Dexter in the Dark (18 page)

“That’s exactly right,” I said. “Because people survive by recognizing things that look dangerous. And fish get caught. We don’t want to.” They looked at me solemnly, then back at the fish. “So what else have we learned today?” I asked after a moment.

“Don’t get caught,” Astor said.

I sighed. At least it was a start, but there was much work yet to do. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s see some of the other exhibits.”

I was not really very familiar with the museum, perhaps because until recently I’d had no children to drag in there. So I was definitely improvising, looking for things that might get them started toward thinking and learning the right things. The piranha had been a stroke of luck, I admit—they had simply popped into view and my giant brain had supplied the correct lesson. Finding the next piece of happy coincidence was not as easy, and it was half an hour of trudging grimly through the murderous crowd of kids and their vicious parents before we came to the lion exhibit.

Once again, the ferocious appearance and reputation proved irresistible to Cody and Astor, and they came to a halt in front of the exhibit. It was a stuffed lion, of course, what I think they call a diorama, but it held their attention. The male lion stood proudly over the body of a gazelle, mouth wide and fangs gleaming. Beside him were two females and a cub. There was a two-page explanation that went with the exhibit, and about halfway down the second page I found what I needed.

“Well now,” I said brightly. “Aren’t we glad we’re not lions?”

“No,” said Cody.

“It says here,” I said, “that when a male lion takes over a lion family—”

“It’s called a
pride
, Dexter,” Astor said. “It was in
Lion King
.”

“All right,” I said. “When a new daddy lion takes over a pride, he kills all the cubs.”

“That’s horrible,” Astor said.

I smiled to show her my sharp teeth. “No, it’s perfectly natural,” I said. “To protect his own and make sure that it’s
his
cubs that rule the roost. Lots of predators do that.”

“What does that have to do with us?” Astor said. “You’re not going to kill us when you marry Mom, are you?”

“Of course not,” I said. “You are my cubs now.”

“Then so what?” she said.

I opened my mouth to explain to her and then felt all the air rush out of me. My mouth hung open but I couldn’t speak, because my brain was whirling with a thought so far-fetched that I didn’t even bother to deny it.
Lots of predators do that
, I heard myself say.
To protect his own
, I had said.

Whatever made me a predator, its home was in the Dark Passenger. And now something had scared away the Passenger. Was it possible that, that—

That what? A new daddy Passenger was threatening
my
Passenger? I had run into many people in my life who had the shadow of something similar to mine hung over them, and nothing had ever happened with them except mutual recognition and a bit of inaudible snarling. This was too stupid even to think about—Passengers didn’t have daddies.

Did they?

“Dexter,” Astor said. “You’re scaring us.”

I admit that I was scaring me, too. The thought that the Passenger could have a parent stalking it with lethal intentions was appallingly stupid—but then, after all, where had the Passenger really come from? I was reasonably sure that it was more than a psychotic figment of my disordered brain. I was not schizophrenic—both of us were sure of that. The fact that it was now gone proved that it had an independent existence.

And this meant that the Passenger had come from somewhere. It had existed before me. It had a source, whether you called it a parent or anything else.

“Earth to Dexter,” Astor said, and I realized that I still stood in front of them frozen in my unlikely, foolish openmouthed pose like a pedantic zombie.

“Yes,” I said stupidly, “I was just thinking.”

“Did it hurt a lot?” she said.

I closed my mouth and looked at her. She was facing me with her look of ten-year-old disgust at how dumb grown-ups can be, and this time I agreed with her. I had always taken the Passenger for granted, so much so that I had never really wondered where it had come from, or how it had come to be. I had been smug, fatuously content to share space with it, simply glad to be me and not some other, emptier mortal, and now, when a little self-knowledge might have saved the day, I was struck dumb. Why had I never thought of any of these things before? And why did I have to choose now as the first time, in the presence of a sarcastic child? I had to devote some time and thought to this—but of course, this was neither the time nor the place.

“Sorry,” I said. “Let’s go see the planetarium.”

“But you were going to tell us why lions are important,” she said.

In truth, I could no longer remember why lions were important. But happily for my image, my cell phone began to chatter before I could admit it. “Just a minute,” I said, and I pulled the phone from its holster. I glanced at it and saw that it was Deborah. And after all, family is family, so I answered.

“They found the heads,” she said.

It took me a moment to figure out what she meant, but Deborah was hissing in my ear and I realized some sort of response was called for. “The heads? From the two bodies over at the university?” I said.

Deborah made an exasperated hissing noise and said, “Jesus, Dex, there aren’t that many missing heads in town.”

“Well, there’s city hall,” I said.

“Get your ass over here, Dexter. I need you.”

“But Deborah, it’s Saturday, and I’m in the middle of—”

“Now,” she said, and hung up.

I looked at Cody and Astor and pondered my quandary. If I took them home it would be at least an hour before I got back to Debs, and in addition we would lose our precious Saturday quality time together. On the other hand, even I knew that taking children to a homicide scene might be considered a little bit eccentric.

But it would also be educational. They needed to be impressed with just how thorough the police are when dead bodies turn up, and this was as good an opportunity as any. On balance, even taking into consideration that my dear sister might have a semi-ballistic reaction, I decided it would be best simply to pile into the car and take them to their first investigation.

“All right,” I said to them as I reholstered my phone. “We have to go now.”

“Where?” Cody said.

“To help my sister,” I said. “Will you remember what we learned today?”

“Yes, but this is just a
museum
,” Astor said. “It’s not what we want to learn.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “And you have to trust me, and do it my way, or I’m not going to teach you.” I leaned down to where I could look them both in the eyes. “Not doodly-squat,” I said.

