The big man strode in to Matthews and held out his hand.
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“Nice to meet you, Captain. I’m Kyle Chutsky. We talked on the phone.” As he shook hands, he glanced around the table, pausing at Deborah before moving back to Matthews. But after only half a second his head snapped back around and he locked stares with Doakes, just for a moment. Neither one of them said anything, moved, twitched, or offered a business card, but I was absolutely positive they knew each other.
Without acknowledging this in any way, Doakes looked down at the table in front of him and Chutsky returned his attention to the captain. “You have a great department here, Captain Matthews. I hear nothing but good things about you guys.”
“Thank you . . . Mr. Chutsky,” Matthews said stiffly. “Have a seat?”
Chutsky gave him a big, charming smile. “Thanks, I will,”
he said, and slid into the empty seat next to Deborah. She didn’t turn to look at him, but from my spot across the table I could see a slow flush climbing up her neck, all the way to her scowl.
And at this point, I could hear a little voice in the back of Dexter’s brain clearing its throat and saying, “Excuse me, just a minute—but what the hell is going on here?” Perhaps someone had slipped some LSD into my coffee, because this entire day was beginning to feel like Dexter in Wonderland. Why were we even here? Who was the battered big guy who made Captain Matthews nervous? How did he know Doakes? And why, for the love of all that is shiny, bright, and sharp, was Deborah’s face turning such an unbecoming shade of red?
I often find myself in situations where it seems to me like everyone else has read the instruction book while poor Dex-
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ter is in the dark and can’t even match tab A with slot B. It usually relates to some natural human emotion, something that is universally understood. Unfortunately, Dexter is from a different universe and does not feel nor understand such things. All I can do is gather a few quick clues to help me decide what kind of face to make while I wait for things to settle back onto the familiar map.
I looked at Vince Masuoka. I was probably closer to him than any of the other lab techs, and not just because we took turns bringing in doughnuts. He always seemed to be faking his way through life, too, as if he had watched a series of videos to learn how to smile and talk to people. He was not quite as talented at pretending as I was, and the results were never as convincing, but I felt a certain kinship.
Right now he looked flustered and intimidated, and he seemed to be trying hard to swallow without any real luck.
No clue there.
Camilla Figg was sitting at attention, staring at a spot on the wall in front of her. Her face was pale, but there was a small and very round spot of red color on each cheek.
Deborah, as mentioned, was slumping down in her chair and seemed very busily engaged in turning bright scarlet.
Chutsky slapped the palm of his hand on the table, looked around with a big happy smile, and said, “I want to thank you all for your cooperation with this thing. It’s very important that we keep this quiet until my people can move in on it.”
Captain Matthews cleared his throat. “Ahem. I, uh, I assume you will want us to continue our routine investigative procedures and the, uh, interrogating of witnesses and so on.”
Chutsky shook his head slowly. “Absolutely not. I need D E A R LY D E V O T E D D E X T E R
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your people all the way out of the picture immediately. I want this whole thing to cease and desist, disappear—as far as your department is concerned, Captain, I want it never to have happened at all.”
“Are YOU taking over this investigation?” Deborah demanded.
Chutsky looked at her and his smile got bigger. “That’s right,” he said. And he probably would have kept smiling at her indefinitely if not for Officer Coronel, the cop who had sat on the porch with the weeping and retching old lady. He cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, okay, just a minute here,”
and there was a certain amount of hostility in his voice that made his very slight accent a little more obvious. Chutsky turned to look at him, and the smile stayed on his face. Coronel looked flustered, but he met Chutsky’s happy stare. “Are you trying to stop us from doing our jobs here?”
“Your job is to protect and serve,” Chutsky said. “In this case that means to protect this information and serve me.”
“That’s bullshit,” Coronel said.
“It doesn’t matter what kind of shit it is,” Chutsky told him. “You’re gonna do it.”
“Who the fuck are you to tell me that?”
Captain Matthews tapped the table with his fingertips.
“That’s enough, Coronel. Mr. Chutsky is from Washington, and I have been instructed to render him every assistance.”
Coronel was shaking his head. “He’s no goddamn FBI,” he said.
Chutsky just smiled. Captain Matthews took a deep breath to say something—but Doakes moved his head half an inch toward Coronel and said, “Shut your mouth.” Coronel looked 7 2
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at him and some of the fight went out of him. “Don’t want to mess with this shit,” Doakes went on. “Let his people handle it.”
“It isn’t right,” said Coronel.
“Leave it,” said Doakes.
Coronel opened his mouth, Doakes raised his eyebrows—and on reflection, looking at the face underneath those eyebrows, perhaps, Officer Coronel decided to leave it.
Captain Matthews cleared his throat in an attempt to take back control. “Any more questions? All right then—Mr. Chutsky. If there’s any other way we can help . . .”
