Dexter 3 - Dexter in the Dark (27 page)

I WAS BONE WEARY, CONFUSED, AND, WORST OF ALL, STILL frightened. Every
lighthearted blast of the horn had me leaping against the seat belt and
searching for a weapon to defend myself, and every time an innocent car pulled
up to within inches of my bumper I found myself glaring into the mirror,
waiting for an unusually hostile movement or a burst of the hateful dream music
flung at my head.

Something was after me. I still didn't know why or what, beyond a vague
connection to an ancient god, but I knew it was after me, and even if it could
not catch me right away, it was wearing me down to the point where surrender
would seem like a relief.

What a frail thing a human being is-and without the
Passenger, that is all I was, a poor imitation of a human being. Weak, soft,
slow and stupid, unseeing, unhearing and unaware, helpless, hopeless, and
harried. Yes, I was almost ready to lie down and let it run over me, whatever
it was. Give in, let the music wash over me and take me away into the joyful
fire and the blank bliss of death. There would be no struggle, no negotiation,
nothing but an end to all that is Dexter. And after a few more nights like the
one just past, that would be fine with me.

Even at work there was no relief. Deborah was lurking
in wait, and pounced after I had barely stepped out of the elevator.

“Starzak is missing,” she said. “Couple
of days of mail in the box, newspapers in the drive-He's gone.”

“But that's good news, Debs,” I said.
“If he ran, doesn't that prove he's guilty?”

“It doesn't prove shit,” she said. “The
same thing happened to Kurt Wagner, and he showed up dead. How do I know that
won't happen to Starzak?”

“We can put out a BOLO,” I said. “We
might get to him first.”

Deborah kicked the wall. “Goddamn it, we haven't gotten to
anything first, or even on time. Help me out here, Dex,” she said.
“This thing is driving me nuts.”

I could have said that it was doing far more than that to me, but it
didn't seem charitable. “I'll try,” I said instead, and Deborah
slouched away down the hall.

I was not even into my cubicle when Vince Masuoka met me with a massive
fake frown “Where are the doughnuts?” he said accusingly.

“What doughnuts?”
I said.

“It was your turn,” he said. “You were
supposed to bring doughnuts today.”

“I had a rough night,” I said.

“So now we're all going to have a rough
morning?” he demanded. “Where's the justice in that?”

“I don't do justice, Vince,” I said.
“Just blood spatter.”

“Hmmph,” he said. “Apparently you don't do doughnuts,
either.” And he stalked away with a nearly convincing imitation of
righteous indignation, leaving me to reflect that I could not remember another
occasion when Vince had gotten the best of me in any kind of verbal
interchange. One more sign that the train had left the station. Could this
really be the end of the line for poor Decaying Dexter?

The rest of the workday was long and awful, as we have always heard
that workdays are supposed to be. This had never been the case for Dexter; I
have always kept busy and artificially cheerful in my job, and never watched
the clock or complained. Perhaps I had enjoyed work because I was conscious of
the fact that it was part of the game, a piece of the Great Joke of Dexter
putting one over and passing for human. But a really good joke needs at least
one other in on it, and since I was alone now, bereft of my inner audience, the
punch line seemed to elude me.

I plodded manfully through the morning, visited a corpse downtown, and
then came back for a pointless round of lab work. I finished out the day by
ordering some supplies and finishing a report. As I was tidying up my desk to
go home, my telephone rang.

“I need your help,” my sister said
brusquely.

“Of course you do,” I said. “Very good
of you to admit it.”

“I'm on duty until midnight,” she said, ignoring my witty and
piquant sally, “and Kyle can't get the shutters up by himself.”

So often in this life I find myself halfway through a
conversation and realizing I don't know what I'm talking about. Very
unsettling, although if everybody else would realize the same thing,
particularly those in Washington, it would be a much better world.

“Why does Kyle need to get the shutters up at
all?” I asked.

Deborah snorted. “Jesus Christ, Dexter, what do
you do all day? We've got a hurricane coming in.”

