Dearly Devoted Dexter (10 page)

Curses on you, Doakes. You’re driving me normal.

“Hey, mister,” Rita said, plunking herself down next to me, where she curled her feet under her, “why so quiet?”

“I think I’m working too hard,” I told her. “And enjoying it less.”

She was quiet for a moment, then she said, “It’s that thing with the guy you had to let go, isn’t it? The guy who was . . . he killed the kids?”

“That’s part of it,” I said. “I don’t like unfinished business.”

Rita nodded, almost as if she actually understood what I was saying. “That’s very . . . I mean, I can tell it’s bothering you. Maybe you should— I don’t know. What do you usually do to relax?”

It certainly conjured up some funny pictures to think of telling her what I did to relax, but it was probably not a very good idea. So instead I said, “Well, I like to take my boat out. Go fishing.”

And a small, very soft voice behind me said, “Me, too.” Only my highly trained nerves of steel prevented me from bumping my head on the ceiling fan; I am nearly impossible to sneak up on, and yet I’d had no idea there was anyone else in the room. But I turned around and there was Cody, looking at me with his large, unblinking eyes. “You too?” I said. “You like to go fishing?”

He nodded; two words at a time was close to his daily limit.

“Well, then,” I said. “I guess it’s settled. How about tomorrow morning?”

“Oh,” Rita said, “I don’t think— I mean, he isn’t— You don’t have to, Dexter.”

Cody looked at me. Naturally enough he didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. It was all there in his eyes. “Rita,” I said, “sometimes the boys need to get away from the girls. Cody and I are going fishing in the morning. Bright and early,” I said to Cody.

“Why?”

“I don’t know why,” I said. “But you’re supposed to go early, so we will.” Cody nodded, looked at his mother, and then turned around and walked down the hall.

“Really, Dexter,” Rita said. “You really don’t have to.”

And, of course, I knew I didn’t have to. But why shouldn’t I? It probably wouldn’t cause me actual physical pain. Besides that, it would be nice to get away for a few hours. Especially from Doakes. And in any case—again, I don’t know why it should be, but kids really do matter to me. I certainly don’t get all gooey-eyed at the sight of training wheels on a bicycle, but on the whole I find children far more interesting than their parents.

The next morning, as the sun was coming up, Cody and I were motoring slowly out of the canal by my apartment in my seventeen-foot Whaler. Cody wore a blue-and-yellow life vest and sat very still on the cooler. He slumped down just a little so that his head almost vanished inside the vest, making him look like a brightly colored turtle.

Inside the cooler was soda and a lunch Rita had made for us, a light snack for ten or twelve people. I had brought frozen shrimp for bait, since this was Cody’s first trip and I didn’t know how he might react to sticking a sharp metal hook into something that was still alive. I rather enjoyed it, of course—the more alive, the better!—but one can’t expect sophisticated tastes from a child.

Out the canal, into Biscayne Bay, and I headed across to Cape Florida, steering for the channel that cut past the lighthouse. Cody didn’t say anything until we came within sight of Stiltsville, that odd collection of houses built on pilings in the middle of the bay. Then he tugged at my sleeve. I bent down to hear him over the roar of the engine and the wind.

“Houses,” he said.

“Yes,” I yelled. “Sometimes there are even people in them.”

He watched the houses go by and then, when they began to disappear behind us, he sat back down on the cooler. He turned around once more to look at them when they were almost out of sight. After that he just sat until we got to Fowey Rock and I idled down. I put the motor in neutral and slid the anchor over the bow, waiting to make sure it caught before turning the engine off.

“All right, Cody,” I said. “It’s time to kill some fish.”

He smiled, a very rare event. “Okay,” he said.

He watched me with unblinking attention as I showed him how to thread the shrimp onto the hook. Then he tried it himself, very slowly and carefully pushing the hook in until the point came out again. He looked at the hook and then up at me. I nodded, and he looked back at the shrimp, reaching out to touch the place where the hook broke through the shell.