“As a matter of fact, Captain, I would appreciate it if I could borrow one of your detectives for liaison. Somebody who can help me find my way around, dot all the t’s, like that.”
All the heads around the table swung to Doakes in perfect unison, except for Chutsky’s. He turned to his side, to Deborah, and said, “How about it, Detective?”
C H A P T E R 9
Ihave to admit the surprise ending to captain Matthew’s meeting caught me off guard, but at least I now knew why everyone was acting so much like lab rats thrown into a lion’s cage. No one likes to have the Feds come in on a case; the only joy in it is making things as hard as possible for them when they do. But Chutsky was apparently such a very heavy hitter that even this small pleasure would be denied to us.
The significance of Deborah’s bright red skin condition was a deeper mystery, but it wasn’t my problem. My problem had suddenly become a little bit clearer. You may think that Dexter is a dull boy for not putting it together sooner, but when the nickel finally dropped it was accompanied by a desire to smack myself on the head. Perhaps all the beer at Rita’s house had short-sheeted my mental powers.
But clearly this visitation from Washington had been called down upon us by none other than Dexter’s personal nemesis, Sergeant Doakes. There had been some vague rumors that his 7 4
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service in the army had been somewhat irregular, and I was starting to believe them. His reaction when he saw the thing on the table had not been shock, outrage, disgust, or anger, but something far more interesting: recognition. Right at the scene he had told Captain Matthews what this was, and who to talk to about it. That particular who had sent Chutsky. And therefore when I had thought Chutsky and Doakes had recognized each other at the meeting, I had been right—because whatever was going on that Doakes knew about, Chutsky knew about it, too, probably even more so, and he had come to squash it. And if Doakes knew about something like this, there had to be a way to use his background against him in some small way, thus flinging the chains off poor Detained Dexter.
It was a brilliant train of pure cool logic; I welcomed the return of my giant brain and mentally patted myself on the head. Good boy, Dexter. Arf arf.
It
is always nice to see the synapses clicking in a way that lets you know your opinion of yourself is sometimes justified.
But in this particular case, there was just a chance that more was at stake than Dexter’s self-esteem. If Doakes had something to hide, I was a step closer to being back in business.
There are several things that Dashing Dexter is good at, and some of them can actually be legally performed in public.
One of these things is using a computer to find information.
This was a skill I had developed to help me be absolutely sure about new friends like MacGregor and Reiker. Aside from avoiding the unpleasantness of cutting up the wrong person, I like to confront my fellow hobbyists with the evidence of their past indiscretions before I send them off to dreamland.
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Computers and the Internet were wonderful means of finding this stuff.
So if Doakes had something to hide, I thought I could probably find it, or at least some small thread of it that I could yank on until his whole dark past began to unravel. Knowing him as I did, I was quite sure it would be dismal and Dexter-like. And when I found that certain something . . . Perhaps I was being naïve to think I could use this hypothetical information to get him off my case, but I thought there was a very good chance. Not by confronting him directly and demanding that he cease and desist or else, which might not be entirely wise with someone like Doakes. Besides, that was blackmail, which I am told is very wrong. But information is power, and I would certainly find some small way to use whatever I found—a way to give Doakes something to think about that did not involve shadowing Dexter and curtailing his Crusade for Decency. And a man who discovers his pants are on fire tends to have very little time to worry about somebody else’s box of matches.
I went happily down the hall from the captain’s office, back to my little cubicle off the forensics lab, and got right to work.
A few hours later I had just about all I could find. There were surprisingly few details in Sergeant Doakes’s file. The few that I found left me gasping for breath: Doakes had a first name! It was Albert—had anyone ever really called him that?
Unthinkable. I had assumed his name was Sergeant. And he had been born, too—in Waycross, Georgia. Where would the wonders end? There was more, even better; before he had come to the department, Sergeant Doakes had been—
Sergeant Doakes! In the army—the Special Forces, of all 7 6
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things! Picturing Doakes in one of those jaunty green beanies marching alongside John Wayne was almost more than I could think about without bursting into military song.
Several commendations and medals were listed, but I could find no mention of any heroic actions that had earned them. Still, I felt much more patriotic just knowing the man.
The rest of his record was almost completely empty of details.
The only thing that stood out at all was an eighteen-month stretch of something called “detached service.” Doakes had served it as a military adviser in El Salvador, returned home to a six-month stretch at the Pentagon, and then retired to our fortunate city. Miami’s police department had been happy to scoop up a decorated veteran and offer him gainful employment.
But El Salvador—I was not a history buff, but I seemed to recall that it had been something of a horror show. There had been protest marches down on Brickell Avenue at the time. I didn’t remember why, but I knew how to find out. I fired up my computer again and went online, and oh dear—find out I did. El Salvador at the time Doakes was there had been a true three-ring circus of torture, rape, murder, and name-calling.
