Darkly Dreaming Dexter

by Jeff Lindsay

  I raised my knife and looked down at my unmoving and unmoved prey. I could still hear his awful wet breath rattling in and out through his nostrils and I wanted to stop it, turn out his lights, shut down this noxious thing, cut it into pieces and seal them into neat dry garbage bags, unmoving chunks of compost that would no longer threaten, no longer eat and excrete and flail around in the patternless maze of human life—

  And I could not.

  I called silently for the familiar rush of dark wings to sweep out of me and light up my knife with the wicked gleam of savage purpose, and nothing came. Nothing moved within me at the thought of doing this sharp and necessary thing I had done so happily so many times. The only thing that welled up inside me was emptiness.

  I lowered the knife, turned away, and walked out into the night.

  T W E N T Y - F O U R

  Somehow I pulled myself out of bed and went in to work the next day, in spite of the gnawing sense of dull despair that bloomed in me like a brittle garden of thorns. I felt wrapped in a fog of dull pain that hurt only enough to remind me that it, too, was without purpose, and there seemed no point to going through the empty motions of breakfast, the long slow drive to work, no reason at all beyond the slavery of habit. But I did it, allowing muscle memory to push me all the way into the chair at my desk, where I sat, turned on the computer, and let the day drag me off into gray drudgery.

  I had failed with Starzak. I was no longer me, and had no idea who or what I was.

  Rita was waiting for me at the door when I got home with a look of anxious annoyance on her face.

  “We need to decide about the band,” she said. “They may already be booked.”

  “All right,” I said. Why not decide about bands? It was as mean-ingful as anything else.

  “I picked up all the CDs from where you dropped them yesterday,” she said, “and sorted them by price.”

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  “I’ll listen to them tonight,” I said, and although Rita still seemed peeved, eventually the evening routine took over and calmed her down, and she settled into cooking and cleaning while I listened to a series of rock bands playing “Chicken Dance” and

  “Electric Slide.” I’m sure that ordinarily it would have been as much fun as a toothache, but since I couldn’t think of anything else in the world worth doing, I labored through the whole stack of CDs and soon it was time for bed again.

  At 1 a.m. the music came back to me, and I don’t mean “Chicken Dance.” It was the drums and trumpets, and a chorus of voices came with them and rolled through my sleep, lifting me up into the heavens, and I woke up on the floor with the memory of it still echoing in my head.

  I lay on the floor for a long time, unable to form any truly coherent thought about what it meant, but afraid to go to sleep in case it should come back again. Eventually I did get into bed, and I suppose I even slept, since I opened my eyes to sunlight and sound coming from the kitchen.

  It was a Saturday morning, and Rita made blueberry pancakes, a very welcome nudge back to everyday life. Cody and Astor piled into the flapjacks with enthusiasm, and on any normal morning I would not have held back either. But today was not a normal morning.

  It is difficult to understate how large the shock must be to put Dexter off his feed. I have a very fast metabolism, and require constant fuel in order to maintain the wonderful device that is me, and Rita’s pancakes fully qualify as high-test unleaded. And yet, time and again I found myself staring at the fork as it wavered halfway between the plate and my mouth, and I was unable to muster the necessary enthusiasm for completing the motion and putting in food.

  Soon enough, everyone else was finished with the meal, and I was still staring at half a plate of food. Even Rita noticed that all was not well in Dexter’s Domain.

  “You’ve hardly touched your food,” she said. “Is something wrong?”

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  “It’s this case I’m working on,” I said, at least half truthfully. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “Oh,” she said. “You’re sure that . . . I mean, is it very violent?”

  “It’s not that,” I said, wondering what she wanted to hear. “It’s just . . . very puzzling.”

  Rita nodded. “Sometimes if you stop thinking about something for a while, the answer comes to you,” she said.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said, which was probably stretching the truth.

  “Are you going to finish your breakfast?” she said.

  I stared down at my plate with its pile of half-eaten pancakes and congealed syrup. Scientifically speaking, I knew they were still delicious, but at the moment they seemed about as appealing as old wet newspaper. “No,” I said.

  Rita looked at me with alarm. When Dexter does not finish his breakfast, we are in uncharted territory. “Why don’t you take your boat out?” she said. “That always helps you relax.” She came over and put a hand on me with aggressive concern, and Cody and Astor looked up with the hope of a boat ride written on their faces, and it was suddenly like being in quicksand.

  I stood up. It was all too much. I could not even meet my own expectations, and to be asked to deal with all theirs too was suffocating. Whether it was my failure with Starzak, the pursuing music, or being sucked down into family life, I could not say. Maybe it was the combination of all of them, pulling me apart with wildly opposite gravities and sucking the pieces into a whirlpool of clinging norma-ley that made me want to scream, and at the same time left me unable even to whimper. Whatever it was, I had to get out of here.

  “I have an errand I have to run,” I said, and they all looked at me with wounded surprise.

  “Oh,” Rita said. “What kind of errand?”

  “Wedding business,” I blurted out, without any idea what I was going to say next, but trusting the impulse blindly. And happily for me, at least one thing went right, because I remembered my conversation with the blushing, groveling Vince Masuoka. “I have to talk to the caterer.”

