Dexter 3 - Dexter in the Dark (7 page)

THE TRAFFIC ON THE 836 WAS BACKED UP FOR HALF A MILE
right after the 395 from Miami Beach poured into it. We inched forward between
exits until we could see the problem: a truckload of watermelons had emptied
out onto the highway. There was a streak of red-and-green goo six inches thick
across the road, dotted with a sprinkling of cars in various stages of
destruction. An ambulance went past on the shoulder, followed by a procession
of cars driven by people too important to wait in a traffic jam. Horns honked
all along the line, people yelled and waved their fists, and somewhere ahead I
heard a single gunshot. It was good to be back to normal life.

By the time we fought our way through the traffic and onto surface
streets, we had lost fifteen minutes and it took another fifteen to get back to
work. Vince and I rode the elevator to the second floor in silence, but as the
doors slid open and we stepped out, he stopped me. “You're doing the right
thing,” he said.

“Yes, I am,” I said. “But if I don't do
it quickly Deborah will kill me.”

He grabbed my arm. “I mean about Manny,” he said.
“You're going to love what he does. It will really make a
difference.”

I was already aware that it
would really make a difference in my bank account, but beyond that I still
didn't see the point. Would everyone truly have a better time if they were
served a series of apparently alien objects of uncertain use and origin instead
of cold cuts? There is a great deal I don't understand about human beings, but
this really seemed to take the cake-assuming we would have a cake at all, which

in my opinion was not a
sure thing. There was one thing I understood quite well, however, and that was
Deborah's attitude about punctuality. It was handed down from our father, and
it said that lateness was disrespect and there were no excuses.

So I pried Vince's fingers
off my arm and shook his hand. “I'm sure we're all going to be very happy
with the food,” I said. He held on to my hand. “It's more than
that,” he said. “Vince-” “You're making a statement about
the rest of your life,” he said. "A really good statement, that your
and

Rita's life together-“
”My life is in danger if I don't go, Vince,“ I said. ”I'm really
happy about this," he said, and it was so unnerving to see him display an
apparently authentic

emotion that there was
actually a little bit of panic to my flight away from him and down the hall to
the

conference room. The room
was full, since this was becoming a somewhat high-profile case after the
hysterical news stories of the evening before about two young women found
burned and headless. Deborah glared at me as I slipped in and stood by the
door, and I gave her what I hoped was a disarming smile. She cut off the
speaker, one of the patrolmen who had been first on the scene.

“All right,” she
said. “We know we're not going to find the heads on the scene.” I had
thought that my late entrance and Deborah's vicious glare at me would certainly
win the award for

Most Dramatic Entrance, but I was dead wrong. Because
just as Debs tried to get the meeting moving again, I was upstaged as
thoroughly as a candle at a firebombing. “Come on, people,” Sergeant
Sister said. “Let's have some ideas about this.” “We could drag
the lake,” Camilla Figg said. She was a thirty-five-year-old forensics
geek and usually

kept quiet, and it was rather surprising to hear her speak. Apparently
some people preferred it that way, because a thin, intense cop named Corrigan
jumped on her right away. “Bullshit,” said Corrigan. “Heads
float.” “They don't float-they're solid bone,” Camilla insisted.

“Some of 'em are,” Corrigan said, and he got
his little laugh. Deborah frowned, and was about to step in with an
authoritative word or two, when a noise in the hall stopped her.

CLUMP.

Not that loud, but somehow
it commanded all the attention there was in the room.

CLUMP.

Closer, a little louder, for all the world approaching us now like
something from a low-budget horror movie…

CLUMP.

For some reason I couldn't hope to explain, everyone in the room seemed
to hold their breath and turn slowly toward the door. And if only because I
wanted to fit in, I began to turn for a peek into the hall myself, when I was
stopped by the smallest possible interior tickle, just a hint of a twitch, and
so I closed my eyes and listened. Hello? I said mentally, and after a very
short pause there was a small, slightly hesitant sound, almost a clearing of
the mental throat, and then-

Somebody in the room muttered, “Holy sweet Jesus,” with the
kind of reverent horror that was always guaranteed to pique my interest, and
the small not-quite-sound within purred just a bit and then subsided. I opened
my eyes.

I can only say that I had been so happy to feel the Passenger stirring
in the dark backseat that for a moment I had tuned out everything around me.
This is always a dangerous slip, especially for artificial humans like me, and
the point was driven home with an absolutely stunning impact when I opened my
eyes.

