Dexter 3 - Dexter in the Dark (3 page)

This was not seeing the bodies-but the Harry Code had been set up to
operate in the cracks of the system, in the shadow areas of perfect justice
rather than perfect law. I was sure, the Passenger was sure, and this was
enough proof to satisfy all of us.

Zander would go on a different kind of moonlight
cruise, and not all of his money would keep him afloat.

SO ON A NIGHT LIKE MANY OTHERS, WHEN THE MOON flung
down chords of manic melody onto its happily bloodthirsty children, I was
humming along and preparing to go out for a sharp frolic. All the work was done
and it was playtime now for Dexter. It should have been a matter of mere
moments to gather my simple toys and head out the door for my appointment with
the trust-fund troublemaker. But of course, with marriage looming, nothing at
all was simple anymore. I began to wonder, in fact, if anything would ever be
simple again.

Of course, I was building a perfect and nearly
impenetrable facade of gleaming antiseptic steel and glass to cement onto the
front of the Gothic horror of Castle Dexter. So I was very willing to cooperate
in retiring the Old Dexter, and therefore I had been in the process of
“consolidating our lives,” as Rita put it. In this case that meant
moving out of my comfy little nook on the edge of Coconut Grove and into Rita's
three-bedroom house farther south, as this was the “sensible” thing
to do. Of course, aside from being sensible it was also a Monster
Inconvenience. Under the new regime there was no way I could keep anything even
slightly private if I should want to. Which of course I did. Every dedicated,
responsible ogre has his secrets, and there were things that I did not wish to
see the light of day in anyone's hands but my own.

There was, for example, a
certain amount of research on potential playmates; and there was also the small
wooden box, very dear to me, that contained forty-one glass slides, each with a
single drop of dried blood preserved in the center, each drop representing a
single less-than-human life that had ended at my hands-

the entire scrapbook of my inner life. Because I do
not leave great heaps of decaying flesh lying about. I am not a slovenly,
slipshod, madly slashing fiend. I am an extremely tidy, madly slashing fiend. I
am always very careful indeed to get rid of my leftovers, and even some cruel
implacable foe bent on proving me the vile ogre that I am would be hard-pressed
to say what my little slides really were.

Still, explaining them might raise questions that could eventually
prove awkward, even to a doting wife-and even more so to some fearsome nemesis
passionately devoted to my destruction. There had been one such recently, a
Miami cop named Sergeant Doakes. And although he was technically still alive, I
had begun to think of him in the past tense, since his recent misadventures had
cost him both his feet and hands, as well as his tongue. He was certainly in no
shape to bring me to well-deserved justice. But I knew enough to know that if
there had been one like him, there would sooner or later be another.

And so privacy seemed important-not that I had ever been a show-off
where my personal affairs were concerned. As far as I knew, no one had ever
seen into my little slide box. But I had never had a fiancée cleaning up for
me, nor two very inquisitive kids sniffing around my things so they could learn
to be much more like Dark Daddy Dexter.

Rita seemed to appreciate my need for a bit of personal space, if not
the reasons for it, and she had sacrificed her sewing room, turning it into
something she called Dexter's study. Eventually this would house my computer
and my few books and CDs and, I suppose, my little rosewood box of slides. But
how could I possibly leave it in here? I could explain it to Cody and Astor
easily enough-but what to tell Rita? Should I try to hide it? Build a secret
passage behind a fake bookcase leading down a winding stairway to my dark lair?
Put the box in the bottom of a fake can of shaving cream, perhaps? It was
something of a problem.

So far I had avoided needing to find a solution by hanging on to my
apartment. But I still kept a few simple things in my study, like my fillet
knives and duct tape, which could readily be explained away by my love for
fishing and air-conditioning. The solution could come later. Right now I felt
icy fingers prodding and tickling at my spine, and I had an urgent need to keep
an appointment with a spoiled young man.

And so into my study I went, in search of a navy blue nylon gym bag I
had been saving for a formal occasion, to hold my knife and tape. I pulled it
from the closet, a sharp taste of anticipation building on my tongue, and put
in my party toys: a new roll of duct tape, a fillet knife, gloves, my silk
mask, and a coil of nylon rope for emergencies. All set. I could feel my veins
gleaming with steely excitement, the wild music rising in my inner ears, the
roaring of the Passenger's pulse urging me on, out, into it. I turned to go-

And ran into a matched pair of solemn children,
staring up at me with expectation.

“He wants to go,” Astor said, and Cody nodded,
looking at me with large unblinking eyes.

I honestly believe that those who know me would say I have a glib
tongue and a ready wit, but as I mentally played back what Astor had said and tried
again to find a way to make it mean something else, all I could manage was a
very human sound, something like, “He muh whu hoo?”

