Dexter 3 - Dexter in the Dark (24 page)

WHEN I WAS VERY YOUNG I ONCE SAW A VARIETY ACT on TV. A
man put a bunch of plates on the end of a series of supple rods, and kept them
up in the air by whipping the rods around to spin the plates. And if he slowed
down or turned his back, even for a moment, one of the plates would wobble and
then crash to the ground, followed by all the others in series.

That's a terrific metaphor for life, isn't it? We're all trying to keep
our plates spinning in the air, and once you get them up there you can't take
your eyes off them and you have to keep chugging along without rest. Except
that in life, somebody keeps adding more plates, hiding the rods, and changing
the law of gravity when you're not looking. And so every time you think you
have all your plates spinning nicely, suddenly you hear a hideous clattering
crash behind you and a whole row of plates you didn't even know you had begins
to hit the ground.

Here I had stupidly assumed that the tragic death of Manny Borque had
given me one less plate to worry about, since I could now proceed to cater the
wedding as it should be done, with $65 worth of cold cuts and a cooler full of
soda. I could concentrate on the very real and important problem of putting me
back together again. And so thinking all was quiet on the home front, I turned
my back for just a moment and was rewarded with a spectacular crash behind me.

The metaphorical plate in question shattered when I
came into Rita's house after work. It was so quiet that I assumed no one was
home, but a quick glance inside showed something far more disturbing. Cody and
Astor sat motionless on the couch, and Rita was standing behind them with a
look on her face that could easily turn fresh milk into yogurt.

“Dexter,” she said, and the tromp of doom
was in her voice, “we need to talk.”

“Of course,” I said, and as I reeled from her expression,
even the mere thought of a lighthearted response shriveled into dust and blew
away in the icy air.

“These children,” Rita said. Apparently that was the entire
thought, because she just glared and said no more.

But of course, I knew which children she meant, so I
nodded encouragingly. “Yes,” I said.

“Ooh,” she said.

Well, if it was taking Rita this long to form a complete sentence, it
was easy to see why the house had been so quiet when I walked in. Clearly the
lost art of conversation was going to need a little boost from Diplomatic
Dexter if we were ever going to get more than seven words out in time for
dinner. So I plunged straight in with my well-known courage. “Rita,”
I said, “is there some kind of problem?”

“Ooh,” she said again,
which was not encouraging.

Well really, there's only so much you can do with monosyllables, even
if you are a gifted conversationalist like me. Since there was clearly no help
coming from Rita, I looked at Cody and Astor, who had not moved since I came
in. “All right,” I said. “Can you two tell me what's wrong with
your mother?”

They exchanged one of their famous looks, and then turned back to me.
“We didn't mean to,” Astor said. “It was an accident.”

It wasn't much, but at least it was a complete sentence. “I'm very
glad to hear it,” I said. “What was an accident?”

“We got caught,” Cody said, and Astor poked
him with an elbow.

“We didn't mean to,” she repeated with emphasis, and Cody
turned to look at her before he remembered what they had agreed on; she glared
at him and he blinked once before slowly nodding his head at me.

“Accident,” he said.

It was nice to see that the party line was firmly in
place behind a united front, but I was still no closer to knowing what we were
talking about, and we had been talking about it, more or less, for several
minutes-time being a large factor, since the dinner hour was approaching and
Dexter does require regular feeding.

“That's all they'll say about it,” Rita said. “And it is
nowhere near enough. I don't see how you could possibly tie up the Villegas'
cat by accident.”

“It didn't die,” Astor said in the tiniest
voice I had ever heard her use.

“And what were the hedge clippers for?” Rita
demanded.

“We didn't use them,” Astor said.

“But you were going to, weren't you?” Rita
said.

Two small heads swiveled to face me, and a moment
later, Rita's did, too.

I am sure it was completely unintentional, but a
picture was beginning to emerge of what had happened, and it was not a peaceful
still life. Clearly the youngsters had been attempting an independent study
without me. And even worse, I could tell that somehow it had become my problem;
the children expected me to bail them out, and Rita was clearly prepared to
lock and load and open fire on me. Of course it was unfair; all I had done so
far was come home from work. But as I have noticed on more than one occasion,
life itself is unfair, and there is no complaint department, so we might as
well accept things the way they happen, clean up the mess, and move on.

Which is what I attempted to do, however futile I suspected it would
be. “I'm sure there's a very good explanation,” I said, and Astor
brightened immediately and began to nod vigorously.

“It was an accident,” she insisted happily.

“Nobody ties up a cat, tapes it to a workbench,
and stands over it with hedge clippers by accident!” Rita said.

