Dexter 3 - Dexter in the Dark (20 page)

TWENTY-FIVE IN MY
LIFELONG STUDY OF HUMAN BEINGS, I HAVE FOUND that no matter how hard they might
try, they have found no way yet to prevent the arrival of Monday morning. And
they do try, of

course, but Monday always comes,
and all the drones have to scuttle back to their dreary workaday lives of
meaningless toil and suffering. That thought always cheers me up, and because I
like to spread happiness wherever I go, I did my small

part to cushion the blow of unavoidable Monday morning
by arriving at work with a box of doughnuts, all of which vanished in what can
only be called an extremely grumpy frenzy before I reached my desk. I doubted
very seriously that anyone had a better reason than I did for feeling surly,
but you would not have known it to watch them all snatching at my doughnuts and
grunting at me.

Vince Masuoka seemed to be sharing in the general feeling of low-key
anguish. He stumbled into my cubbyhole with a look of horror and wonderment on
his face, an expression that must have indicated something very moving because
it looked almost real. “Jesus, Dexter,” he said. “Oh, Jesus
Christ.”

“I tried to save you one,” I said, thinking
that with that much anguish he could only be referring to the calamity of facing
an empty doughnut box. But he shook his head. “Oh, Jesus, I can't believe
it. He's dead!” “I'm sure it had nothing to do with the
doughnuts,” I said.

“My God, and you were going to see him. Did
you?” There comes a point in every conversation where at least one of the
people involved has to know what is being talked about, and I decided that
point had arrived.

“Vince,” I said,
"I want you to take a deep breath, start all over from the top, and
pretend you and I speak

the same language.“ He
stared at me as if he was a frog and I was a heron. ”Shit,“ he said.
”You don't know yet, do you? Holy shit."

“Your language skills
are deteriorating,” I said. “Have you been talking to Deborah?”
“He's dead, Dexter. They found the body late last night.” “Well,
then, I'm sure he'll stay dead long enough for you to tell me what in the hell
you're talking about.” Vince blinked at me, his eyes suddenly huge and
moist. “Manny Borque,” he breathed. "He was

murdered."

I will admit to having mixed reactions. On the one hand, I was
certainly not sorry to have somebody else take the little troll out of the
picture in a way I was unable to do for ethical reasons. But on the other hand,
now I needed to find another caterer-and oh, yes, I would probably have to give
a statement of some kind to the detective in charge. Annoyance fought it out
with relief, but then I remembered that the doughnuts were gone, too.

And so the reaction that won out was irritation at all the bother this
was going to cause. Still, Harry had schooled me well enough to know that this
is not really an acceptable reaction to display when one hears of the death of
an acquaintance. So I did my best to push my face into something resembling
shock, concern, and distress. “Wow,” I said. “I had no idea. Do
they know who did it?”

Vince shook his head. “The guy had no enemies,” he said, and
he didn't seem aware of how unlikely his statement sounded to anyone who had
ever met Manny. “I mean, everybody was just in awe of him.”

“I know,” I said. “He was in magazines
and everything.”

“I can't believe anybody would do that to
him,” he said.

In truth, I couldn't believe it had taken so long for somebody to do
that to him, but it didn't seem like the politic thing to say. “Well, I'm
sure they'll figure it out. Who's assigned to the case?”

Vince looked at me like I had asked him if he thought the sun might
come up in the morning. “Dexter,” he said wonderingly, “his head
was cut off. It's just like the three over at the university.”

When I was young and trying hard to fit in, I played
football for a while, and one time I had been hit hard in the stomach and
couldn't breathe for a few minutes. I felt a little bit like that now.

“Oh,” I said.

“So naturally they've given it to your
sister,” he said.

“Naturally.” A sudden thought hit me, and because I am a
lifelong devotee of irony, I asked him, “He wasn't cooked, too, was
he?”

Vince shook his head. “No,” he said.

I stood up. “I better go talk to Deborah,” I
said.

Deborah was not in any mood to talk when I arrived at Manny's
apartment. She was bending over Camilla Figg, who was dusting for prints around
the legs of the table by the window. She didn't look up, so I peeked into the
kitchen, where Angel-no-relation was bent over the body.

