Jeff Lindsay - Double Dexter

Unconsciously I sped up; the car behind me matched my pace and then began to close the gap between us. I turned right, left, right, on random streets. The other car stayed with me, edging ever closer, while I fought furiously against the impulse to mash down the gas pedal and roar away into the night. But through all my twists and turns he stayed with me, slowly gaining on me until he was only about thirty feet back.

I turned left again, and he followed. It was useless. I had to outrun him or confront him. My battered little car was not going to outrun anything faster than a three-speed bicycle, so clearly confrontation was the option.

But not here, not on these semidark residential streets, where he could do whatever he had in mind with no worry that he would be seen. If there was going to be a face-off, I wanted it to happen under the bright glare of the lights along Dixie Highway, someplace where security cameras and convenience store clerks would see everything.

I turned the car back the way I had come, back toward Dixie Highway, and a moment later the other car swung in behind me, once more moving a little closer. And he edged even nearer as I hurried up to the highway, turned right into traffic, and then pulled into the first open gas station. I parked in the brightest area of light, right in front of the window, clearly in view of the clerk and the security camera. I put the car in park and waited, engine idling. A moment later the car that had followed me all the way from my house slid to a stop next to me.

It was not the battered old Cadillac Crowley had been driving before. Instead, it was a newish Ford Taurus. It looked like a car I had seen before a car I had seen frequently, even daily, and as its driver opened up his door and stepped out into the bright orange glare of the security lights, I realized why that was.

And so instead of exploding out of my car to bludgeon Crowley with my swollen hands, I simply sat behind the wheel and rolled down the window as the other driver approached. He came right up to my car, looked down at me, and smiled: a beautiful, blissful smile that revealed hundreds of shiny, sharp teeth, and in the face of such complete happiness there was only one thing I could say.

Sergeant Doakes, I said, with a very good imitation of mild surprise. What on earth are you doing here at this hour?

For A Long And Uneasy Moment, Sergeant Doakes did not answer. He just looked down at me and smiled his bright predator s smile until I began to feel like the lack of conversation was turning a bit uncomfortable. Even more disquieting than the sergeant s toothy silence, I remembered the gym bag on the floor of the backseat, right behind me. The contents of that bag would be difficult to explain to someone with a nasty, suspicious mind someone, in other words, exactly like Doakes and if he were to open the bag and see my collection of innocent toys it could well make for a few very awkward moments, since I was under Official Suspicion for using just such items.

But Dexter was raised on danger and bred on bluff, and this was exactly the kind of crisis that brought out the very best in me. So I took the initiative and broke the ice.

This is an amazing coincidence, I said brightly.

I was just out for some antihistamines. I showed him my swollen hands, but he didn t seem interested. Do you live around here somewhere? I paused for his reply; he didn t give me one, and as the silence grew I had to fight down the impulse to ask whether the cat had his tongue, before I realized that he was not carrying his speech synthesizer. Oh, I m sorry, I said. You don t have your talking machine, do you? Well, then, I ll cut this short. Nothing worse than a one-sided conversation. And, reaching to roll up the window, I added a cheery, Good night, Sergeant!

Doakes leaned forward and put both his shiny prosthetic claws on the top of my window and pushed down. He was not smiling now, and the muscles in his cheeks flexed visibly as he leaned down and kept my window from closing. I wondered briefly what would happen if his pressure broke the glass: Was it possible that a shard of broken window would spear up past his silver claws and slice his wrists open? The thought of Doakes bleeding out in the parking lot beside my car was very appealing but of course, there was also the possibility that the horrible wet blood would spurt out of him, into the car, and cover me in awful sticky red mess, which was an image that made my skin crawl. Not just the nasty appalling blood, but Doakes s vile blood; it was a thought so revolting that for a moment I couldn t breathe.

But car windows are made of safety glass. They do not shatter into shards. They explode into a pile of small pebbles, and it would take a great deal of ingenuity to use them to kill Doakes, unless I could persuade him to eat them. That didn t seem likely, so with a philosophical shrug, I stopped cranking the window and returned the good sergeant s stare. Was there something else? I asked politely.

Sergeant Doakes had never been known for his skill as a conversationalist, and having his tongue removed had done nothing to add to his talent in that area. And so while it was clear that there was a great deal on his mind, he did not share it with me. He just stared, and his cheek muscles continued to bulge out even though he was no longer pushing down on the window. Finally, when a lesser man than Dexter would have cracked under the strain, Doakes leaned in even closer to me. I looked back at him. It was very awkward, but at least he didn t smell as bad as Hood, and I managed to endure it without collapsing into tears and confessing.

And finally Doakes must have realized that, in the first place, there was quite literally nothing he could say and, in the second, I was not going to break down and admit that I was exactly what he thought I was, and out on a mission to do precisely what he suspected. He straightened up slowly, never taking his eyes off me, nodded a couple of times, as if to say, All righty then. Then he showed just the front row of his impressive set of teeth, a feral half grin that was much more troubling than the full smile, and he made that clich d macho gesture we have all seen in so many movies: two fingers pointed at his own eyes, and then one pointed directly at me. Of course, since he had no fingers, he had to point with his bright and shiny prosthetic claw, and it took a little extra imagination on my part to decipher the signal. But the message was very clear: I m watching you. He let that sink in for a moment, just pointing the claw and glaring at me without blinking. Then he turned abruptly away, strolled back around to the driver s side of his car, opened the door, and got in.

I waited for a moment, but Doakes did not put his car in gear. He just sat there, half turned to watch me, even though I was doing nothing more interesting than sweating. Clearly, he was going to be very literal-minded in carrying out his threat. He would watch me, no matter what I did or did not do. He was watching me now, and I remembered that I was supposed to be buying some antihistamine, and he was very intently watching me not buy it. And so, after a few more awkward moments, I got out of my car and went inside the convenience mart. I grabbed a box of something I had seen a commercial for, paid for it, and went back to my car.

Doakes was still watching. I put my own car in gear, backed out of the parking spot, and began the drive back to my house. I didn t need to look in the rearview mirror to know that Doakes was following along right behind.

I drove slowly home, and the headlights of Doakes s car stayed in the exact center of my rearview mirror the whole way, never wavering and never dropping back more than thirty feet. It was a wonderful textbook example of following somebody with what is called an open tail, and I really wished that Doakes was off at Detective College teaching the technique, instead of bedeviling me with it. Just a few minutes ago I had been so very nearly happy, filled with paella and purpose, and now I was right back on the horns of my dilemma. I absolutely had to take care of Crowley, and as soon as possible but soon and possible were both far, far out of reach as long as Sergeant Doakes stayed welded to my bumper.