Dearly Devoted Dexter (Dexter, #2)

by Jeff Lindsay

I went back to my Dade County real estate database and looked for other properties recently purchased the same way, from the same bank. There were seven; four of them had sold for more than a million dollars, which struck me as a bit high for disposable property.

Two houses: I was willing to bet that someone new had just moved in to one of them, and was doing things that might startle the ladies from the welcome wagon.

“Debbie says you have something for us,” Kyle said. I looked at my sister, who had always been Deborah or Debs but certainly never Debbie.

Deborah leaned forward, looking like the eager young police hound she was. “You found something! I knew you would,” she said.

“Follow the money. Works every time.” “Of course I can't be positive,” I said. “Well, I'd bet on it,” he said. “I think you found Dr. Danco.”

Danco presents the autoveggie. It slices, it dices—” He swiveled his dark lenses back to me. “That's what we called him. Dr. Danco. He made chopped-up vegetables.

CHAPTER 12

Forty tiny windows into my shadow other self. One drop from each of my small adventures. There had been First Nurse, so long ago, who had killed her patients by careful overdose, under the guise of easing pain. And the very next slot in the box, the high-school shop teacher who strangled nurses. Wonderful contrast, and I do love irony. So many memories, and as I stroked each one it made me even more eager to make a new one, number forty-one, even though number forty, MacGregor, was hardly dry. But because it was connected to my next project, and therefore felt incomplete, I was anxious to get on with it. As soon as I could be sure about Reiker and then find some way—

“In the army Doakes was in Special Forces.” “I know that. It's in his personnel file.” “What you don't know, buddy,” said Kyle without moving, “is that there's a dark side to Special Forces. Doakes was with them.”

“Doakes was a shooter,” she said. “The army let the guys in El Salvador borrow him, and he killed people for them.”

“You have to understand how it was,” Chutsky said. It was a little eerie to hear his voice coming from a completely unmoving and unemotional face, as if the voice was really coming from a tape recorder somebody had put in his body. “We believed we were saving the world. Giving up our lives and any hope for something normal and decent, for the cause. Turns out we were just selling our souls. Me, Doakes . . .” “And Dr. Danco,” I said.

“Dr. Danco started out as an idealist, just like the rest of us. He found out in med school there was something missing inside him and he could do things to people and not feel any empathy at all. Nothing at all. It's a lot rarer than you think.”

Kyle was silent for a long moment. “I told you we sold our souls, buddy,” he said at last. He smiled again, a little longer this time. “Yeah, we set him up and they took him down.” “But he's not dead,” Deborah said, always practical. “We got scammed,” Chutsky said. “The Cubans took him.”

“Back in the day, anytime there was trouble in the Americas, there were Cubans. They were propping up one side, just like we did with the other. And they wanted our doctor. I told you, he was special. So they took him, tried to turn him. Put him in the Isle of Pines.”

Isle of Pines is one of the hardest prisons in the world. Dr. Danco spent some real quality time there. They let him know his own side had given him up, and they really put him through it.

“Either they turned him loose or he skipped. Doesn't matter which. He knows who set him up, and he's got a list.”

So he was empty inside, too, was he? A raptor in sheep's clothing. And he, too, had found a way to use his talent for the greater good—again, just like dear old Dexter. But now he had come off the rails, and he began to seem a little bit more like just another predator, no matter the unsettling direction his technique took him.

Why not find Dr. Danco myself, and do a little Dark Dance with him? He was a predator gone bad, just like all the others on my list. No one, not even Doakes, could possibly object to his demise. If I had wondered casually about finding the Doctor before, now it began to take on an urgency that drove away my frustration with missing out on Reiker.

“Cleaning services don't use ammonia, the smell's too strong. But I know who does.”

He smiled and pulled a Baggie out of his pocket. “Bought an ounce of meth,” he said.

CHAPTER 13

“Goddamn it, that's illegal!” she said, smacking the steering wheel with the palm of her hand for emphasis.

“I will not cross over to your motherfucking dark side!” “No, you won't,” he said. “I won't let you, Deborah.”

“I'm calling that address in to vice. Tomorrow,” she said. “All right,” Chutsky said. “And you're throwing away that Baggie.” He looked mildly surprised. “It cost me two grand,” he said. “You're throwing it away,” she repeated. “All right,” he said.

“He's gone, Dexter. Taken. The, the guy has him. The guy who did that thing to the guy,” she said, and although I felt like I was suddenly thrust into an episode of The Sopranos, I knew what she meant. Whoever had turned the thing on the table into a yodeling potato had taken Kyle, presumably to do something similar to him. “Dr. Danco,” I said. “Yes.”

“He said it could happen. Kyle is the only one who knows what the guy looks like. He said when Danco found out Kyle was here, he'd make a try. We had a—a signal set up, and— Shit Dexter, just get over here. We have to find him,” she said, and hung up.

