Dexter 4 - Dexter by Design (12 page)

“You weren't in Vietnam” Harry said. Gus didn't respond.

“Something I learned there is that some people can kill in cold blood, and others can't. And most of us can't” Harry said. “It does bad things to you.”

“So what are you saying: you agree with me, but you can't do it?

If ever anybody deserved it, Harry, Otto Valdez ...”

“What are you doing?” came Deborah's voice, approximately eight inches from my ear. I jumped so hard I bumped my head on the wall.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“Funny place to do it” she said, and since she showed no inclination to move on, I decided I was done listening and I went back to zombie-land in front of the TV. I had certainly heard enough to understand what was going on, and I was fascinated. Dear sweet kindly Uncle Gus wanted to kill somebody, and wanted Harry to help him. My brain whirled with the excitement of it, frantically searching for a way to persuade them to let me help —or at least watch. Where was the harm in that? It was almost a civic duty!

But Harry refused to help Gus, and a little while later Gus left the house looking like someone had let all the air out of him. Harry came back to the TV with me and Debs, and spent the next half hour trying to get his happy face back on.

Two days later they found Uncle Gus's body. It had been mutilated and beheaded and apparently tortured first.

Three days after that, unknown to me, Harry found my little pet memorial under the bushes in the backyard. Over the next week or two I caught him staring at me more than once with his work face on. I did not know why at the time, and it was somewhat intimidating, but I was far too much of the young gawp to be able to phrase a statement like, “Dad, why are you staring at me with that particular expression?”

In any case, the why of it very soon became apparent. Three weeks after Uncle Gus met his untimely end, Harry and I went on a camping trip to Elliot Key, and with a few simple sentences —starting with, “You're different, son” —Harry changed everything forever.

His plan. His design for Dexter. His perfectly crafted, sane and sensible road map for me to be eternally and wonderfully me.

And now I had stepped off the Path, taken a small and dangerous back road detour. I could almost see him shake his head and turn those ice-cold blue eyes on me.

“We've got to get you squared away” Harry would have said.

A PARTICULARLY LOUD SNORE FROM CHUTSKY BROUGHT me back to the present. It was loud enough that one of the nurses stuck her head in the door, and then checked all the dials and gauges and whirling machinery before going away again, with a suspicious backward glance at the two of us, as if we had deliberately made terrible noises in order to upset her machines.

Deborah moved one leg slightly, just enough to prove she was still alive, and I pulled myself all the way back from meandering down memory lane. Somewhere, there was somebody who actually was guilty of putting the knife into my sister. That was all that mattered. Someone had actually done this thing. It was a large and untidy loose end wandering around and I needed to grab hold and snip it back into neatness. Because the thought of such a large piece of unfinished and unpunished business gave me the urge to clean the kitchen and make the bed. It was messy, plain and simple, and Dexter doesn't like disorder.

Another thought poked its nose into the room. I tried to shoo it away, but it kept coming back, wagging its tail and demanding that I pet it. And when I did, it seemed to me to be a good thought.

I closed my eyes and tried to picture the scene one more time. The door swings open —and it stays open as Deborah shows her badge and then falls. And it is still open when I get to her side ... which means that someone else could very well have been inside and looking out. And that meant that somewhere, there just might be somebody who knew what I looked like. A second person, just like Detective Coulter had suggested. It was a little insulting to admit that a drooling dolt like Coulter might be right about something, but after all, Isaac Newton didn't reject gravity just because the apple had a low IQ.

Happily for my self-esteem, however, I was one step ahead of Coulter, because I might know this hypothetical second person's name. We had been going to ask someone named Brandon Weiss about his threats to the Tourist Board, and somehow ended up with Doncevic instead. So there might well have been two of them, living together. Another small train chugged into the station: Arabelle, the cleaning woman at Joe's, had seen two gay tourists, with cameras.

And I had seen two men who fit that description at Fairchild Gardens, also with cameras, filming the crowd. A film of the crime scene arriving at the Tourist Board had started all this. It was not conclusive, but it was certainly a nice start, and I was pleased, since it proved that a certain amount of mental function might well be returning to Cyber-Dex.