And no one had thought to invite me.
I found an awful lot of information posted by various human rights groups. They were quite serious, almost shrill, in the things they had to say about what had been done down there. Still, as far as I could tell, nothing had ever come of their protests. After all, it was only human rights. It must be terribly frustrating; PETA seems to get much better results.
These poor souls had done their research, published their results detailing rapes, electrodes, and, cattle prods, complete with photos, diagrams, and the names of the hideous inhu-
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man monsters who reveled in inflicting this suffering on the masses. And the hideous inhuman monsters in question retired to the south of France, while the rest of the world boy-cotted restaurants for mistreating chickens.
It gave me a great deal of hope. If I was ever caught, perhaps I could simply protest dairy products and they’d let me go.
The El Salvadoran names and historical details I found meant very little to me. Neither did the organizations involved. Apparently it had developed into one of those wonderful free-for-alls where there were no actual good guys, merely several teams of bad guys with the campesinos caught in the middle. The United States had covertly backed one side, however, in spite of the fact that this team seemed just as eager to hammer suspicious poor persons into paste. And it was this side that got my attention. Something had turned the tide in their favor, some terrible threat that was not specified, something that was apparently so awful it left people nostal-gic for cattle prods in the rectum.
Whatever it was, it seemed to coincide with the period of Sergeant Doakes’s detached service.
I sat back in my rickety swivel chair. Well, well, well, I thought. What an interesting coincidence. At approximately the same time, we had Doakes, hideous unnamed torture, and covert U.S. involvement all buzzing about together. Naturally enough there was no proof that these three things were in any way linked, no reason at all to suspect any kind of connection.
Just as naturally, I was as sure as I could be that they were very much three peas in one pod. Because twenty-some years later they had all come back together for a reunion party in Miami: Doakes, Chutsky, and whatever had made the thing 7 8
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on the table. It was starting to look like tab A would fit into slot B after all.
I had found my little string. And if only I could think of a way to pull on it—
Peekaboo, Albert.
Of course, having information to use is one thing. Knowing what it means and how to use it is a different story. And all I really knew was that Doakes had been there when some bad things happened. He probably hadn’t done them himself, and in any case they were sanctioned by the government.
Covertly, of course—which made one wonder how everyone knew about it.
On the other hand, there was certainly somebody out there who still wanted to keep this quiet. And at the moment, that somebody was represented by Chutsky—who was being chaperoned by my dear sister, Deborah. If I could get her help, I might be able to squeeze a few details out of Chutsky.
What I could do then remained to be seen, but at least I could begin.
It sounded too simple, and of course it was. I called Deborah right away, and got her answering machine. I tried her cell phone and it was the same thing. For the rest of the day, Debs was out of the office please leave a message. When I tried her at home that evening it was the same thing. And when I hung up the phone and looked out the window of my apartment, Sergeant Doakes was parked in his favorite spot across the street.
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A half-moon came out from behind a tattered cloud and muttered at me, but it was wasting its breath. No matter how much I wanted to slip away and have an adventure named Reiker, I could not; not with that awful maroon Taurus parked there like a discount conscience. I turned away, looking for something to kick. Here it was Friday night, and I was prevented from stepping out and strolling through the shadows with the Dark Passenger—and now I couldn’t even get my sister on the phone. What a terrible thing life can be.
I paced around my apartment for a while but accomplished nothing except stubbing my toe. I called Deborah two more times and she w
as not home two more times. I looked out the window again. The moon had moved slightly; Doakes had not.
All righty then. Back to plan B.
Half an hour later I was sitting on Rita’s couch with a can of beer in my hand. Doakes had followed me, and I had to assume he was waiting across the street in his car. I hoped he was enjoying this as much as I was, which was to say not very much at all. Was this what it was like to be human? Were people actually so miserable and brainless that they looked forward to this—to spending Friday night, precious time off from wage slave drudgery, sitting in front of a television with a can of beer? It was mind-numbingly dull, and to my horror, I found that I was getting used to it.
Curses on you, Doakes. You’re driving me normal.
“Hey, mister,” Rita said, plunking herself down next to me, where she curled her feet under her, “why so quiet?”
“I think I’m working too hard,” I told her. “And enjoying it less.”
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She was quiet for a moment, then she said, “It’s that thing with the guy you had to let go, isn’t it? The guy who was . . .
he killed the kids?”
“That’s part of it,” I said. “I don’t like unfinished business.”
Rita nodded, almost as if she actually understood what I was saying. “That’s very . . . I mean, I can tell it’s bothering you. Maybe you should— I don’t know. What do you usually do to relax?”
It certainly conjured up some funny pictures to think of telling her what I did to relax, but it was probably not a very good idea. So instead I said, “Well, I like to take my boat out.