Dexter 3 - Dexter in the Dark (10 page)

I AM NOT REALLY PARANOID. I DON'T BELIEVE THAT I AM
surrounded by mysterious enemies who seek to trap me, torture me, kill me. Of
course, I know very well that if I allow my disguise to slip and reveal me for
what I am, then this entire society will join together in calling for my slow
and painful death, but this is not paranoia-this is a calm, clearheaded view of
consensus reality, and I am not frightened by it. I simply try to be careful so
it doesn't happen.

But a very large piece of my carefulness had always been listening to
the subtle whisperings of the Dark Passenger, and it was still being strangely
shy about sharing its thoughts. And so I faced a new and unsettling inner
silence, and that made me very edgy, sending out a little ripple of uneasiness.
It had started with that feeling of being watched, even stalked, at the kilns.
And then, as we drove back to headquarters, I could not shake the idea that a
car seemed to be following us. Was it really? Did it have sinister intent? And
if so, was it toward me or Deborah, or was it just random Miami driver
spookiness?

I watched the car, a white Toyota Avalon, in the side
mirror. It stayed with us all the way until Deborah turned into the parking
lot, and then it simply drove by without slowing or the driver appearing to
stare,

but I could not lose my ridiculous notion that it had indeed been
following us. Still, I could not be sure unless the Passenger told me, which it
did not-it merely gave a sort of sibilant throat-clearing, and so it seemed
beyond stupid for me to say anything to Deborah about it.

And then later, when I came out of the building to my
own car to go home for the night, I had the same feeling once again, that
someone or something was watching-but it was a feeling. Not a warning, not an
interior whisper from the shadows, not a get-ready flutter of invisible black
wings-a feeling. And that made me nervous. When the Passenger speaks, I listen.
I act. But it was not speaking now, merely squirming, and I had no idea what to
do given that message. So in the absence of any more definite idea, I kept my
eyes on my rearview mirror as I headed south for home.

Was this what it was like to be human? To walk through life with the
perpetual feeling that you were meat on the hoof, stumbling down the game trail
with tigers sniffing at your heels? If so, it would certainly go a long way
toward explaining human behavior. As a predator myself, I knew very well the
powerful feeling of strolling in disguise through the herds of potential prey,
knowing that I could at any moment cut one of them from the herd. But without
any word from the Passenger I did not merely blend in; I was actually part of
the herd, vulnerable. I was prey, and I did not like it. It made me a great
deal more watchful.

And when I came down off the expressway, my watching
revealed a white Toyota Avalon following me.

Of course there are lots of white Toyota Avalons in
the world. After all, the Japanese lost the war and that gives them the right
to dominate our car market. And certainly many of these Avalons could
reasonably be heading for home along the same crowded route I took. Logically
speaking, there are only so many directions in which to go, and it made perfect
sense for a white Avalon to go in any one of them. And it was not logical to
assume that anyone would want to follow me. What had I done? I mean, that
anybody could prove?

And so it was perfectly illogical of me to feel that I was being
followed, which does not explain why I made a sudden right turn off U.S. 1 and
down a side street.

It also does not explain why the white Avalon
followed.

The car kept well back, as any predator would do to avoid spooking its
chosen prey-or as any normal person might do if they just happened to take the
same turn by coincidence. And so with the same uncharacteristic lack of logic,
I zigged again, this time to the left, down a small residential street.

A moment later the other car followed.

As mentioned, Dashing Dexter does not know the meaning of fear. That
would have to mean that the roaring thump of my heart, the parching of my
mouth, and the sweat pouring out of my hands was no more than massive
uneasiness.

I did not enjoy the feeling. I was no longer the
Knight of the Knife. My blade and my armor were in some subbasement of the
castle, and I was on the field of battle without them, a suddenly soft and
tasty victim, and for no reason I could name I was sure that something had my
scent in its ravening nostrils.

I turned right again-and noticed only as I went by it
the sign that said NO OUTLET.

I had turned down a
cul-de-sac. I was trapped.

For some reason, I slowed and waited for the other car
to follow me. I suppose I just wanted to be sure that the white Avalon was
really there. It was. I continued to the end of the street, where the road
widened into a small circle for turning around. There were no cars in the
driveway of the house at the top of the circle. I pulled in and stopped my
engine, waiting, amazed by the crashing of my heart and my inability to do anything
more than sit and wait for the inevitable teeth and claws of whatever was
chasing me.

The white car came closer. It slowed as it reached the
circle, slowed as it approached me…

And it went past me, around the circle, back up the street,
and into the Miami sunset.

