Dexter 3 - Dexter in the Dark (5 page)

But in this case, I had nothing whatsoever to tell Deborah. I had, in
fact, been hoping she might have some small crumb of information to give to me,
something that might explain the Dark Passenger's peculiar and uncharacteristic
shrinking act. That, of course, was not the sort of thing I really felt
comfortable telling Deborah about. But no matter what I said about this burned
double offering, she wouldn't believe me. She would be sure I had information
and some kind of angle that made me want to keep it all to myself. The only
thing more suspicious than a sibling is a sibling who happens to be a cop.

Sure enough, she was convinced I was holding out on
her. “Come on, Dexter,” she said. “Out with it. Tell me what you
know about this.” “Dear Sis, I am at a total loss,” I said.
“Bullshit,” she said, apparently unaware of the irony. “You're
holding something back.” “Never in life,” I said. “Would I
lie to my only sister?” She glared at me. “So it isn't
Santeria?” “I have no idea,” I said, as soothingly as possible.
“It seems like a really good place to start. But-”

“I knew it,” she
snapped. “But what?” “Well,” I started. And truly it had
just occurred to me, and probably it meant nothing at all, but here I was in
mid-sentence already, so I went on with it. "Have you ever heard of a
santero using ceramics? And

bulls-don't they have a thing for goat heads?"

She looked at me very hard for a minute, then shook
her head. “That's it? That's what you got?”

“I told you, Debs, I don't got anything. It was
only a thought, something that just now came to me.”

“Well,” she said. “If you're telling me
the truth-”

“Of course I am,” I protested.

“Then, you've got doodly-squat,” she said and looked away,
back to where Captain Matthews was answering questions with his solemn, manly
jaw jutting out. “Which is only slightly less than the horsepucky I
got,” she said.

I had never before grasped that doodly-squat was less
than horsepucky, but it's always nice to learn something new. And yet even this
startling revelation did very little to answer the real question here: Why had
the Dark Passenger pulled a duck and cover? In the course of my job and my
hobby I have seen some things that most people can't even imagine, unless they
have watched several of those movies they show at traffic school for driving
drunk. And in every case I had ever encountered, no matter how grisly, my
shadow companion had some kind of pithy comment on the proceedings, even if it
was only a yawn.

But now, confronted by nothing more sinister than two charred bodies
and some amateur pottery, the Dark Passenger chose to scuttle away like a scared
spider and leave me without guidance-a brand-new feeling for me, and I
discovered I did not like it at all.

Still, what was I to do? I knew of no one I could talk
to about something like the Dark Passenger; at least, not if I wanted to stay at
liberty, which I very much did. As far as I was aware, there were no experts on
the subject, other than me. But what did I really know about my boon companion?
Was I really that knowledgeable, merely because I had shared space with it for
so long? The fact that it had chosen to scuttle into the cellar was making me
very edgy, as if I found myself walking through my office with no pants on.
When it came down to the nub of things, I had no idea what the Dark Passenger
was or where it came from, and that had never seemed all that important.

For some reason, now it did.

image

A modest crowd had gathered by the yellow tape barrier
the police had put up. Enough people so that the Watcher could stand in the
middle of the group without sticking out in any way.

He watched with a cold hunger that did not show on his
face-nothing showed on his face; it was merely a mask he wore for the time
being, a way to hide the coiled power stored inside. Yet somehow the people
around him seemed to sense it, glancing his way nervously from time to time, as
if they had heard a tiger growling nearby.

The Watcher enjoyed their discomfort, enjoyed the way they stared in
stupid fear at what he had done. It was all part of the joy of this power, and
part of the reason he liked to watch.

But he watched with a
purpose right now, carefully and deliberately, even as he watched them scrabble
around like ants and felt the power surge and flex inside him. Walking meat, he
thought. Less than sheep,

and we are the shepherd.