“With you,” Astor said patiently, as if speaking to a
mentally challenged chambermaid. “Cody wants to go with you tonight.”

In retrospect, it's easy to see that this problem
would come up sooner or later. And to be perfectly fair to me, which I think is
very important, I had expected it-but later. Not now. Not on the edge of my
Night of

Need. Not when every hair on my neck was standing straight up and
screeching with the pure and urgent compulsion to slither into the night in
cold, stainless-steel fury-

The situation clearly called for some serious pondering, but all my
nerves were clamoring for me to leap out the window and be off into the
night-but there they were, and so somehow I took a deep breath and pondered the
two of them.

The sharp and shiny tin soul of Dexter the Avenger was forged from a
childhood trauma so violent that I had blocked it out completely. It had made
me what I am, and I am sure I would sniffle and feel unhappy about that if I
was able to feel at all. And these two, Cody and Astor, had been scarred the
same way, beaten and savaged by a violent drug-addicted father until they, too,
were turned forever away from sunlight and lollipops. As my wise foster father
had known in raising me, there was no way to take that away, no way to put the
serpent back in the egg.

But it could be trained. Harry had trained me, shaped me into something
that hunted only the other dark predators, the other monsters and ghouls who
dressed in human skin and prowled the game trails of the city. I had the
indelible urge to kill, unchangeable and forever, but Harry had taught me to
find and dispose of only those who, by his rigorous cop standards, truly needed
it.

When I discovered that Cody was the same way, I had
promised myself that I would carry on the Harry Way, pass on what I had learned
to the boy, raise him up in Dark Righteousness. But this was an entire galaxy
of complications, explanations, and teachings. It had taken Harry nearly ten
years to cram it all into me before he allowed me to play with anything more
complicated than stray animals. I had not even started with Cody-and although
it made me feel like I was trying to be a Jedi Master, I could not possibly
start with him now. I knew that Cody must someday come to terms with being like
me, and I truly meant to help him-but not tonight. Not with the moon calling so
playfully just outside the window, pulling at me like a soft yellow freight
train hitched to my brain.

“I'm not, uh-” I started to say, meaning to deny everything.
But they looked up at me with such an endearing expression of cold certainty
that I stopped. “No,” I said at last. “He's much too
young.”

They exchanged a quick glance, no more, but there was an entire
conversation in it. “I told him you would say that,” Astor said.

“You were right,” I said.

“But Dexter,” she said, “you said you
would show us stuff.”

“I will,” I said, feeling the shadowy
fingers crawl slowly up my spine and prodding for control, urging me out the
door, “but not now.”

“When?” Astor demanded.

I looked at the two of them and felt the oddest combination of wild
impatience to be off and cutting mixed with an urge to wrap them both in a soft
blanket and kill anything that came near them. And nibbling at the edges, just
to round out the blend, a desire to smack their thick little heads together.

Was this fatherhood at last?

The entire surface of my body was tingling with cold
fire from my need to be gone, to begin, to do the mighty unmentionable, but
instead I took a very deep breath and put on a neutral face. "This is a
school

night,“ I said, ”and it is almost your
bedtime."

They looked at me as if I had betrayed them, and I
supposed I had by changing the rules and playing Daddy Dexter when they thought
they were talking to Demon Dexter. Still, it was true enough. One really can't
take small children along on a late-night evisceration and expect them to
remember their ABCs the next day. It was hard enough for me to show up at work
the morning after one of my little adventures, and I had the advantage of all
the Cuban coffee I wanted. Besides, they really were much too young.

“Now you're just being a grown-up,” Astor
said with a withering ten-year-old sneer.

“But I am a grown-up,” I said. “And I am trying to be
the right one for you.” Even though I said it with my teeth hurting from
fighting back the rising need, I meant it-which did nothing at all to soften
the identical looks of bleak contempt I got from both of them.

“We thought you were different,” she said.

“I can't imagine how I could be any more
different and still look human,” I said.

“Not fair,” Cody said, and I locked eyes
with him, seeing a tiny dark beast raise its head and roar at me.

“No, it's not fair,” I said. “Nothing in life is fair.
Fair is a dirty word and I'll thank you not to use that language around
me.”

Cody looked hard at me for a moment, a look of disappointed calculation
I had never seen from him before, and I didn't know if I wanted to swat him or
give him a cookie.

“Not fair,” he repeated.

“Listen,” I said, “this is something I know about. And
this is the first lesson. Normal children go to bed on time on school
nights.”

“Not normal,” he said, sticking his lower
lip out far enough to hold his schoolbooks.