To be honest, things were getting a little complicated. On the one
hand, I was very pleased to get such a clear picture at last of what the
problem was. But on the other hand, we seemed to have strayed into an area that
could be somewhat awkward to explain, and I could not help feeling that Rita
might be a little bit better off if she remained ignorant of these matters.

I thought I had been clear with Astor and Cody that they were not to
fly solo until I had explained their wings to them. But they had obviously
chosen not to understand and, even though they were suffering some very
gratifying consequences for their action, it was still up to me to get them out
of it. Unless they could be made to understand that they absolutely must not
repeat this-and must not stray from the Harry Path as I put their feet upon
it-I was happy to let them twist in the wind indefinitely.

“Do you know that what you did is wrong?” I
asked them. They nodded in unison.

“Do you know why it is wrong?” I said.

Astor looked very uncertain, glanced at Cody, and then
blurted out, “Because we got caught!”

“There now, you see?” said Rita, and a
hysterical edge was creeping into her voice.

“Astor,” I said, looking at her very
carefully and not really winking, “this is not the time to be funny.”

“I'm glad somebody thinks this is funny,”
Rita said. “But I don't happen to think so.”

“Rita,” I said, with all the soothing calm I could muster,
and then, using the smooth cunning I had developed in my years as an apparently
human adult, I added, “I think this might be one of those times that
Reverend Gilles was talking about, where I need to mentor.”

“Dexter, these two have just-I don't have any
idea-and you-!” she said, and even though she was close to tears, I was
happy to see that at least her old speech patterns were returning. Just as happily,
a scene from an old movie popped into my head in the nick of time, and I knew
exactly what a real human being was supposed to do.

I walked over to Rita and, with my very best serious
face, I put a hand on her shoulder.

“Rita,” I said, and I was very proud of how
grave and manly my voice sounded, “you are too close to this, and you're
letting your emotions cloud your judgment. These two need some firm
perspective, and I can give it to them. After all,” I said as the line
came to me, and I was pleased to see that I hadn't lost a step, “I have to
be their father now.”

I should have guessed that this would be the remark that pushed Rita
off the dock and into the lake of tears; and it was, because immediately after
I said it, her lips began to tremble, her face lost all its anger, and a
rivulet began to stream down each cheek.

“All right,” she sobbed, “please,
I-just talk to them.” She snuffled loudly and hurried from the room.

I let Rita have her dramatic exit and gave it a moment to sink in
before I walked back around to the front of the couch and stared down at my two
miscreants. “Well,” I said. “What happened to We understand, We
promise, We'll wait?”

“You're taking too
long,” said Astor. "We haven't done anything except the once, and
besides, you're not

always right and we think we
shouldn't have to wait anymore.“ ”I'm ready,“ Cody said.
”Really,“ I said. ”Then I guess your mother is the greatest
detective in the world, because you're ready

and she caught you
anyway.“ ”Dex-terrrr,“ Astor whined. ”No, Astor, you quit
talking and just listen to me for a minute." I stared at her with my most
serious face,

and for a moment I thought
she was going to say something else but then a miracle took place right there

in our living room. Astor changed her mind and closed
her mouth. “All right,” I said. “I have said from the very
beginning that you have to do it my way. You don't have to believe I'm always
right,” and Astor made a sound, but didn't say anything. “But you
have to do what I say. Or I will not help you, and you will end up in jail.
There is no other way. Okay?”

It is quite possible that they didn't know what to do
with this new tone of voice and new role. I was no longer Playtime Dexter, but
something very different, Dexter of Dark Discipline, which they had never seen
before. They looked at each other uncertainly so I pushed a little more.

“You got caught,”
I said. “What happens when you get caught?” “Time out?”
Cody said uncertainly. “Uh-huh,” I said. “And if you're thirty
years old?” For possibly the first time in her life, Astor had no answer,
and Cody had already used up his two-word

quota for the time being.
They looked at each other, and then they looked at their feet. “My sister,
Sergeant Deborah, and I spend all day catching people who do this kind of
stuff,” I said. “And when we catch them, they go to prison.” I
smiled at Astor. "Time out for grown-ups. But a lot worse. You

sit in a little room the
size of your bathroom, locked in, all day and all night. You pee in a hole in
the floor. You eat moldy garbage, and there are rats and lots of
cockroaches.“ ”We know what prison is, Dexter,“ she said.
”Really? Then why are you in such a hurry to get there?“ I said. ”And
do you know what Old Sparky is?“ Astor looked at her feet again; Cody
hadn't looked up yet. ”Old Sparky is the electric chair. If they catch
you, they strap you into Old Sparky, put some wires on

your head, and fry you up
like bacon. Does that sound like fun?“ They shook their heads, no.
”So the very first lesson is not to get caught,“ I said.
”Remember the piranhas?“ They nodded. ”They look

ferocious, so people know they're dangerous.“
”But Dexter, we don't look ferocious," Astor said.