As he gloated at their
pathetic reaction to his display he felt another presence tickle at the edge of
his predator's senses. He turned his head slowly along the line of yellow
tape-There. That was him, the one in the bright Hawaiian shirt. He really was
with the police. The Watcher reached a careful tendril out toward the other,
and as it touched he watched the other stop

cold in his tracks and close his eyes, as if asking a silent
question-yes. It all made sense now. The other had felt the subtle reach of
senses; he was powerful, that was certain.

But what was his purpose? He watched as the other
straightened up, looked around, and then seemingly shrugged it off and crossed
the police line.

We are stronger, he
thought. Stronger than all of them. And they will discover this, to their very
great

sorrow. He
could feel the hunger growing-but he needed to know more, and he would wait
until the right time. Wait and watch.

For now.

SIX

A HOMICIDE SCENE WITH NO BLOOD SPLATTERED SHOULD have been a real holiday
outing for me, but somehow I couldn't get into the lighthearted frame of mind
to enjoy it. I lurked around for a while, going in and out of the taped-off
area, but there was very little for me to do. And Deborah seemed to have said
all she had to say to me, which left me somewhat alone and unoccupied.

A reasonable being might very well be pardoned for sulking just a tiny
bit, but I had never claimed to be reasonable, and that left me with very few
options. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to get on with life and think
about the many important things that demanded my attention-the kids, the
caterer, Paris, lunch…Considering my laundry list of things to worry about, it
was no wonder the Passenger was proving a wee bit shy.

I looked at the two overcooked bodies again. They were
not doing anything sinister. They were still dead. But the Dark Passenger was
still silent.

I wandered back over to where Deborah stood, talking to
Angel-no-relation. They both looked at me expectantly, but I had no readily
available wit to offer, which was very much out of character. Happily for my
world-famous reputation for permanently cheerful stoicism, before I could
really turn gloomy, Deborah looked over my shoulder and snorted. “About
fucking time.”

I followed her gaze to a patrol car that had just pulled up and watched
a man dressed all in white climb out.

The official City of Miami
babalao had arrived.

Our fair city exists in a permanent blinding haze of
cronyism and corruption that would make Boss Tweed jealous, and every year
millions of dollars are thrown away on imaginary consulting jobs, cost overruns
on projects that haven't begun because they were awarded to someone's
mother-in-law, and other special items of great civic importance, like new
luxury cars for political supporters. So it should be no surprise at all that
the city pays a Santeria priest a salary and benefits.

The surprise is that he earns his money.

Every morning at sunrise, the babalao arrives at the courthouse, where
he usually finds one or two small animal sacrifices left by people with
important legal cases pending. No Miami citizen in his right mind would touch
these things, but of course it would be very bad form to leave dead animals littered
about Miami's great temple of justice. So the babalao removes the sacrifices,
cowrie shells, feathers, beads, charms, and pictures in a way that will not
offend the orishas, the guiding spirits of Santeria.

He is also called upon from time to time to cast
spells for other important civic items, like blessing a new overpass built by a
low-bid contractor or putting a curse on the New York Jets. And he had
apparently been called upon this time by my sister, Deborah.

The official city babalao was a black man of about
fifty, six feet tall with very long fingernails and a considerable paunch. He
was dressed in white pants, a white guayabera, and sandals. He came plodding
over from the patrol car that had brought him, with the cranky expression of a
minor bureaucrat whose important filing work had been interrupted. As he walked
he polished a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses on the tail of his shirt. He
put them on as he approached the bodies and, when he did, what he saw stopped
him dead.

For a long moment he just stared. Then, with his eyes still glued to
the bodies, he backed away. At about thirty feet away, he turned around and
walked back to the patrol car and climbed in.

“What the fuck,” Deborah said, and I agreed
that she had summed things up nicely. The babalao slammed the car door and sat
there in the front seat, staring straight ahead through the windshield without
moving. After a moment Deborah muttered, “Shit,” and went over to the
car. And because like all inquiring minds I want to know, I followed.

When I got to the car Deborah was tapping on the glass of the
passenger-side window and the babalao was still staring straight ahead, jaw
clenched, grimly pretending not to see her. Debs knocked harder; he shook his
head. “Open the door,” she said in her best police-issue
put-down-the-gun voice. He shook his head harder. She knocked on the window
harder. “Open it!” she said.

