by Jeff Lindsay
So: I had been to several restaurants—and that sent one quick bright surge of adrenaline up my spine, because I remembered that one of those restaurants had been Mexican—just like Raul! But of course, it didn’t hold up. Aside from the fact that it was politically terribly incorrect, it made no real sense. Pepino’s restaurant had no more connection to a drug lord than the sushi place where I’d had lunch with Vince had with bombing Pearl Harbor. And that sushi place was just as certainly ruled out—I had sat there in my car for half an hour, a perfect and stationary target. Even a mad bomber would have said, What the hell, and taken a whack at me by some more direct method.
Not the restaurants. Where else? I had been out of jail a very short time, and I hadn’t been very many places, and was my phone really ringing again?!
It was. And once again it was Deborah calling. A great number of things ran lightly across the surface of my brain. Most of them were biting things I could say to her. Unfortunately, the best of them would involve raising my voice and saying things that might even affect the service of my meat loaf.
But one other thing slowly worked its way to the front of the line, gently shoving aside all the salty, profane, and entertaining words and phrases. Deborah, after making it quite clear that she never wanted even to say my name again, had just called me three times in two minutes.
Why?
It would be fun to think that after such a short time with my children she wanted to give them back—and more fun still if she’d had an incredibly illuminating insight into the error of her ways and she wanted to beg my forgiveness and make up. But as stubborn as I knew her to be, it would have to be an epiphany on the order of Saul on the road to Damascus—and Debs in the fast lane of I-95 didn’t sound like it even belonged in the same league. So ruling out the ridiculous, that she had suddenly forgiven me, I could think of absolutely no reason in the world why she would call. And therefore no reason I should answer.
Except…
Curiosity, as the saying goes, killed the cat. And it has frequently proved lethal to nonfelines as well. And yet a tiny but powerful tendril of curiosity was tugging relentlessly at my concentration, demanding all my attention. On top of that, it may even be that some small shred of family loyalty as instilled by Harry might still be lodged in a crack somewhere. Whatever the reason, I did the unthinkable, the unwise, the unresistible.
I answered.
“Yes?” I said smoothly, so she could see that her call—and, by extension, she herself—meant nothing.
“I need your help,” Deborah said between her teeth.
“Reeealllllyyy,” I said, and I think I sounded as surprised as I felt. The possibility that she would even dare to ask such a thing had never occurred to me. “What on earth could you believe I would ever help you with?” And I put as much dry scorn into it as I could, knowing there was absolutely no possible satisfactory answer she could make.
“The children are gone,” she said. “They’ve been kidnapped.”
Except that, of course.
TWENTY
Brian very agreeably drove me north on U.S. 1 and then turned left into the Gables, over to Deborah’s little house. He said nothing, except to ask for directions, and I was grateful. Nearly anyone else in the world would have chattered away the entire time, filling the silence with sentimental expressions of sympathy and compassion—or worse, declarations of total support for me in my hour of need.
Brian did no such thing, proving once again that he knew me better than anyone else in the world. He understood that the very first dewy-eyed gasp of empathetic blather from him, the very first manly compassionate I’m here for you, buddy, would result in my leaning over and clawing his eyes out. Of course, it could also be that he knew I was aware that any such thing he might utter was completely artificial and meaningless, since he could not feel sympathy any more than he could feel anything else.
And I was supposed to be just the same—vacant, unoccupied, null and void in terms of inner content. No emotions, no feelings, no compassion or empathy or any of the other gooey human shortcomings. So it must have been hunger, caused by missing breakfast, that made my stomach churn and roil and my pulse thump at my temples like two small pointy fists.
Kidnapped.
My kids.
The more I thought about it, the less I could actually think about. A powerful rising tide of anger mixed with anxiety flooded through me and I could only grit my teeth, clench my fists, and fantasize about what I would do to whoever had taken them. It was counterproductive, even debilitating, since the only result was a return of this morning’s headache, and a couple of new cuts in the palms of my hands, where I had unconsciously shoved a fingernail in too far while clenching my fists.
Stupid, useless, sickening anger—and yet it did pass the time, and before I knew it Brian was pulling up on the street outside Deborah’s house. “If you don’t mind,” he said with great polite reserve, “I don’t think I’ll go in.”
“No, of course not,” I said. It was obviously unthinkable for him to go in, or to go anywhere near Deborah, and he was wasting my time even mentioning it. I reached for the door handle and his voice stopped me.
“Dexter,” he said.
I turned and looked at him, angry at the delay.
“I will help all I can,” he said, without artifice of any kind, just a clean simplicity that said he really would. It meant more to me than all the crocodile tears in the world, and I unclenched my jaw for the first time since Deborah’s call.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll call you when I know more. When I can.”
He just nodded, and I opened the door and climbed out of his car.
Brian’s car was well out of sight before I even got to Deborah’s front door. That was just as well, because she opened it when I was still on the front walk, ten feet away. She stood there, framed by the doorway, her fists clenched tightly at her sides, and as I looked at her face I saw with utter astonishment that she had been crying. Deborah did not cry. Ever. The last time I had seen her tears was when she was eight years old and fell from a tree, breaking her wrist. Since then she had been icy control, tougher than nails, practically bionic. I knew she felt things—she just never, ever showed them. I had often thought it was funny; she felt everything and showed nothing, and I was just the opposite. The Legacy of Harry.
