Dexter in the Dark (20 page)

The extreme shock of this moment was followed by an even more extreme pleasure.

IT was no longer alone.

EIGHTEEN

T
HE RIDE TO THE DETENTION CENTER WENT SMOOTHLY,
but with Deborah driving that merely meant that no one was severely injured. She was in a hurry, and she was first and foremost a Miami cop who had learned to drive from Miami cops. And that meant she believed that traffic was fluid in nature and she sliced through it like a hot iron in butter, sliding into gaps that weren’t really there, and making it clear to the other drivers that it was either move or die.

Cody and Astor were very pleased, of course, from their securely seat-belted position in the backseat. They sat as straight as possible, craning upward to see out. And rarest of all, Cody actually smiled briefly when we narrowly missed smashing into a 350-pound man on a small motorcycle.

“Put on the siren,” Astor demanded.

“This isn’t a goddamned game,” Deborah snarled.

“Does it have to be a goddamned game for the siren?” Astor said, and Deborah turned bright red and yanked the wheel hard to bring us off U.S. 1, just barely missing a battered Honda riding on four doughnut tires.

“Astor,” I said, “don’t say that word.”

“She says it all the time,” Astor said.

“When you are her age, you can say it, too, if you want to,” I said. “But not when you’re ten years old.”

“That’s stupid,” she said. “If it’s a bad word it doesn’t matter how old you are.”

“That’s very true,” I said. “But I can’t tell Sergeant Deborah what to say.”

“That’s stupid,” Astor repeated, and then switched directions by adding, “Is she really a sergeant? Is that better than a policeman?”

“It means she’s the boss policeman,” I said.

“She can tell the ones in the blue suits what to do?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And she gets to have a gun, too?”

“Yes.”

Astor leaned forward as far as the seat belt would let her, and stared at Deborah with something approaching respect, which was not an expression I saw on her face very often. “I didn’t know girls could have a gun and be the boss policeman,” she said.

“Girls can do any god—anything boys can do,” Deborah snapped. “Usually better.”

Astor looked at Cody, and then at me. “Anything?” she said.

“Almost anything,” I said. “Professional football is probably out.”

“Do you shoot people?” Astor asked Deborah.

“For Christ’s sake, Dexter,” Deborah said.

“She shoots people sometimes,” I told Astor, “but she doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“Shooting somebody is a very private thing,” I said, “and I think she feels that it isn’t anybody else’s business.”

“Stop talking about me like I’m a lamp, for Christ’s sake,” Deborah snapped. “I’m sitting right here.”

“I know that,” Astor said. “Will you tell us about who you shot?”

For an answer, Deborah squealed the car through a sharp turn, into the parking lot, and rocked to a stop in front of the center. “We’re here,” she said, and jumped out as if she was escaping a nest of fire ants. She hurried into the building and as soon as I got Cody and Astor unbuckled, we followed at a more leisurely pace.

Deborah was still speaking with the sergeant on duty at the desk, and I steered Cody and Astor to a pair of battered chairs. “Wait here,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Just
wait
?” Astor said, with outrage quivering in her voice.

“Yes,” I said. “I have to go talk to a bad guy.”

“Why can’t we go?” she demanded.

“It’s against the law,” I said. “Now wait here like I said. Please.”

They didn’t look terribly enthusiastic, but at least they didn’t leap off the chairs and charge down the hallway screaming. I took advantage of their cooperation and joined Deborah.

“Come on,” she said, and we headed to one of the interview rooms down the hall. In a few minutes a guard brought Halpern in. He was handcuffed, and he looked even worse than he had when we brought him in. He hadn’t shaved and his hair was a rat’s nest, and there was a look in his eyes that I can only describe as haunted, no matter how clichéd that sounds. He sat in the chair where the guard nudged him, perching on the edge of the seat and staring at his hands as they lay before him on the table.

Deborah nodded to the guard, who left the room and stood in the hall outside. She waited for the door to swing closed and then turned her attention to Halpern. “Well, Jerry,” she said, “I hope you had a good night’s rest.”

His head jerked as if it had been yanked upward by a rope, and he goggled at her. “What—what do you mean?” he said.

Debs raised her eyebrows. “I don’t mean anything, Jerry,” she said mildly. “Just being polite.”

He stared at her for a moment and then dropped his head again. “I want to go home,” he said in a small, shaky voice.

“I’m sure you do, Jerry,” Deborah said. “But I can’t let you go right now.”

He just shook his head, and muttered something inaudible.

“What’s that, Jerry?” she asked in the same kind, patient voice.

“I said, I don’t think I did anything,” he said, still without looking up.

“You don’t
think
so?” she asked him. “Shouldn’t we be kind of sure about that before we let you go?”

He raised his head to look at her, very slowly this time. “Last night…” he said. “Something about being in this place…” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said.

“You’ve been in a place like this before, haven’t you, Jerry? When you were young,” Deborah said, and he nodded. “And this place made you remember something?”

He jerked as if she’d spit in his face. “I don’t—it isn’t a memory,” he said. “It was a dream. It had to be a dream.”

Deborah nodded very understandingly. “What was the dream about, Jerry?”

He shook his head and stared at her with his jaw hanging open.

“It might help you to talk about it,” she said. “If it’s just a dream, what can it hurt?” He kept shaking his head. “What was the dream about, Jerry?” she said again, a little more insistently, but still very gently.

“There’s a big statue,” he said, and he stopped shaking his head and looked surprised that words had come out.

“All right,” Deborah said.

“It—it’s really big,” he said. “And there’s a…a…it has a fire burning in its belly.”

