Dexter 3 - Dexter in the Dark (4 page)

Surprisingly young and even handsome. An air of innocent charm. Not the
sort of face you might expect, but they never were.

The Watcher followed when the other got off at
Dadeland and walked toward one of the many parked cars. It was late and there
were no people in the lot. He knew he could make it happen now, so easily, just
slip up behind the other and let the power flow through him, out into his
hands, and release the other into the darkness. He could feel the slow,
majestic rise of the strength inside as he closed the distance, almost taste
the great and silent roar of the kill-

And then he stopped suddenly in his tracks and slowly
moved away down a different aisle.

Because the other's car had a very noticeable placard
lying on the dashboard.

A police parking permit.

He was very glad he had been patient. If the other was with the
police…This could be a much bigger problem than he had expected. Not good at
all. This would take some careful planning. And a great deal more observation.

And so the Watcher slipped
quietly back into the night to prepare, and to watch.

SOMEBODY ONCE SAID THAT THERE'S NO REST FOR THE wicked,
and they were almost certainly talking about me, because for several days after
I sent dear little Zander on to his just reward poor Dogged Dexter was very
busy indeed. Even as Rita's frenetic planning kicked into high gear, my job
followed suit. We seemed to have hit one of those periodic spells Miami gets
every now and then in which murder just seems like a good idea, and I was up to
my eyeballs in blood spatter for three days.

But on the fourth day, things actually got a little bit worse. I had brought
in doughnuts, as is my habit from time to time-especially in the days following
my playdates. For some reason, not only do I feel more relaxed for several days
after the Passenger and I have a night encounter, but I also feel quite hungry.
I'm sure that fact is filled with deep psychological significance, but I am far
more interested in making sure I get one or two of the jelly doughnuts before
the savage predators in Forensics shred them all to pieces. Significance can
wait when doughnuts are on the line.

But this morning I barely managed to grab one
raspberry-filled doughnut-and I was lucky not to lose a finger in the process.
The whole floor was buzzing with preparation for a trip to a crime scene, and
the tone of the buzz let me know that it was a particularly heinous one, which
did not please me. That meant longer hours, stuck somewhere far from
civilization and Cuban sandwiches. Who knew what I would end up with for lunch?
Considering that I had been short-changed on the doughnuts, lunch could prove
to be a very important meal, and for all I knew I would be forced to work right
through it.

I grabbed my handy blood-spatter kit and headed out
the door with Vince Masuoka, who despite his small size had somehow grabbed two
of the very valuable filled doughnuts-including the Bavarian cream with the
chocolate frosting. “You have done a little too well, Mighty Hunter,”
I told him with a nod at his plundered loot.

“The gods of the forest have been good,” he said, and took a
large bite. “My people will not starve this season.”

“No, but I will,” I said.

He gave me his terrible phony smile, which looked like something he had
learned to do by studying a government manual on facial expressions. “The
ways of the jungle are hard, Grasshopper,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “First you must
learn to think like a doughnut.”

“Ha,” Vince said. His laugh was even phonier
than his smile, sounding like he was reading aloud from a phonetic spelling of
laughter. “Ah, ha ha ha!” he said. The poor guy seemed to be faking
everything about being human, just like me. But wasn't as good at it as I was.
No wonder I was comfortable with him. That and the fact that he quite often
took a turn bringing the doughnuts.

“You need better camouflage,” he said, nodding at my shirt, a
bright pink-and-green Hawaiian pattern complete with hula girls. “Or at
least better taste.”

“It was on sale,” I said.

“Ha,” he said again. “Well, pretty soon
Rita will be picking your clothes.” And then abruptly dropping his
terrible artificial jollity, he said, “Listen, I think I have found the
perfect caterer.”

“Does he do jelly
doughnuts?” I said, truthfully hoping that the whole subject of my
impending

matrimonial bliss would simply go away. But I had asked Vince to be my
best man, and he was taking the job seriously.

“The guy is very big,” Vince said. “He
did the MTV Awards, and all those showbiz parties and stuff.”

“He sounds delightfully expensive,” I said.

“Well, he owes me a favor,” Vince said.
“I think we can get him down on the price. Maybe like a hundred and fifty
bucks a plate.”

“Actually, Vince, I had hoped we could afford
more than one plate.”

“He was in that South Beach magazine,” he
said, sounding a little hurt. “You should at least talk to him.”