I stopped on the stoop, several feet away, unsure what happened next. Clearly she was just as unsure, because she looked at me, looked away, looked at me again, and then simply turned away and went inside, leaving the door open as an unspoken invitation to follow. I did, locking the door behind me.
Deborah was already seated at her rickety kitchen table when I joined her. She slumped over a cup half-filled with coffee, staring down into the mug like she thought she could find an answer in it. I stood watching her for a moment, but she didn’t look up, so I pulled out a chair and sat opposite her. Some paperwork sat in the middle of the table, and I recognized it—the custody agreement I had signed.
Yesterday’s news—what mattered now was the kids. “How did it happen,” I said. Even to me, it sounded like, How could you let it happen.
But Debs just nodded like she deserved it. “I dropped them at day care, like always,” she said. “I went to work. Half hour later they came. Three men with guns. They said, ‘Bring us the Morgan kids.’ And nobody did anything, so they shot one of the teachers.” She looked up quickly, and then down again. “They got the kids. All four of them. Threw them into a car and drove away.” She slumped down even farther. “They have our kids.”
She sounded half-dead, nearly empty, like she’d already surrendered. I’d never heard her like this, and it made me very uncomfortable. “Who were they?” I said. She frowned, but kept staring down. “The men with the guns,” I said. “Who were they? Any hint at all?”
She shrugged. “Hispanic,” she said. “Thick accent. Two of ’em short and dark, one taller, lighter hair. That’s all I got.”
“
Wonderful,” I said. “Hispanic accent. Shouldn’t be hard to find in Miami.”
“The car was an SUV, dark blue. Nobody saw the plates,” she added in the same dull voice.
I opened my mouth to say something sarcastic, and then snapped it shut again as a gigantic alarm gong began to ring in the back of my brain. Something Debs had said had raised the hairs on my neck and sent the troops to the parapet. I didn’t get it at first. I rewound her last few sentences. Three men with guns—check. Hispanic—check. Two short, one taller—check. Dark blue SUV—
Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding.
I had naturally assumed that Raul’s men had taken the kids. The only question had been, as it was with everything else at the moment, How? How had they found me? Having found me, how did they make the connection and find the children?
Suddenly a very large part of the answer had come clear.
A dark blue SUV. I had seen one recently—in fact, I had seen it more than once. When I parked my car in the alley at Pepino’s—and then later right here, outside Deborah’s house, a dark blue SUV had gone crawling by. And hadn’t there been one other time recently?
“Dexter,” Deborah said, interrupting my train of thought. “I can’t do this. I have to…They put me on administrative leave. And I’m supposed to sit here and let them find my kids?!” She looked up at me with a pleading expression, something else I had never seen from her. “I can’t do that. Jesus fuck, we have to do something!”
“What do you suggest?” I said.
For a second it looked like she was going to lose her temper and snarl at me. But then she wilted, just slumped back over the coffee again. “I don’t know,” she said, barely over a whisper. “They won’t let me near it. I can’t even…They sent me home, and I just…” She shook her head slowly, as if she barely had the energy.
“So you called me?” I said. “Because you think I can find these guys?”
“No,” she said. And then she raised her head and looked at me and she was Debs again. More—she was Über-Deb, the Dragon Slayer. The fire that showed in her eyes would have melted a Buick’s fender. “I called you because when I find them I want them dead.”
I nodded as if that was the most natural thing in the world, for her to ask me to tag along and do the finish work. And actually, for a moment or two, it really did seem quite natural. She would find them, and I would take it from there. Each of us doing what we did best, working together in harmony, world without end. A proper display of Harry’s real legacy.
But on a moment’s reflection, it didn’t seem that natural at all. Mere hours ago I was as good as dead in Deborah’s eyes, lower than pond scum—and for the very same reason that she now found my company desirable. It was such a cold and utilitarian about-face, so completely reptilian, that I should have admired it. I didn’t. I needed more.
Because I have no real human feelings, Harry had molded me to look on family bonds as rules. I’ve always been quite good with rules. They help keep things neat and orderly, and it would be a much better world if everybody paid more attention to them—or even if we all agreed on the same set.
Deborah had broken a very important rule, one that Harry had pounded into me over and over again: Family comes first. Everything else in life will come and go, and things that seem important now will melt away like snowflakes in a summer rain. Not this. Family is forever. I had believed it, even relied on it. And Deborah had violated it. I had needed her as I’d never needed anyone else in my life—needed her help and comfort and support, the things only family can really provide. And she had swept me out of her life like a dust bunny on the living room rug. The only reason she was letting me back in now was because suddenly she needed me.
Of course, it’s always nice to have your talents appreciated, especially by a family member, but at this point in our present nonrelationship, I thought she should give me just a little bit more than a temporary come-kill-things-for-me pass.