It was indeed low-budget horror, Night of the Living
Dead, but in the flesh and not a movie at all, because standing in the doorway,
just to my right, staring at me, was a man who was really supposed to be dead.

Sergeant Doakes.

Doakes had never liked me. He seemed to be the only
cop on the entire force who suspected that I might be what, in fact, I was. I
had always thought he could see through my disguise because he was somewhat the
same thing himself, a cold killer. He had tried and failed to prove that I was
guilty of almost anything, and that failure had also failed to endear me to
him.

The last time I had seen Doakes the paramedics had
been loading him into an ambulance. He had been unconscious, partly as the
result of the shock and pain of having his tongue, feet, and hands removed by a
very talented amateur surgeon who thought Doakes had done him wrong. Now it was
true that I had gently encouraged that notion with the part-time doctor, but I
had at least had the decency to persuade Doakes first to go along with the
plan, in order to catch the inhuman fiend. And I had also very nearly saved
Doakes at considerable risk to my own precious and irreplaceable life and
limbs. I hadn't quite pulled off the dashing and timely rescue I'm sure Doakes
had hoped for, but I had tried, and it was really and truly not my fault that
he had been more dead than alive when they hauled him away.

So I didn't think it was asking too much for some
small acknowledgment of the great hazard I had exposed myself to on his behalf.
I didn't need flowers, or a medal, or even a box of chocolates, but perhaps
something along the lines of a hearty clap on the back and a murmured,
“Thanks, old fellow.” Of course he would have some trouble murmuring
coherently without a tongue, and the clap on the back with one of his new metal
hands could prove painful, but he might at least try. Was that so unreasonable?

Apparently it was. Doakes
stared at me as if he was the hungriest dog in the world and I was the very
last steak. I had thought that he used to look at me with enough venom to lay
low the entire endangered species list. But that had been the gentle laughter
of a tousle-haired child on a sunny day compared to the way he was looking at
me now. And I knew what had made the Dark Passenger clear its throat-it had

been the scent of a familiar predator. I felt the slow flex of interior
wings, coming back to full roaring life, rising to the challenge in Doakes's
eyes. And behind those dark eyes his own inner monster snarled and spat at
mine. We stood like that for a long moment, on the outside simply staring but
on the inside two predatory shadows screeching out a challenge.

Someone was speaking, but the world had narrowed to
just me and Doakes and the two black shadows inside us calling for battle, and
neither one of us heard a word, just an annoying drone in the background.

Deborah's voice cut through the fog at last. “Sergeant
Doakes,” she said, somewhat forcefully. Finally Doakes turned to face her
and the spell was broken. And feeling somewhat smug in the power-joy and
bliss!-of the Passenger, as well as the petty victory of having Doakes turn
away first, I faded into the wallpaper, taking a small step back to survey the
leftovers of my once-mighty nemesis.

Sergeant Doakes still held the department record for bench press, but
he did not look like he would defend his record anytime soon. He was gaunt and,
except for the fire smoldering behind his eyes, he looked almost weak. He stood
stiffly on his two prosthetic feet, his arms hanging straight down by his
sides, with gleaming silver things that looked like a complicated kind of vise
grip protruding from each wrist.

I could hear the others in the room breathing, but
aside from that there was not a sound. Everyone simply stared at the thing that
had once been Doakes, and he stared at Deborah, who licked her lips, apparently
trying to think of something coherent to say, and finally came up with,
“Have a seat, Doakes. Um. I'll bring you up to date?”

Doakes looked at her for a long moment. Then he turned awkwardly
around, glared at me, and clumped out of the room, his strange, measured
footsteps echoing down the hall until they were gone.

On the whole, cops don't like to give the impression
that they are ever impressed or intimidated, so it was several seconds before
anyone risked giving away any unwanted emotion by breathing again. Naturally
enough, it was Deborah who finally broke the unnatural silence. “All
right,” she said, and suddenly everyone was clearing their throats and
shifting in their chairs.

“All right,” she repeated, “so we won't
find the heads at the scene.”

“Heads don't float,” Camilla Figg insisted
scornfully, and we were back to where we had been before the sudden
semi-appearance of Sergeant Doakes. And they droned on for another ten minutes
or so, tirelessly fighting crime by arguing about who was supposed to fill out
the paperwork, when we were rudely interrupted once again by the door beside me
swinging open.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Captain Matthews said.
“I've got some-ah-really great news, I think.” He looked around the
room frowning, which even I could have told him was not the proper face for
delivering great news. “It's, uh, ahem. Sergeant Doakes has come back, and
he's, uh-It's important for you people to realize that he's been badly, uh,
damaged. He has only a couple of years left before he's eligible for full
pension, so the lawyers, ah-we thought, under the circumstances, um…” He
trailed off and looked around the room. “Did somebody already tell you
people?”