As if to prove it, I had one more thought. Taking it a step further, if this hypothetical Weiss had followed the story in the media, which seemed very likely, he would know who I was, and quite possibly consider me a person worth talking to, in the strictly Dexter-ian sense of the word. Dexter-ose? Probably not —this was not a sweet thought, and it did not fill me with sociable good cheer. It meant that either I would have to defend myself successfully when he came, or let him do unto me. Either way there would be a mess, and a body, and a great deal of publicity, and all of them attached to my secret identity, Daytime Dexter, which was something I very much wanted to avoid if possible.

All that meant one simple thing: I had to find him first.

This was not a daunting task. I have spent my adult life getting very good at finding things, and people, on the computer. In fact, it was this particular talent that had gotten Debs and me into our current mess, so there was a certain symmetry to the idea that this same skill would get me out of it now.

All right then: to work. Time to heed the clarion call and strap myself into my trusty computer.

And as always seems to happen when I have reached the point where I am ready to take decisive action, everything began to happen at once.

As I took a breath in preparation for standing up, Chutsky suddenly opened his eyes and said, “Oh, hey, buddy, the doctor said—” and was interrupted by the sound of my cell phone ringing.

As I reached to answer it, a doctor stepped into the room and said, “All right” to two interns following close behind him.

And then in rapid-fire confusion I heard, from the doctor, the phone and Chutsky, “Hey, buddy, it's the doc —Cub Scouts, and Astor's friend has the mumps —the higher nerve center seems to be responding to ...”

Once again I was very pleased not to be a normal human being, since if I was I would certainly have flung my chair at the doctor and run screaming from the room. Instead, I waved at Chutsky, turned away from the doctors, and concentrated on the phone.

“I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you” I said. “Can you say it again?” I said, it would be a big help if you could come home” Rita said.

“If you're not too busy? Because Cody has his first Cub Scouts meeting tonight, and Astor's friend Lucy has the mumps? Which means she can't go over there, so one of us should stay with her at home? And I thought, you know. Unless you're stuck at work again?”

“I'm at the hospital” I said.

“Oh,” Rita said. “Well then, that's ... Is she any better?” I looked over at the small clot of doctors. They were examining a small heap of documents apparently relating to Deborah. I think we're about to find out,” I said. “The doctors are here now.”

“Well, if it's -1 guess I could just -1 mean, Astor could go along to Cub Scouts if ...”

“I'll take Cody to Scouts” I said. “Let me just talk to the doctor first.”

“If you're sure” she said. “Because if it's, you know ...”

“I know” I said, although I actually didn't. “I'll be right home.”

“All right” she said. “Love you.” I hung up and turned back to the doctors. One of the interns had peeled back Deborah's eyelid and was glaring at her eyeball with the aid of a small flashlight. The real doctor was watching him, holding the clipboard.

“Excuse me” I said, and he glanced up at me.

“Yes?” he said, with what I recognized as a fake smile. It was not nearly as good as mine.

“She's my sister” I said.

The doctor nodded. “Next of kin, all right” he said.

“Is there any sign of improvement?”

“Well,” he said. “The higher nerve functions seem to be coming back on-line, and the autonomic responses are good. And there's no fever or infection, so the prognosis seems favorable for a slight upgrade in condition within the next twenty-four hours.”

“That's good,” I said hopefully.

“However, I do have to warn you” he said, with an equally phony frown of importance and seriousness. “She lost an awful lot of blood, which can sometimes lead to permanent impairment of brain functions.”

“But it's too soon to tell?” I said.

“Yes” he said, nodding vigorously. “Exactly”

“Thank you, Doctor” I said, and stepped around him to where Chutsky was now standing, wedged into a corner, so the doctors could have full access to Debs.

“She'll be fine” he told me. “Don't let these guys scare you, she's gonna be absolutely fine. Remember, I had Doc Teidel here.” He lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “No offense to these guys, but Teidel's a hell of a lot better. He put me back together, and I was a whole lot worse than this” he said, nodding at Deborah. “And I didn't have any brain damage, either.” Considering the Pollyanna optimism he was showing, I wasn't sure about that, but it didn't seem worth arguing about. “All right” I said. “Then I'll check back with you later. I have a crisis at home.”

“Oh” he said, with a frown. “Everybody okay?”

