by Jeff Lindsay
The green van did not belong there, judging by the type of neighborhood this was. Of course, it could be that Ingraham was having some plastering work done and the workers had decided to stay until the job was done. But I didn’t think so, and neither did the Dark Passenger. I took out my cell phone to call Deborah.
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“I may have found something,” I told her when she answered.
“What took you so long?” she said.
“I think Dr. Danco is working out of Ingraham’s house on Miami Beach,” I said.
There was a short pause in which I could almost see her frown. “Why do you think that?”
The idea of explaining to her that my guess was only a guess was not terribly appealing, so I just said, “It’s a long story, Sis. But I think I’m right.”
“You think,” she said. “But you’re not sure.”
“I will be in a few minutes,” I said. “I’m parked around the corner from the house, and there’s a van parked in front that looks a little out of place in this neighborhood.”
“Stay put,” she said. “I’ll call you back.” She hung up and left me looking at the house. It was an awkward angle to watch from and I could not really look without developing a severe knot in my neck. So I turned the car around and faced down the street toward the bend where the house sat sneering at me and as I did—there it was. Poking its bloated head through the trees, guttering bleary beams of light down onto the rancid landscape. That moon, that always laughing light-house of a moon. There it was.
I could feel the cold fingers of moonlight poking at me, prodding and teasing and urging me on to some foolish and wonderful something, and it had been so very long since I had listened that the sounds came twice as loud as ever, washing over my head and down my spine and in truth, what harm could it do to be absolutely sure before Deborah called back? Not to do anything stupid, of course, but just to ease 2 7 6
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out of the car and down the street past the house, just a casual stroll in the moonlight along a quiet street of houses. And if by chance the opportunity arose to play a few small games with the Doctor—
It was mildly upsetting to notice that my breath was slightly shaky as I climbed out of my car. Shame on you, Dexter. Where’s that famous icy control? Perhaps it had slipped from being under wraps too long, and perhaps it was just that the same hiatus had made me a little too eager, but this would never do. I took a long, deep breath to steady myself and headed up the street, just a casual monster out for an evening stroll past an impromptu vivisection clinic. Hello, neighbor, beautiful night to remove a leg, isn’t it?
With each step closer to the house I felt That Something growing taller and harder inside me, and at the same time the old cold fingers clamping down to hold it in place. I was fire and ice, alive with moonlight and death, and as I came even with the house the whispers inside began to well up as I heard the faint sounds from the house, a chorus of rhythm and sax-ophones that sounded very much like Tito Puente and I did not need the rising whispers to tell me that I was right, this was indeed the place where the Doctor had set up his clinic.
He was here, and he was at work.
And now, what did I do about that? Of course the wise thing to do would be to stroll back to my car and wait for Deborah’s call—but was this really a night for wisdom, with that lyrically sneering moon so low in the sky and ice pouring through my veins and urging me onward?
And so when I had walked on past the house, I slipped into the shadows around the house next door and slid carefully through the backyard until I could see the back of Ingraham’s D E A R LY D E V O T E D D E X T E R
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house. There was a very bright light showing in the back window and I stalked into the yard in the shadow of a tree, closer and closer. A few more cat-footed steps and I could almost see in the window. I moved a little closer, just outside the line that light cast on the ground.
From where I now stood I could at last see in the window, upward at a slight angle, inside, to the ceiling of the room.
And there was the mirror Danco seemed so fond of using, showing me half the table—
—and slightly more than half of Sergeant Doakes.
He was strapped securely in place, motionless, even his newly shaved head clamped tight to the table. I could not see too many details, but from what I could see, both his hands were gone at the wrist. The hands first? Very interesting, a totally different approach from the one he had used on Chutsky.
How did Dr. Danco decide what was right for each individual patient?
I found myself increasingly intrigued by the man and his work; there was a quirky sense of humor in motion here and as silly as it is, I wanted to know just a little bit more about how it worked. I moved half a step closer.
The music paused and I paused with it, and then as the mambo beat picked up again I heard a metallic cough behind me and felt something flick my shoulder, stinging and tingling, and I turned around to see a small man with large, thick glasses looking at me. He was holding in his hand what looked like a paintball gun, and I just had time to feel indignant that it was aimed at me before somebody removed all the bones from my legs and I melted down into the dew-smeared moonlit grass where it was all dark and full of dreams.
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Iwas cutting happily away at a very bad person who I had taped securely and strapped to a table but somehow the knife was made of rubber and only wobbled from side to side. I reached up and grabbed a giant bone saw instead and laid it into the alligator on the table, but the real joy would not come to me and instead there was pain and I saw that I was slicing away at my own arms. My wrists burned and bucked but I could not stop cutting and then I hit an ar-tery and the awful red spewed out everywhere and blinded me with a scarlet mist and then I was falling, falling forever through the darkness of dim empty me where the awful shapes twisted and yammered and pulled at me until I fell through and hit the dreadful red puddle there on the floor beside where two hollow moons glared down at me and demanded: Open your eyes, you are awake—
And it all came back into focus on the two hollow moons that were actually the pair of thick lenses set in large black D E A R LY D E V O T E D D E X T E R
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frames and wedged onto the face of a small, wiry man with a mustache who was bending over me with a syringe in his hand.
