But in the middle of the climactic scene, right when we were about to learn that we are all the same and then hug, the doorbell rang. Harry frowned a little bit, but he got up and went to the door with one eye still on the TV. Since I had already guessed how the show would end and I was not particularly moved by artificial hugs of compassion, I watched Harry. He turned on the outside light, peeked through the eyehole, and then unlocked and opened the door.
“Gus,” he said, with surprise. “Come on in.”
Gus Rigby was Harry’s oldest friend on the force. They had been best man at each other’s wedding, and Harry was godfather to Gus’s daughter, Betsy. Since his divorce, Gus was always at our house for holidays and special occasions, although not as often now that Doris was sick, and he always brought a key lime pie.
But he didn’t look terribly social now, and he was not carrying a pie. He looked angry and frazzled, and he said, “We gotta talk,” and pushed past Harry into the house.
“About what?” Harry said, still holding the door open.
Gus turned and snarled at him, “Otto Valdez is out on the street.”
Harry stared at him. “How did he get out?”
“That lawyer he’s got,” Gus said. “He said it was excessive force.”
Harry nodded. “You were rough on him, Gus.”
“He’s a baby-raper,” Gus said. “You want me to kiss him?”
“All right,” Harry said. He closed and locked the door. “What is there to talk about?” he said.
“He’s after me now,” Gus said. “The phone rings and nobody’s there, just breathing. But I know it’s him. And I got a note under my front door. At my home, Harry.”
“What did the lieutenant say?”
Gus shook his head. “I want to do this myself,” he said. “On the side. And I want your help.”
With the wonderful timing that happens only in real life, the TV show came to an end and the laugh track blasted out right on the toes of Gus’s words. Deborah laughed, too, and finally looked up. “Hi, Uncle Gus,” she said.
“Hello, Debbie,” Gus said. “You’re more beautiful every day.”
Debs scowled. Even then she was embarrassed by her good looks, and she didn’t like being reminded of it. “Thank you,” she said grumpily.
“Come on into the kitchen,” Harry said, taking Gus by the elbow and leading him away.
I knew perfectly well that Harry was taking Gus into the kitchen to keep me and Deborah from hearing what would be said, and naturally enough that made me want to hear it all the more. And since Harry had not specifically said, “Stay here and do not listen …,” why, it would hardly be eavesdropping at all!
So I got up from in front of the TV set very casually and went down the hall toward the bathroom. I paused in the hallway and looked back: Deborah was already engrossed in the next program, and so I slid into a small patch of shadow and listened.
“… courts will handle it,” Harry was saying.
“Like they handled it so far?” Gus said, sounding angrier than I had ever heard him. “Come on, Harry, you know better than that.”
“We’re not vigilantes, Gus.”
“Well maybe we should be, goddamn it.”
There was a pause. I heard the refrigerator door open and then the sound of a beer can opening. A moment went by and nothing was said.
“Listen, Harry,” Gus said at last. “We’ve been cops for a long time now.”
“Coming up on twenty years,” Harry said.
“And from the first day on the job, didn’t it hit you that the system just doesn’t work? That the biggest assholes always find a way to fall out of jail and back onto the streets? Huh?”
“That doesn’t mean we have the right to—”
“Then who does have the right, Harry? If not us, who does?”
There was another longish pause. Finally, Harry spoke, very softly, and I had to strain to make out the words.
“You weren’t in Vietnam,” Harry said. Gus didn’t respond. “Something I learned there is that some people can kill in cold blood, and others can’t. And most of us can’t,” Harry said. “It does bad things to you.”
“So what are you saying, you agree with me, but you can’t do it? If ever anybody deserved it, Harry, Otto Valdez …”
“What are you doing?” came Deborah’s voice, approximately eight inches from my ear. I jumped so hard I bumped my head on the wall.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Funny place to do it,” she said, and since she showed no inclination to move on, I decided I was done listening and I went back to zombie land in front of the TV. I had certainly heard enough to understand what was going on, and I was fascinated. Dear sweet kindly Uncle Gus wanted to kill somebody, and wanted Harry to help him. My brain whirled with the excitement of it, frantically searching for a way to persuade them to let me help—or at least watch. Where was the harm in that? It was almost a civic duty!
But Harry refused to help Gus, and a little while later Gus left the house looking like someone had let all the air out of him. Harry came back to the TV with me and Debs, and spent the next half hour trying to get his happy face back on.
Two days later they found Uncle Gus’s body. It had been mutilated and beheaded and apparently tortured first.
And three days after that, unknown to me, Harry found my little pet memorial under the bushes in the backyard. Over the next week or two I caught him staring at me more than once with his work face on. I did not know why at the time, and it was somewhat intimidating, but I was far too much of the young gawp to be able to phrase a statement like, Dad, why are you staring at me with that particular expression?
And in any case, the Why of it very soon became apparent. Three weeks after Uncle Gus met his untimely end, Harry and I went on a camping trip to Elliott Key, and with a few simple sentences—starting with, “You’re different, son”—Harry changed everything forever.
