Dexter 4 - Dexter by Design (7 page)

There are really very few better conversation stoppers than telling your brother you're considering arresting him for murder, and even my legendary wit was not equal to the task of thinking of something to say that was worth the breath spent on it. So we rode in silence, down US 1 to 95 North and then off the freeway and into the Design District, just past the turnoff for the Julia Tuttle Causeway.

The silence made the trip seem a lot longer than it really was.

I glanced once or twice at Deborah, but she was apparently absorbed in thought —perhaps considering whether to use her good cuffs on me or just the cheap extra pair in the glove compartment. Whatever the case, she stared straight ahead, turning the wheel mechanically and moving in and out of traffic without any real thought, and without any attention wasted on me.

We found the address quickly enough, which was a relief, since the strain of not looking at each other and not talking was getting to be a bit much. Deborah pulled up in front of a sort of warehouse looking thing on NE 40th Street, and pushed the gear lever into Park. She turned off the engine and still did not look at me, but paused for a moment. Then she shook her head and climbed out of the car.

I guess I was supposed to just follow along like always, Little Deb's hulking shadow. But I do have some small smidgen of pride, and really: if she was going to turn on me for a paltry few recreational killings, should I be expected to help her solve these? I mean, I don't need to think that things are fair —they never are —but this seemed to be straining at the bounds of decency.

So I sat in the car and didn't really watch as Debs stalked up to the door of the place and rang the buzzer. It was only out of the uninterested corner of my eye that I saw the door open, and I barely noticed the boring detail of Deborah showing her badge. And so I couldn't really tell from where I sat unwatching in the car if the man hit her and she fell over, or whether he simply pushed her to the ground and then disappeared inside.

But I became mildly interested again when she struggled to one knee, then fell over and did not get up again.

I heard a distinct buzzing in Alarm Central: something was very wrong and all my huffishness with Deborah evaporated like gasoline on hot pavement. I was out of the car and running up the sidewalk as fast as I could manage it.

From ten feet away I could see the handle of a knife sticking out of her side and I slowed for a moment as a shock wave rolled through me. A pool of awful wet blood was already spreading across the sidewalk and I was back in the cold box with Biney, my brother, and seeing the terrible sticky red lying thick and nasty on the floor and I could not move or even breathe. But the door fluttered open and the man who had knifed Deborah stepped out, saw me, and went to his knees reaching for the knife handle, and the rising sound of wind that whooshed in my ears turned into the roar of the Dark Passenger spreading its wings and I stepped forward quickly and kicked him hard in the side of the head.

He sprawled beside her, face in the blood, and he did not move.

I knelt beside Deborah and took her hand. Her pulse was strong, and her eyes flickered open. “Dex” she whispered.

“Hang on, sis” I said, and she closed her eyes again. I pulled her radio from its holster on her belt and called for help.

A small crowd had gathered in the few minutes it took for the ambulance to get there, but they parted willingly as the emergency medical techs jumped out and hurried to Deborah.

“Whoof” the first one said. “Let's stop the bleeding fast.” He was a stocky young guy with a Marine Corps haircut, and he knelt beside Debs and went to work. His partner, an even stockier woman of about forty, quickly got an IV bag into Deborah's arm, sliding the needle in just as I felt a hand pulling my arm from behind.

I turned. A uniformed cop was there, a middle-aged black guy with a shaved head, and he nodded at me. “You her partner?” he asked.

I pulled out my ID. “Her brother” I said. “Forensics.”

“Huh” he said, taking my credentials and looking them over.

“You guys don't usually get to the scene this fast.” He handed back my ID. “What can you tell me about that guy?” He nodded to the man who had stabbed Deborah, who was sitting up now and holding his head as another cop squatted beside him.

“He opened the door and saw her” I said. “And then he stuck a knife in her.”

“Uh-huh” the cop said. He turned away to his partner. “Cuff him, Frankie.”

I did not watch and gloat as the two cops pulled the knife wielder's arms behind him and slapped on cuffs, because they were loading Deborah into the ambulance. I stepped over to speak to the EMS guy with the short hair. “Will she be all right?” I asked.

He gave me a mechanical and unconvincing smile. “We'll see what the doctors say, okay?” he said, which did not sound as encouraging as he might have intended.