Dr. Danco, I presume?
I didn’t think I had said it out loud, but he nodded and said, “Yes, they called me that. And who are you?” His accent was slightly strained, as if he had to think a little too hard about each word. There was a trace of Cuban to it, but not like Spanish was his native tongue. For some reason his voice made me very unhappy, as if it had an odor of Dexter Repel-lant to it. But deep inside my lizard brain an old dinosaur lifted its head and roared back and so I did not cringe away from him as I had at first wanted to. I tried to shake my head, but found that very hard to do for some reason.
“Don’t try to move yet,” he said. “It won’t work. But don’t worry, you’ll be able to see everything I do to your friend on the table. And soon enough it will be your turn. You can see yourself, then, in the mirror.” He blinked at me, and a light touch of whimsy came into his voice. “It’s a wonderful thing about mirrors. Did you know that if someone is standing outside the house looking into a mirror, you can see them from inside the house?”
He sounded like an elementary-school teacher explaining a joke to a student he was fond of, but who might be too dumb to get it. And I felt just dumb enough for that to make sense, because I had walked right into this with no thought deeper than, Gee, that’s interesting. My own moon-driven impatience and curiosity had made me careless and he had seen me peeping in. Still, he was gloating, and that was annoying, so I felt compelled to say something, however feeble.
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“Why yes, I knew that
,” I said. “And did you know that this house has a front door, too? And no peacocks on guard this time.”
He blinked. “Should I be alarmed?” he said.
“Well, you never know who might come barging in uninvited.”
Dr. Danco moved the left corner of his mouth upward perhaps a quarter of an inch. “Well,” he said, “if your friend on the operating table is a fair sample, I think I may be all right, don’t you?” And I had to admit that he had a point. The first-team players had not been impressive; what did he have to fear from the bench? If only I wasn’t still a little dopey from whatever drugs he had used on me, I’m quite sure I would have said something far more clever, but in truth I was still in a little bit of a chemical fog.
“I do hope I’m not supposed to believe that help is on the way?” he said.
I was wondering the same thing, but it didn’t seem entirely smart to say so. “Believe what you like,” I said instead, hoping that was ambiguous enough to give him pause, and cursing the slowness of my normally swift mental powers.
“All right then,” he said. “I believe you came here alone.
Although I am curious about why.”
“I wanted to study your technique,” I said.
“Oh, good,” he said. “I’ll be happy to show you—first-hand.” He flickered his tiny little smile at me again and added, “And then feet.” He waited for a moment, probably to see if I would laugh at his hilarious pun. I felt very sorry to disappoint him, but perhaps later it might seem funnier, if I got out of this alive.
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Danco patted my arm and leaned in just a bit. “We’ll have to have your name, you know. No fun without it.”
I pictured him speaking to me by name as I lay strapped to the table, and it was not a cheerful image.
“Will you tell me your name?” he asked.
“Rumplestiltskin,” I said.
He stared at me, his eyes huge behind the thick lenses.
Then he reached down to my hip pocket and worked my wallet out. He flipped it open and found my driver’s license.
“Oh. So YOU’RE Dexter. Congratulations on your engagement.” He dropped my wallet beside me and patted my cheek. “Watch and learn, because all too soon I will be doing the same things to you.”
“How wonderful for you,” I said.
Danco frowned at me. “You really should be more frightened,” he said. “Why aren’t you?” He pursed his lips. “Interesting. I’ll increase the dosage next time.” And he stood up and moved away.
I lay in a dark corner next to a bucket and a broom and watched him bustle about the kitchen. He made himself a cup of instant Cuban coffee and stirred in a huge amount of sugar.
Then he moved back to the center of the room and stared down at the table, sipping thoughtfully.
“Nahma,” the thing on the table that had once been Sergeant Doakes pleaded. “Nahana. Nahma.” Of course his tongue had been removed—obvious symbology for the person Danco believed had squealed on him.
“Yes, I know,” Dr. Danco said. “But you haven’t guessed a single one yet.” He almost seemed to be smiling as he said that, although his face did not look like it was formed to make 2 8 2
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any expression beyond thoughtful interest. But it was enough to set Doakes off into a fit of yammering and trying to thrash his way out of his bonds. It didn’t work very well, and didn’t seem to concern Dr. Danco, who moved away sipping his coffee and humming along off-key to Tito Puente. As Doakes flopped about I could see that his right foot was gone, as well as his hands and tongue. Chutsky had said his entire lower leg had been removed all at once. The Doctor was obviously making this one last a little longer. And when it was my turn—how would he decide what to take and when?
Piece by small dim piece my brain was clearing itself of fog.
I wondered how long I had been unconscious. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing I could discuss with the Doctor.