His plan. His design for Dexter. His perfectly crafted, sane, and sensible road map for me to be eternally and wonderfully me.
And now I had stepped off the Path, taken a small and dangerous back-road detour. I could almost see him shake his head and turn those ice-cold blue eyes on me.
“We’ve got to get you squared away,” Harry would have said.
SEVENTEEN
A PARTICULARLY LOUD SNORE FROM CHUTSKY BROUGHT me back to the present. It was loud enough that one of the nurses stuck her head in the door, and then checked all the dials and gauges and whirling machinery before going away again, with a suspicious backward glance at the two of us, as if we had deliberately made terrible noises in order to upset her machines.
Deborah moved one leg slightly, just enough to prove she was still alive, and I pulled myself all the way back from meandering down memory lane. Somewhere, there was somebody who actually was guilty of putting the knife into my sister. That was all that mattered. Someone had actually done this thing. It was a large and untidy loose end wandering around and I needed to grab hold and snip it back into neatness. Because the thought of such a large piece of unfinished and unpunished business gave me the urge to clean the kitchen and make the bed. It was messy, plain and simple, and Dexter doesn’t like disorder.
Another thought poked its nose into the room. I tried to shoo it away, but it kept coming back, wagging its tail and demanding that I pet it. And when I did, it seemed to me to be a good thought. I closed my eyes and tried to picture the scene one more time. The door swings open—and it stays open as Deborah shows her badge and then falls. And it is still open when I get to her side …
… which means that someone else could very well have been inside and looking out. And that meant that somewhere, there just might be somebody who knew what I looked like. A second person, just like Detective Coulter had suggested. It was a little insulting to admit that a drooling dolt like Coulter might be right about something, but after all, Isaac Newton didn’t reject gravity just because the apple had a low IQ.
&n
bsp; And happily for my self-esteem, I was one step ahead of Coulter, because I might know this hypothetical second person’s name. We had been going to ask someone named Brandon Weiss about his threats to the Tourist Board, and somehow ended up with Doncevic instead. So there might well have been two of them, living together—
Another small train chugged into the station: Arabelle, the cleaning woman at Joe’s, had seen two gay tourists, with cameras. And I had seen two men who fit that description at Fairchild Gardens, also with cameras, filming the crowd. A film of the crime scene arriving at the Tourist Board had started all this. It was not conclusive, but it was certainly a nice start, and I was pleased, since it proved that a certain amount of mental function might well be returning to Cyber-Dex.
And as if to prove it, I had one more thought. Taking it a step further, if this hypothetical Weiss had followed the story in the media, which seemed very likely, he would know who I was, and quite possibly consider me a person worth talking to, in the strictly Dexter-ian sense of the word. Dexter-ose? Probably not—this was not a sweet thought, and it did not fill me with sociable good cheer. It meant that either I would have to defend myself successfully when he came, or let him do unto me. Either way there would be a mess, and a body, and a great deal of publicity, and all of them attached to my secret identity, Daytime Dexter, which was something I would very much like to avoid if possible.
All that meant one simple thing: I had to find him first.
This was not a daunting task. I have spent my adult life getting very good at finding things, and people, on the computer. In fact, it was this particular talent that had gotten Debs and me into our current mess, so there was a certain symmetry to the idea that this same skill would get me out of it now.
All right then: to work. Time to heed the clarion call and strap myself into my trusty computer.
And as always seems to happen when I have reached the point where I am ready to take decisive action, everything began to happen at once.
As I took a breath in preparation for standing up, Chutsky suddenly opened his eyes and said, “Oh, hey, buddy, the doctor said—” and was interrupted by the sound of my cell phone ringing, and as I reached to answer it, a doctor stepped into the room and said, “All right,” to two interns following close behind him.
And then in rapid-fire confusion I heard, from the doctor, the phone, and Chutsky, “Hey, buddy, it’s the doc—Cub Scouts, and Astor’s friend has the mumps—the higher nerve center seems to be responding to …”
Once again I was very pleased to be abnormal, because a normal human being would certainly have flung his chair at the doctor and run screaming from the room. Instead, I waved at Chutsky, turned away from the doctors, and concentrated on the phone.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you,” I said. “Can you say it again?”
“I said, it would be a big help if you could come home,” Rita said. “If you’re not too busy? Because Cody has his first Cub Scout meeting tonight, and Astor’s friend Lucy has the mumps? Which means she can’t go over there, so one of us should stay with her at home? And I thought, you know. Unless you’re stuck at work again?”
“I’m at the hospital,” I said.
“Oh,” Rita said. “Well then, that’s—Is she any better?”
I looked over at the small clot of doctors. They were examining a small heap of documents apparently relating to Deborah. “I think we’re about to find out,” I said. “The doctors are here now.”
“Well, if it’s—I guess I could just—I mean, Astor could go along to Cub Scouts if—”
“I’ll take Cody to Scouts,” I said. “Let me just talk to the doctor first.”