“Are you taking her to Jackson?” I asked.

He nodded. “She'll be in the ICU Trauma when you get there,” he said.

“Can I ride with you?” I asked.

“No” he said. He slammed the door shut, ran to the front seat of the ambulance, and got in. I watched as they nosed out into traffic, turned on the siren, and drove away.

I suddenly felt very lonely. It seemed far too melodramatic to bear. The last words we had spoken were not pleasant, and now they might very well prove to be our Last Words. It was a sequence of events that belonged on television, preferably on an afternoon soap opera. It did not belong in the prime time drama of Dexter's Dim Days. But there it was. Deborah was on her way to intensive care and I did not know if she would come out of it. I did not even know if she would get there alive.

I looked back at the sidewalk. It seemed like an awful lot of blood. Deborah's blood.

Happily for me, I did not have to brood too long. Detective Coulter had arrived, and he looked unhappy even for him. I watched him stand on the sidewalk for a minute and look around, before he trudged over to where I stood. He looked even more unhappy as he looked me over from head to toe with the same expression he had used on the crime scene.

“Dexter” he said, shaking his head. “The fuck you do?” For a very brief moment I actually started to deny that I'd stabbed my sister. Then I realized he couldn't possibly be accusing me, and indeed, he was merely breaking the ice before taking my statement.

“She shoulda waited for me” he said. “I'm her partner.”

“You were getting coffee” I said. “She thought it shouldn't wait.” Coulter looked down at the blood on the pavement and shook his head. “Coulda waited twenty minutes” he said. “For her partner.” He looked up at me. “It's a sacred bond.” I have no experience with the sacred, since I spend most of my time playing for the other team, so I simply said, I guess you're right” and that seemed to satisfy him enough that he settled down and just took my statement with no more than a few sour glances at the blood stain left by his sacred partner. It took a very long ten minutes before I could finally excuse myself to drive to the hospital.

the walls are painted, and on the whole they are not truly happy places. Of course, I was quite pleased that there was one close by, but I was not filled with a sense of pleasant expectation when I walked into the trauma unit. There was an air of animal resignation about the people waiting, and a sense of perpetual, bone-numbing crisis on the faces of all the doctors and nurses as they bustled back and forth, and this was only countered by the unhurried, bureaucratic, clipboard-wielding officiality of the woman who stopped me when I tried to push through and find Deborah.

“Sergeant Morgan, knife wound” I said. “They just brought her in.”

“Who are you?” she said.

Stupidly thinking it might get me past her quickly, I said, “Next of kin” and the woman actually smiled. “Good” she said. “Just the man I need to talk to.”

“Can I see her?” I said.

“No” she said. She grabbed me by the elbow and began to steer me firmly toward an office cubicle.

“Can you tell me how she's doing?” I asked.

“Have a seat right here, please” she said, propelling me toward a molded plastic chair that faced a small desk.

“But how is she?” I said, refusing to be bullied.

“We'll find out in just a minute” she said. “Just as soon as we get some of this paperwork done. Sit down, please, Mr —is it Mr Morton?”

“Morgan” I said.

She frowned. I have Morton here.”

“It's Morgan” I said. “M-o-r-g-a-n.”

“Are you sure?” she asked me, and the surreal nature of the whole hospital experience swept over me and shoved me down into the chair, as if I had been smacked by a huge wet pillow.

“Quite sure” I said faintly, slumping back as much as the wobbly little chair allowed.

“Now I'll have to change it in the computer” she said, frowning.

“Doggone it.”

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, like a stranded fish, as the woman pecked at her keyboard. It was just too much; even her laconic “Doggone it” was an offense to reason. It was Deborah's life on the line —shouldn't there be great fiery gouts of urgent profanity spewing from every single person physically able to stand and speak? Perhaps I could arrange for Hernando Meza to come in and teach a workshop on the correct linguistic approach to impending doom.

It took far longer than seemed either possible or human, but eventually I did manage to get all the proper forms filled out and persuade the woman that, as next of kin and a police employee I had every right in the world to see my sister. But of course, things being what they are in this vale of tears, I did not really get to see her.