So I met her gaze with a steely one of my own. “I think that’s absolutely wonderful,” I said. “But why should I do that for you? Why,” I went on as she gaped angrily at me, “should I do anything at all for you? And don’t,” I cautioned her, showing her the palm of one hand, “please don’t say because I’m your brother and they’re my kids. You burned those bridges, and very thoroughly, too.”
“For fuck’s sake, Dexter,” she said, and it was nice to see some color returning to her cheeks, “don’t you care about anything but yourself?!”
“I’ve got nothing else left to care about,” I said. “You let Anderson take away my job, my reputation, and my freedom—and then you took away my family.” I nudged the custody papers toward her and raised an eyebrow. “Remember? It wasn’t that long ago.”
“I did what I thought was best for the kids,” she said, and it may be that now she had just a little too much color in her cheeks. “That’s what I always do.” She tapped the tabletop with a finger, hard, once for each word. “It’s What I’m Doing Now.”
“Really? It’s best for them if I stay in jail until I come sneaking in to kill a few bad guys for you? And then I disappear conveniently again, is that the plan?” I shook my head. “That’s something only my sister could ask for—and I no longer have one.”
“Well, fuck,” she snarled. “What do you want, an apology? Fine, I’m sorry, okay?”
“Nope. Not okay. Not enough.”
Debs leaned across the table as far as she could go and still stay seated. “You miserable shit,” she said. “They’re your kids, too!”
“Not anymore,” I said, and I glanced meaningfully at the custody papers.
For a second she just showed me her teeth, anger building up in her eyes and looking for somewhere to go and something to burn. And then she lashed out with a hand—I flinched, but it wasn’t my face she was going for. Instead, she snatched up the custody papers, ripped them in half, and flung the pieces at my head. Since I had already used up my flinch, most of the pieces hit me. Considering what I’d already been through in the last few hours it didn’t hurt that much. In fact, in an odd way, it felt kind of good.
Apparently I had a family again.
“Apology accepted,” I said. “How do we find them?”
She glared a few seconds longer; after all, she had to go from rage back to plotting revenge, and it’s much harder to shift gears that quickly when you have emotions. Debs leaned back into a more normal sitting posture and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I told you everything I’ve got.”
“Three Hispanic males,” I said. “And one dark blue SUV.”
“That’s it,” she said, and she slumped back over her coffee cup again. “That’s all of it.” She picked up her coffee cup, looked at the contents, and put it back down again without drinking. “I don’t even know why they snatched the kids. Revenge, somebody I busted?” She shook her head. “If only I knew why…”
Deborah has always had a fairly healthy ego, and I was glad that the present crisis had not beaten it down; she believed that someone had taken the kids to get at her. I hadn’t even considered that idea; I had just naturally assumed that it was Raul’s men getting leverage on me. But I thought about the possibility that it was an attack on Debs instead, and right off the bat the notion had several very appealing elements. For starters, it let me off the hook—I didn’t have to tell her that it was my fault, which might have put a damper on what was turning into a rather heartwarming reunion. I also didn’t have to tell her about Brian, which would almost certainly dampen his life even more severely.
But it wouldn’t do, of course. I had seen the blue SUV, and was now certain it had trailed me to Deb’s house. From there, it was a simple matter for them to watch her, see the kids, follow to day care, and grab them. The only real question remained the same: How had they found me in the first place? I had seen them at dinner, and so they had picked me up before that—and if I could remember where I had seen the blue SUV earlier—
“Are you ou
t for good now?” Deborah said abruptly.
“Out?” I said, still with one foot in my thoughts. “You mean out of jail?” She nodded. “Well, it’s not certain. The state attorney really wants me for this.”
She snorted. “Well, shit,” she said. “If Frank Kraunauer can’t get you out—Jesus, Dex, what’s the matter?”
The matter was simple: My head was spinning like a carousel. Or possibly I was motionless and the room itself was spinning—maybe even the entire Universe, suddenly whirling around like an enormous insane dervish. It must have shown on my face, because the whole natural order as I knew it had suddenly flipped over on its axis. East was now up, and West was tomorrow, and nothing was what it should be, and yet because of that everything suddenly made sense. It was sickening, maddening, dreadful, gut-lurching sense, but it added up perfectly.
I knew where I had seen the blue SUV earlier.
I recalled clearly where I had been and what I had been doing and suddenly all the nickels were dropping into every available slot, and every single light, bell, gong, and siren in the big pinball game of Dexter’s Universe was going off at once. I knew. And with one abrupt, reality-shifting moment of recall, everything fell into place.
And not in a good way. Not at all.
“Dex?” Deborah said uncertainly, as if she wasn’t sure whether our relationship had healed to the point where she could show concern. “Are you all right?”
“I am a dolt,” I said. “A naive, trusting, gullible dolt. Blind in one eye, deaf in both ears, and dumber than a fence post.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but what made you realize it?”
“I know how to find them,” I said.
The look of concern dropped off her face, instantly replaced by a very wicked hunger. “How,” she said.
I looked at her and started to tell her—and stopped. Could I really tell her? That the kidnappers had followed me to her and the kids?