“All right,” I said. “Now drop it in the water.” He looked up at me. “That’s where the fish are,” I said. Cody nodded, pointed his rod tip over the side of the boat, and pushed the release button on his little Zebco reel to drop the bait into the water. I flicked my bait over the side, too, and we sat there rocking slowly on the waves.

I watched Cody fish with his fierce blank concentration. Perhaps it was the combination of open water and a small boy, but I couldn’t help but think of Reiker. Even though I could not safely investigate him, I was assuming that he was guilty. When would he know that MacGregor was gone, and what would he do about it? It seemed most likely that he would panic and try to disappear—and yet, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered. There is a natural human reluctance to abandon an entire life and start over somewhere else. Perhaps he would just be cautious for a while. And if so, I could fill my time with the new entry on my rather exclusive social register, whoever had created the Howling Vegetable of N.W. 4th Street, and the fact that this sounded rather like a Sherlock Holmes title made it no less urgent. Somehow I had to neutralize Doakes. Somehow someway sometime soon I had to—

“Are you going to be my dad?” Cody asked suddenly.

Luckily I had nothing in my mouth which might choke me, but for a moment it felt like there was something in my throat, something the approximate size of a Thanksgiving turkey. When I could breathe again, I managed to stammer out, “Why do you ask?”

He was still watching his rod tip. “Mom says maybe,” he said.

“Did she?” I said, and he nodded without looking up.

My head whirled. What was Rita thinking? I had been so wrapped up in the hard work of ramming my disguise down Doakes’s throat that I had never really thought about what was going on in Rita’s head. Apparently, I should have. Could she truly be thinking that, that—it was unthinkable. But I suppose in a strange way it might make sense if one was a human being. Fortunately I am not, and the thought seemed completely bizarre to me.
Mom says maybe?
Maybe I would be Cody’s dad? Meaning, um—

“Well,” I said, which was a very good start considering I had absolutely no idea what I might say next. Happily for me, just as I realized nothing resembling a coherent answer was going to come out of my mouth, Cody’s rod tip jerked savagely. “You have a fish!” I said, and for the next few minutes it was all he could do to hang on as the line whirred off his reel. The fish made repeated ferocious, slashing zigzags to the right, the left, under the boat, and then straight for the horizon. But slowly, in spite of several long runs away from the boat, Cody worked the fish closer. I coached him to keep the rod tip up, wind in the line, work the fish in to where I could get a hand on the leader and bring it into the boat. Cody watched it flop on the deck, its forked tail still flipping wildly.

“A blue runner,” I said. “That is one wild fish.” I bent to release it, but it was bucking too much for me to get a hand on it. A thin stream of blood came from its mouth and onto my clean white deck, which was a bit upsetting. “Ick,” I said. “I think he swallowed the hook. We’ll have to cut it out.” I pulled my fillet knife from its black plastic sheath and laid it on the deck. “There’s going to be a lot of blood,” I warned Cody. I do not like blood, and I did not want it in my boat, not even fish blood. I took the two steps forward to open the dry locker and get an old towel I kept for cleaning up.

“Ha,” I heard behind me, softly. I turned around.

Cody had taken the knife and stuck it into the fish, watching it struggle away from the blade, and then carefully sticking the point in again. This second time he pushed the blade deep into the fish’s gills, and a gout of blood ran out onto the deck.

“Cody,” I said.

He looked up at me and, wonder of wonders, he smiled. “I like fishing, Dexter,” he said.

CHAPTER 10

B
Y MONDAY MORNING I STILL HAD NOT GOTTEN IN
touch with Deborah. I called repeatedly, and although I became so familiar with the sound of the tone that I could hum it, Deborah did not respond. It was increasingly frustrating; here I was with a possible way out of the stranglehold Doakes had put me in, and I could get no further with it than the telephone. It’s terrible to have to depend on someone else.