I watched it go, and as its taillights disappeared
around the corner I suddenly remembered how to breathe. I took advantage of
this rediscovered knowledge, and it felt very good. Once I had restored my
oxygen content and settled back into being me, I began to feel like a very
stupid me. What, after all, had really happened? A car had appeared to follow
me. Then it had gone away. There were a million reasons why it might have taken
the same route as I had, most of them summed up by the one word: coincidence.
And then, as poor Dithering Dexter sat sweating in his seat, what had the big
bad car done? It had gone past. It had not paused to stare, snarl, or throw a
hand grenade. It had just gone by and left me in a puddle of my own absurd
fear.

There was a knock on my window and I bumped my head on
the ceiling of the car.

I turned to look. A middle-aged man with a mustache
and bad acne scars was bent over, looking in at me. I had not noticed him until
now, further proof that I was alone and unprotected.

I rolled down the window. “Can I help you with
something?” the man said.

“No, thank you,” I told him, somewhat puzzled as to what help
he thought he could offer. But he did not keep me guessing.

“You're in my driveway,” he said.

“Oh,” I said, and it occurred to me that I probably was and
some explanation was called for. “I was looking for Vinny,” I said.
Not brilliant, but serviceable under the circumstances.

“You got the wrong place,” the man said with
a certain mean triumph that almost cheered me up again.

“Sorry,” I said. I rolled up the window and
backed out of the driveway, and the man stood and watched me go, presumably to
be sure that I did not suddenly leap out and attack him with a machete. In just
a few moments I was back in the bloodthirsty chaos of U.S. 1. And as the
routine violence of the traffic closed around me like a warm blanket, I felt
myself slowly sinking back into myself. Home again, behind the crumbling walls
of Castle Dexter, vacant basement and all.

I had never felt so stupid-which is to say, I felt as close to being a
real human being as it was possible for me to feel. What on earth had I been
thinking? I had not, in truth, been thinking at all, merely reacting to a
bizarre twitch of panic. It was all too ridiculous, too patently human and
laughable, if only I had been a real human who could really laugh. Ah, well. At
least I was really ridiculous.

I drove the last few miles
thinking of insulting things to call myself for such a timid overreaction, and
by the time I pulled into the driveway at Rita's house I was thoroughly soaked
in my own abuse, which made me feel much better. I got out of my car with
something very close to a real smile on my face, generated by my joy in the
true depth of Dexter Dunderhead. And as I took one step away from the car, half
turning

to head for the front door, a car drove slowly by.

A white Avalon, of course.

If there is such a thing in the world as justice, then this was surely
one of the moments it had arranged just for me. Because many times I had
enjoyed the sight of a person standing with their mouth hanging open,
completely incapacitated by surprise and fear, and now here was Dexter in the
same stupid pose. Frozen in place, unable to move even to wipe away my own
drool, I watched the car drive slowly past, and the only thought I could muster
was that I must look very, very stupid.

Naturally, I would have looked a great deal stupider if whoever was in
the white car did anything other than drive past slowly, but happily for the
many people who know and love me-at least two, including myself-the car went by
without pausing. For a moment I thought I could see a face looking at me from
the driver's seat. And then he accelerated, turning slightly away into the
middle of the street so that the light gleamed for an instant off the silver
bull's head Toyota emblem, and the car was gone.

And I could think of nothing at all to do but eventually close my
mouth, scratch my head, and stumble into the house.

image

There was a soft but very deep and powerful drumbeat,
and gladness surged up, born from relief and anticipation of what was to come.
And then the horns sounded, and it was very close now, only a matter of moments
before it came and then everything would begin and happen again at last, and as
the gladness rose into a melody that climbed until it seemed to come from
everywhere, I felt my feet taking me to where the voices promised bliss,
filling everything with that joy that was on the way, that overwhelming
fulfillment that would lift us into ecstasy-

And I woke up with my heart pounding and a sense of
relief that was certainly not justified and that I did not understand at all.
Because it was not merely the relief of a sip of water when you are thirsty or
resting when you are tired, although it was those things, too.

But-far beyond puzzling, deep into disturbing-it was also the relief
that comes after one of my playdates with the wicked; the relief that says you have
fulfilled the deep longings of your innermost self and now you may relax and be
content for a while.

And this could not be. It was impossible for me to feel that most
private and personal of feelings while lying in bed asleep.

I looked at the clock beside the bed: five minutes
past midnight, not a time for Dexter to be up and about, not on a night when he
had planned only to sleep.

On the other side of the bed Rita snored softly, twitching slightly
like a dog who dreamed of chasing a rabbit.