“Exactly the point,” I told him.
“That's why you always have to look normal, act normal, make everyone else
think you are normal. And the other thing you have to do is exactly what I tell
you, or I won't do this.” He didn't look quite convinced, but he was
weakening. “Cody,” I said. “You have to trust me, and you have
to do it my way.”

“Have to,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “Have to.”

He looked at me for a very long moment, then switched
his stare to his sister, who looked back at him. It was a marvel of sub-vocal
communication; I could tell that they were having a long, very intricate
conversation, but they didn't make a sound until Astor shrugged and turned back
to me. “You have to promise,” she said to me.

“All right,” I
said. “Promise what?”

“That you'll start teaching us,” she said,
and Cody nodded. “Soon.”

I took a deep breath. I had never really had any chance of going to
what I consider a very hypothetical heaven, even before this. But to go through
with this, agreeing to turn these ragged little monsters into neat,
well-schooled little monsters-well, I would certainly hope I was right about
the hypothetical part. “I promise,” I said. They looked at each
other, looked at me, and left.

And there I was with a bag full of toys, a pressing engagement, and a
somewhat shriveled sense of urgency.

Is family life like this for everyone? If so, how does
anyone survive it? Why do people have more than one child, or any at all? Here
I was with an important and fulfilling goal in front of me, and suddenly I get
blindsided by something no soccer mom ever had to face and it was nearly
impossible to remember what I was thinking only moments ago. Even with an
impatient growl from the Dark Passenger-strangely muted, as if just a little
confused-it took me several moments to pull myself together, from Dazed Daddy
Dexter back to the Cold Avenger once again. I found it difficult to call back
the icy edge of readiness and danger; it was difficult, in fact, to remember
where I had left my car keys.

Somehow I found them and stumbled out of my study, and
after mumbling some heartfelt nothing to Rita, I was out the door and into the
night at last.

I HAD FOLLOWED ZANDER LONG ENOUGH TO KNOW HIS ROUTINE, and since this
was Thursday night, I knew exactly where he would be. He spent every Thursday
evening at One World Mission of Divine Light, presumably inspecting the
livestock. After about ninety minutes of smiling at the staff and listening to
a brief service he would write a check for the pastor, a huge black man who had
once played in the NFL. The pastor would smile and thank him, and Zander would
slip quietly out the back door to his modest SUV and drive humbly to his house,
all aglow with the virtuous feeling that comes only from true good works.

But tonight, he would not drive alone.

Tonight Dexter and his Dark Passenger would go along for the ride and
steer him to a brand-new kind of journey.

But first the cold and careful approach, the payoff to
the weeks of stealthy stalking.

I parked my car only a few miles from Rita's house at a large old
shopping area called Dadeland and walked to the nearby Metrorail station. The
train was seldom crowded, even at rush hour, but there were enough people
around that no one paid any attention to me. Just a nice man in fashionably
dark clothes carrying a gym bag.

I got off one stop past downtown and walked six blocks to the mission,
feeling the keen edge sharpening itself within me, moving me back to the
readiness I needed. We would think about Cody and Astor later. Right now, on
this street, I was all hard, hidden brightness. The blinding orange-pink glare
of the special crime-fighting streetlights could not wash away the darkness I
wrapped tighter around me as I walked.

The mission sat on the corner of a medium-busy street,
in a converted storefront. There was a small crowd gathered in front-no real
surprise, since they gave out food and clothing, and all you had to do to get
it was to spend a few moments of your rum-soaked time listening to the good
reverend explain why

you were going to hell. It seemed like a pretty good
bargain, even to me, but I wasn't hungry. I moved on past, around back to the
parking lot.

Although it was slightly dimmer here, the parking lot was still far too
bright for me, almost too bright even to see the moon, although I could feel it
there in the sky, smirking down on our tiny squirming fragile life, festooned
as it was with monsters who lived only to take that life away in large,
pain-filled mouthfuls. Monsters like me, and like Zander. But tonight there
would be one less.

I walked one time around the perimeter of the parking lot. It appeared
to be safe. There was no one in sight, no one sitting or dozing in any of the
cars. The only window with a view into the area was a small one, high up on the
back wall of the mission, fitted with opaque glass-the restroom. I circled
closer to Zander's car, a blue Dodge Durango nosed in next to the back door,
and tried the door handle-locked. Parked next to it was an old Chrysler, the
pastor's venerable ride. I moved to the far side of the Chrysler and began my
wait.

