Dexter 3 - Dexter in the Dark (13 page)

The Watcher moved a little closer, to study the other,
perhaps see some sign as to how he was reacting so far. Interesting to bring
those children with him. They didn't seem particularly disturbed by the sight
of the two heads. Perhaps they were used to such things, or-

No. It was not possible.

Moving with the greatest possible care, he edged
closer, still trying to work his way near with the natural ebb and flow of the
onlookers, until he got to the yellow tape at a point as close to the children
as he could get.

And when the boy looked up and their eyes met, there
was no longer any possibility of mistake.

For a moment their gaze locked and all sense of time was
lost in the whir of shadowy wings. The boy simply stood there and stared at him
with recognition-not of who he was but of what, and his small dark wings
fluttered in panicked fury. The Watcher could not help himself; he moved
closer, allowing the boy to see him and the nimbus of dark power he carried.
The boy showed no fear-simply looked back at him and showed his own power. Then
the boy turned away and took his sister's hand, and the two of them trotted
over to the other.

Time to leave. The children would certainly point him out, and he did
not want his face seen, not yet. He hurried back to the car and drove away, but
not with anything like worry. Not at all. If anything, he was more pleased than
he had a right to be.

It was the children, of course. Not just that they would tell the
other, and move him a few small steps further into the necessary fear. But also
because he really liked children. They were wonderful to work with, they
broadcast emotions that were so very powerful, and raised the whole energy of
the event to a higher plane.

Children-wonderful.

This was actually starting to be enjoyable.

image

For a while, it was enough to ride in the monkey-things and help them
kill. But even this grew dull with the simple repetition, and every now and
then IT felt again that there had to be something more. There was that tantalizing
twitch of something indefinable at the moment of the kill, the sense that
something stirred toward waking and then settled back down again, and IT wanted
to know what that was.

But no matter how many times, no matter how many
different monkey-things, IT could never get any closer to that feeling, never
push in far enough to find out what it was. And that made IT want to know all
the more.

A great deal of time went by, and IT began to turn sour again. The
monkey-things were just too simple, and whatever IT did with them was not
enough. IT began to resent their stupid, pointless, endlessly repeating
existence. IT lashed out at them once or twice, wanting to punish them for
their dumb, unimaginative suffering, and IT drove IT's host to kill entire families,
whole tribes of the things. And as they all died, that wonderful hint of
something else would hang there just out of reach and then settle back down
again into slumber.

It was furiously frustrating; there had to be a way to break through,
find out what that elusive something was and pull it into existence.

And then at last, the monkey-things began to change.
It was very slow at first, so slow that IT didn't even realize what was
happening until the process was well under way. And one wonderful day, when IT
went into a new host, the thing stood up on its back legs and, as IT still
wondered what was happening, the

thing said, “Who are you?” The extreme shock
of this moment was followed by an even more extreme pleasure. IT was no longer
alone.

EIGHTEEN THE 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.