit,” said Chutsky. “Is it going to rain?”

  “Every day at this time,” I said.

  “That’s no good,” he said. “We gotta do something before it rains. You’re up, Dexter.”

  “Me?” I said, startled out of my meditations on maverick medical malpractice. I had adjusted to going along for the ride, but to actually have to do something was a little more than I had bargained for. I mean, here we had two hardened warriors sitting idly by, while we sent Delicate Dimpled Dexter into danger? Where’s the sense in that?

  “You,” Chutsky said. “I need to hang back and see what happens. If it’s him, I can take him out better. And Debbie-” He smiled at her, even though she seemed to be scowling at him. “Debbie is too much of a cop. She walks like a cop, she stares like a cop, and she might try to write him a ticket. He’d make her from a mile away. So it’s you, Dex.”

  “It’s me doing what?” I asked, and I admit that I was still feeling some righteous indignation.

  “Just walk by the house one time, around the cul-de-sac and back. Keep your eyes and ears open, but don’t be too obvious.”

  “I don’t know how to be obvious,” I said.

  “Great. Then this should be a piece of cake.”

  It was clear that neither logic nor completely justified irritation was going to do any good, so I opened the door and got out, but I couldn’t resist a parting shot. I leaned in Deborah’s window and said, “I hope I live to regret this.” And very obligingly, the thunder rumbled again nearby.

  I strolled down the sidewalk toward the house. There were leaves underfoot, a couple of crushed juice cartons from some kid’s lunch box. A cat rushed out onto a lawn as I passed and sat down very suddenly to lick its paws and stare at me from a safe distance.

  At the house with all the cars in front the music changed and someone yelled, “Whoo!” It was nice to know that somebody was having a good time while I strolled into mortal danger.

  I turned left and began to walk the curve around the cul-de-sac. I glanced at the house with the van in front, feeling very proud of the completely nonobvious way I pulled it off. The lawn was shaggy and there were several soggy newspapers in the driveway. There didn’t seem to be any visible pile of discarded body parts, and no one rushed out and tried to kill me. But as I passed by I could hear a TV blaring a game show in Spanish. A male voice rose above the hysterical announcer’s and a dish clattered. And as a puff of wind brought the first large and hard raindrops, it also carried the smell of ammonia from the house.

  I continued on past the house and back to the car. A few more drops of rain pelted down and a rumble of thunder rolled by, but the downpour held off. I climbed back into the car. “Nothing terribly sinister,” I reported. “The lawn needs mowing and there’s a smell of ammonia. Voices in the house. Either he talks to himself or there’s more than one of him.”

  “Ammonia,” Kyle said.

  “Yes, I think so,” I said. “Probably just cleaning supplies.”

  Kyle shook his head. “Cleaning services don’t use ammonia, the smell’s too strong. But I know who does.”

  “Who?” Deborah demanded.

  He grinned at her. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and got out of the car.

  “Kyle!” Deborah said, but he just waved a hand and walked right up to the front door of the house. “Shit,” Deborah muttered as he knocked and stood glancing up at the dark clouds of the approaching storm.

  The front door opened. A short and stocky man with a dark complexion and black hair falling over his forehead stared out. Chutsky said something to him and for a moment neither of them moved. The small man looked up the street, then at Kyle. Kyle slowly pulled a hand from his pocket and showed the dark man something-money? The man looked at whatever it was, looked at Chutsky again, and then held the door open. Chutsky went in. The door slammed shut.

  “Shit,” Deborah said again. She chewed on a fingernail, a habit I hadn’t seen from her since she was a teenager. Apparently it tasted good, because when it was gone she started on another. She was on her third fingernail when the door to the little house opened and Chutsky came back out, smiling and waving. The door closed and he disappeared behind a wall of water as the clouds finally opened wide. He came pounding up the street to the car and slid into the front seat, dripping wet.

  “GodDAMN!” he said. “I’m totally soaked!”

  “What the fuck was that all about?” Deborah demanded.

  Chutsky cocked an eyebrow at me and pushed the hair off his forehead. “Don’t she talk elegant?” he said.

  “Kyle, goddamn it,” she said.

  “The smell of ammonia,” he said. “No surgical use, and no commercial cleaning crew would use it.”

  “We did this already,” Deborah snapped.

  He smiled. “But ammonia IS used for cooking methamphetamine,” he said. “Which turns out
to be what these guys are doing.”

  “You just walked right into a meth kitchen?” Deb said. “What the hell did you do in there?”