I might well have said that whatever else I do all day, I don't have
the leisure to sit around and listen to the Weather Channel. Instead, I just
said, “A hurricane, really. How exciting. When did this happen?”

“Try to get there around six. Kyle will be
waiting,” she said.

“All right,” I said. But she had already
hung up.

Since I speak fluent
Deborah, I suppose I should have accepted her telephone call as a kind of formal
apology for her recent pointless hostility. Quite possibly she had come to
accept the Dark Passenger, especially since it was gone. This should have made
me happy. But considering the day I had been having, it was just one more
splinter under the fingernail for poor Downtrodden Dexter. On top of that, it

seemed like sheer effrontery for a hurricane to pick this moment for
its pointless harassment. Was there no end to the pain and suffering I would be
forced to endure?

Ah well, to exist is to wallow in misery. I headed out
the door for my date with Deborah's paramour.

Before I started my car, however, I placed a call to Rita, who would be
very nearly home now by my calculations.

“Dexter,” she answered breathlessly, “I can't remember
how much bottled water we have and the lines at Publix are all the way out into
the parking lot.”

“Well then we'll just have to drink beer,” I
said.

“I think we're okay on the canned food, except
that beef stew has been there for two years,” she said, apparently unaware
that anyone else might have said something. So I let her rattle on, hoping she
would slow down eventually. “I checked the flashlights two weeks
ago,” she said. “Remember, when the power went out for forty minutes?
And the extra batteries are in the refrigerator, on the bottom shelf at the
back. I have Cody and Astor with me now, there's no after-school program
tomorrow, but somebody at school told them about Hurricane Andrew and I think
Astor is a little frightened, so maybe when you get home you could talk to
them? And explain that it's like a big thunderstorm and we'll be all right,
there's just going to be a lot of wind and noise and the lights will go out for
a little while. But if you see a store on the way home that isn't too crowded
be sure to stop and get some bottled water, as much as you can get. And some
ice, I think the cooler is still on the shelf above the washing machine, we can
fill it with ice and put in the perishables. Oh-what about your boat? Will it
be all right where it is, or do you need to do something with it? I think we
can get the things out of the yard before dark, I'm sure we'll be fine, and it
probably won't hit here anyway.”

“All right,” I said. “I'll be a little
late getting home.”

“All right. Oh-look at that, the Winn-Dixie store doesn't look too
bad. I guess we'll try to get in, there's a parking spot. Bye!”

I would never have thought it possible, but Rita had apparently learned
to get by without breathing. Or perhaps she only had to come up for air every
hour or so, like a whale. Still, it was an inspiring performance, and after
witnessing it, I felt far better prepared to put up shutters with my sister's
one-handed boyfriend. I started the car and slid out into traffic.

If rush-hour traffic is utter mayhem, then rush-hour
traffic with a hurricane coming is end-of-the-world,
we're-all-going-to-die-but-you-go-first insanity. People were driving as if
they positively had to kill everyone else who might come between them and
getting their plywood and batteries. It was not a terribly long drive to
Deborah's little house in Coral Gables, but when I finally pulled into her
driveway I felt as if I had survived an Apache manhood ordeal.

As I climbed out of the car, the front door of the
house swung open and Chutsky came out. “Hey, buddy,” he called. He
gave me a cheerful wave with the steel hook where his left hand used to be and
came down the walkway to meet me. “I really appreciate the help. This
goddamned hook makes it kind of tough to put the wing nuts on.”

“And even harder to pick your nose,” I said,
just a little irritated by his cheerful suffering.

But instead of taking
offense, he laughed. "Yeah. And a whole lot harder to wipe my ass. Come
on. I got

all the stuff out in back."

I followed him around to the back of the house, where
Deborah had a small overgrown patio. But to my great surprise, it was no longer
overgrown. The trees that had hung over the area were trimmed back, and the
weeds growing up between the flagstones were all gone. There were three neatly
pruned rosebushes and a bank of ornamental flowers of some kind, and a neatly
polished barbecue grill stood in one corner.