“To be honest,” I said, which of course meant I was lying,
“I think Rita wants something simple. Like a buffet.”

Vince was definitely sulking now. “At least talk
to him,” he repeated.

“I'll talk to Rita about it,” I said, wishing that would make
the whole thing go away. And during the trip to the crime scene Vince said no
more about it, so maybe it had.

The scene turned out to be a lot easier for me than I
had anticipated, and I cheered up quite a bit when I got there. In the first
place, it was on the University of Miami campus, which was my dear old alma
mater, and in keeping with my lifelong attempt to appear human, I always tried
to remember to pretend I felt a warm, fuzzy fondness for the place when I was
there. Secondly, there was apparently very little raw blood to deal with, which
might mean that I could be done with it in a reasonable amount of time. It also
meant freedom from the nasty wet red stuff-I really don't like blood, which may
seem odd, but there it is. I do, however, find great satisfaction in organizing
it at a crime scene, forcing it to fit a decent pattern and behave itself. In
this case, from what I learned on the way there, that would hardly be a
challenge.

And so it was with my usual cheerful good spirits that I sauntered over
toward the yellow crime-scene tape, certain of a charming interlude in a hectic
workday-

And came to a dead stop with one foot just inside the
tape.

For a moment the world turned bright yellow and there was a sickening sensation
of lurching weightless through space. I could see nothing except the
knife-edged glare. There was a silent sound from the dark backseat, the feeling
of subliminal nausea mixed with the blind panic of a butcher knife squealing
across a chalkboard. A skittering, a nervousness, a wild certainty that
something was very badly wrong, and no hint of what or where it was.

My sight came back and I looked around me. I saw
nothing I didn't expect to see at a crime scene: a small crowd gathered at the
yellow tape, some uniforms guarding the perimeter, a few cheap-suited
detectives, and my team, the forensic geeks, scrabbling through the bushes on
their hands and knees. All perfectly normal to the naked eye. And so I turned
to my infallible fully clothed interior eye for an answer.

What is it? I asked
silently, closing my eyes again and searching for some answer from the
Passenger to this unprecedented display of discomfort. I was accustomed to
commentary from my Dark Associate, and quite often my first sight of a crime
scene would be punctuated by sly whispers of admiration or

amusement, but this-it was clearly a sound of
distress, and I did not know what to make of it.

What? I asked again. But there was no answer beyond the uneasy rustle
of invisible wings, so I shook it off and walked over to the site.

The two bodies had clearly been burned somewhere else,
since there was no sign of any barbecue large enough to bake two medium-size
females quite so thoroughly. They had been dumped beside the lake that runs
through the UM campus, just off the path that ran around it, and discovered by
a pair of early-morning joggers. It was my opinion from the state of the small
amount of blood evidence I found that the heads had been removed after the two
had burned to death.

One small detail gave me pause. The bodies were laid
out neatly, almost reverently, with the charred arms folded across the chests.
And in place of the severed heads, a ceramic bull's head had been carefully
placed at the top of each torso.

This is exactly the kind of loving touch that always brings some type
of comment from the Dark Passenger-generally speaking, an amused whisper, a
small chuckle, even a twinge of jealousy. But this time, as Dexter said to
himself, Aha, a bull's head! What do we think about that?, the Passenger
responded immediately and forcefully with-

Nothing?

Not a whisper, not a sigh?

I sent an irritated demand for answers, and got no more than a worried
scuttling, as if the Passenger were ducking down behind anything that might
provide cover, and hoping to ride out the storm without being noticed.

I opened my eyes, as much from startlement as anything else. I could
not remember any time when the Passenger had nothing to say on some example of
our favorite subject, and yet here he was, not merely subdued but hiding.

I looked back at the two charred bodies with new respect. I had no clue
as to what this might mean, but since it had never happened before, it seemed like
a good idea to find out.

Angel Batista-no-relation was on his hands and knees on the far side of
the path, very carefully examining things I couldn't see and didn't really care
about. “Did you find it yet?” I asked him.

He didn't look up. “Find what?” he said.

“I don't have any idea,” I said. “But
it must be here somewhere.”

He reached out with a pair of tweezers and plucked a single blade of
grass, staring hard at it and then stuffing it into a plastic baggie as he
spoke. “Why,” he said, “would somebody put a ceramic bull
head?”

“Because chocolate would melt,” I said.

