Dexter? Are you there, buddy?
I was there. But I suddenly found, oddly enough, that I really missed Deborah. This was exactly the kind of thing I should be doing with her—after all, it was bright daylight out there, and that was not truly Dexter’s Dominion. Dexter needs darkness to blossom into the real life-of-the-party that he is deep inside. Sunlight and hunting did not mix. With Deborah’s badge I could have stayed hidden in plain sight, but without it… I was not actually nervous, of course, but I was a little bit uneasy.
But there was no choice at all. Deborah was lying in a hospital bed, Weiss and his dear friend Wimble were giggling at me in a house on Ninety-eighth Street, and Dexter was dithering about daylight. And that would not do, not at all.
So stand, breathe, stretch. Once more into the breach, dear Dexter. Get up and be gone. And I did, and I headed out the door to my car, but I could not shake the strange feeling of unease.
The feeling lasted all the way over to Northeast Ninety-eighth Street, even through the soothing homicidal rhythm of the traffic. Something was wrong somewhere and Dexter was headed into it somehow. But since there was nothing more definite than that, I kept going, and wondering what was really chewing at the bottom corner of my brain. Was it really just fear of daylight? Or was my subconscious telling me that I had missed something important, something that was getting ready to rear up and bite me? I went over it all in my head, again and again, and it all added up the same way, and the only thing that really stuck out was the thought that it was all very simple, perfectly connected, coherent and logical and right, and I had no choice but to act as quickly as I could, and why should that be bothersome? When did Dexter ever have any choice anyway? When does anyone really have a choice of any kind, beyond occasionally being able to say—on those very few good days we get—I choose ice cream instead of pie?
But I still felt invisible fingers tickling at my neck when I parked the car, across the street and halfway down the block from Wimble’s house. And so for several long minutes I did nothing more than sit in the car and look up the street at the house.
The bronze-colored car was parked in the street right in front of the house. There was no sign of life, and no large heap of body parts dragged to the curb to wait for pickup. Nothing at all but a quiet house in an ordinary Miami neighborhood, baking in the midday sun.
And the longer I sat there in the car with the motor off, the more I realized that I was baking, too, and if I stayed in the car a few more minutes, I would be watching a crisp dark crust form on my skin. Whatever faint tremors of doubt I felt, I had to do something while there was still breathable air in the car.
I got out and stood blinking in the heat and light for several seconds, and then moved off down the street, away from Wimble’s house. Moving slowly and casually, I walked around the block one time, looking at the house from the rear. There was not much to see; a row of hedges growing up through a chain-link fence blocked any view of the house from the next block over. I continued around the block, crossed the street, and walked on back to my car.
And stood there again, blinking in the brightness, feeling the sweat roll down my spine, across my forehead, into my eyes. I knew that I could not stand there a great deal longer without drawing attention. I had to do something—either approach the house, or get back into my car, drive home, and wait to see myself on the evening news. But with that nasty, annoying little voice still squeaking in my brain that something was just not right, I stood there a little longer, until some small and brittle thing inside snapped, and I finally said, Fine. Let it come, whatever it might be. Anything is better than standing here counting the droplets of sweat as they fall.
I remembered something helpful for a change, and opened the trunk of my car. I had thrown a clipboard in there; it had been very useful for several past investigations into the lifestyles of the wicked and infamous, and there was a clip-on tie as well. It has been my experience that you can go anywhere, day or night, and no one will question you if you wear a clip-on tie and carry a clipboard. Luckily today I was wearing a shirt that actually buttoned at the neck, and I hung the tie on my collar, picked up the clipboard and a ballpoint pen, and walked up the street to Wimble’s house. Just another semi-important official somebody or other, here to check on something.
I glanced up the street; it was lined with trees, and several of the houses had visible fruit trees in their yard. Fine: today I was Inspector Dexter, from the State Board of Tree Inspection. This would allow me to move close to the house with a semilogical activity to cloak me.
And then what? Could I really get inside and take Weiss by surprise, in broad daylight? The hot glare of the sun made it seem vastly unlikely somehow. There was no comforting darkness, no shadows to hold me and hide my approach. I was as completely visible and obvious as could be, and if Weiss glanced out the window and recognized me, the game was up before it properly began.
But what choice did I have? It was him or me, and if I did nothing at all, he would most likely do a great deal of something, starting with exposing me and moving down the list to hurting Cody or Astor, or who knows what. I had to head him off and stop him, now.
And as I straightened up to do so, a most unwelcome thought shoved its way in: Was this the way Deborah thought of me? Did she see me as a sort of wild obscenity, slashing its way across the landscape with random ferocity? Was that why she had been so unhappy with me? Because she had formed an image of me as a ravening monster? It was such a painful notion that for a moment I could do nothing but blink away the drops of sweat rolling down my forehead. It was unfair, totally unjustified; of course I was a monster—but not that kind. I was neat, focused, polite, and very careful not to cause the tourists any inconvenience with random body parts scattered about. How could she fail to see that? How could I make her see the well-ordered beauty of the way Harry had set me up?