Astor frowned. “Dex-terrrr,” she said.

“I mean it. It has to be my way.”

Once again she and Cody locked glances. After a moment he nodded, and she turned back to me. “All right,” she said. “We promise.”

“We’ll wait,” Cody said.

“We understand,” Astor said. “When can we start the cool stuff?”

“When I say,” I said. “Anyway, right now we have to go.”

She switched immediately back to snippy ten-year-old. “Now where do we have to go?”

“I have to go to work,” I said. “So I’m taking you with me.”

“To see a
body
?” she asked hopefully.

I shook my head. “Just the head,” I said.

She looked at Cody and shook her head. “Mom won’t like it.”

“You can wait in the car if you want to,” I said.

“Let’s go,” said Cody, his longest speech all day.

We went.

SEVENTEEN

D
EBORAH WAS WAITING AT A MODEST
$2
MILLION HOUSE
on a private cul-de-sac in Coconut Grove. The street was sealed off from just inside the guard booth to the house itself, about halfway down on the left, and a crowd of indignant residents stood around on their carefully manicured lawns and walkways, fuming at the swarm of low-rent social undesirables from the police department who had invaded their little paradise. Deborah was in the street instructing a videographer in what to shoot and from what angles. I hurried over to join her, with Cody and Astor trailing along right behind.

“What the hell is that?” Deborah demanded, glaring from the kids to me.

“They are known as children,” I told her. “They are often a byproduct of marriage, which may be why you are unfamiliar with them.”

“Are you off your fucking nut bringing them here?” she snapped.

“You’re not supposed to say that word,” Astor told Deborah with a glare. “You owe me fifty cents for saying it.”

Deborah opened her mouth, turned bright red, and closed it again. “You gotta get them outta here,” she finally said. “They shouldn’t see this.”

“We
want
to see it,” Astor said.

“Hush,” I told them. “Both of you.”

“Jesus Christ, Dexter,” Deborah said.

“You told me to come right away,” I said. “I came.”

“I can’t play nursemaid to a couple of kids,” Deborah said.

“You don’t have to,” I said. “They’ll be fine.”

Deborah stared at the two of them; they stared back. Nobody blinked, and for a moment I thought my dear sister would chew off her lower lip. Then she shook herself. “Screw it,” she said. “I don’t have time for a hassle. You two wait over there.” She pointed to her car, which was parked across the street, and grabbed me by the arm. She dragged me toward the house where all the activity was humming. “Lookit,” she said, and pointed at the front of the house.

On the phone, Deborah had told me they found the heads, but in truth it would have taken a major effort to miss them. In front of the house, the short driveway curled through a pair of coral-rock gateposts before puddling into a small courtyard with a fountain in the middle. On top of each gatepost was an ornate lamp. Chalked on the driveway between the posts was something that looked like the letters
MLK
, except that it was in a strange script that I did not recognize. And to make sure that no one spent too long puzzling out the message, on top of each gatepost—

Well. Although I had to admit the display had a certain primitive vigor and an undeniable dramatic impact, it was really far too crude for my taste. Even though the heads apparently had been carefully cleaned, the eyelids were gone and the mouths had been forced into a strange smile by the heat, and it was not pleasant. Certainly no one on-site asked my opinion, but I have always felt that there should be no leftovers. It’s untidy, and it shows a lack of a real workmanlike spirit. And for these heads to be left so conspicuously—this was mere showing off, and demonstrated an unrefined approach to the problem. Still, there’s no accounting for taste. I’m always willing to admit that my technique is not the only way. And as always in aesthetic matters, I waited for some small sibilant whisper of agreement from the Dark Passenger—but of course, there was nothing.

Not a murmur, not a twitch of the wing, not a peep. My compass was gone, leaving me in the very unsettling position of needing to hold my own hand.

Of course, I was not completely alone. There was Deborah beside me, and I became aware that as I was pondering the matter of my shadow companion’s disappearance, she was speaking to me.

“They were at the funeral this morning,” she said. “Came back and this was waiting for them.”

“Who are they?” I asked, nodding at the house.

Deborah jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow. It hurt. “The family, asshole. The Ortega family. What did I just say?”

“So this happened in daylight?” For some reason, that made it seem a little more disturbing.

“Most of the neighbors were at the funeral, too,” she said. “But we’re still looking for somebody who might have seen something.” She shrugged. “We might get lucky. Who knows.”

I did not know, but for some reason I did not think that anything connected to this would bring us luck. “I guess this creates a little doubt about Halpern’s guilt,” I said.

“It damned well does not,” she said. “That asshole is guilty.”

“Ah,” I said. “So you think that somebody else found the heads, and, uh…”

“Fucking hell, I don’t know,” she said. “Somebody must be working with him.”

I just shook my head. That didn’t make any sense at all, and we both knew it. Somebody capable of conceiving and performing the elaborate ritual of the two murders would almost have to do it alone. Such acts were so highly personal, each small step the acting out of some unique inner need, that the idea of two people sharing the same vision was almost pure nonsense. In a weird way, the ceremonial display of the heads fit in with the way the bodies had been left—two pieces of the same ritual.

“That doesn’t seem right,” I said.

“Well then, what does?”

I looked at the heads, perched so carefully atop the lamps. They had of course been burned in the fire that had toasted the bodies, and there were no traces of blood visible. The necks appeared to have been cut very neatly. Other than that, I had no keen insight into anything at all—and yet there was Deborah, staring at me expectantly. It’s difficult to have a reputation for being able to see into the still heart of the mystery when all that notoriety rests on the shadowy guidance of an interior voice that was, at the moment, somewhere else altogether. I felt like a ventriloquist’s dummy, suddenly called upon to perform the whole act alone.