Jeff Lindsay - Double Dexter

A middle-aged man and woman walked into my shadowy retreat from the interior of the fort. They held hands and ambled past me, hardly seeing me, their flip-flops slapping on the hard stone floor, and then they disappeared out the other side toward the dock. I thought it through again, and it didn t get any better. But I didn t think of any other choices either. My best new thought came when I remembered that technically, Crowley had kidnapped Cody and Astor. If I was truly cornered, I could claim I had been defending them and throw myself on the mercy of the court. I was pretty sure there wasn t a lot of that in any Florida court, and I didn t think much of it would be reserved for me, but it didn t really matter. This was my only shot, and I would just have to take it and let things sort themselves out later.

In any case, I really wanted to do this. I wanted Crowley dead, and I wanted to do it myself, and nothing else was quite as important as that. If that meant a long vacation behind bars, so be it. I probably deserved it.

I looked at my watch. The boat should arrive in about half an hour. I couldn t lurk here in the shadows the whole time without somebody wondering what I was doing. So I continued on through the gateway and walked into the fort.

It seemed even bigger on the inside. The walls folded around a huge green lawn speckled with trees and crossed by a few pathways that led away to the far side, which seemed to be very far away. There were a few buildings, probably where the park rangers lived. To the right was a sign that read, VISITOR CENTER, and beyond it on the top of the wall a black lighthouse stuck up into the bright blue sky.

The top story of the high brick wall gaped in an endless chain of large openings, a series of huge doorways with no doors. The bottom floor echoed this pattern, with smaller, squatter doorways leading into blank darkness inside the walls. It was a vast arena of dark and secluded spots, so many of them over such a huge area that the 10^th Mountain Division could not have covered it all, let alone a small handful of park rangers, and I could see why Crowley had chosen it. It was the perfect setting for a recreational murder, followed by a haunting.

I went to the right, past the doorway into the Visitor Center and along the wall, peering into dark and empty rooms. Underneath the lighthouse I found a stairway leading up to the top of the wall, and I climbed it, coming out on top into the bright sunlight again. I squinted and looked around, and the intensity of the light hurt my eyes. I wished I d brought sunglasses. But I also wished I d brought a bazooka, or at least a baseball bat, so the glasses seemed a little bit trivial.

I went to the edge of the wall and looked down. Below me the moat came right up to the wall, and beyond that there was a sandy roadway between the fort and the beach. A fat man in a tiny bathing suit walked by on the sand, following a large black dog. Beyond him was a sliver of beach and several large boats moored just a few yards out from the sand. Someone on the deck of one of the yachts yelled something, and there was a brief blare of music.

I turned to my left, walking along the top of the wall in the direction the ferry would be coming from, picking my way through sand and tufts of grass, past a big black cannon where three kids were playing pirate. Beyond them I saw a chunk of loose brick lying in the sand. It had split in three pieces and fallen out of its slot in the wall. I glanced around me casually; the pirates were on the far side of their cannon, and there was no one else in sight. I stooped and picked up a piece of the brick and slid it into my pocket. It wasn t quite a bazooka, but it was better than nothing.

It was a five-minute walk across the top of the wall to the far side of the fort. When I finally got there I was soaked in sweat and I had a slight headache from the sun s sharp glare. I stood there and looked back toward Key West, squinting through the reflected gleam of light off the water. I waited for ten minutes or so, doing no more than scanning the horizon. Three more people walked past me, two middle-aged women chattering away in deep harsh voices, and one old man with a bandage on the side of his head. And then a small white speck appeared in the distance, even brighter than the blaze of sunlight off the water, and I watched as it grew bigger and brighter, and in only a few minutes it was big enough to be sure. It was the ferry, bringing me Cody and Astor and an end to the threat of Crowley. They were almost here, and it was time.

I hurried back to the staircase and went down to the gateway to wait.

I stood in the shadows inside the fort s gateway, half-hidden behind the stone arch, and I watched as the large catamaran slid up to the dock and tied off. Many times in my sad short life I have waited in ambush and cuddled my wicked thoughts, but this was different. This was no deliciously private rendezvous on a carefully chosen night of silvery moonlight. This was a public execution in a crowd of strangers, a perversion forced on me by necessity, and it seemed like I was doing everything for the very first time. I felt stiff, clumsy, amateurish. I did not hear the sweet wing-rustle and whisper of encouragement from the Dark Passenger, and I did not hear the music of the Dance Macabre, and there was no delicious cool rush of power and certainty flowing out through my fingertips. My mouth was dry and my still-swollen hands were sweaty and I could hear my heart pounding rapidly in my ears and this was not wonderful wicked me lying in wait in complete control, not at all, and it made me fidgety and unhappy in a way that was almost painful.

But there was no choice, no way out, no direction but forward, and so I waited and watched as the ferry s steel ramp slammed down onto the dock, and the crowd of gawkers surged off the boat and onto Dry Tortugas National Park, home of Fort Jefferson and Dexter s Last Stand.

There were about sixty people on the boat, and most of them had come down the ramp and begun to amble around the outside of the fort before I saw Astor s unmistakable blond head through a gap in the parade. A moment later the crowd parted again and there they were, all three of them. Cody and Astor held hands and Crowley walked very close behind them, herding them forward off the dock and onto the brick path toward the fort.

I tensed and slid deeper into the shadow of the stone gate. I flexed my fingers. They felt cramped and stupid, incapable of anything but knotting up. I made and unmade a fist several times, and when my hands felt as lively as they were going to get I reached into my pocket and took out my chunk of brick. It didn t make me feel much better.

I waited. My throat was so dry that swallowing hurt, but I swallowed anyway and took a deep breath and tried to force icy calm into my veins. It didn t work. My hands were shaky and the brick felt slippery in my grip. I took half a peek around the stone arch and for a few frozen seconds I didn t see them anywhere. I eased out of the shadows a little more; there they were, standing stupidly in front of the sign, staring around them. I could see Astor s mouth moving in what was clearly a tirade of irritation, and Cody s small face was set in a scowl. Crowley had a duffel bag slung over one shoulder, and he wore an idiotic mask of pleasant anticipation, as if he really was on an enchanted holiday with two wonderful children.

But they didn t move away from the sign. I wondered what Crowley had told them to keep them docile. It must have been good. They had no reason to distrust him if he had a plausible enough lie, but these were not ordinary, well-behaved children. Behind their pleasant and youthful features, throbbing inside their delightful tousled heads, dark and wicked flowers were blooming. Crowley could not possibly suspect it, but these were Dexters-in-Training, and they were, in every sense of the word, little Monsters. I felt a surge of affection for the two of them.