“No, you don't,” I said. “And you don't
want to. We are supposed to be people, not piranhas. But the idea is the same,
to look like something you are not. Because when something bad happens, that's
who everyone will look for first-the ferocious people. You need to look like
sweet, lovable, normal children.”

“Can I wear
makeup?” Astor asked. “When you're older,” I said. “You say
that about everything!” she said. “And I mean it about
everything,” I said. "You got caught this time because you went off
on your own

and didn't know what you
were doing. You didn't know what you were doing because you didn't listen to

me.“ I decided the torture had gone on long
enough and I sat down on the couch in between them. ”No more doing
anything without me, okay? And when you promise this time, you better mean
it."

They both looked slowly up at me and then nodded. “We
promise,” Astor said softly, and Cody, even softer, echoed,
“Promise.”

“Well then,” I said. I took their hands and
we shook solemnly. “Good,” I said. “Now let's go apologize to
your mom.” They both jumped up, radiating relief that the hideous ordeal
was over, and I followed them out of the room, closer to feeling self-satisfied
than I could remember feeling before.

Maybe there was something to this whole fatherhood
thing after all.

SUN TZU, A VERY SMART MAN, IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT
he has been dead for so long, wrote a book called The Art of War, and one of
the many clever observations he made in the book was that every time something
awful happens, there's a way to turn it to your advantage, if you just look at
things properly. This is not New Age California Pollyanna thinking, insisting
that if life gives you lemons you can always make Key Lime pie. It is, rather,
very practical advice that comes in handy a lot more than you might think.

At the moment, for instance, my problem was how to
continue training Cody and Astor in the Harry Way now that they had been busted
by their mother. And in looking for a solution I remembered good old Sun Tzu
and tried to imagine what he might have done. Of course, he had been a general,
so he probably would have attacked the left flank with cavalry or something,
but surely the principles were the same.

So as I led Cody and Astor to their weeping mother I
was beating the bushes in the dark forest of Dexter's brain for some small
partridge of an idea that the old Chinese general might approve of. And just as
the three of us trickled to a halt in front of sniffling Rita, the idea popped out,
and I grabbed it.

“Rita,” I said quietly, “I think I can
stop this before it gets out of hand.”

“You heard what-This is
already out of hand,” she said, and she paused for a large snuffle.

“I have an idea,”
I said. “I want you to bring them down to me at work tomorrow, right after
school.” “But that isn't-I mean, didn't it all start because-”
“Did you ever see a TV show called Scared Straight?” I said. She
stared at me for a moment, snuffled again, and looked at the two kids. And that
is why, at three thirty the next afternoon, Cody and Astor were taking turns
peering into a

microscope in the forensics lab. “That's a
hair?” Astor demanded. “That's right,” I said. “It looks
gross!” “Most of the human body is gross, especially if you look at
it under a microscope,” I told her. "Look at

the one next to it."

There was a studious pause, broken only once when Cody
yanked on her arm, and she pushed him away and said, “Stop it, Cody.”
“What do you notice?” I asked. “They don't look the same,”
she said. “They're not,” I said. “The first one is yours. The
other one is mine.” She continued to look for a moment, then straightened
up from the eyepiece. “You can tell,” she said.

“They're different.” “It gets
better,” I told her. “Cody, give me your shoe.” Cody very
obligingly sat on the floor and pried off his left sneaker. I took it from him
and held out a

hand. “Come with me,” I said. I helped him
to his feet and he followed me, hopping one-footed to the closest countertop. I
lifted him onto a stool and held up the shoe so he could see the bottom.
“Your shoe,” I said. “Clean or dirty?”

He peered at it carefully.
“Clean,” he said. “So you would think,” I said. “Watch
this.” I took a small wire brush to the tread of his shoe, carefully
scraping out the nearly invisible gunk from between the ridges of the tread
into a petri dish. I lifted a

small sample of it onto a
glass slide and took it back over to the microscope. Astor immediately crowded
in to look, but Cody hopped over quickly. “My turn,” he said.
“My shoe.” She looked at me and I nodded. “It's his shoe,”
I said. “You can see right after.” She apparently accepted the
justice of that, as she stepped

back and let Cody climb
onto the stool. I looked into the eyepiece to focus it, and saw that the slide
was

everything I could hope
for. “Aha,” I said, and stepped back. “Tell me what you see,
young Jedi.” Cody frowned into the microscope for several minutes, until
Astor's jiggling dance of impatience became so distracting that we both looked
at her. “That's long enough,” she said. “It's my turn.”