“It has a belly?” Deborah said. “What kind of statue is it?”

“It’s so big,” he said. “Bronze body, with two arms held out, and the arms are moving down, to…” He trailed off, and then mumbled something.

“What did you say, Jerry?”

“He said it has a bull’s head,” I said, and I could feel all the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight out.

“The arms come down,” he said. “And I feel…really happy. I don’t know why. Singing. And I put the two girls into the arms. I cut them with a knife, and they go up to the mouth, and the arms dump them in. Into the fire…”

“Jerry,” Debs said, even more gently, “your clothes had blood on them, and they’d been singed.” He didn’t say anything, and she went on. “We know you have blackouts when you’re feeling too much stress,” she said. He stayed quiet. “Isn’t it just possible, Jerry, that you had one of these blackouts, killed the girls, and came home? Without knowing it?”

He began shaking his head again, slowly and mechanically.

“Can you give me a better suggestion?” she said.

“Where would I find a statue like that?” he said. “That’s—how could I, what, find the statue, and build the fire inside it, and get the girls there, and—how could that be possible? How could I do all that and not know it?”

Deborah looked at me, and I shrugged. It was a fair point. After all, there must surely be some practical limit to what you can do while sleepwalking, and this did seem to go a little beyond that.

“Then where did the dream come from, Jerry?” she said.

“Everybody has dreams,” he said.

“And how did the blood get on your clothes?”

“Wilkins did it,” he said. “He had to, there’s no other answer.”

There was a knock on the door and the sergeant came in. He bent over and spoke softly into Deborah’s ear, and I leaned closer to hear. “This guy’s lawyer is making trouble,” he said. “He says now that the heads turned up while his client is in here, he has to be innocent.” The sergeant shrugged. “I can’t keep him outta here,” he said.

“All right,” Debs said. “Thanks, Dave.” He shrugged again, straightened, and left the room.

Deborah looked at me. “Well,” I said, “at least it doesn’t seem too easy anymore.”

She turned back to Halpern. “All right, Jerry,” she said. “We’ll talk some more later.” She stood up and walked out of the room and I followed.

“What do we think about that?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “Jesus, Dex, I don’t know. I need a major break here.” She stopped walking and turned to face me. “Either the guy really did this in one of his blackouts, which means he set the whole thing up without really knowing, which is impossible.”

“Probably,” I said.

“Or else somebody else went to a shitload of trouble to set it up and frame him, and timed it just right to match one of his blackouts.”

“Which is also impossible,” I said helpfully.

“Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

“And the statue with the bull’s head and the fire in its belly?”

“Fuck,” she said. “It’s just a dream. Has to be.”

“So where were the girls burned?”

“You want to show me a giant statue with a bull’s head and a built-in barbecue? Where do you hide that? You find it and I’ll believe it’s real,” she said.

“Do we have to release Halpern now?” I asked.

“No, goddamn it,” she snarled. “I still got him on resisting arrest.” And she turned away and walked back toward the receiving area.

Cody and Astor were sitting with the sergeant when we got back out to the entryway, and even though they had not remained where I told them to, I was so grateful that they had not set anything on fire that I let it go. Deborah watched impatiently while I collected them, and we all headed out the door together. “Now what?” I said.

“We have to talk to Wilkins, of course,” Deborah said.

“And do we ask him if he has a statue with a bull’s head in his backyard?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “That’s bullshit.”

“That’s a bad word,” said Astor. “You owe me fifty cents.”

“It’s getting late,” I said. “I have to get the kids home before their mother barbecues me.”

Deborah looked at Cody and Astor for a long moment, then up at me. “All right,” she said.

NINETEEN

I
DID MANAGE TO GET THE KIDS HOME BEFORE
R
ITA WENT
over the edge, but it was a very close call that was not made any easier when she found out that they had been to see severed heads. Still, they were obviously unbothered and even excited about their day, and Astor’s new determination to be a Mini-Me to my sister Deborah seemed to distract Rita from anything approaching actual wrath. After all, an early career choice could save a lot of time and bother later.

It was clear that Rita had a full head of steam and we were in for Babblefest. Normally I would simply smile and nod and let her run on. But I was in no mood for anything that smacked of normal. For the last two days I had wanted nothing but a quiet place and time to try to figure out where my Passenger had gone, and I had instead been pulled in every other direction possible by Deborah, Rita, the kids, even my job, of all things. My disguise had taken over from the thing it was supposed to be hiding, and I did not like it. But if I could make it past Rita and out the door, I would finally have some time to myself.

And so, pleading important case work that could not wait for Monday morning, I slid out the door and drove in to the office, enjoying the relative peace and calm of Miami traffic on a Saturday night.

For the first fifteen minutes of the drive I could not lose the feeling that I was being followed. Ridiculous, I know, but I had no experience with being alone in the night and it made me feel very vulnerable. Without the Passenger I was a tiger with a dull nose and no fangs. I felt slow and stupid, and the skin on my back would not stop crawling. It was an overall feeling of impending creepiness, the sense that I needed to circle around and sniff the back trail, because something was lurking there hungrily. And tickling at the edges of all that was an echo of that strange dream music, making my feet twitch in an involuntary way, as if they had someplace to go without me.

It was a terrible feeling, and if only I had been capable of empathy, I’m sure I might have had a moment of awful revelation, wherein I flung a hand to my forehead and sank to the ground, murmuring anguished regrets over all the times I had done the stalking and caused this dreadful feeling in others. But I am not built for anguish—at least, not my own—and so all I could think about was my very large problem. My Passenger was gone, and I was empty and defenseless if somebody really was tailing me.