“Sergeant Doakes was just here,” Deborah
said.

“Oh,” Matthews said. “Well, then-”
He shrugged. “That's fine. All right then. I'll let you get on with the
meeting then. Anything to report?”

“No real progress yet,
Captain,” Deborah said. “Well, I'm sure you'll get this thing wrapped
up before the press-I mean, in a timely fashion.” “Yes, sir,”
she said. “All right then,” he said again. And he looked around the
room once, squared his shoulders, and left the

room. “Heads don't float,” somebody else
said, and a small snort of laughter went around the room. “Jesus,”
Deborah said. “Can we focus on this, please? We got two bodies here.”
And more to come, I thought, and the Dark Passenger quivered slightly, as if
trying very bravely not to

run away, but that was all,
and I thought no more about it.

I DON'T DREAM. I MEAN, I'M SURE THAT AT SOME POINT
DURING my normal sleep, there must be images and fragments of nonsense parading
through my subconscious. After all, they tell me that happens with everyone.
But I never seem to remember dreams if I do have them, which they tell me
happens to nobody at all. So I assume that I do not dream.

It was therefore something of a shock to discover myself late that
night, cradled in Rita's arms, shouting something I could not quite hear; just
the echo of my own strangled voice coming back at me out of the cottony dark,
and Rita's cool hand on my forehead, her voice murmuring, “All right,
sweetheart, I won't leave you.”

“Thank you very much,” I said in a croaking
voice. I cleared my throat and sat up.

“You had a bad dream,” she told me.

“Really? What was it?” I still didn't remember anything but
my shouting and a vague sense of danger crowding in on me, and me all alone.

“I don't know,” Rita said. “You were shouting, 'Come
back! Don't leave me alone.'” She cleared her throat. “Dexter-I know
you're feeling some stress about our wedding-”

“Not at all,” I said.

“But I want you to know. I will never leave
you.” She reached for my hand again. “This is forever with me, big
man. I am holding on to you.” She scooted over and put her head on my
shoulder. “Don't worry. I won't ever leave you, Dexter.”

Even though I lack experience with dreams, I was fairly sure that my
subconscious was not terribly worried about Rita leaving me. I mean, it hadn't
occurred to me that she would, which was not really a sign of trust on my part.
I just hadn't thought about it. Truly, I had no idea why she wanted to hang on
to me in the first place, so any hypothetical leave-taking was just as
mysterious.

No, this was my
subconscious. If it was crying out in pain at the threat of abandonment, I knew
exactly

what it feared losing: the Dark Passenger. My bosom buddy, my constant
companion on my journey through life's sorrows and sharp pleasures. That was
the fear behind the dream: losing the thing that had been so very much a part
of me, had actually defined me, for my whole life.

When it scuttled into hiding at the university crime
scene it had clearly shaken me badly, more than I had known at the time. The
sudden and very scary reappearance of 65 percent of Sergeant Doakes supplied
the sense of danger, and the rest was easy. My subconscious had kicked in and
supplied a dream on the subject. Perfectly clear-Psych 101, a textbook case,
nothing to worry about.

So why was I still worrying?

Because the Passenger had never even flinched before,
and I still didn't know why it had chosen now. Was Rita right about the stress
of the approaching wedding? Or was there really something about the two
headless bodies by the university lake that just plain scared the Dark out of
me?

I didn't know-and, since it seemed like Rita's ideas about comforting
me had begun to take a more active turn, it did not look like I was going to
find out anytime soon.

“Come here, baby,” Rita whispered.

And after all, there really isn't any place to run in
a queen-size bed, is there?

image

The next morning found Deborah obsessed with finding
the missing heads from the two bodies at the university. Somehow word had
leaked out to the press that the department was interested in finding a couple
of skulls that had wandered away. This was Miami, and I really would have
thought that a missing head would get less press coverage than a traffic tie-up
on I-95, but something about the fact that there were two of them, and that
they apparently belonged to young women, created quite a stir. Captain Matthews
was a man who knew the value of being mentioned in the press, but even he was
not pleased with the note of surly hysteria that attached itself to this story.