And on my side of the bed,
one terribly confused Dexter. Something had come into my dreamless night and
made waves across the tranquil sea of my soulless sleep. I did not know what
that something was, but it had made me very glad for no reason I could name, and
I did not like that at all. My moonlight hobby made me glad in my own
emotionless way and that was all. Nothing else had ever been allowed into that
corner of the dark subbasement of Dexter. That was the way I preferred it to
be. I had my own small,

well-guarded space inside, marked off and locked down, where I felt my
own particular joy-on those nights only and at no other time. Nothing else made
sense for me.

So what had invaded, knocked down the door, and
flooded the cellar with this uncalled-for and unwanted feeling? What in all the
world possibly could climb in with such overwhelming ease?

I lay down, determined to go back to sleep and prove
to myself that I was still in charge here, that nothing had happened, and
certainly wouldn't happen again. This was Dexterland, and I was king. Nothing
else was permitted inside. And I closed my eyes and turned for confirmation to
the voice of authority on the inside, the inarguable master of the shadowy
corners of all that is me, the Dark Passenger, and I waited for it to agree, to
hiss a soothing phrase to put the jangling music and its geyser of feeling into
its place, out of the dark and into the outside. And I waited for it to say
something, anything, and it did not.

And I poked at it with a very hard and irritated
thought, thinking, Wake up! Show some teeth in there!

And it said nothing.

I hurried myself into all the corners of me, hollering
with increasing concern, calling for the Passenger, but the place it had been
was empty, swept clean, room to rent. It was gone as if it had never been there
at all.

In the place where it used to be I could still hear an echo of the
music, bouncing off the hard walls of an unfurnished apartment and rolling
through a sudden, very painful emptiness.

The Dark Passenger was gone.

I SPENT THE NEXT DAY IN A LATHER OF UNCERTAINTY, HOPING that the
Passenger would return and somehow sure it would not. And as the day wore on,
this dreary certainty got bigger and bleaker.

There was a large, brittle empty spot inside me and I had no real way
to think about it or cope with the gaping hollowness that I had never felt
before. I would certainly not claim to feel anguish, which has always struck me
as a very self-indulgent thing to experience, but I was acutely uneasy and I
lived the whole day in a thick syrup of anxious dread.

Where had my Passenger gone, and why? Would it come
back? And these questions pulled me inevitably down into even more alarming
speculation: What was the Passenger and why had it come to me in the first
place?

It was somewhat sobering to realize just how deeply I had defined
myself by something that was not actually me-or was it? Perhaps the entire
persona of the Dark Passenger was no more than the sick construct of a damaged
mind, a web spun to catch tiny glimmers of filtered reality and protect me from
the awful truth of what I really am. It was possible. I am well aware of basic
psychology, and I have assumed for quite some time that I am somewhere off the
charts. That's fine with me; I get along very well without any shred of normal
humanity to my name.

Or I had until now. But
suddenly I was all alone in there, and things did not seem quite so hard-edged
and certain. And for the first time, I truly needed to know.

Of course, few jobs provide paid time off for introspection, even on a
topic as important as missing Dark Passengers. No, Dexter must still lift that
bale. Especially with Deborah cracking the whip.

Happily, it was mostly routine. I spent the morning with my fellow
geeks combing through Halpern's apartment for some concrete residue of his
guilt. Even more happily, the evidence was so abundant that very little real
work was necessary.

In the back of his closet we found a sock with several drops of blood
on it. Under the couch was a white canvas shoe with a matching blotch on top.
In a plastic bag in the bathroom was a pair of pants with a singed cuff and
even more blood, small dots of spray that had been heat-hardened.

It was probably a good thing that there was so much of
it out in the open, because Dexter was truly not his usual bright and eager
self today. I found myself drifting in an anxious gray mist and wondering if
the Passenger was coming home, only to jerk back to the present, standing there
in the closet holding a dirty, blood-spattered sock. If any real investigation
had been necessary, I am not sure I could have performed up to my own very high
standards.

Luckily, it wasn't needed. I had never before seen
such an outpouring of clear and obvious evidence from somebody who had, after
all, had several days to clean up. When I indulge in my own little hobby I am
neat and tidy and forensically innocent within minutes; Halpern had let several
days go by without taking even the most elementary precautions. It was almost
too easy, and when we checked his car I dropped the “almost.” Clearly
displayed on the central armrest of the front seat was a thumbprint of dried
blood.

Of course, it was still possible that our lab work would show that it
was chicken blood, and Halpern had simply been indulging in an innocent
pastime, perhaps as an amateur poultry butcher. Somehow, I doubted it. It
seemed overwhelmingly clear that Halpern had done something truly unkind to
someone.

