Dexter 3 - Dexter in the Dark (30 page)

I saw no reason to doubt that he would do as he said, and I saw no sign
of any way to stop him, either. Everyone living had scattered, except for us.

“If I drop the gun,” I said, and I hoped I
sounded reasonable, “how do I know you won't put her in the fire
anyway.”

He snarled at me, and it still caused a twinge of agony. “I'm not
a murderer,” he said. “It has to be done right or it's just
killing.”

“I'm not sure I can see a difference,” I
said.

“You wouldn't. You're an aberration,” he
said.

“How do I know you won't kill us all
anyway?” I said.

“You're the one I need to feed to the fire,”
he said. “Drop the gun and you can save this girl.”

“Not terribly convincing,” I said, stalling
for time, hoping for that time to bring something.

“I don't need to be,” he said. “This isn't a
stalemate-there are other people on this island, and they'll be back out here
soon. You can't shoot them all. And the god is still here. But since you
obviously need convincing, how about if I slice your girl a few times and let
the blood flow persuade you?” He reached down to his hip, found nothing,
and frowned. “My knife,” he said, and then his expression of
puzzlement blossomed into one of great astonishment. He gaped at me without
saying a thing, simply holding his mouth wide open as if he was about to sing
an aria.

And then he dropped to his knees, frowned, and pitched
forward onto his face, revealing a knife blade protruding from his back-and
also revealing Cody, standing behind him, smiling slightly as he watched

the old man fall, and then looking up at me.

“Told you I was ready,” he said.

THE HURRICANE TURNED NORTH AT THE LAST MINUTE and ended up hitting us
with nothing but a lot of rain and a little wind. The worst of the storm passed
far to the north of Toro Key, and Cody, Astor, and I spent the remainder of the
night locked in the elegant room with the couch in front of one door and a
large overstuffed chair in front of the other. I called Deborah on the phone I
found in the room, and then made a small bed out of cushions behind the bar,
thinking that the thick mahogany would provide additional protection if it was
needed.

It wasn't. I sat with my borrowed pistol all night, watching the doors,
and watching the kids sleep. And since nobody disturbed us, that was really not
enough to keep a full-grown brain alive, so I thought, too.

I thought about what I would say to Cody when he woke
up. When he put the knife into the old man he had changed everything. No matter
what he thought, he was not ready merely because of what he had done. He had
actually made things harder for himself. The road was going to be a long tough
one for him, and I didn't know if I was good enough to keep his feet on it. I
was not Harry, could never be anything like Harry. Harry had run on love, and I
had a completely different operating system.

And what was that now? What was Dexter without
Darkness?

How could I hope to live at all, let alone teach the
children how to live, with a gaping gray vacuum inside me? The old man had said
the Passenger would come back if I was in enough pain. Did I have to physically
torture myself to call it home? How could I do that? I had just stood in
burning pants watching Astor nearly thrown into a fire, and that hadn't been
enough to bring back the Passenger.

I still didn't have any answers when Deborah arrived at dawn with the
SWAT team and Chutsky. They found no one left on the island, and no clues as to
where they might have gone. The bodies of the old man, Wilkins, and Starzak
were tagged and bagged, and we all clambered onto the big Coast Guard
helicopter to ride back to the mainland. Cody and Astor were thrilled of
course, although they did an excellent job of pretending not to be impressed.
And after all the hugs and weeping showered on them by Rita, and the general
happy air of a job well done among the rest of them, life went on.

image

Just that: life went on. Nothing new happened, nothing within me was
resolved, and no new direction revealed itself. It was simply a resumption of
an aggressively plain ordinary existence that did more to grind me down further
than all the physical pain in the world could have done. Perhaps the old man
had been right-perhaps I had been an aberration. But I was not even that any
longer.

I felt deflated. Not merely empty but finished somehow, as if whatever
I came into the world to do was done now, and the hollow shell of me was left
behind to live on the memories.

I still craved an answer to the personal absence that
plagued me, and I had not received it. It now seemed likely that I never would.
In my numbness I could never feel a pain deep enough to bring home the Dark
Passenger. We were all safe and the bad guys were dead or gone, but somehow
that didn't seem to be

about me. If that sounds selfish, I can only say that
I have never pretended to be anything else but completely self-centered-at
least not unless someone was watching. Now, of course, I would have to learn to
truly live the part, and the notion filled me with a distant, weary loathing
that I couldn't shake off.

The feeling stayed with me over the next few days, and
finally faded into the background just enough that I began to accept it as my
new permanent lot. Dexter Downtrodden. I would learn to walk stooped over, and
dress all in gray, and children everywhere would play mean little tricks on me
because I was so sad and dreary. And finally, at some pathetic old age, I would
simply fall over unnoticed and let the wind blow my dust into the street.