From my gym bag I pulled a white silk mask and dropped
it over my face, settling the eyeholes snugly. Then I took out a loop of
fifty-pound-test fishing line and I was ready. Very soon now it would begin,
the Dark Dance. Zander strolling all unknowing into a predator's night, a night
of sharp surprises, a final and savage darkness pierced with fierce
fulfillment. So very soon, he would amble calmly out of his life and into mine.
And then-

Had Cody remembered to brush his teeth? He had been
forgetting lately, and Rita was reluctant to get him out of bed once he was
settled in. But it was important to set him on the path of good habits now, and
brushing was important.

I flicked my noose, letting it settle onto my knees. Tomorrow was photo
day at Astor's school. She was supposed to wear her Easter dress from last year
to look nice for the picture. Had she set it out so she wouldn't forget in the
morning? Of course she wouldn't smile for the picture, but she should at least
wear the good dress.

Could I really be crouched here in the night, noose in hand and waiting
to pounce, and thinking about such things? How was it possible for my
anticipation to be filled with these thoughts instead of the fang-sharpening
eagerness of turning the Dark Passenger loose on an oh-so-deserving playmate?
Was this a foretaste of Dexter's shiny new married life?

I breathed in carefully, feeling a great sympathy for W.
C. Fields. I couldn't work with kids, either. I closed my eyes, felt myself
fill with dark night air, and let it out again, feeling the frigid readiness
return. Slowly Dexter receded and the Dark Passenger took back the controls.

And not a moment too soon.

The back door clattered open and we could hear the sound of horrible
animal noises blatting and bleating away inside, a truly awful rendering of
“Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” the sound of it enough to send anyone
back to the bottle. And enough to propel Zander out the door. He paused in the
doorway, turned to give the room a cheery wave and a smirk, and then the door
slammed shut and he came around his car to the driver's side and he was ours.

Zander fumbled for his keys and the lock clicked open
and we were around the car and behind him. Before he knew what was happening
the noose whistled through the air and slipped around his neck and we yanked
hard enough to pull him off his feet, hard enough to bring him to his knees
with his breath stopped and his face turning dark and it was good.

“Not a sound,” we said, cold and perfect. “Do exactly as
we say, not a single word or sound, and you will live a little longer,” we
told him, and we tightened the noose just a bit to let him know he belonged to
us and must do as we said.

Zander responded in a most gratifying way by slipping forward onto his
face and he was not smirking now. Drool leaked from the corner of his mouth and
he clawed at the noose, but we held it far too tight for him to get a finger
under the line. When he was very close to passing out we eased the pressure,
just enough to let him crackle in a single painful breath. “On your feet
now,” we said gently, pulling upward on the noose so he would do as he was
told. And slowly, clawing his way up the side of his car, Zander obeyed.

“Good,” we said. “Get in the car.”
We switched the noose to my left hand and opened the door of the car, then
reached around the door post and took it again in my right as we climbed in the
backseat behind him. “Drive,” we said in our dark and icy command
voice.

“Where?” Zander said in his voice, now a
hoarse whisper from our little reminders with the noose.

We pulled the line tight again to remind him not to talk
out of turn. When we thought he had received the message we loosened it again.
“West,” we said. “No more talk. Drive.”

He put the car in gear and, with a few small tugs on the noose, I
steered him west and up onto the Dolphin Expressway. For a while Zander did
exactly as we said. He would look at us in the mirror from time to time, but a
very slight twitch of the noose kept him extremely cooperative until we took
him onto the Palmetto Expressway and north.

“Listen,” he said suddenly, as we drove past the airport,
“I am like really rich. I can give you whatever you want.”

“Yes, you can,” we said, “and you will,” and he did
not understand what we wanted, because he relaxed just a little bit.

“Okay,” he said, voice still rough from the
noose, “so how much do you want?”

We locked eyes with him in the mirror and slowly, very slowly so he
would begin to understand, we tightened the line around his neck. When he could
barely breathe, we held it like that for a moment. “Everything,” we
said. “We will have everything.” We loosened the noose, just a
little. “Drive,” we said.

Zander drove. He was very quiet the rest of the way,
but he did not seem as frightened as he should have been. Of course, he must
believe that this was not really happening to him, could not possibly happen,
not to him, living forever in his impenetrable cocoon of money. Everything had
a price, and he could always afford it. Soon he would negotiate. Then he would
buy his way out.

And he would. Eventually he would buy his way out. But
not with money. And never out of this noose.

It was not a terribly long
drive and we were quiet all the way to the Hialeah exit we had chosen. But when
Zander slowed for the off-ramp, he glanced at me in the mirror with fear in his
eyes, the climbing terror of a monster in a trap, ready to chew off his leg to
escape, and the tangible bite of his panic sparked a warm glow in the Dark
Passenger and made us very glad and strong. “You don't-there, there
isn't-where are we going?” he stammered, weak and pitiful and sounding
more human all the time, which made us angry and we yanked too hard until he
swerved onto the shoulder momentarily and we had to grant him some slack in the
noose. Zander steered back onto the road and the bottom of the ramp.