Finally he rolled down the window. “This is
nothing to do with me,” he said.

“Then what is it?” Deborah asked him.

He just shook his head. “I need to get back to
work,” he said.

“Is it Palo Mayombe?” I asked him, and Debs glared at me for
interrupting, but it seemed like a fair question. Palo Mayombe was a somewhat
darker offshoot of Santeria, and although I knew almost nothing about it, there
had been rumors of some very wicked rituals that had piqued my interest.

But the babalao shook his head. “Listen,” he
said. “There's stuff out there, you guys got no idea, and you don't wanna
know.”

“Is this one of those
things?” I asked. “I dunno,” he said. “Might be.”
“What can you tell us about it?” Deborah demanded. “I can't tell
you nothing 'cause I don't know nothing,” he said. "But I don't like
it and I don't want

anything to do with it. I got important stuff to do
today-tell the cop I gotta go.“ And he rolled the window up again.
”Shit,“ Deborah said, and she looked at me accusingly. ”Well I
didn't do anything,“ I said. ”Shit,“ she said again. ”What
the hell does that mean?"

“I am completely in the dark,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” she said, and she looked entirely unconvinced, which was a
little ironic. I mean, people believe me all the time when I'm being somewhat
less than perfectly truthful-and yet here was my own foster flesh and blood,
refusing to believe that I was, in fact, completely in the dark. Aside from the
fact that the babalao seemed to be having the same reaction as the
Passenger-and what should I make of that?

Before I could pursue that fascinating
line of thought, I realized that Deborah was still staring at me with

an exceedingly unpleasant expression on her face.
“Did you find the heads?” I asked, quite helpfully I thought.
“We might get a feel for the ritual if we saw what he did to the
heads.”

“No, we haven't found the heads. I haven't found
anything except a brother who's holding out on me.”

“Deborah, really, this
permanent air of nasty suspicion is not good for your face muscles. You'll get
frown lines.” “Maybe I'll get a killer, too,” she said, and
walked back to the two charred bodies. Since my usefulness was apparently at an
end, at least as far as my sister was concerned, there was really

not a great deal more for me to do on-site. I finished up with my blood
kit, taking small samples of the dried black stuff caked around the two necks,
and headed back to the lab in plenty of time for a late lunch.

But alas, poor Dauntless Dexter obviously had a target painted on his
back, because my troubles had barely begun. Just as I was tidying up my desk
and getting ready to take part in the cheerfully homicidal rush-hour traffic,
Vince Masuoka came skipping into my office. “I just talked to Manny,”
he said. “He can see us tomorrow morning at ten.”

“That's wonderful
news,” I said. “The only thing that could possibly make it any better
would be to know who Manny is and why he wants to see us.” Vince actually
looked a little hurt, one of the few genuine expressions I had ever seen on his
face.

“Manny Borque,” he said. “The
caterer.”

“The one from MTV?”

“Yeah, that's right,” Vince said. “The guy that's won
all the awards, and he's been written up in Gourmet magazine.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, stalling for time in the hope that some
brilliant flash of inspiration would hit to help me dodge this terrible fate.
“The award-winning caterer.”

“Dexter, this guy is big. He could make your
whole wedding.”

“Well, Vince, I think that's terrific, but-”

“Listen,” he said, with an air of firm command that I had
never heard from him before, “you said you would talk to Rita about this
and let her decide.”

“I said that?”

“Yes, you did. And I am not going to let you throw away a
wonderful opportunity like this, not when it's something that I know Rita would
really love to have.”

I wasn't sure how he could be so positive about that.
After all, I was actually engaged to the woman, and I had no idea what sort of
caterer might fill her with shock and awe. But I didn't think this was the time
to ask him how he knew what Rita would and would not love. Then again, a man
who dressed up as Carmen Miranda for Halloween might very well have a keener
insight than mine into my fiancée's innermost culinary desires.