  He smiled and pulled a Baggie out of his pocket. “Bought an ounce of meth,” he said.

  CHAPTER 13

  DEBORAH DIDN’T SPEAK FOR ALMOST TEN MINUTES, just drove the car and stared ahead with her jaw clamped shut. I could see the muscles flexing along the side of her face and all the way down into her shoulders. Knowing her as I did I was quite sure that an explosion was brewing, but since I knew nothing at all about how Debs in Love might behave, I couldn’t tell how soon. The target of her impending meltdown, Chutsky, sat beside her in the front seat, equally silent, but apparently quite happy to sit quietly and look at the scenery.

  We were almost to the second address and well into the shadow of Mount Trashmore when Debs finally erupted.

  “Goddamn it, that’s illegal!” she said, smacking the steering wheel with the palm of her hand for emphasis.

  Chutsky looked at her with mild affection. “Yes, I know,” he said.

  “I am a sworn fucking officer of the law!” Deborah told him. “I took an oath to stop this kind of shit-and you-!” She sputtered to a halt.

  “I had to be sure,” he said calmly. “This seemed like the best way.”

  “I ought to put the cuffs on YOU!” she said.

  “That might be fun,” he said.

  “You SON of a bitch!”

  “At least.”

  “I will not cross over to your motherfucking dark side!”

  “No, you won’t,” he said. “I won’t let you, Deborah.”

  The breath whooshed out of her and she turned to look at him. He looked back. I had never seen a silent conversation, and this one was a doozy. Her eyes clicked anxiously from the left side of his face to the right and then left again. He simply looked back, calm and unblinking. It was elegant and fascinating and almost as interesting as the fact that Debs had apparently forgotten she was driving.

  “I hate to interrupt,” I said. “But I believe that’s a beer truck right ahead?”

  Her head snapped back around and she braked, just in time to avoid turning us into a bumper sticker on a load of Miller Lite. “I’m calling that address in to vice. Tomorrow,” she said.

  “All right,” Chutsky said.

  “And you’re throwing away that Baggie.”

  He looked mildly surprised. “It cost me two grand,” he said.

  “You’re throwing it away,” she repeated.

  “All right,” he said. They looked at each other again, leaving me to watch for lethal beer trucks. Still, it was nice to see everything settled and harmony restored to the universe so we could get on with finding our hideous inhuman monster of the week, secure in the knowledge that love will always prevail. And so it was a great satisfaction to cruise down South Dixie Highway through the last of the rainstorm, and as the sun broke out of the clouds we turned onto a road that led us into a twisty series of streets, all with a terrific view of the gigantic pile of garbage known as Mount Trashmore.

  The house we were looking for was in the middle of what looked like the last row of houses before civilization ended and garbage reigned supreme. It was at the bend of a circular street and we went past it twice before we were sure that we had found it. It was a modest dwelling of the three-bedroom two-mortgage kind, painted a pale yellow with white trim, and the lawn was very neatly cropped. There was no car visible in the driveway or the carport, and a FOR SALE sign on the front lawn had been covered with another that said SOLD! in bright red letters.

  “Maybe he hasn’t moved in yet,” Deborah said.

  “He has to be somewhere,” Chutsky said, and it was hard to argue with his logic. “Pull over. Have you got a clipboard?”

  Deborah parked the car, frowning. “Under the seat. I need it for my paperwork.”

  “I won’t smudge it,” he said, and fumbled under the seat for a second before pulling out a plain metal clipboard with a stack of official forms clamped onto it. “Perfect,” he said. “Gimme a pen.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, handing him a cheap white ballpoint with a blue top.

  “Nobody ever stops a guy with a clipboard,” Chutsky said with a grin. And before either of us could say anything, he was out of the car and walking up the short driveway in a steady, nine-to-five-bureaucrat kind of pace. He stopped halfway and looked at the clipboard, turning over a couple of pages and reading something before looking at the house and shaking his head.

  “He seems very good at this kind of thing,” I said to Deborah.

  “He’d goddamned well better be,” she said. She bit another nail and I worried that soon she would run out.

  Chutsky continued up the drive, consulting his clipboard, apparently unaware that he was causing a fingernail shortage in the car behind him. He looked natural and unrushed, and had obviously had a lot of experience at either chicanery or skulduggery, depending on which word was better suited for describing officially sanctioned mischief. And he had Debs biting her nails and almost ramming beer trucks. Perhaps he was not a good influence on her after all, although it was nice to have another target for her scowling and her vicious arm punches. I am always willing to let someone else wear the bruises for a while.