“Turn right,” we said, and he did, the unlovely breath
rasping in and out through his spit-flecked lips. But he did just as we told
him to do, all the way down the street and left onto a small, dark lane of old
warehouses.

He parked his car where we told him, by the rusty door
of a dark unused building. A partially rotted sign with the end lopped off
still said JONE PLASTI. “Park,” we said, and as he fumbled the gear
lever into park we were out the door and yanking him after us and onto the
ground, pulling tight and watching him thrash for a moment before we jerked him
up to his feet. The spit had caked around his mouth, and there was some small
bit of belief in his eyes now as he stood there ugly and disgusting in the lovely
moonlight, all atremble with some terrible mistake I had made against his
money, and the growing notion that perhaps he was no different from the ones he
had done exactly this to washed over him and left him weak. We let him stand
and breathe for just a moment, then pushed him toward the door. He put one hand
out, palm against the concrete-block wall. “Listen,” he said, and
there was a quaver of pure human in his voice now. “I can get you a ton of
money. Whatever you want.”

We said nothing. Zander licked his lips. “All right,” he
said, and his voice now was dry, shredded, and desperate. “So what do you
want from me?”

“Exactly what you took from the others,” we said with an
extra-sharp twitch of the noose. “Except the shoe.”

He stared and his mouth sagged and he peed in his
pants. “I didn't,” he said. “That's not-”

“You did,” we told him. “It is.”
And pulling back hard on the leash we pushed him forward and through the door,
into the carefully prepared space. There were a few shattered clumps of PVC
pipe swept off to the sides and, more important for Zander, two fifty-gallon
drums of hydrochloric acid, left behind by Jone Plasti when they had gone out
of business.

It was easy enough for us to get Zander up onto the
work space we had cleared for him, and in just a few moments we had him taped
and tied into place and we were very eager to begin. We cut the noose off and
he gasped as the knife nicked his throat.

“Jesus!” he said. “Listen, you're
making a big mistake.”

We said nothing; there was work to do and we prepared for it, slowly
cutting away his clothing and dropping it carefully into one of the drums of
acid.

“Oh, fuck, please,” he said.
“Seriously, it's not what you think-you don't know what you're about to
do.”

We were ready and we held up the knife for him to see that actually we
knew very well what we were doing, and we were about to do it.

“Dude, please,” he said. The fear in him was far beyond
anything he thought possible, beyond the humiliation of wetting his pants and
begging, beyond anything he had ever imagined.

And then he grew surprisingly still. He looked right into my eyes with
an uncalled-for clarity and in a voice I had not heard from him before he said,
“He'll find you.”

We stopped for a moment to consider what this meant.
But we were quite sure that it was his last hopeful bluff, and it blunted the
delicious taste of his terror and made us angry and we taped his mouth shut and
went to work.

And when we were done there was nothing left except for one of his
shoes. We thought about having it mounted, but of course that would be untidy,
so it went into the barrel of acid with the rest of Zander.

image

This was not good, the Watcher thought. They had been inside the
abandoned warehouse far too long, and there could be no doubt that whatever they
were doing in there, it was not a social occasion.

Nor was the meeting he had been scheduled to have with
Zander. Their meetings had always been strictly business, although Zander
obviously thought of them in different terms. The awe on his face at their rare
encounters spoke volumes on what the young fool thought and felt. He was so
proud of the small contribution he made, so eager to be near the cold, massive
power.

The Watcher did not regret anything that might happen to Zander-he was
easy enough to replace: the real concern was why this was happening tonight,
and what it might mean.

And he was glad now that he had not interfered, had
simply hung back and followed. He could easily have moved in and taken the
brash young man who had taken Zander, crushed him completely. Even now he felt
the vast power murmuring within himself, a power that could roar out and sweep
away anything that stood before it-but no.

The Watcher also had patience, and this, too, was a strength. If this
other was truly a threat, it was better to wait and to watch, and when he knew
enough about the danger, he would strike-swiftly, overwhelmingly, and finally.

So he watched. It was several hours before the other
came out and got into Zander's car. The Watcher stayed well back, with his
headlights off at first, tailing the blue Durango easily in the late-night
traffic. And when the other parked the car in the lot at a Metrorail station
and got on the train, he stepped on, too, just as the doors slid closed, and
sat at the far end, studying the reflection of the face for the first time.