The Darkness to Come (11 page)

Tapping his lip with the knife, Dexter considered that. “What did she say?”

“She said she was doing fine.” Betty got teary-eyed, sniffled. “She said that she loved me . . . and missed me something terrible.”

“I’m touched. But I’m not sure I believe you have no clue whatsoever about where she’s gone, or how to get in touch with her. No, I don’t believe that at all.”

Betty blinked away tears. “But I’ve told you the truth.”

“I know my wife. She adores you, takes care of you. She would never sever her ties with you and call only once a year.”

Dexter surveyed the living room, the hallway, and the kitchen beyond.

“There has to be something in here that she’s sent you,” he said.

“There’s nothing, I promise you.” But he detected a trace of worry in her voice.

“I’ll check for myself.”

He began his search in the most obvious of places: underneath the Christmas tree. A half-dozen brightly wrapped gifts were piled beneath the tree’s ornament-laden boughs. Each present was adorned with a bow and a tag that identified the giver, and the recipient.

He looked through them, tossing each item aside after he checked the tag. All of the gifts were from Betty, to people whose names he’d never heard.

“Those presents are going to children at my church,” Betty said.

Dexter cursed. She was right. None of the gifts came from, or were addressed to, his wife.

“I told you, she doesn’t send me gifts, or anything else,” Betty said. “It would be much too risky for her.”

“Where’s your little black book?”

“Pardon?”

“Your address book, you old bitch. It’s a black, leather-bound book. I’ve seen it here before.”

Betty recoiled at his sharp words, but she said, “It’s in the study. Look on the desk, near the telephone.”

In the study, Dexter found the book just where she’d said it would be. It lay near a cordless phone and a stack of envelopes.

Dexter flipped through the address book. Underneath his wife’s name, the last address listed was of their Chicago condo, and he knew that she no longer lived there. The phone number was their old number, too.

I don’t believe this. The old bitch is hiding something from me.

He noticed the pile of envelopes beside the phone. He riffled through them. Most of them were recent utility bills and bank statements, but one of them had been sent from Thad Washington, in St. Louis, Missouri. It had a postmark of December 11, one week ago.

The envelope had already been sliced open. He looked inside, and found a personal check written from Thad to Betty, in the amount of one thousand dollars.

Dexter scrutinized the check like a bank teller suspicious of fraud. He returned to the living room and waved the check in Betty’s face.

“What’s this?” he asked.

She frowned. “What is it? I can’t read without my glasses. Since you’re so smart you surely remember that about me.”

In her haughty tone, he sensed an undercurrent of anxiety.

“It’s a check from Thad Washington to you, for one grand,” he said. “I remember Thad. He was a co-worker of my wife’s at a salon in Chicago—some faggot hair stylist. Why is he sending money to you?”

Betty’s gaze slipped away from him. “He’s . . . he’s paying me back for a . . . for a loan I once gave him.”

He slapped her—a swift, backhand pimp slap. Her head rocked sideways, and her eyes rolled.

“I’ve wanted to do that to you from the first day I met you,” he said. “That stupid lie you just told me gave me a good reason.”

Betty’s lips worked, but no words came out. It pleased him—he’d quite literally knocked the dumb old bitch down a few pegs.

The telephone rang.

“Saved by the bell,” Dexter said. He moved to the phone on the end table. The Caller ID display stated:
Unknown Number
.

Intuition guided Dexter’s hand to the handset.

“Hello?” he said.

The caller did not reply. The silence confirmed Dexter’s gut instinct.

It was his wife.

Her timing was as impeccable as ever.

Chapter 14

Hearing Dexter answer the phone at Aunt Betty’s drove such a deep chill into Rachel that she was momentarily paralyzed, as if she’d been hit with a blast of Siberian wind.

“Hello, Joy,” Dexter said, using her old first name. “Guess who?”

Rachel couldn’t speak. She could barely breathe, too; her breath came out of her dry lips in a low whistle.
Dexter was at her aunt’s house.
He would only be there to hurt her, and the phantom pain that had fanned across her head a few minutes ago might be only a hint of what he had done, or might do, to her Aunt Betty.