And so pressure came down on all of us from above; from the captain to
Deborah, who wasted no time passing it on down to the rest of us. Vince Masuoka
became convinced that he could provide Deborah with the key to the whole matter
by finding out which bizarre religious sect was responsible. This led to him
sticking his head in my door that morning and, without any kind of warning,
giving me his best fake smile and saying, firmly and distinctly,
“Candomblé.”

“Shame on you,” I said. “This is no
time for that kind of language.”

“Ha,” he said, with his terrible artificial
laugh. “But it is, I'm sure of it. Candomblé is like Santeria, but it's
Brazilian.”

“Vince, I have no reason to doubt you on that. My
question is, what the hell are you talking about?”

He came two steps into the room in a kind of prance, as if his body
wanted to take off and he couldn't quite fight it down. “They have a thing
about animal heads in some of their rituals,” he said. “It's on the
Internet.”

“Really,” I said.
"Does it say on the Internet that this Brazilian thing barbecues humans,
cuts off their

heads, and replaces them with ceramic bulls'
heads?"

Vince wilted just a bit. “No,” he admitted,
and he raised his eyebrows hopefully. “But they use animals.”

“How do they use them, Vince?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, and he looked around my little room, possibly
for another topic of conversation. “Sometimes they, you know, offer a part
to the gods, and then they eat the rest.”

“Vince,” I said, “are you suggesting
that somebody ate the missing heads?”

“No,” he said, turning sullen, almost like
Cody and Astor might have done. “But they could have.”

“It would be very crunchy, wouldn't it?”

“All right,” he said, exceedingly sulky now. “I'm just
trying to help.” And he stalked away, without even a small fake smile.

But the chaos had only begun. As my unwanted trip to dreamland
indicated, I was already under enough pressure without the added strain of a
rampaging sister. But only a few minutes later, my small oasis of peace was
ripped asunder once again, this time by Deborah, who came roaring into my office
as if pursued by killer bees.

“Come on,” she snarled at me.

“Come on where?” I asked, quite a reasonable question, I
thought, but you would have thought I had asked her to shave her head and paint
her skull blue.

“Just get in gear, and come on!” she said, so I came on and
followed her down to the parking lot and into her car.

“I swear to God,” she fumed as she hammered
her car through the traffic, “I have never seen Matthews this pissed
before. And now it's my fault!” She banged on the horn for emphasis and
swerved in front of a van that said PALMVIEW ASSISTED LIVING on the side.
“All because some asshole leaked the heads to the press.”

“Well, Debs,” I said, with all the
reasonable soothing I could muster, “I'm sure the heads will turn
up.”

“You're goddamned right they will,” she said, narrowly
missing a fat man on a bicycle that had huge saddlebags stuffed with scrap
metal. “Because I am going to find out which cult the son of a bitch
belongs to, and then I'm going to nail the bastard.”

I paused in mid-soothe. Apparently my dear demented sister, just like
Vince, had gotten hold of the idea that finding the appropriate alternative
religion would yield a killer. “Ah, all right,” I said. “And
where are we going to do that?”

She slid the car out onto
Biscayne Boulevard and into a parking space at the curb without answering, and
got out of the car. And so I found myself patiently following her into the
Centre for Inner Enhancement, a clearinghouse for all the wonderfully useful
things that have the words “holistic,” “herbal,” or
“aura” in them.

The Centre was a small and shabby building in an area of Biscayne
Boulevard that had apparently been designated by treaty as a kind of
reservation for prostitutes and crack dealers. There were enormous bars on the
storefront windows and more of them on the door, which was locked. Deborah
pounded on it and after a moment it gave an annoying buzz. She pushed, and
finally it clicked and swung open.

We stepped in. A suffocating cloud of sickly sweet incense rolled over
me, and I could tell that my inner enhancement had begun with a complete
overhaul of my lungs. Through the smoke I could dimly see a large yellow silk
banner hung along one wall that stated WE ARE ALL ONE. It did not say one of
what. A recording played softly, the sound of someone who seemed to be fighting
off an overdose of downers by occasionally ringing a series of small bells. A
waterfall murmured in the background and I am sure that my spirit would have soared,
if only I had one. Since I didn't, I found the whole thing just a bit
irritating.

