Jeff Lindsay - Darkly Dreaming Dexter

She slapped my arm playfully. “You're awful,” she said. Luckily Sergeant Doakes came over to us and the detective didn't have time for a kittenish giggle, which would have been more than I could take. As always, Doakes seemed more interested in finding a way to get a good grip on my ribs and pull me open than anything else, and he gave me such a warm and penetrating look of welcome that I faded quickly away and left him to LaGuerta. He stared after me, watching me with an expression that said I had to be guilty of something and he would very much like to examine my entrails to find out what. I'm sure he would have been happier someplace where the police were permitted to break the occasional tibia or femur. I circled away from him, moving slowly around the rink to the nearest place where I could get in. I had just found it when something came at me on my blind side and hit me, rather hard, in the ribs.

I straightened up to face my assailant with a certain bruise and a strained smile. “Hello, dear sister,” I said. “So nice to see a friendly face.”

“Bastard!” she hissed at me.

“Quite probably,” I said. “But why bring it up now?”

“Because, you miserable son of a bitch, you had a lead and you didn't call me!”

“A lead?” I almost stuttered. “What makes you think—”

“Cut the crap, Dexter,” Deborah snarled. “You weren't driving around at four AM looking for hookers.

You knew where he was, goddamn it.”

Light dawned. I had been so wrapped up in my own problems, starting with the dream—and the fact that it had obviously been something more than that—and continuing on through my nightmarish encounter with LaGuerta, that it did not occur to me that I had wronged Deborah. I had not shared. Of course she would be angry. “Not a lead, Deb,” I said, trying to soothe her feelings a bit. “Nothing solid like that. Just—a feeling. A thought, that's all. It was really nothing—” She shoved again. “Except that it was something ,” she snarled. “You found him.”

“Actually, I'm not sure,” I said. “I think he found me.”

“Quit being clever,” she said, and I spread my hands to show how impossible that would be. “You promised, goddamn you.”

I did not remember making any kind of promise that might cover calling her in the middle of the night and telling her my dreams, but this didn't seem like a very politic thing to say, so I didn't. “I'm sorry, Deb,” I said instead. “I really didn't think it would pan out. It was just a . . . a hunch, really.” I was certainly not going to attempt any explanation of the parapsychology involved, even with Deb. Or perhaps especially not with her. But another thought hit me. I lowered my voice. “Maybe you could help me a little. What am I supposed to tell them if they ever decide to ask what I was doing driving around down there at four AM?”

“Has LaGuerta interviewed you yet?”

“Exhaustively,” I said, fighting down a shudder.

Deb made a disgusted face. “And she didn't ask.” It was not a question.

“I'm sure the detective has a great deal on her mind,” I said. I did not add that apparently some of it was me. “But sooner or later, somebody will ask.” I looked over to where she was Directing the Operation. “Probably Sergeant Doakes,” I said with real dread.

She nodded. “He's a decent cop. If he could just lose some attitude.”

“Attitude may be all he is,” I said. “But he doesn't like me for some reason. He'll ask anything if he thinks it will make me squirm.”

“So tell him the truth,” Deborah said deadpan. “But first, tell it to me.” And she poked me again in the same spot.

“Please, Deb,” I said. “You know how easily I bruise.”

“I don't know,” she said. “But I feel like finding out.”

“It won't happen again,” I promised. “It was just one of those 3 AM inspirations, Deborah. What would you have said if I had called you about it, and then it turned out to be nothing?”

“But it didn't. It turned out to be something,” she said with another push.

“I really didn't think it would. And I would have felt stupid dragging you in on it.”

“Imagine how I would have felt if he had killed you,” she said.

It took me by surprise. I couldn't even begin to imagine how she would have felt. Regret?

Disappointment? Anger? That sort of thing is way beyond me, I'm afraid. So I just repeated, “I'm sorry, Deb.” And then, because I am the kind of cheerful Pollyanna who always finds the bright side, I added, “But at least the refrigerated truck was there.”

She blinked at me. “The truck was where?” she said.

“Oh, Deb,” I said. “They didn't tell you?”

She hit me even harder in the same place. “Goddamn it, Dexter,” she hissed. “What about the truck?”

“It was there, Deb,” I said, somewhat embarrassed by her nakedly emotional reaction—and also, of course, by the fact that a good-looking woman was beating the crap out of me. “He was driving a refrigerated truck. When he threw the head.”

She grabbed my arms and stared at me. “The fuck you say,” she finally said.

“The fuck I do.”

“Jesus—!” she said, staring off into space and no doubt seeing her promotion floating there somewhere above my head. And she was probably going to go on but at that moment Angel-no-relation lifted his voice over the echoing din of the arena. “Detective?” he called, looking over at LaGuerta. It was a strange, unconscious sound, the half-strangled cry of a man who never makes loud noises in public, and something about it brought instant quiet to the room. The tone was part shock and part triumph—I found something important but oh-my-God. All eyes turned to Angel and he nodded down at the crouching bald man who was slowly, carefully, removing something from the top package.

The man finally pulled the thing out, fumbled, and dropped it, and it skittered across the ice. He reached for it and slipped, sliding after the brightly gleaming thing from the package until they both came to rest against the boards. Hand shaking, Angel grabbed for it, got it and held it up for all of us to see. The sudden quiet in the building was awe inspiring, breathtaking, beautiful, like the overwhelming crash of applause at the unveiling of any work of genius.

It was the rearview mirror from the truck.

THE GREAT BLANKET OF STUNNED SILENCE LASTED for only a moment. Then the buzz of talk in the arena took on a new note as people strained to see, to explain, to speculate.

A mirror. What the hell did it mean?

Good question. In spite of feeling so very moved by the thing, I didn't have any immediate theories about what it meant. Sometimes great art is like that. It affects you and you can't say why. Was it deep symbolism? A cryptic message? A wrenching plea for help and understanding? Impossible to say, and to me, not the most important thing at first. I just wanted to breathe it in. Let others worry about how it had gotten there. After all, maybe it had just fallen off and he had decided to throw it away in the nearest handy garbage bag.

Not possible, of course not. And now I couldn't help thinking about it. The mirror was there for some very important reason. These were not garbage bags to him. As he had now proved so elegantly with this hockey-rink setting, presentation was an important part of what he was doing. He would not be casual in any detail. And because of that, I began to think about what the mirror might mean. I had to believe that, as improvised as it might be, putting it in with the body parts was exceedingly deliberate.

And I had the further feeling, burbling up from somewhere behind my lungs, that this was a very careful, very private message.