“I’ve been having a nice chat with Aunt Betty,” he said. “We’ve been catching up on family matters.”

Rachel’s knuckles, curled around the handset, throbbed. She could imagine Dexter at her aunt’s house with such clarity that she wondered if it were a vision of the actual scene, though her gift didn’t normally work in that manner.

He stands in the living room, tall and cruel, towering over Aunt Betty. He’s probably armed with a knife of some kind, as he’d always had a fascination with deadly blades, from Japanese samurai swords to daggers . . .

“Your aunt won’t tell me where you’ve gone,” he said. “I honestly don’t think she knows where you are. Smart of you, to keep your location secret from her.”

Rachel choked back a cry. But tears had begun to roll down her cheeks, forming a puddle on the desk.

Please, God, don’t let him hurt Aunt Betty. Please.

“Want to talk to her?” Dexter asked. “Here she is.”

After a moment of fumbling, Rachel heard her aunt on the line, breathing hard. “Muffin.”

At her aunt’s mention of her childhood nickname, Rachel nearly lost it. She clutched a fistful of her hair. A wall of tears had fallen over her eyes.

“Aunt Betty . . .” Rachel sobbed.

“Wherever you are, run away, Muffin,” Aunt Betty said, in a tight voice. “I love you . . . always . . .”

“I love you, always, too, oh, Jesus, please . . .”

“Run!”

“Aunt Betty, I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry . . .”

“You’re going to be very sorry.” Dexter had come back on the line; in the background, Aunt Betty was weeping.

Rachel savagely wiped away her tears. “Leave her alone, you bastard. This has nothing to do with her.”

 “I disagree. Remember how much Aunt Betty despised me? Remember how she’d meddle in our business?”

“Dexter, please. I’m begging you. Please don’t hurt her.”

“Check this out, sweetheart.”

Suddenly, a thin wail pierced Rachel’s ear.
Aunt Betty . . .

Rachel rocketed out of her chair and shrieked at Dexter as if they were in the same room. “Stop it!”

Her aunt’s scream warbled into dry, wracking sobs.

Rachel didn’t want to know what Dexter had done to her. Didn’t want to imagine. Although in her mind’s eye, she could envision it—and it was unspeakable.

“I’m going to find you,” Dexter said. “How’s that song go? Ain’t no mountain high enough . . . ain’t no valley low enough . . . to keep me from tracking your ass down, baby.”

Rachel shouted at him again. But he hung up.

She heard only the indifferent dial tone . . . and her aunt’s screams echoing in her ears.

Chapter 15

It had been a thrill to hear his lovely wife’s voice again. It had been four years since he’d spoken to her, and her fear of him was as profound as ever. By the time he ended their call, he had a huge erection.

Aroused, he turned his attention to Aunt Betty, and finished his business with her. Perhaps due to his excitement, he got a bit carried away, actually. But the smug, meddling old bitch deserved everything he gave her.

He exited the house via the back door. His wife would phone the police and give them his name and description, and he saw no purpose in making himself an easy target.

Snowflakes continued to spiral out of the sky. He walked through tall drifts of snow in the backyard, climbed the chain-link fence, and dropped into the narrow alley. Ahead, the alley emptied into a street that intersected the one on which Aunt Betty lived.

He thrust his hands into his pockets and crossed from the alley to the street, whistling to himself like a man out for a lunch time stroll. He made a left at the corner. His Chevy sat about a hundred yards ahead.

But the mail man was coming his way; a tall, ruddy-faced white guy walking nimbly across the snowy sidewalk.

Dexter calculated the high risk of his situation: a terrible crime has been committed in a quiet community. Someone phones the cops and gives the perpetrator’s name and a description. The cops jump into action, and in their frantic search for leads, talk to anyone who might have been in the neighborhood at the time the crime was committed, in the hopes of getting an eyewitness . . . such as a mail carrier out on his daily rounds.

Dexter wasn’t worried that the Chevy would be traced to him, since he’d purchased it without supplying ID. But it wouldn’t do if some peckerwood mailman saw him getting in the car.