And the first answer was, I could not—not if Weiss stayed alive and at liberty. Because once my face was on the news, my life was over and Deborah would have no more choice than I would; no more choice than I had right now. Sunlight or not, I had to do this, and I had to do it quickly and well.
I took a deep breath and moved up the street to the house next to Wimble’s, looking intently at the trees along the drive and scribbling on the clipboard. I moved slowly up the driveway. No one leaped out at me with a machete in their teeth, so I walked back down the driveway, paused in front of the house, and then went on to Wimble’s.
There were suspicious trees to examine there, too, and I looked up at them, made notes, and moved a bit farther up the driveway. There was no sight nor sound of life from the house. Even though I did not know what I hoped to see, I moved closer, looking for it, and not just in the trees. I looked carefully at the house, noting that all the windows seemed to have shades drawn down. Nothing could see in or out. I got far enough up the driveway to notice that there was a back door, located at the top of two concrete steps. I moved toward it very casually, listening for any small rustling or whispering or shouts of “Look out! He’s here!” Still nothing; I pretended to notice a tree in the backyard, close to a propane tank and only about twenty feet from the door, and I went over to it.
Still nothing. I scribbled. There was a window in the top half of the door, with no shade pulled down. I walked over to it, mounted the two steps, and peeked inside. I was looking into a darkened hallway, lined with a washing machine and dryer, and a few brooms and mops held in clamps on the wall. I put a hand on the doorknob and turned very slowly and quietly. It was unlocked. I took a deep breath—
—and very nearly fell out of my skin as a horrible, shattering scream came from inside. It was the sound of anguish and horror and such a clear call for help that even Disinterested Dexter moved reflexively forward, and I had one foot actually inside the house when a tiny little question mark scuttled across the floor of my brain and I thought, I’ve heard that scream before. And as my second foot moved forward, farther into the house, I th
ought, Really? Where? The answer came quite quickly, which was comforting: it was the same scream that was on the “New Miami” videos that Weiss had made.
—which meant that it was a recorded scream.
—which meant it was intended to lure me inside.
—which meant that Weiss was ready and waiting for me.
It is not terribly flattering to my own special self, but the truth is that I actually paused for a split second to admire the speed and clarity of my mental process. And then, happily for me, I obeyed the shrill interior voice that was screaming Run, Dexter, Run! and bolted out of the house and down the driveway, just in time to see the bronze-colored car screech away down the street.
And then a huge hand rose up behind me and slammed me to the ground, a hot wind blew past, and Wimble’s house was gone in a cloud of flame and showering rubble.
TWENTY-TWO
“IT WAS THE PROPANE,” DETECTIVE COULTER TOLD ME. I leaned against the side of the EMS truck holding an ice pack to my head. My wounds were very minor, considering, but because they were on me they seemed more important, and I was not enjoying them, nor the attention I was getting. Across the street the rubble of Wimble’s house smoldered and the firefighters still poked and squirted at steaming piles of junk. The house was not totally destroyed, but a large chunk of the middle of it from roof to foundation was gone and it had certainly lost a great deal of market value, dropping instantly into the category of Very Airy Fixer-Upper.
“So,” Coulter said. “He lets the gas out from the wall heater in that soundproof room, tosses in something to set it off, we don’t know what yet, and he’s out the door and away before it all goes boom.” Coulter paused and took a long swig from the large plastic bottle of Mountain Dew he carried. I watched his Adam’s apple bob under two thick rolls of grimy flab. He finished drinking, poked his index finger into the mouth of the bottle, and wiped his mouth on his forearm, staring at me as if I was keeping him from using a napkin.
“Why would he have a soundproof room, you think?” he said.
I shook my head very briefly and stopped because it hurt. “He was a video editor,” I said. “He probably needed it for recording.”
“Recording,” said Coulter. “Not chopping people up.”
“That’s right,” I said.
Coulter shook his head. Apparently it didn’t hurt him at all, because he did it for several seconds, looking over at the smoking house. “So, and you were here, because why?” he said. “I’m not real clear on that part, Dex.”
Of course he was not real clear on that part. I had done everything I could to avoid answering any questions about that part, clutching my head and blinking and gasping as if in terrible pain every time someone approached the subject. Of course I knew that sooner or later I would have to provide a satisfactory answer, and the sticky part was that “satisfactory” thing. Certainly I could claim I’d been visiting my ailing granny, but the problem with giving such answers to cops is that they tend to check them, and alas, Dexter had no ailing granny, nor any other plausible reason to be here when the house exploded, and I had a very strong feeling that claiming coincidence would not really get me terribly far, either.
And in all the time since I had picked myself up off the pavement and staggered over to lean on a tree and admire the way I could still move all my body parts—the whole time I was getting patched up and then waiting for Coulter to arrive—all these long minutes-into-hours, I had not managed to come up with anything that sounded even faintly believable. And with Coulter now turning to stare at me very hard indeed, I realized my time was up.
“So, what then?” he said. “You were here because why? Picking up your laundry? Part-time job delivering pizza? What?”