The dosage, he had said. He had been holding a syringe as I woke up, been surprised that I was not more frightened— Of course. What a wonderful idea, to inject his patients with some kind of psychotropic drug to increase their sense of helpless terror. I wished I knew how to do that. Why hadn’t I gotten medical training? But, of course, it was a little late to worry about that. And in any case, it sounded very much like the dosage was adjusted just right for Doakes.
“Well, Albert,” said the Doctor to the sergeant, in a very pleasant and conversational voice, slurping his coffee,
“what’s your guess?”
“Nahana! Nah!”
“I don’t think that’s right,” said the Doctor. “Although perhaps if you had a tongue, it might have been. Well, in any case,” he said, and he bent to the edge of the table and made a small mark on a piece of paper, almost like he was crossing something out. “It is rather a long word,” he said. “Nine letters. Still, you have to take the good with the bad, don’t you?”
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And he put down his pencil and picked up a saw, and as Doakes bucked wildly against his bonds the Doctor sawed off Doakes’s left foot, just above the ankle. He did it very quickly and neatly, placing the severed foot beside Doakes’s head as he reached over to his array of instruments and picked up what looked a large soldering iron. He applied this to the new wound and a wet hiss of steam billowed up as he cauterized the stump for minimal blood flow. “There now,” he said.
Doakes made a strangled noise and went limp as the smell of seared flesh drifted through the room. With any luck at all he would be unconscious for a while.
And I, happily, was a little more conscious all the time. As the chemicals from the Doctor’s dart gun seeped out of my brain, a sort of muddy light began to trickle in.
Ah, memory. Isn’t it a lovely thing? Even when we are in the middle of the worst of times, we have our memories to cheer us. I, for example, lay there helpless, able only to watch as dreadful things happened to Sergeant Doakes, knowing that soon it would be my turn. But even so, I had my memories.
And what I remembered now was something Chutsky had said when I rescued him. “When he got me up there,” he had said, “he said, ‘Seven,’ and ‘What’s your guess?’ ” At the time I had thought it a rather strange thing to say, and wondered if Chutsky had imagined it as a side effect of the drugs.
But I had just heard the Doctor say the same things to Doakes: “What’s your guess?” followed by, “Nine letters.”
And then he had made a mark on the piece of paper taped to the table.
Just as there had been a piece of paper taped near each victim we had found, each time with a single word on it, the let-
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ters crossed out one at a time. HONOR. LOYALTY. Irony, of course: Danco reminding his former comrades of the virtues they had forsaken by turning him over to the Cubans. And poor Burdett, the man from Washington whom we found in the shell of the house in Miami Shores. He had been worth no real mental effort. Just a quick five letters, POGUE. And his arms, legs, and head had been quickly cut off and separated from his body. P-O-G-U-E. Arm, leg, leg, arm, head.
Was it really possible? I knew that my Dark Passenger had a sense of humor, but it was quite a bit darker than this—this was playful, whimsical, and even silly.
Much like the Choose Life license plate had been. And like everything else I had observed about the Doctor’s behavior.
It seemed so completely unlikely, but—
Doctor Danco was playing a little game as he sliced and diced. Perhaps he had played it with others in those long years inside the Cuban prison at the Isle of Pines, and maybe it had come to seem like just the right thing to serve his whimsical revenge. Because it certainly seemed like he was playing it now—with Chutsky, and with Doakes and the others. It was quite absurd, but it was also the only thing that made sense.
Doctor Danco was playing hangman.
“Well,” he said, squatting beside me again. “How do you think your friend is doing?”
“I think you have him stumped,” I said.
He cocked his head to one side and his small, dry tongue flicked out and over his lips as he stared at me, his eyes large and unblinking through his thick glasses. “Bravo,” he said, and he patted my arm again. “I don’t think you really believe this will happen to you,” he said. “Perhaps a ten will persuade you.”
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“Does it have an E in it?” I asked, and he rocked back slightly as if some offensive odor had drifted up to him from my socks.
“Well,” he said, still without blinking, and then something that may have been related to a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Yes, there are two E’s. But of course, you guessed out of turn, so . . .” He shrugged, a tiny gesture.
“You could count it as a wrong guess—for Sergeant Doakes,” I suggested, quite helpfully, I thought.
He nodded. “You don’t like him. I see,” he said, and he frowned a little. “Even so, you really should be more afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” I said. Sheer bravado, of course, but how often does one get a chance to banter with an authentic vil-lain? And the shot seemed to go home; Danco stared at me for a long moment before he finally gave his head a very slight shake.
“Well, Dexter,” he said, “I can see we’re going to have our work cut out for us.” And he gave me his tiny, almost invisible smile. “Among other things,” he added, and a cheerful black shadow reared up behind him as he spoke, thundering a happy challenge to my Dark Passenger, which slid forward and bellowed back. For a moment we faced off like that, and then he finally blinked, just once, and stood up. He walked back over to the table where Doakes slumbered so peacefully, and I sank back in my homey little corner and wondered what sort of miracle the Great Dexterini might come up with for this, his greatest escape.