Dexter 3 - Dexter in the Dark (26 page)

with very wide eyes. I
tried to open 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 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.
”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 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 climate. “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.'”

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 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.” 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.”

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 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?”

“I don't know,”
she said dully. “Ordinary,” I said. “Do you really want to be
ordinary?” “No,” she said, and she didn't sound quite so
unhappy. "But then if we're not ordinary, people will notice

us."

“That's why you have to learn to keep a low
profile,” I said, secretly pleased at the way the conversation had worked
around to prove my point. “You have to pretend to be really normal.”
“So we shouldn't ever let anybody know we're different,” she said.
“Not anybody.” “That's right,” I said. She looked at her
brother, and they had another of those long silent conversations. I enjoyed the
quiet,

just driving through the evening congestion and
feeling sorry for myself.

After a few minutes Astor spoke up again. “That
means we shouldn't tell Mom what we did today,” she said. “You can
tell her about the microscope,” I said. “But not the other
stuff?” Astor said. “The scary guy and riding with Sergeant
Debbie?” “That's right,” I said. “But we're never supposed
to tell a lie,” she said. “Especially to our own mother.”
“That's why you don't tell her anything,” I said. "She doesn't
need to know things that will make her

worry too much.“ ”But she loves us,“
Astor said. ”She wants us to be happy.“ ”Yes,“ I said.
”But she has to think you are happy in a way she can understand. Otherwise
she can't be

happy."

There was another long
silence before Astor finally said, just before we turned onto their street,
“Does the scary guy have a mother?” “Almost certainly,” I
said.

Rita must have been waiting
right inside the front door, because as we pulled up and parked the door swung
open and she came out to meet us. “Well, hello,” she said cheerfully.
“And what did you two learn today?”

“We saw dirt,”
Cody said. “From my shoe.” Rita blinked. “Really,” she
said. “And there was a piece of popcorn, too,” Astor said. "And
we looked in the microphone and we could tell

where we had been.“ ”Microscope,“ Cody
said. ”Whatever,“ Astor shrugged. ”But you could tell whose hair
it was, too. And if it was a goat or a rug.“ ”Wow,“ Rita said,
looking somewhat overwhelmed and uncertain, ”I guess you had quite a time
then.“ ”Yes,“ Cody said. ”Well then,“ Rita said.
”Why don't you two get started on homework, and I'll get you a
snack.“ ”Okay," Astor said, and she and Cody scurried up the
walk and into the house. Rita watched them until

they went inside, and then
she turned to me and held onto my elbow as we strolled after them. “So it
went well?” she asked me. “I mean, with the-they seemed very,
um…” “They are,” I said. "I think they're beginning to
understand that there are consequences for fooling around

like that.“ ”You didn't show them anything
too grim, did you?“ she said. ”Not at all. Not even any blood.“
”Good," she said, and she leaned her head on my shoulder, which I
suppose is part of the price you have

to pay when you are going to marry someone. Perhaps it
was simply a public way to mark her territory, in which case I guess I should be
very happy that she chose not to do so with the traditional animal method.
Anyway, displaying affection through physical contact is not something I really
understand, and I felt a bit awkward, but I put an arm around her, since I knew
that was the correct human response, and we followed the kids into the house.

image

I'm quite sure it isn't right to call it a dream. But
in the night the sound came into my poor battered head once again, the music
and chanting and the clash of metal I had heard before, and there was the
feeling of heat on my face and a swell of savage joy rising from the special
place inside that had been empty for so long now. I woke up standing by the
front door with my hand on the doorknob, covered with sweat, content,
fulfilled, and not at all uneasy as I should have been.

I knew the term “sleepwalking,” of course.
But I also knew from my freshman psychology class that the reasons someone
sleepwalks are usually not related to hearing music. And I also knew in the
deepest

level of my being that I should be anxious, worried, crawling with
distress at the things that had been happening in my unconscious brain. They
did not belong there, it was not possible that they could be there-and yet,
there they were. And I was glad to have them. That was the most frightening thing
of all.