“If you’re sure,” she said. “Because if it’s, you know …”
“I know,” I said, although I actually didn’t. “I’ll be right home.”
“All right,” she said. “Love you.”
I hung up and turned back to the doctors. One of the interns had peeled back one of Deborah’s eyelids and was glaring at her eyeball with the aid of a small flashlight. The real doctor was watching him, holding the clipboard.
“Excuse me,” I said, and he glanced up at me.
“Yes,” he said, with what I recognized as a fake smile. It was not nearly as good as mine.
“She’s my sister,” I said.
The doctor nodded. “Next of kin, all right,” he said.
“Is there any sign of improvement?”
“Well,” he said. “The higher nerve functions seem to be coming back online, and the autonomic responses are good. And there’s no fever or infection, so the prognosis seems favorable for a slight upgrade in condition within the next twenty-four hours.”
“That’s good,” I said hopefully.
“However, I do have to warn you,” he said, with an equally phony frown of importance and seriousness. “She lost an awful lot of blood, which can sometimes lead to permanent impairment of brain functions.”
“But it’s too soon to tell?” I said.
“Yes,” he said, nodding vigorously. “Exactly.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” I said, and I stepped around him, to where Chutsky was now standing, wedged into a corner, so the doctors could have full access to Debs.
“She’ll be fine,” he told me. “Don’t let these guys scare you, she’s gonna be absolutely fine. Remember, I had Doc Teidel here.” He lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “No offense to these guys, but Teidel’s a hell of a lot better. He put me back together, and I was a whole lot worse than this,” he said, nodding at Deborah. “And I didn’t have any brain damage, either.”
Considering the Pollyanna optimism he was showing, I wasn’t sure about that, but it didn’t seem worth arguing about. “All right,” I said. “Then I’ll check back with you later. I have a crisis at home.”
“Oh,” he said, with a frown. “Everybody okay?”
“All fine,” I said. “It’s the Cub Scouts I’m worried about.”
And although I meant that as a lighthearted exit line, isn’t it funny how often these little jokes come true?
EIGHTEEN
THE CUB SCOUT DEN THAT RITA HAD FOUND FOR CODY met at Golden Lakes Elementary School, a few miles from our house. We got there a little early and sat in the car for a minute, and Cody watched without expression as a handful of boys his approximate age ran into the school wearing their blue uniforms. I let him sit and watch, thinking that a little preparation time might do us both some good.
A few cars pulled up. More boys in blue uniforms ran into the building, apparently eager to get inside. Anyone equipped with a heart would certainly have found it warming at the sight—one parent was so enamored of the scene that he stood beside his van and videotaped the stream of boys running past and inside. But Cody and I simply sat and watched.
“They’re all the same,” Cody said softly.
“Just on the outside,” I said. “It’s something you can learn to do.”
He looked at me blankly.
“It’s just like putting on one of those uniforms,” I said. “When you look the same, people think you are. You can do this.”
“Why,” he said.
“Cody,” I said, “we have talked about how important it is to look normal.” He nodded. “This will help you figure out how to act like other kids. It’s part of your training.”
“Other part?” he said, with the first eagerness he had shown, and I knew he was longing for the simple clarity of the knife.
“If you do this part well, we will do the other part,” I said.
“An animal?”
I looked at him, saw the cold gleam in his small blue eyes, and knew there was no going back from he where he already was; the only thing I could hope for was the long and difficult shaping that had been done to me. “All right,” I said at last. “Maybe we can do an animal.”
He watched me for another long moment, and then he nodded back, and we climbed out of the car and followed the pack into the cafeteria.
Inside, the other boys—and one girl—ran around making lots of loud noise for the first few minutes. Cody and I sat quietly in our tiny, molded plastic chairs, at a table just barely tall enough to smack you in the kneecaps if you tried to walk around it. He watched the others at their noisy play without expression and without any attempt to join in, and that was a starting point, something I could do with him. He was far too young to be known as a brooding loner—we needed to get his disguise in gear.
“Cody,” I said, and he looked at me with the same lack of expression. “Look at the other kids.”
He blinked, and then swiveled his head to take in the rest of the room. He watched without comment for a minute, and then turned back to me. “Okay,” he said softly.
“It’s just that they’re all running around and having fun, and you’re not,” I said.
“No,” he said.
“So you will stand out,” I said. “You have to pretend you’re having fun here.”
“I don’t know how,” he said, a major speech for him.
“But you have to learn,” I said. “You have to look like all the others, or …”
“Well, well, what’s wrong with you, little guy?” a voice boomed out. A large and offensively cheerful man came over and put his hands on his bare knees so he could shove his face closer to Cody’s. He was bursting out of a Cub Scout leader’s uniform, and the sight of his hairy legs and large belly seemed very wrong. “You’re not feeling shy, are you?” he said with a huge and terrible grin.
Cody stared back at him without blinking for a long moment, and the man’s grin began to fade a little. “No,” Cody said at last.