“All fine” I said. “It's the Cub Scouts I'm worried about.” And although I meant that as a light-hearted exit line, isn't it funny how often these little jokes come true?

The Cub Scout den that Rita had found for Cody met at Golden Lakes Elementary School, a few miles from our house. We got there a little early and sat in the car for a minute, and Cody watched without expression as a handful of boys his approximate age ran into the school wearing their blue uniforms.

I let him sit and watch, thinking that a little preparation time might do us both some good.

A few cars pulled up. More boys in blue uniforms ran into the building, apparently eager to get inside. Anyone equipped with a heart would certainly have found it warming at the sight —one parent was so enamored of the scene that he stood beside his van and video-taped the stream of boys running past and inside. But Cody and I simply sat and watched.

“They're all the same” Cody said softly.

“Just on the outside” I said. “It's something you can learn to do.” He looked at me blankly.

“It's just like putting on one of those uniforms” I said. “When you look the same, people think you are. You can do this.”

“Why?” he said.

“Cody” I said, “we have talked about how important it is to look normal.” He nodded. “This will help you figure out how to act like other kids. It's part of your training.”

“Other part?” he said, with the first eagerness he had shown, and I knew he was longing for the simple clarity of the knife.

“If you do this part well, we will do the other part” I said.

“An animal?”

I looked at him, saw the cold gleam in his small blue eyes, and knew there was no going back from where he already was; the only thing I could hope for was the long and difficult shaping that had been done to me. “All right” I said. “We'll do an animal.”

He watched me for another long moment, and then he nodded back, and we climbed out of the car and followed the pack into the cafeteria.

Inside, the other boys —and one girl —ran around making lots of loud noise for the first few minutes. Cody and I sat quietly in our tiny, molded plastic chairs, at a table just barely tall enough to smack you in the kneecaps if you tried to walk around it. He watched the others at their noisy play without expression and without any attempt to join in, and that was a starting point, something I could do with him. He was far too young to be known as a brooding loner we needed to get his disguise in gear.

“Cody” I said, and he looked at me with the same lack of expression.

“Look at the other kids.” He blinked, and then swivelled his head to take in the rest of the room. He watched without comment for a minute, and then turned back to me. “Okay” he said softly.

“It's just that they're all running around and having fun, and you're not” I said.

“No” he said.

“So you will stand out”1 said. “You have to pretend you're having fun here.”

I don't know how” he said, a major speech for him.

“But you have to learn,” I said. “You have to look like all the others, or—”

“Well, well, what's wrong with you, little guy?” a voice boomed out. A large and offensively cheerful man came over and put his hands on his bare knees so he could shove his face closer to Cody's.

He was bursting out of a Cub Scout leader's uniform, and the sight of his hairy legs and large belly seemed very wrong. “You're not feeling shy, are you?” he said with a huge and terrible grin.

Cody stared back at him without blinking for a long moment, and the man's grin began to fade a little. “No” Cody said at last.

“Well, good” the man said, straightening up and moving back a step.

“He's not really shy” I said. “He's just a little tired today.” The man turned his grin on me, looked me over for a moment, then stuck out his hand. “Roger Deutsch” he said, holding out his hand. “I'm the den master. I just like to get to know everybody a little before we start.”

“Dexter Morgan” I said, shaking his hand. “This is Cody” Deutsch held his hand out to Cody. “Hi, Cody, glad to meet you.” Cody looked at the hand, then at me; I nodded at him, and he put his small hand into the meaty paw held out in front of him. “Hi” he said.

“So” Deutsch said relentlessly, “what brings you to Scouting, Cody?”

Cody glanced at me. I smiled, and he turned back to Deutsch.

“Have fun” he said, his small, deadpan face looking like he was at a funeral.

“Great” said Deutsch. “Scouting should be fun. But there's a serious part, too. You can learn about all kinds of cool things. Is there anything special you really want to learn about, Cody?”

“Animal carving” Cody said, and I had to fight not to fall out of my tiny chair.

“Cody” I said.

“No, that's okay, Mr Morgan” Deutsch said. “We do lots of crafts.

We can start with soap carving and move on to wood.” He winked at Cody. “If you're worried about him working with knives, we won't let him hurt himself.”