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  Rita lit up. “You’re going to see Manny Borque? Oh,” she said.

  “That’s really—”

  “Yes, it is,” I assured her. “I’ll be back later.” And so at the reasonable Saturday-morning time of fifteen minutes before ten o’clock, I bid a fond farewell to dirty dishes and domesticity, and climbed into my car. It was an unusually calm morning on the roads, and I saw no violence or crime of any kind as I drove to South Beach, which was almost like seeing snow at the Fontaine-bleau. Things being what they were for me lately, I kept an eye on the rearview mirror. For just a minute I thought that a little red Jeep-style car was following me, but when I slowed down it went right past me. The traffic stayed light, and it was still only ten fifteen when I had parked my car, rode up in the elevator, and knocked on Manny Borque’s door.

  There was a very long spell of utter silence, and I knocked again, a little more enthusiastically this time. I was about to try a truly rousing salute on the door when it swung open and an exceedingly bleary and mostly naked Manny Borque blinked up at me. “Jesus’ tits,” he croaked. “What time is it?”

  “Ten fifteen,” I said brightly. “Practically time for lunch.”

  Perhaps he wasn’t really awake, or perhaps he thought it was so funny it was worth saying again, but in any case he repeated himself: “Jesus’ tits.”

  “May I come in?” I asked him politely, and he blinked a few more times and then pushed the door open all the way.

  “This better be good,” he said, and I followed him in, past the hideous art-thing in his foyer and on to his perch by the window.

  He hopped up onto his stool, and I sat on the one opposite.

  “I need to talk to you about my wedding,” I said, and he shook his head very grumpily and squealed out, “Franky!” There was no answer and he leaned on one tiny hand and tapped the other on the table. “That little bitch had better— Goddamn
it, Franky!” he called out in something like a very high-pitched bellow.

  A moment later there was a scurrying sound from the back of the apartment, and then a young man came out, pulling a robe closed as he hurried in and brushing back his lank brown hair as he 188

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  came to a halt in front of Manny. “Hi,” he said. “I mean, you know.

  Good morning.”

  “Get coffee very quickly,” Manny said without looking up at him.

  “Um,” Franky said. “Sure. Okay.” He hesitated for half a second, just long enough to give Manny time to fling out his minuscule fist and shriek, “Now, goddamn it!” Franky gulped and lurched away toward the kitchen, and Manny went back to leaning his full eighty-five pounds of towering grumpiness on his fist and closing his eyes with a sigh, as though he were tormented by numberless hordes of truly idiotic demons.

  Since it seemed obvious that there could be no possibility of conversation without coffee, I looked out the window and enjoyed the view. There were three large freighters on the horizon, sending up plumes of smoke, and closer in to shore a good scattering of pleasure boats, ranging from the multimillion-dollar playtoys headed for the Bahamas all the way down to a cluster of Wind-surfers in close to the beach. A bright yellow kayak was offshore, apparently heading out to meet the freighters. The sun shone, the gulls flew by searching for garbage, and I waited for Manny to receive his transfusion.

  There was a shattering crash from the kitchen, and Franky’s muted wail of “Oh, shit.” Manny tried to close his eyes tighter, as if he could seal out all the agony of being surrounded by terrible stupidity. And only a few minutes later, Franky arrived with the coffee service, a silver semi-shapeless pot and three squat stoneware cups, perched on a transparent platter shaped like an artist’s palette.

  With trembling hands Franky placed a cup in front of Manny and poured it full. Manny took a tiny sip, sighed heavily without any sense of relief, and opened his eyes at last. “All right,” he said.

  And turning to Franky, he added, “Go clean up your hideous mess, and if I step on broken glass later, I swear to God I will disembowel you.” Franky stumbled away, and Manny took another microscopic sip before turning his bleary glare on me. “You want to talk about your wedding,” he said as if he couldn’t really believe it.

  “That’s right,” I said, and he shook his head.

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  “A nice-looking man like you,” he said. “Why on earth would you want to get married?”

  “I need the tax break,” I said. “Can we talk about the menu?”

  “At the crack of dawn, on a Saturday? No,” he said. “It’s a horrible, pointless, primitive ritual,” and I assumed he was talking about the wedding rather than the menu, although with Manny one really couldn’t be sure. “I am truly appalled that anyone would willingly go through with it. But,” he said, waving his hand dismissively, “at least it gives me a chance to experiment.”

  “I wonder if it might be possible to experiment a little cheaper.”

  “It might be,” he said and for the first time he showed his teeth, but it could only be called a smile if you agree that torturing animals is funny, “but it just won’t happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve already decided what I want to do, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

  To be perfectly truthful there were several things I could think of to stop him, but none of them—enjoyable as they might be—would pass the strict guidelines of the Harry Code, and so I could not do them. “I don’t suppose sweet reason would have any effect?” I asked hopefully.

  He leered at me. “How sweet did you have in mind?” he said.

  “Well, I was going to say please and smile a lot,” I said.

  “Not good enough,” he said. “Not by a great deal.”