He nodded without looking up. “Your sister thinks
it's a Santeria thing.”

“Really,” I said.
That possibility had not occurred to me, and I felt a little miffed that it
hadn't. After all,

this was Miami; anytime we encountered something that
looked like a ritual and involved animal heads, Santeria should have been the
first thing all of us thought. An Afro-Cuban religion that combined Yoruba
animism with Catholicism, Santeria was widespread in Miami. Animal sacrifice
and symbolism were common for its devotees, which would explain the bull heads.
And although a relatively small number of people actually practiced Santeria,
most homes in the city had one or two small saint candles or cowrie-shell
necklaces bought at a botanica. The prevailing attitude around town was that
even if you didn't believe in it, it didn't hurt to pay it some respect.

As I said, it should have occurred to me at once. But my foster sister,
now a full sergeant in homicide, had thought of it first, even though I was
supposed to be the clever one.

I had been relieved to learn that Deborah was assigned to the case,
since it meant that there would be a minimum of bone-numbing stupidity. It
would also, I hoped, give her something better to do with her time than she had
appeared to have lately. She had been spending all hours of the day and night
hovering around her damaged boyfriend, Kyle Chutsky, who had lost one or two
minor limbs in his recent encounter with a deranged freelance surgeon who
specialized in turning human beings into squealing potatoes-the same villain
who had artfully trimmed away so many unnecessary parts from Sergeant Doakes.
He had not had the time to finish with Kyle, but Debs had taken the whole thing
rather personally and, after fatally shooting the good doctor, she had devoted
herself to nursing Chutsky back to vigorous manhood.

I'm sure she had racked up numberless points on the
ethical scoreboard, no matter who was keeping track, but in truth all the time
off had done her no good with the department, and even worse, poor lonely
Dexter had felt keenly the uncalled-for neglect from his only living relative.

So it was very good news all around to have Deborah assigned to the
case, and on the far side of the path she was talking to her boss, Captain
Matthews, no doubt giving him a little ammunition for his ongoing war with the
press, who simply refused to take his picture from his good side.

The press vans were, in fact, already rolling up and spewing out crews
to tape background shots of the area. A couple of the local bloodhounds were
standing there, solemnly clutching their microphones and intoning mournful
sentences about the tragedy of two lives so brutally ended. As always, I felt
reverently grateful to live in a free society, where the press had a sacred
right to show footage of dead people on the evening news.

Captain Matthews carefully brushed his already perfect hair with the
heel of his hand, clapped Deborah on the shoulder, and marched over to talk to
the press. And I marched over to my sister.

She stood where Matthews had left her, watching his back as he began to
speak to Rick Sangre, one of the true gurus of if-it-bleeds-it-leads reporting.
“Well, Sis,” I said. “Welcome back to the real world.”

She shook her head. “Hip hooray,” she said.

“How is Kyle doing?” I asked her, since my
training told me that was the right thing to ask about.

“Physically?” she said. “He's fine. But
he just feels useless all the time. And those assholes in Washington won't let
him go back to work.”

It was difficult for me to judge Chutsky's ability to
get back to work, since no one had ever said exactly what work he did. I knew
it was vaguely connected to some part of the government and was also something
clandestine, but beyond that I didn't know. “Well,” I said, searching
for the proper cliché, "I'm

sure it just needs some
time."

“Yeah,” she said.
“I'm sure.” She looked back at the place where the two charred bodies
lay. “Anyhow, this is a great way to get my mind off it.” “The
rumor mill tells me you think it's Santeria,” I said, and her head
swiveled rapidly around to face me. “You think it's not?” she
demanded. “Oh, no, it might well be,” I said. “But?” she
said sharply. “No buts at all,” I said. “Damn it, Dexter,”
she said. “What do you know about this?” And it was probably a fair
question. I had

been known on occasion to offer a pretty fair guess
about some of the more gruesome murders we worked on. I had gained a small
reputation for my insight into the way the twisted homicidal sickos thought and
operated-natural enough, since, unknown to everyone but Deborah, I was a
twisted homicidal sicko myself.

But even though Deborah had only recently become aware of my true
nature, she had not been shy about taking advantage of it to help her in her
work. I didn't mind; glad to help. What else is family for? And I didn't really
care if my fellow monsters paid their debt to society in Old Sparky-unless, of
course, it was somebody I was saving for my own innocent pleasure.