  Chutsky paused outside the front door and wrote something down. And then, although I did not see how he did it, he unlocked the front door and went in. The door closed behind him.

  “Shit,” said Deborah. “Breaking and entering on top of possession. He’ll have me hijacking an airliner next.”

  “I’ve always wanted to see Havana,” I said helpfully.

  “Two minutes,” she said tersely. “Then I call for backup and go in after him.”

  To judge from the way her hand was twitching toward the radio, it was one minute and fifty-nine seconds when the front door opened again and Chutsky came back out. He paused in the driveway, wrote something on the clipboard, and returned to the car.

  “All right,” he said as he slid into the front seat. “Let’s go home.”

  “The house is empty?” Deborah demanded.

  “Clean as a whistle,” he said. “Not a towel or a soup can anywhere.”

  “So now what?” she asked as she put the car in gear.

  He shook his head. “Back to plan A,” he said.

  “And what the hell is plan A?” Deborah asked him.

  “Patience,” he said.

  And so in spite of a delightful lunch and a truly original little shopping trip afterward, we were back to waiting. A week passed in the now typically boring way. It didn’t seem like Sergeant Doakes would give up before my conversion to a beer-bellied sofa ornament was complete, and I could see nothing else to do except play kick the can and hangman with Cody and Astor, performing outrageously theatrical good-bye kisses with Rita afterward for the benefit of my stalker.

  Then came the telephone ringing in the middle of the night. It was Sunday night, and I had to leave for work early the next day; Vince Masuoka and I had an arrangement, and it was my turn to pick up doughnuts. And now here was the telephone, brazenly ringing as if I had no cares in the world and the doughnuts would deliver themselves. I glanced at the clock on my bedside table: 2:38. I admit I was somewhat cranky as I lifted the receiver and said, “Leave me alone.”

  “Dexter. Kyle is gone,” Deborah said. She sounded far beyond tired, totally tense, and unsure whether she wanted to shoot someone or cry.

  It took me just a moment to get my powerful intellect up to speed. “Uh, well Deb,” I said, “a guy like that, maybe you’re better off-”

  “He’s gone, Dexter. Taken. The, the guy has him. The guy who did that thing to the guy,” she said, and although I felt like I was suddenly thrust into an episode of The Sopranos, I knew what she meant. Whoever had turned the thing on the table into a yodeling potato had taken Kyle, presumably to do something similar to him.

  “Dr. Danco,” I said.

  “Y
es.”

  “How do you know?” I asked her.

  “He said it could happen. Kyle is the only one who knows what the guy looks like. He said when Danco found out Kyle was here, he’d make a try. We had a-a signal set up, and-Shit Dexter, just get over here. We have to find him,” she said, and hung up.

  It’s always me, isn’t it? I’m not really a very nice person, but for some reason it’s always me that they come to with their problems. Oh, Dexter, a savage inhuman monster has taken my boyfriend! Well damn it, I’m a savage inhuman monster, too-didn’t that entitle me to some rest?

  I sighed. Apparently not.

  I hoped Vince would understand about the doughnuts.

  CHAPTER 14

  IT WAS A FIFTEEN-MINUTE DRIVE TO DEBORAH’S HOUSE from where I lived in the Grove. For once, I did not see Sergeant Doakes following me, but perhaps he was using a Klingon cloaking device. In any case, the traffic was very sparse and I even made the light at U.S. 1. Deborah lived in a small house on Medina in Coral Gables, overgrown with some neglected fruit trees and a crumbling coral-rock wall. I nosed my car in next to hers in the short driveway and was only two steps away when Deborah opened her front door. “Where have you been?” she said.

  “I went to yoga class, and then out to the mall to buy shoes,” I said. In truth, I had actually hurried over, getting there less than twenty minutes after her call, and I was a little miffed at the tone she was taking.

  “Get in here,” she said, peering around into the darkness and holding on to the door as if she thought it might fly away.

  “Yes, O Mighty One,” I said, and I got in.

  Deborah’s little house was lavishly decorated in I-have-no-life modern. Her living area generally looked like a cheap hotel room that had been occupied by a rock band and looted of everything except a TV and VCR. There was a chair and a small table by French doors that led out to a patio that was almost lost in a tangle of bushes. She had found another chair somewhere, though, a rickety folding chair, and she pulled it over to the table for me. I was so touched by her hospitable gesture that I risked life and limb by sitting in the flimsy thing. “Well,” I said. “How long has he been gone?”