  “Vince said you were guessing five hundred dollars a plate?”

  “I don’t guess,” he snarled. “And I don’t give a shit about counting your fucking pennies.”

  “Of course not,” I said, trying to soothe him a bit. “After all, they’re not your pennies.”

  “Your girlfriend signed the fucking contract,” he said. “I can charge you anything I fucking feel like.”

  “But there must be something I can do to get the price down a little?” I said hopefully.

  His snarl loosened into his patented leer again. “Not in a chair,”

  he said.

  “Then what can I do?”

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  “If you mean what can you do to get me to change my mind, nothing. Not a thing in the world. I have people lined up around the block trying to hire me—I am booked two years in advance, and I am doing you a very large favor.” His leer widened into something almost supernatural. “So prepare yourself for a miracle. And a very hefty bill.”

  I stood up. The little gnome was obviously not going to bend in the least, and there was nothing I could do about it. I really wanted to say something like “You haven’t heard the last of me,” but there didn’t seem much point to that either. So I just smiled back, said,

  “Well then,” and walked out of the apartment. As the door closed behind me, I could hear him, already squealing at Franky, “For Christ’s sake move your big ass and get all that shit off my fucking floor.”

  As I walked toward the elevator I felt an icy steel finger brush the back of my neck and for just a moment I felt a faint stirring, as if the Dark Passenger had put one toe in the water and run away after seeing that it was too cold. I stopped dead and slowly looked around me in the hallway.

  Nothing. Down at the far end a man was fumbling with the newspaper in front of his door. Otherwise, the hall was empty. I closed my eyes for just a moment. What? I asked. But there was no answer. I was still alone. And unless somebody was glaring at me through a peephole in one of the doors, it had been a false alarm.

  Or, more likely, wishful thinking.

  I got in the elevator and went down.

  As the elevator door slid shut the Watcher straightened up, still holding the newspaper from where he had taken it off the mat. It was a good piece of camouflage, and it might work again. He stared down the hall and wondered what was so interesting in that other apartment, but it didn’t really matter. He would find out. Whatever the other had been doing, he would find out.

  He counted slowly to ten and then sauntered down the hallway to the apartment the other had visited. It would only take a moment to find out why he had gone in there. And then—

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  The Watcher had no real idea what was really going through the other’s mind right now, but it was not happening fast enough. It was time for a real push, something to break the other out of his passivity. He felt a rare pulse of playfulness welling up through the dark cloud of power, and he heard the flutter of dark wings inside.

  T W E N T Y - F I V E

  In my lifelong study of human beings, I have found that no matter how hard they might try, they have found no way yet to prevent the arrival of Monday morning. And they do try, of course, but Monday always comes, and all the drones have to scuttle back to their dreary workaday lives of meaningless toil and suffering.

  That thought always cheers me up, and because I like to spread happiness wherever I go, I did my small part to cushion the blow of unavoidable Monday morning by arriving at work with a box of doughnuts, all of which vanished in what can only be called an extremely grumpy frenzy before I reached my desk. I doubted very seriously that anyone had a better reason than I did for feeling surly, but you would not have known it to watch them all snatching at my doughnuts and grunting at me.

  Vince Masuoka seemed to be sharing in the general feeling of low-key anguish. He stumbled into my cubbyhole with a look of horror and wonderment on his face, an expression that must have indicated something very moving because it looked almost real.

  “Je
sus, Dexter,” he said. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

  “I tried to save you one,” I said, thinking that with that much DEXTER IN THE DARK

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  anguish he could only be referring to the calamity of facing an empty doughnut box. But he shook his head.

  “Oh, Jesus, I can’t believe it. He’s dead!”

  “I’m sure it had nothing to do with the doughnuts,” I said.

  “My God, and you were going to see him. Did you?”

  There comes a point in every conversation where at least one of the people involved has to know what is being talked about, and I decided that point had arrived.

  “Vince,” I said, “I want you to take a deep breath, start all over from the top, and pretend you and I speak the same language.”

  He stared at me as if he was a frog and I was a heron. “Shit,” he said. “You don’t know yet, do you? Holy shit.”

  “Your language skills are deteriorating,” I said. “Have you been talking to Deborah?”

  “He’s dead, Dexter. They found the body late last night.”

  “Well, then, I’m sure he’ll stay dead long enough for you to tell me what in the hell you’re talking about.”

  Vince blinked at me, his eyes suddenly huge and moist.

  “Manny Borque,” he breathed. “He was murdered.”

  I will admit to having mixed reactions. On the one hand, I was certainly not sorry to have somebody else take the little troll out of the picture in a way I was unable to do for ethical reasons. But on the other hand, now I needed to find another caterer—and oh, yes, I would probably have to give a statement of some kind to the detective in charge. Annoyance fought it out with relief, but then I remembered that the doughnuts were gone, too.

  And so the reaction that won out was irritation at all the bother this was going to cause. Still, Harry had schooled me well enough to know that this is not really an acceptable reaction to display when one hears of the death of an acquaintance. So I did my best to push my face into something resembling shock, concern, and distress. “Wow,” I said. “I had no idea. Do they know who did it?”