Air came in through my throat, which suddenly felt sore and much too big; Weiss had let go of the noose and picked up his camera. I took a ragged breath and managed to focus one eye on his back as he began to pan across the crowd. I took another breath; pain raced through my throat, but it felt pretty good, and enough light and thought came back with the breath that I managed to get up on one knee and look around.
Weiss was pointing the camera at a woman on the edge of the crowd—the woman who had scolded Cody and Astor for interfering. She was fiftyish, dressed very stylishly, and she was still yelling at them to back away, leave it alone, somebody call security, and happily for us all, the kids were not listening. They had freed Rita from the table, although her hands and feet were still bound, and the gag was still wedged into her mouth. I stood up—but before I could take more than a half step toward them, Weiss grabbed my leash again and pulled tight, and I went back into the midnight sun.
Dimly, from very far away, I heard scuffling, and the line around my throat went slack again as Weiss said, “Not this time, you little shit!” There was a smacking sound and a small thump, and as a little light came back into my world, I saw Astor lying on the floor and Weiss struggling to take the screwdriver away from Cody. I raised a hand to my neck and scrabbled feebly at the line, and got it loose enough to take a huge breath, which was probably the right thing to do, but nonetheless caused a fit of the most painful coughing I have ever experienced, so very choked and dry that the lights went out once more.
When I could breathe again, I opened my eyes to see that Cody was on the floor next to Astor, on the far side of the exhibit space beyond the table saw, and Weiss stood over them with the screwdriver in one hand and his video camera in the other. Astor’s leg twitched, but other than that they did not move. Weiss stepped toward them and raised the screwdriver, and I lurched drunkenly up to my feet to stop him, knowing I could never get there in time and feeling all the darkness drain out of me and puddle around my shoes at the thought of my helplessness.
And at the last possible second, as Weiss stood gloating over the small still bodies of the children and Dexter leaned forward with horrible slowness, Rita stumbled forward into the picture—hands still tied, mouth still gagged, but feet fast enough to bring her charging into Weiss, slamming him with a deadly hip that sent him twirling sideways, away from the children, and straight at the table saw. And as he staggered upright she bumped him again, and this time his feet tangled together and he fell, the arm holding his camera flailing out protectively to keep him from falling onto the spinning saw blade. And he almost succeeded—almost.
Weiss’s hand slapped the table on the far side of the blade, but the force of his fall brought all his weight down, and with a grinding whine an explosive red mist shot into the air as Weiss’s forearm, hand still clutching the camera, came off altogether and thumped onto the model-train track at the edge of the crowd. The spectators gasped and Weiss stood slowly upright, staring at the stump of his arm as the blood pumped out. He looked at me and tried to say something, shook his head and stepped toward me, and looked at his rapidly squirting stump again, and then came another step toward me. And then, almost like he was walking down a flight of invisible stairs, he walked slowly down onto his knees and knelt there, swaying, only a few feet away from me.
And I, paralyzed by my fight with the noose and my fear for the children and above all the sight of that awful wet nasty viscous horrible blood pouring out and onto the floor—I simply stood there as Weiss looked up at me one last time. His lips moved again, but nothing came out and he shook his head slowly, carefully, as if he was afraid that it, too, might fall off and onto the floor. With exaggerated care he locked his eyes onto mine and very carefully, very distinctly, he said, “Take lots of pictures.” And he smiled a faint and very pale smile and pitched face forward into his own blood.
I took a step back as he fell and looked up; on the TV screen the model train chugged forward and slammed into the camera still clutched in the hand at the end of Weiss’s severed arm. The wheels churned for a moment, and then the train fell over.
“Brilliant,” said the stylish older lady in the front of the crowd. “Absolutely brilliant.”
EPILOGUE
THE EMERGENCY MEDICS IN MIAMI ARE VERY GOOD, partly because they get so much practice. But alas, they did not manage to save Weiss. He had very nearly bled out by the time they got to his side, and at the urging of a frantic Rita, the meds spent a crucial two more minutes looking at Cody and Astor as Weiss slipped away down the long dark slope into the pages of art history.
