Jeff Lindsay - Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“How do you have it set up?” I asked the top of the young man's head. “Do the images automatically archive?”

This time he looked up. I had used archive as a verb, so I must be okay. “Yeah,” he said. “It refreshes every fifteen seconds and just dumps to the hard drive. I usually erase in the morning.”

Deborah actually clutched my arm hard enough to break the skin. “Did you erase this morning?” she asked him.

He glanced away again. “No,” he said. “You guys came stomping in and yelling and stuff. I didn't even get to check my e-mail.”

Deborah looked at me. “Bingo,” I said.

“Come here,” she said to our unhappy camper.

“Huh?” he said.

“Come here,” she repeated, and he stood up slowly, mouth hanging open, and rubbed his knuckles.

“What,” he said.

“Could you please come over here, sir?” Deborah ordered with truly veteran-cop technique, and he stuttered into motion and came over. “Can we see the pictures from last night, please?”

He gaped at the computer, then at her. “Why?” he said. Ah, the mysteries of human intelligence.

“Because,” Deborah said, very slowly and carefully. “I think you might have taken a picture of the killer.”

He stared at her and blinked, then blushed. “No way,” he said.

“Way,” I told him.

He stared at me, and then at Deb, his jaw hanging open. “Awesome,” he breathed. “No shit? I mean-No, really? I mean—” He blushed even harder.

“Can we look at the pictures?” Deb said. He stood still for a second, then plunged into the chair at the desk and touched the mouse. Immediately the screen came to life, and he began typing and mouse-clicking furiously. “What time should I start?”

“What time did everybody leave?” Deborah asked him.

He shrugged. “We were empty last night. Everybody gone by, what—eight o'clock?”

“Start at midnight,” I said, and he nodded.

“'Kay,” he said. He worked quietly for a moment, then, “Come on,” he mumbled. “It's only like a six hundred megaherz,” he said. “They won't update. They keep saying it's fine, but sooooo freaking slow, and it won't— Okay,” he said, breaking off suddenly.

A dark image appeared on the monitor: the empty parking lot below us. “Midnight,” he said, and stared at the screen. After fifteen seconds, the picture changed to the same picture.

“Do we have to watch five hours of this?” Deborah asked.

“Scroll through,” I said. “Look for headlights or something moving.”

“Riiiiiight,” he said. He did some rapid point-and-click, and the pictures began to flip past at one per second. They didn't change much at first; the same dark parking lot, one bright light out at the edge of the picture. After about fifty frames had clicked past, an image jumped into view. “A truck!” Deborah said.

Our pet nerd shook his head. “Security,” he said, and in the next frame the security car was visible.

He kept scrolling, and the pictures rolled by, eternal and unchanging. Every thirty or forty frames we would see the security truck pass, and then nothing. After several minutes of this, the pattern stopped, and there was a long stretch of nothing. “Busted,” my greasy new friend said.

Deborah gave him a hard look. “The camera is broken?”

He looked up at her, blushed again, and looked away. “The security dudes,” he explained. “They totally suck. Every night at, like, three? They park over at the other side and go to sleep.” He nodded at the unchanging pictures scrolling past. “See? Hello! Mr. Security Dude? Hard at work?” He made a wet sound deep in his nose that I had to assume was meant to be laughter. “Not very!” He repeated the snorting sound and started the pictures scrolling again.

And then suddenly— “Wait!” I called out.

On-screen, a van popped into view at the door below us. There was another pop as the image changed, and a man stood beside the truck. “Can you make it go closer?” Deborah asked.

“Zoom in,” I said before he could do more than frown a little. He moved the cursor, highlighted the dark figure on the screen, and clicked the mouse. The picture jumped to a closer look.

“You're not gonna get much more resolution,” he said. “The pixels—”

“Shut up,” said Deborah. She was staring at the screen hard enough to melt it, and as I stared too I could see why.

It was dark, and the man was still too far away to be certain, but from the few details I could make out, there was something oddly familiar about him; the way he stood frozen in the image on the computer, his weight balanced on both feet, and the overall impression of the profile. Somehow, as vague as it was, it added up to something. And as a very loud wave of sibilant chuckling erupted from deep in the backseat of my brain, it fell on me with the impact of a concert grand piano that, actually, he looked an awful lot like-“Dexter . . . ?” Deborah said, in a sort of hushed and strangled croak.

Yes indeed.

Just like Dexter.

I AM PRETTY SURE THAT DEBORAH TOOK YOUNG MR. Bad Hair Day back to the lounge, because when I looked up again, she was standing in front of me, alone. In spite of her blue uniform she did not look at all like a cop right now. She looked worried, like she couldn't decide whether to yell or to cry, like a mommy whose special little boy had let her down in a big way.

“Well?” she demanded, and I had to agree that she had a point.

“Not terribly,” I said. “You?”

She kicked a chair. It fell over. “Goddamn it, Dexter, don't give me that clever shit! Tell me something.

Tell me that wasn't you!” I didn't say anything. “Well then, tell me it is you! Just tell me SOMETHING! Anything at all!”

I shook my head. “I—” There was really nothing to say, so I just shook my head again. “I'm pretty sure it isn't me,” I said. “I mean, I don't think so.” Even to me that sounded like I had both feet firmly planted in the land of lame answers.

“What does that mean, ‘pretty sure'?” Deb demanded. “Does that mean you're not sure? That it might be you in that picture?”

“Well,” I said, a truly brilliant riposte, considering. “Maybe. I don't know.”

“And does ‘I don't know' mean you don't know whether you're going to tell me, or does it mean that you really don't know if that's you in the picture?”

“I'm pretty sure it isn't me, Deborah,” I repeated. “But I really don't know for sure. It looks like me, doesn't it?”

“Shit,” she said, and kicked the chair where it lay. It slammed into the table. “How can you not know, goddamn it?!”

“It is a little tough to explain.”

“Try!”

I opened my mouth, but for once in my life nothing came out. As if everything else wasn't bad enough, I seemed to be all out of clever, too. “I just—I've been having these . . . dreams, but—Deb, I really don't know,” I said, and I may have actually mumbled it.

“Shit shit SHIT!” said Deborah. Kick kick kick.

And it was very hard to disagree with her analysis of the situation.

All my stupid, self-mutilating musings swam back at me with a bright and mocking edge. Of course it wasn't me—how could it be me? Wouldn't I know it if it was me? Apparently not, dear boy. Apparently you didn't actually know anything at all. Because our deep dark dim little brains tell us all kinds of things that swim in and out of reality, but pictures do not lie.

Deb unleashed a new volley of savage attacks on the chair, and then straightened up. Her face was flushed very red and her eyes looked more like Harry's eyes than they ever had before. “All right,” she said. “It's like this,” and she blinked and paused for a moment as it occurred to both of us that she had just said a Harry thing.