“In a minute,” I said, and I turned back to
Cody. “Tell me what you saw.”

He shook his head. “Junk,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “Now I'll tell you.” I looked into
the eyepiece again and said, “First off, animal hair, probably
feline.”

“That means cat,” Astor said.

“Then there's some soil with a high nitrogen content-probably potting
soil, like you'd use for houseplants.” I spoke to him without looking up.
“Where did you take the cat? The garage? Where your mom works on her
plants?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Uh-huh. I thought so.” I looked back into the microscope.
“Oh-look there. That's a synthetic fiber, from somebody's carpet. It's
blue.” I looked at Cody and raised an eyebrow. “What color is the
carpet in your room, Cody?”

His eyes were wide-open round as he said,
“Blue.”

“Yup. If I wanted to get fancy I'd compare this to a piece I took
from your room. Then you would be cooked. I could prove that it was you with
the cat.” I looked back into the eyepiece again. “My goodness,
somebody had pizza recently-oh, and there's a small chunk of popcorn, too.
Remember the movie last week?”

“Dexter, I wanna see,” Astor whined.
“It's my turn.”

“All right,” I said, and I set her on a
stool next to Cody's so she could peer into the microscope.

“I don't see popcorn,” she said immediately.

“That round, brownish thing up in the corner,” I said. She
was quiet for a minute, and then looked up at me.

“You can't really tell all that,” she said.
“Not just looking in the microscope.”

I am happy to admit that I was showing off, but after
all, that's what this whole episode was about, so I was prepared. I grabbed a
three-ring notebook I had prepared and laid it open on the counter. “I
can, too,” I said. “And a whole lot more. Look.” I turned to a
page that had photos of several different animal hairs, carefully selected to
show the greatest variety. “Here's the cat hair,” I said.
“Completely different from goat, see?” I flipped the page. “And
carpet fibers. Nothing like these from a shirt and this one from a
washcloth.”

The two of them crowded
together and stared at the book, flipping through the ten or so pages I had put
together to show them that, yes indeed, I really can tell all that. It was
carefully arranged to make forensics look just a tiny bit more all-seeing and
all-powerful than the Wizard of Oz, of course. And to be fair, we really can do
most of what I showed them. It never actually seems to do much good in catching
any bad guys, but why should I tell them that and spoil a magical afternoon?

“Look back in the microscope,” I told them after a few
minutes. “See what else you can find.” They did so, very eagerly, and
seemed quite happy at it for a while.

When they finally looked up at me I gave them a cheerful smile and
said, “All this from a clean shoe.” I closed the book and watched the
two of them think about this. “And that's just using the microscope,”
I said, nodding around the room at the many gleaming machines. “Think what
we can figure out if we use all the fancy stuff.”

“Yeah, but we could go barefoot,” Astor
said.

I nodded as if what she had said made sense. “Yes, you
could,” I said. “And then I could do something like this-give me your
hand.”

Astor eyed me for a few seconds as if she was afraid I would cut her
arm off, but then she held it out slowly. I held it and, using a fingernail clipper
from my pocket, I scraped under her fingernails. “Wait until you see what
you have here,” I said.

“But I washed my hands,” Astor said.

“Doesn't matter,” I told her. I put the small specks of stuff
onto another glass slide and fixed it to the microscope. “Now then,”
I said.

CLUMP.

It really is a bit melodramatic to say that we all froze, but there it
is-we did. They both looked up at me and I looked back at them and we all
forgot to breathe.

CLUMP.

The sound was getting closer and it was very hard to
remember that we were in police headquarters and perfectly safe.
“Dexter,” Astor said in a slightly quavery voice. “We are in
police headquarters,” I said. “We're perfectly safe.”

CLUMP.

It stopped, very close. The hair went up on the back of my neck and I
turned toward the door as it swung slowly open.

Sergeant Doakes. He stood there in the doorway,
glaring, which seemed to have become his permanent expression. “You,”
he said, and the sound was nearly as unsettling as his appearance as it rolled
out of his tongue-less mouth.

“Why yes, it is me,” I said. “Good of
you to remember.”

He clumped one more step into the room and Astor
scrambled off her stool and scurried to the windows, as far away from the door
as she could get. Doakes paused and looked at her. Then his eyes swung back to
Cody, who slid off his stool and stood there unblinking, facing Doakes.