I looked at Chutsky and raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “It's maybe a little bit gay,
right?” He shrugged. “I get real bored sitting around here healing,
and anyway I like to keep things neatened up a little more than your
sister.”

“It looks very nice,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” he said, as if I really had accused him of being
gay. “Well, let's get this done.” He nodded toward a stack of
corrugated steel leaning against the side of the house-Deborah's hurricane
shutters. The Morgans were second-generation Floridians, and Harry had raised
us to use good shutters. Save a little money on the shutters, spend a lot more
replacing the house when they failed.

The downside to the high quality of Deborah's
shutters, though, was that they were very heavy and had sharp edges. Thick
gloves were necessary-or in Chutsky's case, one glove. I'm not sure he
appreciated the cash he was saving on gloves, though. He seemed to work a
little harder than he had to, in order to let me know that he was not really
handicapped and didn't actually need my help.

At any rate, it was only about forty minutes before we had all the
shutters in their tracks and locked on. Chutsky took a last look at the ones
that covered the French doors of the patio and, apparently satisfied with our
outstanding craftsmanship, he raised his left arm to wipe the sweat from his
brow, catching himself at the very last moment before he rammed the hook
through his cheek. He laughed a little bitterly, staring at the hook.

“I'm still not used to this thing,” he said, shaking his
head. “I wake up in the night and the missing knuckle itches.”

It was difficult to think of anything clever or even socially
acceptable to say to that. I had never read anywhere what to say to someone
speaking of having feeling in his amputated hand. Chutsky seemed to feel the
awkwardness, because he gave me a small dry snort of non-humorous amusement.

“Hey, well,” he said, “there's still a
couple of kicks left in the old mule.” It seemed to me an unfortunate
choice of words, since he was also missing his left foot, and any kicking at
all seemed out of the question. Still, I was pleased to see him coming out of
his depression, so it seemed like a good thing to agree with him.

“No one ever doubted it,” I said. “I'm
sure you're going to be fine.”

“Uh-huh, thanks,” he said, not very convincingly.
“Anyway, it's not you I have to convince. It's a couple of old desk
jockies inside the Beltway. They've offered me a desk job, but…” He
shrugged.

“Come on now,” I said. “You can't
really want to go back to the cloak-and-dagger work, can you?”

“It's what I'm good
at,” he said. “For a while there, I was the very best.”

“Maybe you just miss the adrenaline,” I
said. “Maybe,” he said. “How about a beer?” “Thank
you,” I said, “but I have orders from on high to get bottled water
and ice before it's all gone.” “Right,” he said.
“Everybody's terrified they might have to drink a mojito without
ice.” “It's one of the great dangers of a hurricane,” I said.
“Thanks for the help,” he said.

image

If anything, traffic was even worse as I headed for home. Some of the
people were hurrying away with their precious sheets of plywood tied to their
car roofs as if they had just robbed a bank. They were angry from the tension
of standing in line for an hour wondering if someone would cut in front of them
and whether there would be anything left when it was their turn.

The rest of the people on the road were on their way to take their
places in these same lines and hated everyone who had gotten there first and
maybe bought the last C battery in Florida.

Altogether, it was a delightful mixture of hostility, rage, and
paranoia, and it should have cheered me up immensely. But any hope of good
cheer vanished when I found myself humming something, a familiar tune that I
couldn't quite place, and couldn't stop humming. And when I finally did place
it, all the joy of the festive evening was shattered.

It was the music from my sleep.

The music that had played in my head with the feeling
of heat and the smell of something burning. It was plain and repetitive and not
a terribly catchy bit of music, but here I was humming it to myself on South
Dixie Highway, humming and feeling comfort from the repeating notes as if it
was a lullaby my mother used to sing.

And I still didn't know what it meant.

I am sure that whatever was happening in my subconscious
was caused by something simple, logical, and easy to understand. On the other
hand, I just couldn't think of a simple, logical, and easy-to-understand reason
for hearing music and feeling heat on my face in my sleep.