It's always me, isn't it? I'm not really a very nice person, but for some reason it's always me that they come to with their problems. Oh, Dexter, a savage inhuman monster has taken my boyfriend! Well damn it, I'm a savage inhuman monster, too—didn't that entitle me to some rest?

CHAPTER 14

“Deborah, cutting off the arms and legs is not what this guy wants to do. It's just how he does it.” “Goddamn it, Dexter, talk English.” “What he wants to do is totally destroy his victims. Break them inside and out, way beyond repair. Turn them into musical beanbags that will never again have a moment of anything except total endless insane horror. Cutting off limbs and lips is just the way he— What?”

But wait a moment. I closed my eyes and tried to think about it. Dr. Danco would know that Kyle was a pro. And as I had already told Deborah, the whole purpose was to shatter the victim into screaming unfixable pieces. Therefore . . . I opened my eyes. “Deb,” I said. She looked at me. “I am in the rare position of having some hope to offer.”

“This is only a guess,” I said. “But I think Dr. Demented will probably keep Kyle around for a while, without working on him.”

“To make it last longer, and to soften him up. Kyle knows what's coming. He's braced for it. But now, imagine he's just left lying in the dark, tied up, so his imagination goes to work. And so I think maybe,” I added as it occurred to me, “there's another victim ahead of him. The guy who's missing. So Kyle hears it—the saws and scalpels, the moans and whispers. He even smells it, knows it's coming but doesn't know when. He'll be half crazy before he even loses a toenail.”

I know family comes first, but shouldn't that mean after breakfast?

CHAPTER 15

“There's no prognosis, and there's not going to be one. Physically, there's not enough left to do anything but sustain life, if you want to call it that. Mentally?” He put both hands palm up and then dropped them on the table. “I'm not a shrink, but there's nothing left in there and no way that he'll ever have a single lucid moment, ever again. The only hope he has is that we keep him so doped up he doesn't know who he is, until he dies. Which for his sake we should all hope is soon.”

“Were there traces of any drugs in the blood?” Deborah asked. Spielman snorted. “Traces, hell. The guy's blood is a cocktail sauce. I've never seen such a mix before. All designed to keep him awake, but deaden the physical pain so the shock of the multiple amputations didn't kill him.” “Was there anything unusual about the cuts?” I asked him. “The guy's had training,” Spielman said. “They were all done with very good surgical technique. But any medical school in the world could have taught him that.” He blew out a breath and an apologetic smile flickered quickly across his face. “Some of them were already healed.” “What kind of time frame does that give us?” Deborah asked him. Spielman shrugged. “Four to six weeks, start to finish,” he said. “He took at least a month to surgically dismember this guy, one small piece at a time. I can't imagine anything more horrible.”

“He did it in front of a mirror,” I said, ever-helpful. “So the victim had to watch.”

“Here it is. Name is Manuel Borges. A native of El Salvador, in the import business.” He put the paper down in front of Deborah.

“El Salvador. Connected to something called FLANGE.” “That was our side,” I said. She looked up at me. “The side the United States supported. I looked it up on the Internet.”

Deborah drove rapidly and silently, with her jaw clenched, all the way to the little house on N.W. 4th Street where it had all started. The yellow tape was gone, of course, but Deborah parked haphazardly anyway, cop fashion, and got out of the car.

“We need to speak to Ariel Medina,” Deborah said, holding up her badge.

“Por favor, Señora,” I said. “Mi hermana no habla español.”

“Lázaro!” Her son stepped forward, and as she resumed her monologue with barely a pause, he began to translate for her.

“Even with Castro, they would never do a thing like that,” she said. “Yes, they kill people. Or they put you in the Isle of Pines. But never a thing like this. Not in Cuba. Only in America,” she said.

“El victimo proximo es el novio de mi hermana,” I said. The next victim is my sister's sweetheart. Deborah glared at me, but Ariel said, “Aaahhh,” clucked her tongue, and nodded her head. “Well, I don't know what I can tell you. I did see the man, maybe two times.” She shrugged and Deborah leaned forward impatiently. “Always at night, never very close. I can say, the man was small, very short. And skinny as well. With big glasses. More than this, I don't know. He never came out, he was very quiet. Sometimes we would hear music.” She smiled just a little and added, “Tito Puente.” And Lázaro echoed unnecessarily, “Tito Puente.”

“Did he have a car?” Deborah asked, and Ariel frowned. “A van,” she said. “He drove an old white van with no windows. It was very clean, but had many rust spots and dents. I saw it a few times, but he usually kept it in his garage.”

“It's a specialty plate, Deb,” I said. “The one that says, CHOOSE LIFE.”

I really wanted to meet this guy.

“Really, Deb,” I said. “This is the first hint of personality we've got from the guy. We know he has a sense of humor. I think that's a big step forward.”

“The van will turn up, Deb. You know that. The database will spit out every white van with a CHOOSE LIFE tag, and with an APB out it's just a matter of time.”