I simply stood in a hallway and peeked through a porthole-shaped window and watched as what seemed like a very large crowd of people in lime green scrubs gathered around the table and did terrible, unimaginable things —to Deborah.

For several centuries I simply stood and stared and occasionally flinched as a bloody hand or instrument appeared in the air above my sister. The smell of chemicals, blood, sweat and fear was almost overwhelming. But finally, when I could feel the earth turning dead and airless and the sun growing old and cold, they all stepped back from the table and several of them began to push her toward the door. I stepped back and watched them roll her through the doors and down the hall, and then I grabbed at the arm of one of the senior-looking men who filed out after. It might have been a mistake: my hand touched something cold, wet and sticky, and I pulled it away to see it splotched with blood. For a moment I felt light-headed and unclean and even a little panicky, but as the surgeon turned to look at me I recovered just enough.

“How is she?” I asked him.

He looked down the hall toward where they were taking my sister, then back at me. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Her brother” I said. “Is she going to be all right?” He gave me half a not-funny smile. “It's much too soon to tell” he said. “She lost an awful lot of blood. She could be fine, or there could be complications. We just don't know yet.”

“What kind of complications?” I asked. It seemed like a very reasonable question to me, but he blew out an irritated breath and shook his head.

“Everything from infection to brain damage” he said. “We're not going to know anything for a day or two, so you're just going to have to wait until we do know something, okay?” He gave me the other half of the smile and walked away in the opposite direction from where they had taken Deborah.

I watched him go, thinking about brain damage. Then I turned and followed the gurney that had carried Deborah down the hall.

There were so many pieces of machinery around Deborah that it took me a moment before I saw her in the middle of the whirring, chirping clutter. She lay there in the bed without moving, tubes going in and out of her, her face half covered by a respirator mask and nearly as pale as the sheets. I stood and looked for a minute, not sure what I was supposed to do. I had bent all my concentration on getting in to see her, and now here I was, and I could not remember ever reading anywhere what the proper procedure was for visiting nearest and dearest in the ICU.

Was I supposed to hold her hand? It seemed likely, but I wasn't sure, and there was an IV attached to the hand nearest me; it didn't seem like a good idea to risk dislodging it.

So instead I found a chair, tucked away under one of the life support machines. I moved it as close to the bed as seemed proper, and I settled down to wait.

After only a couple of minutes there was a sound at the door and I looked up to see a thin black cop I knew slightly, Wilkins. He stuck his head in the door and said, “Hey, Dexter, right?” I nodded and held up my credentials. Wilkins nodded his head at Deborah.

“How is she?”

“Too soon to tell” I said.

“Sorry, man” he said, and shrugged. “Captain wants somebody watching, so I'll be out here.”

“Thank you” I said, and he turned away to take up his post at the door.

I tried to imagine what life would be like without Deborah. The very idea was disturbing, although I could not say why. I could not think of any huge and obvious differences, and that made me feel slightly embarrassed, so I worked at it a little harder. I would probably get to eat the coq au vin warm next time. I would not have as many bruises on my arms without her world-famous vicious arm punches. And I would not have to worry about her arresting me, either. It was all good —why was I worried?

Still, the logic was not terribly convincing. And what if she lived but suffered brain damage? That could very well affect her career in law enforcement. She might need full-time care, spoonfeeding, adult diapers —none of these things would go over well on the job. And who would do all the endless tedious drudgery of looking after her? I didn't know a great deal about medical insurance, but I knew enough to know that full-time care was not something they offered cheerfully. What if I had to take care of her? It would certainly put a large dent in my free time. But who else was there? In all the world, she had no other family. There was only Dear Dutiful Dexter; no one else to push her wheelchair and cook her pablum and tenderly wipe the corners of her mouth as she drooled. I would have to tend to her for the rest of her life, far into the sunset years, the two of us sitting and watching game shows while the rest of the world went on its merry way, killing and brutalizing each other without me.

Just before I sank under a huge wave of wet self-pity I remembered Kyle Chutsky. To call him Deborah's boyfriend was not quite accurate, since they had been living together for over a year, and that made it seem like a bit more. Besides, he was hardly a boy. He was at least ten years older than Debs, very large and beat-up, and missing his left hand and foot as the result of an encounter with the same amateur surgeon who had modified Sergeant Doakes.