Keep walking
.
Act as if I have every right to be in this neighborhood, act as if nothing at all is wrong. Act as if I’m invisible.

When the thought slipped through his mind, the phenomenon he’d experienced that morning and yesterday started anew: the darting movement in the corner of his eye. The serpent-hissing noises.

Dexter spun, found nothing behind him.
Dammit, what is that?

The mail carrier was drawing near. Crunching through snow. Whistling.

The dancing movements in his peripheral vision faded, and the reptilian hissing ceased, too. Warmth settled over Dexter, as though he were wrapped in a wool blanket.

What’s happening to me?

Although it was a curious sensation, he felt a surprising peace. Whatever this was, it was a good thing. It felt too pleasurable to be harmful to him.

The mail man was at the house ahead. High-stepping through snow.

Dexter nodded and waved, like a friendly neighbor.

The mail carrier did not return the greeting. He didn’t appear to see Dexter.

Well, you know most black folk are invisible to white people, anyway.

But then the mail man strode down the sidewalk on which Dexter stood, and walked toward him and then swept right past him, looking in Dexter’s direction but never registering Dexter’s presence, as if Dexter were merely a tree growing along the edge of the sidewalk.

Dexter stared after the guy.

He had the feeling that something significant had occurred, but he couldn’t grasp what it might be. Or perhaps he did understand, and was unwilling to accept it, for it fell outside the boundaries of what he believed was possible.

The mail carrier had walked past as if Dexter was invisible.

Chapter 16

Rachel called the Zion Police Department and, without giving her name, informed them that Dexter Bates had broken into her aunt’s house and committed a violent crime. She supplied a detailed physical description of Dexter. She even gave them his inmate number, reading it from the record she’d printed off the Illinois Department of Corrections Web site.

The police dispatcher promised to send officers to her aunt’s house immediately. Rachel hung up and rocked back in her office chair, shaking.

Dexter didn’t hurt Aunt Betty. He couldn’t have.

But she could still hear her aunt’s raw scream. Worse, she had an awful knot in the pit of her stomach—a pulsating ball of tangled muscle that she felt only when someone close to her had died. When her parents had passed when she was a teenager, she’d experienced identical sickening premonitions and feelings.

She can’t be dead.

But the Dexter she remembered was fully capable of murder. She knew that better than anyone.

His voice returned to her:
I’m going to find you.

Before calling her aunt, she had punched in the code to hide her phone number from Caller ID, but it gave her no comfort. Dexter would bring to bear the same tunnel-vision focus to finding her that he brought to everything else in his life. And he was intelligent, frighteningly so, with a damn near photographic memory, the cunning of a predator—and no conscience whatsoever.

Sooner or later, he was going to discover where she lived. It was as inevitable as nightfall.

The thought of what he’d possibly done to her aunt . . . the fear of what he would do to her, and then, innocent Joshua, was too much for her to withstand. She bolted out of the chair, raced to the bathroom, flipped up the toilet lid, and vomited so violently into the bowl it felt as though her stomach lining had torn loose.

None of the other stylists came to check on her. The music playing out front, and the chattering women hard at work on hair, would have drowned out any noises from back there.

She was grateful for the privacy. She couldn’t share her predicament with anyone. She didn’t dare to put anyone else at risk.

At the sink, she washed her face with cold water, rinsed out her mouth.

The cell phone she wore on her hip rang. Joshua’s cell number appeared.

She remembered her two o’clock doctor’s appointment. He was probably calling her to confirm that she was meeting him.

She let the call go to voice mail. A wave of sadness washed over her that almost drove her to her knees again.

I’m so sorry,Josh,
she thought.

She touched her abdomen and imagined the as-yet-unformed heart of their child, beating softly inside of her.

I’m sorry, but I’ve got to protect our baby.

It was time for her contingency plan.

Chapter 17

Parked outside the doctor’s office, Joshua attempted again to reach Rachel on her cell. It was a quarter past two, and not only was she late for her appointment, she wasn’t answering her phone, either.