It didn't seem polite to say that I wasn't worried about Cody hurting himself with a blade in his hand. He already knew very well which end to hold, and he had shown a precocious talent for finding the right way to put in the point. But I was fairly certain Cody could not learn the kind of animal carving he wanted in Scouting —at least not until the Eagle Scout level. So I simply said, “We'll talk it over with Mom, and see what she says” and Deutsch nodded his head.

“Great” he said. “In the meantime, don't be shy. You just jump in here with both feet, buddy.” Cody looked at me, and then nodded at Deutsch.

“All right” Deutsch said, finally straightening up. “Well, let's get this thing started then.” He nodded at me and turned back to begin rallying the troops.

Cody shook his head and whispered something. I leaned a little closer to him. “What?” I said.

“Both feet” he said.

“It's just an expression” I told him.

He looked at me. “Stupid expression” he said.

Deutsch had moved across the room, calling for quiet, getting all the kids together, and they were now assembling in the front of the room. It was time for Cody to jump in, even if it was only with one foot at first. So I stood up and held out a hand to him. “Come on” I said. “This will work out fine.” Cody didn't look convinced, but he stood up and looked at the group of normal boys converging on Deutsch. He pulled himself as straight and tall as possible, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay” and marched over to join the group.

I watched him push carefully through the crowd to find his spot and then stand there, all alone and being as brave as he could be.

This was not going to be easy —not for him, and not for me. It would be very awkward for him to try to fit into a group that he had nothing in common with. He was a tiny wolf trying to grow lamb's wool and learn to say, “Baaa!” If he howled at the moon even once the game was over.

And for me? I could only watch, and possibly give him a few pointers in between rounds. I had gone through a similar phase myself, and I still remembered the terrible pain of it; realizing that this was all and forever something for the others and never for me that laughter, friendship, the sense of belonging, were things I would never really feel. Even worse, once I realized that I was outside all of it, I had to pretend to feel it, learn to show the mask of happiness in order to hide the deadly emptiness inside.

I remembered the dreadful clumsiness of those first years of trying; the first horrible attempts at laughter, always at the wrong time and always sounding so very inhuman. Even speaking to the others naturally, easily, about the right things and with the right manufactured feelings. Slowly, painfully, awkwardly learning, watching how the others did these things so effortlessly and feeling the added pain of being outside that graceful ease of expression. A small thing, knowing how to laugh. So very inconsequential, unless you don't know how and have to learn it from watching others, as I did.

As Cody would have to do now. He would have to go through the whole vile process of understanding that he was different and always would be, and then learning to pretend he was not. And that was just the starting point, the first easy leg of the Harry Path. After that things got even more complicated, more difficult and painful, until an entire artificial life was built and hammered into place. All fake, all the time, with only the short and far-too-rare intervals of razor-edged reality to look forward to —and I was passing all this on to Cody, that small and damaged creature who stood up there now so stiffly, watching with such intense focus for a hint of belonging that would never come.

Did I really have the right to force him into this agonizing mold?

Merely because ” had gone through this, did that truly mean he had to? Because if I was honest with myself, it had not been working terribly well for me lately. The Harry Path, a thing that had seemed so clear, clean and clever, had taken a turn into the underbrush.

Deborah, the one person in the world who should understand, doubted that it was right, that it was even real, and now she lay in the ICU while I floundered around the city slaughtering the innocent.

Was this really what I wanted for Cody?

I watched him follow along through the Pledge of Allegiance, and found no answers there. And so it was a very thoughtful Dexter who eventually tottered home after the meeting, with a wounded and uncertain Cody in tow.

Rita met us at the door, a look of worry on her face. “How did it go?” she asked Cody.

“Okay” he said, with a look on his face that said it was not okay.

“It was fine” I said, sounding a little more convincing. “And it will get much better.”

“Has to” Cody said softly.

Rita looked from Cody to me and then back again. I don't I mean, did you, did you ... Cody. Are you going to keep going?” Cody looked at me and I could almost see a small and sharp blade flashing in his eyes. “I'll go” he said to his mother.

Rita looked relieved. “That's wonderful” she said. “Because it really is -1 know that you'll, you know.”

“I'm sure he will” I said.

My cell phone began to chirp and I answered it. “Yes” I said.

“She woke up” Chutsky said. “And she spoke.”

“I'll be right there” I said.