To be perfectly fair to me, which I think is very important, I did not think of him merely because I wanted someone else to take care of a hypothetically brain-damaged Deborah. Rather, it occurred to me that the fact she was in the ICU was something he might want to know.

So I took my cell phone from its holster and called him. He answered almost immediately.

“Hello?”

“Kyle, this is Dexter” I said.

“Hey, buddy” he said in his artificially cheerful voice. “What's up?”

“I'm with Deborah” I said. “In the ICU at Jackson.”

“What happened?” he asked after a slight pause.

“She's been stabbed” I replied. “She lost a lot of blood.”

“I'm on my way” he announced, and hung up.

It was nice that Chutsky cared enough to come right away.

Maybe he would help me with Deborah's pablum, take turns pushing the wheelchair. It's good to have someone.

That reminded me that I had someone —or perhaps I was had.

In any case, Rita would want to know I would be late, before she cooked a pheasant souffle for me. I called her at work, told her quickly what was up, and hung up again as she was just getting started on a chorus of Oh-My-Gods.

Chutsky came into the room about fifteen minutes later, trailed by a nurse who was apparently trying to make sure he was perfectly happy with everything from the location of the room to the arrangement of IVs. “This is her,” the nurse said.

“Thanks, Gloria” Chutsky said without looking at anything but Deborah. The nurse hovered anxiously for a few more moments, and then vanished uncertainly.

Meanwhile, Chutsky moved over to the bed and took Deborah's hand —good to know I had been right about that; holding her hand was, indeed, the correct thing to do.

“What happened, buddy?” he said, staring down at Deborah.

I gave him a brief rundown, and he listened without looking at me, pausing in his hand-holding briefly to wipe a lock of hair away from Deborah's forehead. When I had finished talking he nodded absently and said, “What did the doctors say?”

“It's too soon to tell” I said.

He waved that away impatiently, using the gleaming silver hook that had replaced his left hand. “They always say that” he said. “What else?”

“There's a chance of permanent damage” I said. “Even brain damage.”

He nodded. “She lost a lot of blood” he said, not a question, but I answered anyway. “That's right,” I said.

I have a guy coming down from Bethesda” Chutsky said. “He'll be here in a couple of hours.” I couldn't think of very much to say to that. A guy? From Bethesda? Was this good news of some kind, and if so, why?

I could not come up with a single thing to distinguish Bethesda from Cleveland, except that it was in Maryland instead of Ohio.

What kind of guy would come down from there? And to what end? But I also couldn't think of any way to frame a question on the subject. For some reason, my brain was not running with its usual icy efficiency. So I just watched as Chutsky pulled another chair around to the far side of the bed, where he could sit and hold Deborah's hand. And after he got settled, he finally looked directly at me. “Dexter” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Think you could scare up some coffee? And maybe a doughnut or something?”

The question took me completely by surprise —not because it was such a bizarre notion, but because it seemed like one to me, and it really should have been as natural as breathing. It was well past my lunchtime, and I had not eaten, and I had not thought of eating.

But now, when Chutsky suggested it, the idea seemed wrong, like singing the real words to “Barnacle Bill” in church.

Still, to object would seem even stranger. So I stood up and said, “I'll see what I can do” and headed out and down the hall.

When I came back a few minutes later I had two cups of coffee and four doughnuts. I paused in the hallway, I don't know why, and looked in. Chutsky was leaning forward, eyes closed, with Deborah's hand pressed to his forehead. His lips were moving, although I could hear no sound over the clatter of the life support machinery. Was he praying? It seemed like the oddest thing yet. I suppose I really didn't know him very well, but what I did know about him did not fit with the image of a man who prayed. And in any case, it was embarrassing, something you didn't really want to see, like watching somebody clean their nostrils with a fingertip. I cleared my throat as I came over to my chair, but he didn't look up.

Aside from saying something loud and cheerful, and possibly interrupting his fit of religious fervor, there was nothing really constructive for me to do. So I sat down and started on the doughnuts. I had almost finished the first one when Chutsky finally looked up.