But of course, we weren't here for pleasure, or even inner enhancement.
And Sergeant Sister was, of course, all business all the time. She marched over
to the counter, where there stood a middle-aged woman wearing a full-length
tie-dyed dress that seemed to be made out of old crepe paper. Her graying hair
radiated out from her head in a kind of random mess, and she was frowning. Of
course, it may have been a beatific frown of enlightenment.

“Can I help you?” she said, in a gravelly
voice that seemed to suggest we were beyond help.

Deborah held up her badge. Before she could say anything the woman
reached over and plucked it from her hand.

“All right, Sergeant Morgan,” the woman
said, tossing the badge on the counter. “It seems to be genuine.”

“Couldn't you just read her aura and tell that?” I suggested.
Neither of them seemed ready to give that remark any of the appreciation it
deserved, so I shrugged and listened as Deborah began her grueling
interrogation.

“I'd like to ask you a few questions,
please,” Deborah said, leaning forward to scoop up her badge.

“About what?” the woman demanded. She
frowned even harder, and Deborah frowned back, and it began to look like we
were in for a good old-fashioned country frown-off, with the winner getting
free Botox treatments to freeze her face into a permanent scowl.

“There have been some murders,” Deborah
said, and the woman shrugged.

“What's that got to do with me?” she asked.

I applauded her reasoning, but after all, I did have
to play for my own team now and then.

“It's because we are all one,” I said.
“That's the basis of all police work.”

She swiveled her frown to me and blinked at me in a very aggressive
way. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded. “Lemme see your
badge.”

“I'm her backup,” I said. “In case
she's attacked by bad karma.”

The woman snorted, but at
least she didn't shoot me. “Cops in this town,” she said, "are
swimming in bad

karma. I was at the FTAA rally, and I know what you
people are like."

“Maybe we are,” Deborah said, “but the other side is
even worse, so could you just answer a few questions?”

The woman looked back at Deborah, still frowning, and shrugged.
“Okay, I guess,” she said. “But I don't see how I can help. And
I call my lawyer if you get out of line.”

“Fine,” Deborah said. “We're looking for a lead on somebody
who might be connected to a local alternative religious group that has a thing
for bulls.”

For a second I thought the woman was almost going to
smile, but she caught herself just in time. “Bulls? Jesus, who doesn't
have a thing for bulls. Goes all the way back to Sumer, Crete, all those old
cradle-ofcivilization places. Lots of people have worshipped them. I mean,
aside from the huge cocks, they're very powerful.”

If the woman thought she was going to embarrass
Deborah, she didn't know as much about Miami cops as she thought she did. My
sister didn't even blink. “Do you know of any group in particular that
might be local?” Debs said.

“I dunno,” she said. “What kind of
group?”

“Candomblé?” I said, briefly grateful to
Vince for supplying a word. “Palo Mayombe? Or even Wicca.”

“The Spanish stuff, you gotta go over to Eleggua
on Eighth Street. I wouldn't know about that. We sell some stuff to the Wicca
people, but I'm not gonna tell you about it without a warrant. Anyway, they
don't do bulls.” She snorted. “They just stand around in the
Everglades naked, waiting for their power to come.”

“Is there anybody else?” Debs insisted.

The woman just shook her head. “I dunno. I mean, I know about most
of the groups in town, and nothing like that I can think of.” She
shrugged. “Maybe the Druids, they got a spring event coming up. They used
to do human sacrifice.”

Deborah frowned even more intensely. “When was
that?” she said.

This time the woman actually did smile, just a little, with one corner of
her mouth. “About two thousand years ago. You're a little late on that
one, Sherlock.”

“Is there anything else you can think of that
might help?” Deborah asked.

The woman shook her head. “Help with what? There might be some
psycho loser out there who read Aleister Crowley and lives on a dairy farm. How
would I know?”

Deborah looked at her for a moment, as if trying to
decide if she had been offensive enough to arrest, and then apparently decided
against it. “Thank you for your time,” she said, and she flipped her
business card on the counter. “If you think of anything that might be
helpful, please give me a call.”

“Yeah, sure,” the
woman said, without even glancing at the card. Deborah glared at her for a
moment

longer and then stalked out
of the door. The woman stared at me and I smiled. “I really like
vegetables,” I said. Then I gave the woman the peace sign and followed my
sister out. “That was a stupid idea,” Deborah said as we walked rapidly
back to her car. “Oh, I wouldn't say that,” I said. And it was quite
true, I wouldn't say it. Of course, it really was a stupid

idea, but to say so would
have been to invite one of Debs's vicious arm punches. "If nothing else,
we