“Angel,” I said, and I found some difficulty
believing my eyes, so I asked him, “Is that really a girl's head
there?”

He nodded and poked at the head with a pen. “Your
sister says, prolly the girl from the Lowe Museum,” he said. “They
put it here because this guy is such a bugero.”

I looked down at the two cuts, one just above the shoulders, the other
just below the chin. The one on the head matched what we had seen before, done
with neatness and care. But the one on the body that was presumably Manny was
much rougher, as if it had been hurried. The edges of the two cuts were pushed
together carefully, but of course they did not quite mesh. Even on my own, with
no dark interior muttering, I could tell that this was different somehow, and
one small cold finger crawling across the back of my neck suggested that the
difference might be very important-maybe even to my current troubles-but beyond
that vague and unsatisfying ghost of a hint, there was nothing for me here but
uneasiness.

“Is there another
body?” I asked him, remembering poor bullied Franky. Angel shrugged
without looking up. “In the bedroom,” he said. “Just with a
butcher knife stuck in him. They left his head.” He sounded a little
offended that someone would go to all that trouble and leave the

head, but other than that
he seemed to have nothing to tell me, so I walked away, over to where my sister
was now squatting beside Camilla. “Good morning, Debs,” I said, with
a cheerfulness I did not feel at all, and I was not the only one,

because she didn't even look
up at me. “Goddamn it, Dexter,” she said. “Unless you have
something really good for me, stay the fuck away.” “It isn't all that
good,” I said. "But the guy in the bedroom is named Franky. This one
here is Manny

Borque, who has been in a
number of magazines.“ ”How the fuck would you know that?“ she
said. ”Well, it's a little awkward,“ I said, ”but I may have
been one of the last people to see this guy alive.“ She straightened up.
”When,“ she said. ”Saturday morning. Around ten thirty. Right
here." And I pointed to the coffee cup that was still on top of

the table. “Those are my prints.”

Deborah was looking at me with disbelief and shaking
her head. “You knew this guy,” she said. “He was a friend of
yours?” “I hired him to cater my wedding,” I said. “He was
supposed to be very good at it.” “Uh-huh,” she said. “So
what were you doing here on a Saturday morning?” “He raised the price
on me,” I said. “I wanted to talk him down.” She looked around
the apartment and glanced out the window at the million-dollar view. "What
was he

charging?“ she said. ”Five hundred dollars a
plate,“ I said. Her head snapped around to face me again. ”Jesus
fuck,“ she said. ”For what?“ I shrugged. ”He wouldn't tell
me, and he wouldn't lower the price."

“Five hundred dollars a plate?” she said.

“It is a little high, isn't it? Or should I say,
it was.”

Deborah chewed on her lip for a long moment without blinking, and then
she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me away from Camilla. I could still see
one small foot sticking out of the kitchen door where the dear departed had met
his untimely end, but Deborah led me away from it and over to the far end of
the room.

“Dexter,” she said, “promise me you
didn't kill this guy.”

As I have mentioned before, I do not have real
emotions. I have practiced long and hard to react the way human beings would
react in almost every possible situation-but this one caught me by surprise.
What is the correct facial expression for being accused of murder by your
sister? Shock? Anger? Disbelief? As far as I knew, this wasn't covered in any
of the textbooks.

“Deborah,” I said. Not tremendously clever,
but it was all I could think of.

“Because you don't get a free pass with me,”
she said. “Not for something like this.”

“I would never,” I said. “This is not…” I shook my
head, and it really seemed so unfair. First the Dark Passenger left me, and now
my sister and my wits had apparently fled, too. All the rats were swimming away
as the good ship Dexter slid slowly under the waves.

I took a deep breath and tried to organize the crew to
bail out a little. Deborah was the only person on earth who knew what I really
was, and even though she was still getting used to the idea, I had thought she
understood the very careful boundaries set up by Harry, and understood, too,
that I would never cross them. Apparently I was wrong. “Deborah,” I said.
“Why would I-”

“Cut the crap,” she snapped. “We both know you could
have done it. You were here at the right time. And you have a pretty good
motive, to get out of paying him like fifty grand. It's either that or I
believe some guy in jail did it.”

