Dexter in the Dark (4 page)

“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.

FOUR

I
HAD FOLLOWED
Z
ANDER 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.