But I am persistent and patient, among my many other Boy Scout virtues. I left dozens of messages, all of them cheerful and clever, and that positive attitude must have done the trick, because I finally got an answer.

I had just settled into my desk chair to finish a report on a double homicide, nothing exciting. A single weapon, probably a machete, and a few moments of wild abandon. The initial wounds on both victims had been delivered in bed, where they had apparently been caught in flagrante delicto. The man had managed to raise one arm, but a little too late to save his neck. The woman made it all the way to the door before a blow to the upper spine sent a spurt of blood onto the wall beside the door frame. Routine stuff, the kind of thing that makes up most of my work, and extremely unpleasant. There is just so very much blood in two human beings, and when somebody decides to let it all out at once it makes a terrible and unattractive mess, which I find deeply offensive. Organizing and analyzing it makes me feel a great deal better, and my job can be deeply satisfying on occasion.

But this one was a real mess. I had found spatter on the ceiling fan, most likely from the machete blade as the killer raised his arm between strokes. And because the fan was on, it flung more spatter to the far corners of the room.

It had been a busy day for Dexter. I was just trying to word a paragraph in the report properly to indicate that it had been what we like to call a “crime of passion” when my phone rang.

“Hey, Dex,” the voice said, and it sounded so relaxed, even sleepy, that it took me a moment to realize it was Deborah.

“Well,” I said. “The rumors of your death were exaggerated.”

She laughed, and again the sound of it was downright mellow, unlike her usual hard-edged chuckle. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m alive. But Kyle has kept me pretty busy.”

“Remind him of the labor laws, Sis. Even sergeants need their rest.”

“Mm, I don’t know about that,” she said. “I feel pretty good without it.” And she gave a throaty, two-syllable chuckle that sounded as unlike Debs as if she had asked me to show her the best way to cut through living human bone.

I tried to remember when I had heard Deborah say she felt pretty good and actually sound like she meant it at the same time. I came up blank. “You sound very unlike yourself, Deborah,” I said. “What on earth has gotten into you?”

This time her laugh was a bit longer, but just as happy. “The usual,” she said. And then she laughed again. “Anyway, what’s up?”

“Oh, not a thing,” I said, with innocence blooming from my tongue. “My only sister disappears for days and nights on end without a word and then turns up sounding like she stepped out of
Stepford Sergeants
. So I am naturally curious to know what the hell is going on, that’s all.”

“Well, hell,” she said. “I’m touched. It’s almost like having a real human brother.”

“Let’s hope it goes no further than almost.”

“How about we get together for lunch?” she said.

“I’m already hungry,” I said. “Relampago’s?”

“Mm, no,” she said. “How about Azul?”

I suppose her choice of restaurant made as much sense as everything else about her this morning, because it made no sense at all. Deborah was a blue-collar diner, and Azul was the kind of place where Saudi royalty ate when they were in town. Apparently her transformation into an alien was now complete.

“Certainly, Deb, Azul. I’ll just sell my car to pay for it and meet you there.”

“One o’clock,” she said. “And don’t worry about the money. Kyle will pick up the tab.” She hung up. And I didn’t actually say AHA! But a small light flickered on.

Kyle would pay, would he? Well, well. And at Azul, too.

If the glittery ticky-tack of South Beach is the part of Miami designed for insecure wannabe celebrities, Azul is for people who find the glamour amusing. The little cafés that crowd South Beach compete for attention with a shrill clamor of bright and cheap gaudiness. Azul is so understated by comparison that you wonder if they had ever seen even a single episode of
Miami Vice
.

I left my car with the mandatory valet parking attendant in a small cobblestone circle out front. I am fond of my car, but I will admit that it did not compare favorably to the line of Ferraris and Rolls-Royces. Even so, the attendant did not actually decline to park it for me, although he must have guessed that it would not result in the kind of tip he was used to. I suppose my bowling shirt and khaki pants were an unmistakable clue that I didn’t have even a single bearer bond or Krugerrand for him.