Rita hovered anxiously while the EMS guys got Cody and Astor to sit up and look around. Cody blinked and tried to reach for his screwdriver, and Astor immediately started to complain about how rotten the smelling salts smelled, so I was reasonably sure they were going to be all right. Still, they almost certainly had minor concussions, which gave me a warm feeling of family togetherness; so young, and already following in my footsteps. And so the two of them were sent off to the hospital for twenty-four hours of observation, “just to be safe.” Rita went along, of course, to protect them from the doctors.
When they were gone, I stood and watched the two EMS techs who knelt beside Coulter. They had brought the defribillator paddles out, but after a few moments of poking at the body, they shook their heads, stood up, and walked away. I thought they looked a little disappointed that they hadn’t had a chance to yell “Clear!” and release the charge, but maybe I was reading into it. I was still feeling a little woozy from my time in Weiss’s noose, and a little strange at the way things had wobbled away from me so quickly. Normally, I am Dexter on the Spot, at the center of all important action, and to have so much death and destruction all around me and not be a crucial part of it didn’t seem right. Two whole bodies, and me no more than an observer with the vapors, fainting on the outskirts of the drama like a Victorian maiden.
And Weiss: he actually looked peaceful and content. Extremely pale and dead, too, of course, but still—what could he be thinking? I had never seen such an expression on the face of the dear departed, and it was a bit unsettling. What did he have to feel happy about? He was absolutely, certifiably dead, and that did not seem to me like anything that should inspire good cheer. Maybe it was just a trick of the facial muscles settling into death. Whatever it was, my pondering was interrupted by a hurried scuffle behind me and I turned around.
Special Agent Recht came to a halt a few feet away and stood looking at the carnage with a face locked rigidly into a professional mask, even though it did not hide the shock, or the fact that she was rather pale. Still, she didn’t faint or throw up, so I thought she was well ahead of the game.
“Is that him?” she said in a voice as tightly locked as her face. She cleared her throat before I could answer and added, “Is that the man who attempted to kidnap your children?”
“Yes,” I said, and then, showing that my giant brain was at last swimming back to the controls, I anticipated the awkward question and said, “My wife was sure that’s him, and so were the kids.”
Recht nodded, apparently unable to take her eyes off Weiss. “All right,” she said. I couldn’t tell what that meant, but it seemed like an encouraging sign. I hoped it meant that the FBI would lose interest in me now. “What about him?” Recht said, nodding toward the back of the exhibit where the EMS guys were finishing their examination of Coulter.
“Detective Coulter got here before me,” I said.
Recht nodded. “That’s what the guy on the door says,” she said, and the fact that she had asked about that was not terribly comforting, so I decided that a few careful dance steps might be called for.
“Detective Coulter,” I said carefully, as if fighting for control—and I have to admit that the rasp remaining in my voice from the noose was very effective—“He got here first. Before I could … I think he—He gave his life to save Rita.”
I thought that sniffling might be overkill, so I held back, bu
t even I was impressed with the sound of the manly emotion in my voice. Alas, Special Agent Recht was not. She looked at Coulter’s body again, and at Weiss’s, and then at me. “Mr. Morgan,” she said, and there was official doubt in her voice. For a moment I thought she was going to arrest me anyway, and possibly she thought so, too. But then she just shook her head and turned away.
And in a sane and well-ordered universe, any ruling deity would have said that was enough for one day. But things being what they are, it was not. Because I turned around to leave and bumped directly into Israel Salguero.
“Detective Coulter is dead?” he said, sliding a step back without blinking.
“Yes,” I said. “Um, before I got here.”
Salguero nodded. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what the witnesses said.”
On the one hand, it was very good news that the witnesses said that, but on the other, it was very bad that he had already asked them, since it meant his first concern was, Where was Dexter when the bodies began to fall? And so, thinking that some grand, emotional flummery might save the day, I looked away and said, “I should have been here.”
There was such a long silence from Salguero that I finally had to turn back and look at him, if only to make sure he had not drawn his weapon and pointed it at my head. Happily for Dexter’s Dome, he had not. Instead, he was just looking at me with his completely detached and emotionless gaze. “I think it is probably a very good thing that you were not here,” he said at last. “Good for you, and your sister, and the memory of your father.”
“Um …?” I said, and it is a testament to Salguero’s savvy that he knew exactly what I meant.