The music was not welcome in the Dexter Auditorium. I
did not want it. I wanted it to go away. But it came, and it played, and it
made me supernaturally happy against my will and then dumped me by the front
door, apparently trying to get me outside and-

And what? It was a jolt of
monster-under-the-bed thought straight from the lizard brain, but… Was it a
random impulse, uncharted movement by my unconscious mind, that got me out of
bed and

down the hall to the door? Or was something trying to
get me to open the door and go outside? He had told the kids I would find him
when the time was right-was this the right time? Did someone want Dexter alone
and unconscious in the night? It was a wonderful thought, and I was terribly
proud to have it, because it meant that I had clearly

suffered brain damage and
could no longer be held responsible. Once again I was blazing new trails in the
territory of stupid. It was impossible, idiotic, stress-induced hysteria. No
one on earth could possibly have so much time to throw away; Dexter was not
important enough to anyone but Dexter. And to prove it, I turned on the
floodlight over the front porch and opened the door.

Across the street and about
fifty feet to the west a car started up and drove away. I closed the door and
double-locked it. And now it was my turn once more to sit up at the kitchen
table, sipping coffee and pondering life's great

mystery. The clock said 3:32 when I sat down, and 6:00
when Rita finally came into the room. “Dexter,” she said with an expression
of soporific surprise on her face. “In the flesh,” I said, and it was
exceedingly difficult for me to maintain my artificially cheerful facade. She
frowned. “What's wrong?” “Nothing at all,” I said. “I
just couldn't sleep.” Rita bent her face down toward the floor and
shuffled over to the coffeemaker and poured herself a cup.

Then she sat across the table from me and took a sip.
“Dexter,” she said, “it's perfectly normal to have
reservations.”

“Of course,” I said, with absolutely no idea
what she meant, “otherwise you don't get a table.” She shook her head
slightly with a tired smile. “You know what I mean,” she said, which
was not true. “About the wedding.”

A small bleary light went on in the back of my head,
and I very nearly said Aha. Of course the wedding. Human females were obsessive
on the subject of weddings, even it if wasn't their own. When it was, in

fact, their own, the idea of it took over every moment of waking and
sleeping thought. Rita was seeing everything that happened through a pair of
wedding-colored glasses. If I could not sleep, that was because of bad dreams
brought on by our upcoming wedding.

I, on the other hand, was not similarly afflicted. I had a great deal
of important stuff to worry about, and the wedding was something that was on
automatic pilot. At some point I would show up, it would happen, and that would
be that. Clearly this was not a viewpoint I could invite Rita to share, no
matter how sensible it seemed to me. No, I had to come up with a plausible
reason for my sleeplessness, and in addition I needed to reassure her of my
enthusiasm for the wonderful looming event.

I looked around the room for a clue, and finally saw something in the
two lunch boxes stacked beside the sink. A great place to start: I reached deep
into the dregs of my soggy brain and pulled out the only thing I could find
there that was less than half wet. “What if I'm not good enough for Cody
and Astor?” I said. “How can I be their father when I'm really not?
What if I just can't do it?”

“Oh, Dexter,” she said. “You're a
wonderful father. They absolutely love you.”

“But,” I said, struggling for both authenticity and the next
line, “but they're little now. When they get older. When they want to know
about their real father-”

“They know all they'll ever need to know about
that sonofabitch,” Rita snapped. It surprised me: I had never heard her
use rough language before. Possibly she never had, either, because she began to
blush. “You are their real father,” she said. “You are the man
they look up to, listen to, and love. You are exactly the father they
need.”

I suppose that was at least partly true, since I was the only one who
could teach them the Harry Way and other things they needed to know, though I
suspected this was not exactly what Rita had in mind. But it didn't seem
politic to bring that up, so I simply said, “I really want to be good at
this. I can't fail, even for a minute.”

“Oh, Dex,” she said, “people fail all the time.”
That was very true. I had noticed many times before that failure seemed to be
one of the identifying characteristics of the species. “But we keep
trying, and it comes out all right in the end. Really. You're going to be great
at this, you'll see.”

“Do you really think so?” I said, only
mildly ashamed of the disgraceful way I was hamming it up.

“I know so,” she said, with her patented
Rita smile. She reached across the table and clutched at my hand. “I won't
let you fail,” she said. “You're mine now.”

It was a bold claim, flinging the Emancipation Proclamation aside like
that and saying she owned me. Still, it seemed to close off an awkward moment
comfortably, so I let it slide. “All right,” I said. “Let's have
breakfast.”

She cocked her head to one side and looked at me for a moment, and I
was aware that I must have hit a false note, but she just blinked a few times
before she said, “All right,” and got up and began to cook breakfast.

image

The other had come to the door in the night, and then
slammed it in fear-there was no mistaking that part.

He had felt fear. He heard the call and came, and he
was afraid. And so the Watcher had no doubt about it. It was time. Now.