“Hey” he said. “What'd you get?” I passed him a coffee and two of the doughnuts. He grabbed the coffee with his right hand and passed his hook through the holes in the doughnuts. “Thanks,” he said. He held the coffee between his knees and flipped the lid off with a finger, dangling the doughnuts from his hook and taking a bite out of one of them. “Mmp” he said.

“Didn't get any lunch. I was waiting to hear from Deborah, and I was going to maybe come eat with you guys. But...” he said, and trailed off, taking another bite of the doughnut.

He ate his doughnuts in silence, except for the occasional slurp of coffee, and I took advantage of the time to finish mine. When we were both done we simply sat and stared at Deborah as if she was our favorite TV show. Now and again one of the machines would make some sort of odd noise and we would both glance up at it. But nothing actually changed. Deborah continued to lay with her eyes closed, breathing slowly and raggedly and with the Darth Vader sound of the respirator as an accompaniment.

I sat for at least an hour, and my thoughts didn't suddenly turn bright and sunny. As far as I could tell, neither did Chutsky's.

He did not burst into tears, but he looked tired and a little grey, worse than I had ever seen him except for when I rescued him from the man who cut off his hand and foot. And I suppose I did not look a great deal better, although it was not the thing I worried about the most, now or at any other time. In truth, I did not spend a great deal of my time worrying about anything —planning, yes, making sure that things went just right on my Special Nights Out. But worrying truly seemed to be an emotional activity rather than a rational one, and until now it had never furrowed my forehead.

But now? Dexter worried; it was a surprisingly easy pastime to pick up. I got the hang of it right away, and it was all I could do to keep from chewing my fingernails.

Of course she would be all right. Wouldn't she? “Too soon to tell” began to seem more ominous. Could I even trust that statement?

Wasn't there a protocol, a standard medical procedure for informing next of kin that their loved ones were either dying or about to become vegetables? Start out by warning them that all may not be right “too soon to tell” —and then gradually break it to them that all is forever unwell.

But wasn't there some law somewhere that required doctors to tell the truth about these things? Or was that just auto mechanics?

Was there such a thing as truth, medically speaking? I had no idea this was a new world for me, and I didn't like it, but whatever else might be true, it really was too soon to tell, and I would just have to wait, and shockingly, I was not nearly as good at that as I had expected.

When my stomach began to growl again I decided it must be evening, but a glance at my watch told me that it was still only a few minutes short of four o'clock.

Twenty minutes later Chutsky's Guy From Bethesda arrived.

I hadn't really known what to expect, but it was nothing like what I got. The guy was about five foot six, bald and pot-bellied, with thick gold-framed glasses, and he came in with two of the doctors who had worked on Deborah. They followed him like high school freshmen trailing the prom queen, eager to point out things that would make him happy. Chutsky leapt to his feet when the guy came in.

“Doctor Teidel!” he said.

Teidel nodded at Chutsky and said, “Out” with a head motion that included me.

Chustky nodded and grabbed my arm, and as he pulled me out of the room Teidel and his two satellites were already pulling back the sheet to examine Deborah.

“The guy is the best” Chutsky said, and although he still didn't say the best what, I was now assuming it was something medical.

“What is he going to do?” I asked, and Chutsky shrugged.

“Whatever it takes” he said. “Come on, let's get something to eat. We don't want to see this.” That did not sound terribly reassuring, but Chutsky obviously felt better about things with Teidel in charge, so I followed along to a small and crowded cafe on the ground floor of the parking garage. We wedged ourselves in at a small table in the corner and ate indifferent sandwiches and, although I didn't think to ask him, Chutsky told me a little about the doctor from Bethesda.

“Guy's amazing” he said. “Ten years ago? He put me back together. I was in a lot worse shape than Deborah, believe me, and he got all the pieces back in the right place and in working order.”

“Which is almost as important” I said, and Chutsky nodded as if he was listening to me.

“Honest to God” he said, “Teidel is the best there is. You saw how those other doctors were treating him?”

“Like they wanted to wash his feet and peel him grapes” I said.

Chutsky gave one syllable of polite laugh, “Huh” and an equally brief smile. “She's gonna be okay now” he said. “Just fine.” But whether he was trying to convince me or himself, I couldn't say.