“There are now no witnesses …” He paused and gave me a look very much like what you might see if cobras ever learn to smile. “No surviving witnesses,” he said, “to anything that happened, in any of these … circumstances.” He made a slight movement of his shoulders that was probably a shrug. “And so …” He did not finish the sentence, letting it dangle so it might mean, “and so that’s the end of it,” or “and so I will simply arrest you,” or even, “and so I will kill you myself.” He watched me for a moment and then repeated, “And so,” this time so that it sounded like a question. Then he nodded and walked away, leaving me with the image of his bright and lidless gaze burned into my retinas.
And so.
That was, happily, just about the last of it. There was a minor bit of excitement provided by the stylish lady from the front of the crowd, who turned out to be Dr. Elaine Donazetti, a very important figure in the world of contemporary art. She pushed her way through the perimeter and began taking Polaroids, and had to be restrained and led away from bodies. But she used the pictures and some of the videotape Weiss had made and published a series of illustrated articles that made Weiss semifamous with the people who like that sort of thing. So at least he got his last request for pictures. It’s nice when things work out, isn’t it?
Detective Coulter was just as lucky. Department gossip told me that he had been passed over for promotion, twice, and I suppose he thought he could jump-start his career by making a dramatic arrest single-handedly. And it worked! The department decided it needed some good publicity out of this whole dreadful mess, and Coulter was all they had to work with. So he was promoted posthumously for his heroism in single-handedly almost saving Rita.
Of course I went to Coulter’s funeral. I love the ceremony, the ritual, the outpouring of all that rigid emotion, and it gave me a chance to practice some of my favorite facial expressions—solemnity, noble grief, and compassion, all rarely used and in need of a workout.
The whole department was there, in uniform, even Deborah. She looked very pale in her blue uniform, but after all, Coulter had been her partner, at least on paper, and honor demanded that she attend. The hospital fussed, but she was close enough to being released anyway that they didn’t stop her. She did not cry, of course—she had never been nearly as good at hypocrisy as I was. But she looked properly solemn when they lowered the coffin into the ground, and I did my best to make the same kind of face.
I thought I did it rather well, too—but Sergeant Doakes did not agree. I saw him glaring at me from the ranks, as if he thought I had personally strangled Coulter, which was absurd; I had never strangled anyone. I mean, a little noose play now and then, but all in good fun—I don’t like that kind of personal contact, and a knife is so much cleaner. Of course I had been very pleased to see Coulter pronounced dead and Dexter therefore off the hook, but I’d had nothing at all to do with it. As I said, it’s just nice when things work out, isn’t it?
And life staggered back onto its feet and lurched into its old routines once again. I went to work, Cody and Astor went to school, and two days after Coulter’s funeral Rita went to a doctor’s appointment. That night after she tucked the children in, she settled down beside me on the couch, put her head on my shoulder, and pried the remote control out of my hands. She turned off the TV and sighed a few times, and finally, when I was mystified beyond endurance, I said, “Is something wrong?”
“No,” she said. “Not wrong at all. I mean, I don’t think so. If you don’t, um, think so.”
“Why would I think so?” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said, and she sighed again. “It’s just, you know, we never talked about it, and now …”
“Now what?” I said. It was really too much; after all I had gone through, to have to endure this kind of circular nonconversation, and I could feel my irritation level rising rapidly.
“Now, just,” she said. “The doctor says I’m all right.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s good.”
She shook her head. “In spite of,” she said. “You know.”
I didn’t know, and it didn’t seem fair that she expected me to know, and I said so. And after a great deal of throat clearing and stammering, when she finally told me, I found that I lost the power of speech just as she had, and the only thing I could manage to say was the punch line of a very old joke that I knew was not the right thing to say, but I could not stop it and it came out anyway, and as if from a great distance, I heard Dexter’s voice calling out:
You’re going to have a WHAT?!
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Jeff Lindsay
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.doubleday.com
DOUBLEDAY and the DD colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lindsay, Jeffry P.
Dexter by design : a novel / Jeff Lindsay. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Forensic scientists—Fiction. 2. Vigilantes—Fiction. 3. Serial murderers—Fiction.
4. Miami (Fla.)—Fiction. 5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3562.I51175D46 2009
813′.54—dc22
2009009269
eISBN: 978-0-385-53014-9
v3.0_r2
Jeff Lindsay, Dexter by Design
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