Dearly Devoted Dexter (Dexter, #2)

by Jeff Lindsay

“Shit,” he said. “Shoulda let me.” And he turned, walking rapidly out of the room.

Clearly this monster was showing off for some reason, and it may have been only a perfectly natural competitive spirit, but that seemed a little irritating, even while it made me want to know more.

It was Deborah who finally got things organized. She persuaded the paramedics to sedate the victim and take it away, which allowed the surprisingly squeamish lab techs to come back inside and go to work.

There was really not a great deal for me to do. I had come in Deborah's car and so I did not have my kit, and in any case there was no visible blood spatter anywhere that I could see. Since that was my area of expertise, I felt I should find something and be useful, but our surgical friend had been too careful. Just to be sure I looked through the rest of the house, which wasn't much. There was one small bedroom, an even smaller bathroom, and a closet. They all seemed to be empty, except for a bare, battered mattress on the floor of the bedroom.

I stepped over to see what it might be. It was hardly worth the effort; nothing but a single small page of white paper, ripped slightly at the top where a little rectangle had been torn away. I looked just above Angel's head and sure enough, there on the side of the table was the missing rectangle of paper, held to the table with a strip of Scotch tape. “Mira,” I said, and Angel looked. “Aha,” he said. As he examined the tape carefully—tape holds fingerprints wonderfully well—he put the paper on the floor and I squatted down to look at it. There were some letters written on it in a spidery hand; I leaned over farther to read them: LOYALTY.

My naturally high metabolism needed constant attention: no diet for Dexter.

I would rather eat than do anything else except play with the Passenger. It's a true miracle of genetics that I am not fat.

“You are all hereby ordered to keep to yourselves what you may have seen, heard, or surmised in connection with this event and its location. No comment, public or private, of any kind.” He looked at Doakes, who nodded, and then he looked around the table at all of us.

Doakes looked down at the table in front of him and Chutsky returned his attention to the captain.

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?

Chutsky shook his head slowly. “Absolutely not. I need 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.”

He turned to his side, to Deborah, and said, “How about it, Detective?”

CHAPTER 9

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 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.

If Doakes had something to hide, I was a step closer to being back in business.

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.

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.

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 things!

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.

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.

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 nostalgic for cattle prods in the rectum. Whatever it was, it seemed to coincide with the period of Sergeant Doakes's detached service.

I had found my little string. And if only I could think of a way to pull on it— Peekaboo, Albert.

I certainly don't get all gooey-eyed at the sight of training wheels on a bicycle, but on the whole I find children far more interesting than their parents.

“Are you going to be my dad?” Cody asked suddenly.

When I could breathe again, I managed to stammer out, “Why do you ask?” He was still watching his rod tip. “Mom says maybe,” he said. “Did she?” I said, and he nodded without looking up.

“Cody,” I said. He looked up at me and, wonder of wonders, he smiled. “I like fishing, Dexter,” he said.

CHAPTER 10

The restaurant itself was dark and cool and so quiet you could hear an American Express Black Card drop. The far wall was tinted glass with a door that led out to a terrace. And there was Deborah, sitting at a small corner table outside, looking out over the water. Across from her, facing back toward the door in to the restaurant, sat Kyle Chutsky, who would pick up the tab. He was wearing very expensive sunglasses, so perhaps he really would. I approached the table and a waiter materialized to pull out a chair that was certainly far too heavy for anyone who could afford to eat here. The waiter didn't actually bow, but I could tell that the restraint was an effort.

“Well, what do you think about this guy, Dexter?” “Oh, just the basics so far,” I said. “Somebody with a lot of training in the medical area and in covert activities who came unhinged and needs to make a statement, something to do with Central America. He'll probably do it again timed for maximum impact, rather than because he feels he has to. So he's not really a standard serial type of— What?”

“What do you mean, Central America?”

I admit it had been a little obvious, but it had apparently worked. “Oh,” I said. “Isn't that right?” All those years of practice in imitating human expressions paid off for me here as I put on my best innocently curious face.

“Pretty good, buddy. How'd you come up with all that?” “Oh, I don't know,” I said modestly. “It just seemed obvious. The hard part is figuring out how Sergeant Doakes is involved.” “Jesus H. Christ,” he said, and clenched his fists again.

“You're not just trying to drop Doakes in the shit, are you?” Deborah asked me. “In Captain Matthews's conference room,” I said, “when Kyle saw Doakes for the first time, there was a moment when I thought they recognized each other.”

“Buddy,” he said, “I don't want to cause you any trouble, but you have to let go of this. Back off. Find a different hobby. Or else you are in a world of shit—and you will get flushed.”

“Patience,” Harry said. He paused to cough into a Kleenex. “Patient is more important than smart, Dex. You're already smart.”

“In your case, you have to be more patient, because you'll be thinking you're clever enough to get away with it,” he said. “You're not. Nobody is.” He paused to cough again, and this time it took longer and seemed to go deeper.

“I know you, Dexter. Better than you know yourself.” And this was easy to believe until he followed up with, “You're basically a good guy.”

“No I'm not,” I said, thinking of the wonderful things I had not yet been allowed to do; even wanting to do them pretty much ruled out any kind of association with goodness.

“Yes, you are,” he said. “And you have to believe that you are. Your heart is pretty much in the right place, Dex,” he said, and with that he collapsed into a truly epic fit of coughing. It lasted for what seemed like several minutes, and then he leaned weakly back onto his pillow.

“Patience,” he said. And he made it sound strong, in spite of the terrible pain and weakness he must have felt. “You still have a long way to go, and I don't have a whole lot of time, Dexter.”

“Your sister will be a good cop. You,” he smiled slowly, a little sadly, “you will be something else. Real justice. But only if you're patient. If your chance isn't there, Dexter, wait until it is.”

don't know what I'll do when you're dead,” I said. “You'll do fine,” he said. “There's so much to remember.”

“We can't always do what we think we have to do. So when there's nothing else you can do, you wait,” he said, and held out his arm for his shot. “No matter what . . . pressure . . . you might feel.”

Harry understood me. No one else ever had, and no one else ever would, through all time in all the world. Only Harry.

The only reason I ever thought about being human was to be more like him.

CHAPTER 11

Sooner or later I would find a way to make Doakes blink.

The house on N.W. 4th Street was registered to Ramon Puntia.

The house had been bought with a single cash payment, a wire transfer from a bank in Guatemala.

well. Apparently Switzerland and the Cayman Islands were no longer à la mode, and if one wished for discreet banking in the Spanish-speaking world, Guatemala was all the rage.