Doakes stared at Cody, Cody stared back, and Doakes
made what I can only call a Darth Vader intake of breath. Then he swung his
head back to me and clumped one rapid step closer, nearly losing his balance.
“You,” he said again, hissing it this time. “Kigs!”

“Kigs?” I said, and I really was puzzled and
not trying to provoke him. I mean, if he insisted on stomping around and
frightening children, the least he could do is carry a notepad and pencil to
communicate with.

Apparently that thoughtful gesture was beyond him, though. Instead he
gave another Darth Vader breath and slowly pointed his steel claw at Cody.
“Kigs,” he said agian, his lips drawn back in a snarl.

“He means me,” Cody said. I turned to him, surprised to hear
him speak with Doakes right there, like a nightmare come to life. But of
course, Cody didn't have nightmares. He simply looked at Doakes.

“What about you, Cody?” I said.

“He saw my shadow,” Cody said.

Sergeant Doakes took another wobbly step toward me. His right claw
snapped, as if it had decided on its own to attack me. “You. Goo.
Gik.”

It was becoming apparent that he had something on his mind, but it was
even clearer that he ought to stick with the silent glaring, since it was
nearly impossible to understand the gooey syllables that came from his damaged
mouth.

“Wuk. You. Goo,” he hissed, and it was such a clear
condemnation of all that was Dexter, I at last understood that he was accusing
me of something.

“What do you mean?” I said. “I didn't
do anything.”

“Goy,” he said, pointing again at Cody.

“Why, yes,” I said. “Methodist, actually.” I admit
that I deliberately misunderstood him: he was saying “boy” and it
came out “goy” because he had no tongue, but really, one can only
take so much. It should have been painfully clear to Doakes that his attempts
at vocal communication were having very limited success, and yet he insisted on
trying. Didn't the man have any sense of decorum at all?

Happily for all of us, we were interrupted by a
clatter in the hallway and Deborah rushed into the room. “Dexter,”
she said. She paused as she took in the wild tableau of Doakes with claw
upraised against me, Astor cringing against the window, and Cody lifting a
scalpel off the bench to use against Doakes. “What the hell,” Deborah
said. “Doakes?”

He very slowly let his arm drop, but he did not take
his eyes off me.

“I've been looking for you, Dexter. Where were
you?”

I was grateful enough for her timely entry that I did not point out how
foolish her question was. “Why, I was right here, educating the
children,” I said. “Where were you?”

“On my way to the
Dinner Key,” she said. “They found Kurt Wagner's body.”

THIRTY-THREE DEBORAH
HURLED US THROUGH TRAFFIC AT EVEL Knievel-over-the-canyon speeds. I tried to
think of a polite way to point out that we were going to see a dead body that
would probably not escape,

so could she please slow
down, but I could not come up with any phrase that would not cause her to take
her hands off the wheel and put them around my neck. Cody and Astor were too
young to realize that they were in mortal danger, and they seemed to be

enjoying themselves thoroughly in the backseat, even
getting into the spirit of things by happily returning the greetings of the
other motorists by raising their own middle fingers in unison each time we cut
off somebody.

There was a three-car pileup on U.S. 1 at LeJeune
which slowed traffic for a few moments and we were forced to cut our pace to a
crawl. Since I no longer had to spend all my breath suppressing screams of
terror, I tried to find out from Deborah exactly what we were racing to see.

“How was he
killed?” I asked her. “Just like the others,” she said.
“Burned. And there's no head on the body.” “You're sure this is
Kurt Wagner?” I asked her. “Can I prove it? Not yet,” she said.
“Am I sure? Shit yes.” “Why?” “They found his car
nearby,” she said. I was quite sure that normally I would understand
exactly why somebody seemed to have a fetish for the

heads, and know where to find them and why. But of course,
now that I was all alone on the inside there was no more normal. “This
doesn't make any sense, you know,” I said. Deborah snarled and hammered
the heel of her hand on the steering wheel. “Tell me about it,” she
said.

“Kurt must have done
the other victims,” I said. “So who killed him? His
scoutmaster?” she said, leaning on the horn and pulling around the traffic
snarl into the oncoming lane. She swerved toward a bus, stomped on the gas, and
wove through traffic for fifty yards until we were past the pileup. I
concentrated on remembering to breathe and reflecting that we were all certain
to die someday anyway, so in the big picture what did it really matter if
Deborah killed us? It was not terribly comforting, but it did keep me from
screaming and diving out the car window until Deborah pulled back into the
correct lane on the far side of U.S. 1.

“That was fun,”
said Astor. “Can we do that again?” Cody nodded enthusiastically.
“And we could put on the siren next time,” Astor said. "How come
you don't use the siren, Sergeant