It was one of the biggest shocks of a very unsettling day to hear Coulter revealing a faint patina of wit. I had thought of him as an exceedingly dull and dim lump of dough, incapable of anything beyond filling out an accident report, and yet here he was making amusing remarks with a very professional deadpan delivery, and if he could do that, I had to assume he might have an outside chance of putting two and two together and coming up with me. I was truly on the spot. And so, throwing my cunning into high gear, I decided to go with the time-honored tactic of telling a big lie wrapped in a small truth.
“Look, Detective,” I said, with a painful and somewhat hesitant delivery that I was quite proud of. Then I closed my eyes and took a deep breath—all real Academy Award stuff, if you asked me. “I’m sorry, I’m still a little fuzzy. They say I sustained a minor concussion.”
“Was that before you got here, Dex?” Coulter said. “Or can you remember that far back, about why you were here?”
“I can remember,” I said reluctantly. “I just…”
“You don’t feel so good,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I can understand that,” he said, and for one wild, irrational moment I thought he might let me go. But no: “What I can’t understand,” he went on relentlessly, “is what the fuck you were doing here when the fucking house blew the fuck up.”
“It’s not easy to say,” I said.
“I guess not,” said Coulter. “’Cause you haven’t said it yet. You gonna tell me, Dex?” He popped his finger out of the bottle, took a sip, pushed the finger back in again. The bottle was more than half empty now, and it hung there like some kind of strange and embarrassing biological appendage. Coulter wiped his mouth again. “See, I kind of need to know this,” he said. “’Cuz they tell me there’s a body in there.”
A minor seismic event worked its way down my spine, from the top of my skull all the way down to my heels. “Body?” I said with my usual incisive wit.
“Yeah,” he said. “A body.”
“That’s, you mean—dead?”
Coulter nodded, watching me with distant amusement, and I realized with a terrible shock that we had switched roles, and now I was the stupid one. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “’Cuz it was inside the house when it went ka-boom, so you would have to figure it would be dead. Also,” he said, “it couldn’t run away, being tied up like that. Who would tie a guy up when the house was gonna blow like that, do you figure?”
“It, uh … must have been the killer,” I stammered.
“Uh-huh,” said Coulter. “So you figure the killer killed him, that it?”
“Uh, yes,” I said, and even through the growing pounding in my head, I could tell how stupid and unconvincing that sounded.
“Uh-huh. But not you, right? I mean, you didn’t tie the guy up and toss in a Cohiba or something, right?”
“Look, I saw the guy drive away as the house went up,” I said.
“And who was that guy, Dex? I mean, you got a name or anything? ’Cuz that would really help a lot here.”
It might have been that the concussion was spreading, but a terrible numbness seemed to be taking me over. Coulter suspected something, and even though I was relatively innocent in this case, any kind of investigation was bound to have uncomfortable results for Dexter. Coulter’s eyes had not left my face, and he had not blinked, and I had to tell him something, but even with a minor concussion I knew that I could not give him Weiss’s name. “I, it—the car was registered to Kenneth Wimble,” I said tentatively.
Coulter nodded. “Same guy owns the house,” he said.
“Yes, that’s right.”
He kept nodding mechanically as if that made sense and said, “Sure. So you figure Wimble ties up this guy—in his own house—and then blows up his own house and drives away in his car, like to the summer place in North Carolina, maybe?”
Again it came across to me that there was more to this man than I had thought there was, and it was not a pleasant realization. I thought I was dealing with SpongeBob, and he had turned out to be Colombo instead, hiding a much sharper mind than the shabby appearance seemed to allow for. I, who’d worn a disguise my entire life, had been fooled by a better costume, and looking at the gleam of previo
usly hidden intelligence in Coulter’s eyes, I realized that Dexter was in danger. This was going to call for a great deal of skill and cleverness, and even then I was no longer sure it would be enough.
“I don’t know where he went,” I said, which was not a great start, but it was all I could come up with.
“’Course not. And you don’t know who he is, either, right? ’Cuz you’d tell me if you did.”
“Yes, I would.”
“But you don’t have any idea.”
“No.”
“So great, then why’n’t you tell me what you were doing here instead?” he said.
And there it was, full circle, back to the real question—and if I answered it right, all was forgiven, and if I did not respond in a way that would make my suddenly smart friend happy, there was a very real possibility that he would follow through and derail the Dexter Express. I was waist-deep in the outhouse without a rope, and my brain was throbbing, trying to push through the fog to top form, and failing.
“It’s … it’s …” I looked down and then far away to my left, searching for the right words for a terrible and embarrassing admission. “She’s my sister,” I said at last.
“Who is?” said Coulter.
“Deborah,” I said. “Your partner. Deborah Morgan. She’s in the ICU because of this guy, and I…” I trailed off very convincingly and waited to see if he could fill in the blanks, or if the cute remarks had been a coincidence.
“I knew that,” he admitted. He took another sip of soda and then jammed his fingertip back into the mouth of the bottle and let it dangle again. “So you find this guy how?”
“At the elementary school this morning,” I said. “He was shooting video from his car, and I got the tag. I traced it to here.”
Coulter nodded. “Uh-huh,” he said. “And instead of telling me, or the lieutenant, or even a school crossing guard, you figure to take him on by yourself.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Because she’s your sister.”