Because I am an artificial human, I am also extremely clearheaded most
of the time, uncluttered by emotions. But I felt as if I was trying to see
through quicksand. On the one hand, I was surprised and a little disappointed
that she thought I might have done something this sloppy. On the other hand, I
wanted to reassure her that I hadn't. And I wanted to say that if I had done
this, she would never have found out about it, but that didn't seem quite
diplomatic. So I took another deep breath and settled for, “I
promise.”

My sister looked at me long and hard.
“Really,” I said.

She finally nodded. “All right,” she said.
“You better be telling me the truth.”

“I am,” I said. “I didn't do
this.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Then who
did?”

It really isn't fair, is it? I mean, this whole life
thing. Here I was, still defending myself from an accusation of murder-from my
own foster flesh and blood!-and at the same time being asked to solve the
crime. I had to admire the mental agility that allowed Deborah to perform that
kind of cerebral tumbling

act, but I also had to wish
she would direct her creative thinking at somebody else. “I don't know who
did this,” I said. “And I don't-I'm not getting any, um, ideas about
it.” She stared at me very hard indeed. “Why should I believe that,
either?” she said. “Deborah,” I said, and I hesitated. Was this
the time to tell her about the Dark Passenger and its present

absence? There was a very uncomfortable
series of sensations sloshing through me, somewhat like the

onset of the flu. Could
these be emotions, pounding at the defenseless coastline of Dexter, like huge
tidal

waves of toxic sludge? If
so, it was no wonder humans were such miserable creatures. This was an awful

experience.

“Listen, Deborah,” I said again, trying to
think of a way to start.

“I am listening, for Christ's sake,” she
said. “But you're not saying anything.”

“It's hard to say,” I said. “I've never
said it before.”

“This would be a great
time to start.”

“I, uh-I have this
thing inside me,” I said, aware that I sounded like a complete idiot and
feeling a strange

heat rising into my cheeks.
“What do you mean,” she demanded. “You've got cancer?”
“No, no, it's-I hear, um-It tells me things,” I said. For some reason
I had to look away from Deborah.

There was a photograph of a naked man's torso on the
wall; I looked back to Deborah. “Jesus,” she said. “You mean you
hear voices? Jesus Christ, Dex.” “No,” I said. “It's not like
hearing voices. Not exactly.” “Well then what the fuck?” she
said. I had to look at the naked torso again, and then blow out a large breath
before I could look back at

Deborah. “When I get
one of my hunches about, you know. At a crime scene,” I said. "It's
because this…

thing is telling me."
Deborah's face was frozen over, completely immobile, as if she was listening to
a

confession of terrible deeds; which she was, of
course.

“So it tells you, what?” she said.
“Hey, somebody who thinks he's Batman did this.”

“Kind of,” I said. “Just, you know. The
little hints I used to get.”

“Used to get,” she
said.

I really had to look away
again. “It's gone, Deborah,” I said. "Something about all this
Moloch stuff

scared it away. That's never
happened before." She didn't say anything for a long time, and I saw no
reason to say it for her.

“Did you ever tell Dad
about this voice?” she said at last. “I didn't have to,” I said.
“He already knew.” “And now your voices are gone,” she
said. “Just one voice.” “And that's why you're not telling me
anything about all this.” “Yes.” Deborah ground her teeth
together loud enough for me to hear them. Then she released a large breath

without unlocking her jaw. “Either you're lying
to me because you did this,” she hissed at me, “or you're telling the
truth and you're a fucking psycho.” “Debs-”

“Which one do you think I want to believe,
Dexter? Huh? Which one?” I don't believe I have felt real anger since I was
an adolescent, and it may be that even then I was not able to feel the real
thing. But with the Dark Passenger gone and me slipping down the slope into
genuine humanity, all the old barriers between me and normal life were fading,
and I felt something now that must have been very close to the real thing.
“Deborah,” I said, “if you don't trust me and you want to think
I did this, then I don't give a rat's ass which one you believe.”