And yet, the small nagging thought tugged at me that
it was, just as overwhelmingly so, too easy. Something was not quite right
here. But since I had no Passenger to point me in the right direction, I kept
it to myself. It would have been cruel, in any case, to burst Deborah's happy
balloon. She was very nearly glowing with satisfaction as the results came in
and Halpern looked more and more like our demented catch of the day.

Deborah was actually humming when she dragged me along
to interview Halpern, which took my unease to a new level. I watched her as we
went into the room where Halpern was waiting. I could not remember the last
time she had seemed so happy. She even forgot to wear her expression of
perpetual disapproval. It was very unsettling, a complete violation of natural
law, as if everyone on I-95 suddenly decided to drive slowly and carefully.

“Well, Jerry,” she said cheerfully as we settled into chairs
facing Halpern. “Would you like to talk about those two girls?”

“There's nothing to talk about,” he said. He was very pale,
almost greenish, but he looked a lot more determined than he had when we
brought him in. “You've made a mistake,” he said. “I didn't do
anything.”

Deborah looked at me with a smile and shook her head.
“He didn't do anything,” she said happily.

“It's possible,” I said. “Somebody else
might have put the bloody clothes in his apartment while he was watching
Letterman.”

“Is that what happened,
Jerry?” she said. “Did somebody else put those bloody clothes in your
place?” If possible, he looked even greener. “What-bloody-what are
you talking about?” She smiled at him. "Jerry. We found a pair of
your pants with blood on 'em. It matches the victims' blood.

We found a shoe and a sock, same story. And we found a
bloody fingerprint in your car. Your fingerprint, their blood.“ Deborah
leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. ”Does that jog your memory
at all, Jerry?"

Halpern had started shaking his head while Deborah was talking, and he
continued to do so, as if it was some kind of weird reflex and he didn't know
he was doing it. “No,” he said. “No. That isn't even-No.”

“No, Jerry?”
Deborah said. “What does that mean, no?” He was still shaking his
head. A drop of sweat flew off and plopped on the table and I could hear him
trying very hard to breathe. “Please,” he said. “This is crazy.
I didn't do anything. Why are you-This is pure Kafka, I didn't do anything.”

Deborah turned to me and
raised an eyebrow. “Kafka?” she said. “He thinks he's a
cockroach,” I told her. “I'm just a dumb cop, Jerry,” she said.
"I don't know about Kafka. But I know solid evidence when I see

it. And you know what,
Jerry? I'm seeing it all over your apartment.“ ”But I didn't do
anything,“ he pleaded. ”Okay,“ said Deborah with a shrug.
”Then help me out here. How did all that stuff get into your place?“
”Wilkins did it,“ he said, and he looked surprised, as if someone
else had said it. ”Wilkins?“ Deborah said, looking at me. ”The
professor in the office next door?“ I said. ”Yes, that's right,“
Halpern said, suddenly gathering steam and leaning forward. ”It was
Wilkins-it had to

be."

“Wilkins did it,” Deborah said. “He put
on your clothes, killed the girls, and then put the clothes back in your
apartment.” “Yes, that's right.” “Why would he do
that?” “We're both up for tenure,” he said. “Only one of us
will get it.” Deborah stared at him as if he had suggested dancing naked.
“Tenure,” she said at last, and there was

wonder in her voice.

“That's right,” he
said defensively. “It's the most important moment in any academic
career.” “Important enough to kill somebody?” I asked. He just
stared at a spot on the table. “It was Wilkins,” he said. Deborah
stared at him for a full minute, with the expression of a fond aunt watching
her favorite nephew.

He looked at her for a few seconds, and then blinked, glanced down at
the table, over to me, and back down to the table again. When the silence
continued, he finally looked back up at Deborah. “All right, Jerry,”
she said. “If that's the best you can do, I think it might be time for you
to call your lawyer.”

He goggled at her, but seemed unable to think of
anything to say, so Deborah stood up and headed for the door, and I followed.
“Got him,” she said in the hallway. “That son of a bitch is
cooked. Game, set, point.”

And she was so positively sunny that I couldn't help saying, “If
it was him.” She absolutely beamed at me. “Of course it was him, Dex.
Jesus, don't knock yourself. You did some great work here, and for once we got
the right guy first time out.”

“I guess so,” I said.