Life went on. Days blended into weeks. Vince Masuoka went into a
furious frenzy of activity, finding a new more reasonable caterer, fitting me
for my tuxedo, and, eventually, when the wedding day itself came, getting me to
the overgrown church in Coconut Grove on time.

So I stood there at the altar, listening to the organ
music and waiting with my new numb patience for Rita to sashay down the aisle
and into permanent bondage with me. It was a very pretty scene, if only I had
been able to appreciate it. The church was full of nicely dressed people-I
never knew Rita had so many friends! Perhaps now I should try to collect some,
too, to stand beside me in my new gray, pointless life. The altar was
overflowing with flowers, and Vince stood at my side, sweating nervously and
spasmodically wiping his hands on his pants legs every few seconds.

Then there was a louder blare from the organ, and everyone in the
church stood up and faced backward. And here they came: Astor in the lead, in
her beautiful white dress, her hair done in sausage curls and an enormous
basket of flowers in her hands. Next came Cody in his tiny tuxedo, his hair
plastered to his head, holding the small velvet cushion with the rings on it.

Last of all came Rita. As I saw her and the children,
I seemed to see the whole drab agony of my new life parading toward me, a life
of PTA meetings and bicycles, mortgages and Neighborhood Watch meetings, and
Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, soccer and new shoes and braces. It was an entire
lifeless, colorless secondhand existence, and the torment of it was blindingly
sharp, almost more than I could bear. It washed over me with exquisite agony, a
torture worse than anything I had ever felt, a pain so bitter that I closed my
eyes-

And then I felt a strange stirring inside, a kind of surging
fulfillment, a feeling that things were just the way they should be, now and
evermore, world without end; that what was brought together here must never be
rent asunder.

And marveling at this sensation of rightness, I opened my eyes and
turned to look at Cody and Astor as they climbed the steps to stand beside me.
Astor looked so radiantly happy, an expression beyond any I had ever seen from
her, and it filled me with a sense of comfort and rightness. And Cody, so
dignified with his small careful steps, very solemn in his quiet way. I saw
that his lips were moving in some secret message for me, and I gave him a
questioning glance. His lips moved again and I bent just a little to hear him.

“Your shadow,” he said. “It's
back.”

I straightened slowly and closed my eyes for the merest moment. Just
long enough to hear the hushed sibilance of a welcome-home chuckle.

The Passenger had returned.

I opened my eyes, back again to the world as it should
be. No matter that I stood surrounded by flowers and light and music and happiness,
nor that Rita was now climbing the steps intent on clamping herself to me
forevermore. The world was whole once again, just as it should be. A place
where the moon sung hymns and the darkness below it murmured perfect harmony
broken only by the counterpoint of sharp steel and the joy of the hunt.

No more gray. Life had returned to a place of bright blades and dark
shadows, a place where Dexter hid behind the daylight so that he could leap out
of the night and be what he was meant to be: Dexter the Avenger, Dark Driver
for the thing once more inside.

And I felt a very real smile spread across my face as Rita stepped up
to stand beside me, a smile that stayed with me through all the pretty words and
hand-holding, because once more, forever and always, I could say it again.

I do. And yes, I will, I really will.

And soon.

FAR ABOVE THE AIMLESS SCURRYING OF THE CITY IT watched, and IT waited.
There was plenty to see, as always, and IT was in no hurry. IT had done this
many times before, and would do so again, endlessly and forever. That was what
IT was for. Right now there were so many different choices to consider, and no
reason to do anything but consider them until the right one was clear. And then
IT would start again, gather the faithful, give them their bright miracle, and
IT would feel once more the wonder and joy and swelling rightness of their
pain.

All that would come again. It was just a matter of
waiting for the right moment.

And IT had all the time in the world.

JEFF LINDSAY is the author of Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted
Dexter. He lives in Florida with his wife and children.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter Dearly Devoted Dexter

PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY

Copyright © 2007 by Jeff
Lindsay

Dexter in the Dark
(Dexter 03) by Jeff Lindsay Page 191 of 191

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States by Doubleday, an imprint of The Doubleday
Broadway Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.doubleday.com

DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses,
organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the
author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lindsay, Jeffry P. Dexter in the dark : a novel / Jeff Lindsay.-1st ed.

p. cm.

1. Forensic scientists-Fiction. 2. Vigilantes-Fiction.
3. Serial murderers-Fiction. 4. Miami (Fla.)-Fiction.

5. Psychological fiction. I. Title. PS3562.I51175D47 2007 813'.54-dc22
2007020277

eISBN: 978-0-385-52303-5

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