She cocked her head to one side and stared at me,
still smirking in a completely self-satisfied way. “Whatsa matter,
Dex,” she said. “Got your shorts in a knot about the wedding?”
“Nothing's the matter,” I said. "Life on earth has never before
been so completely harmonious and

satisfying. I just-"
And here I hesitated, because I didn't really know what I just. There was only
this

unshakable and unreasonable feeling that something was
not right. “I know, Dex,” she said in a kindly voice that somehow
made it feel even worse. “It seems way too easy, right? But think of all
the shit we go through every day, with every other case. It stands to reason
that now and then we get an easy one, doesn't it?”

“I don't know,” I said. “This just
doesn't feel right.”

She snorted. “With the
amount of hard evidence we got on this guy, nobody's going to give a shit how
it feels, Dex,” she said. “Why don't you lighten up and enjoy a
good day's work?” I'm sure it was excellent advice, but I could not
take it. Even though I had no familiar whisper to feed me

my cues, I had to say
something. “He doesn't act like he's lying,” I said, rather feebly.
Deborah shrugged. “He's a nut job. Not my problem. He did it.”
"But if he's psychotic in some way, why would it just burst out all of a
sudden? I mean, he's thirty

something years old, and
this is the first time he's done anything? That doesn't fit.“ She actually
patted my shoulder and smiled again. ”Good point, Dex. Why don't you get
on your computer and check his background? I bet we find something.“ She
glanced at her watch. ”You can do that right after the press conference,
okay? Come on, can't be late."

And I followed along dutifully, wondering how I always
seemed to volunteer for extra work.

Deborah had, in fact, been granted the priceless boon
of a press conference, something Captain Matthews did not give out lightly. It
was her first as lead detective on a major case with its own media frenzy, and
she had clearly studied up on how to look and speak for the evening news. She
lost her smile and any other visible trace of emotion and spoke flat sentences
of perfect cop-ese. Only someone who knew her as well as I did could tell that
great and uncharacteristic happiness was burbling behind her wooden face.

So I stood at the back of the room and watched as my sister made a
series of radiantly mechanical statements adding up to her belief that she had
arrested a suspect in the heinous murders at the university, and as soon as she
knew if he was guilty her dear friends in the media would be among the first to
know it. She was clearly proud and happy and it had been pure meanness on my
part even to hint that something was not quite righteous with Halpern's guilt,
especially since I did not know what that might be-or even if.

She was almost certainly right-Halpern was guilty and I was being
stupid and grumpy, thrown off the trolley of pure reason by my missing
Passenger. It was the echo of its absence that made me uneasy, and not any kind
of doubt about the suspect in a case that really meant absolutely nothing to me
anyway. Almost certainly-

And there was that almost again. I had lived my life until now in
absolutes-I had no experience with “almost,” and it was unsettling, deeply
disturbing not to have that voice of certainty to tell me what was what with no
dithering and no doubt. I began to realize just how helpless I was without the
Dark Passenger. Even in my day job, nothing was simple anymore.

Back in my cubicle I sat in my chair and leaned back with my eyes
closed. Anybody there? I asked hopefully. Nobody was. Just an empty spot that
was beginning to hurt as the numb wonder wore off. With the distraction of work
over, there was nothing to keep me from self-absorbed self-pity. I was alone in
a dark, mean world full of terrible things like me. Or at least, the me I used
to be.

Where had the Passenger gone, and why had it gone there? If something
had truly scared it away, what could that something be? What could frighten a
thing that lived for darkness, that really came to life only when the knives
were out?

And this brought a brand-new thought that was most unwelcome: If this
hypothetical something had scared away the Passenger, had it followed it into
exile? Or was it still sniffing at my trail? Was I in danger with no way left
to protect myself-with no way of knowing whether some lethal threat was right
behind me until its drool actually fell on my neck?

I have always heard that new experiences are a good thing, but this one
was pure torture. The more I thought about it, the less I understood what was
happening to me, and the more it hurt.

Well, there was one sure remedy for misery, and that was good hard work
on something completely pointless. I swiveled around to face my computer and
got busy.

In only a few minutes I had
opened up the entire life and history of Dr. Gerald Halpern, Ph.D. Of course,
it was a little trickier than simply searching Halpern's name on Google. There
was, for example, the matter of the sealed court records, which took me almost
five full minutes to open. But when I did, it was certainly worth the effort,
and I found myself thinking, Well, well, well… And because at the moment I was
tragically alone on the inside, with no one to hear my pensive remarks, I said
it aloud, too. “Well, well, well,” I said.

The foster-care records would have been interesting enough-not because I
felt any bond with Halpern from my own parentless past. I had been more than
adequately provided with a home and family by Harry, Doris, and Deborah, unlike
Halpern, who had flitted from foster home to foster home until finally landing
at Syracuse University.