Jeffry Lindsay - Dexter in the Dark

“Yes, but this is just a museum ,” Astor said. “It’s not what we want to learn.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “And you have to trust me, and do it my way, or I’m not going to teach you.” I leaned down to where I could look them both in the eyes. “Not doodly-squat,” I said.

Astor frowned. “Dex-terrrr,” she said.

“I mean it. It has to be my way.”

Once again she and Cody locked glances. After a moment he nodded, and she turned back to me. “All right,” she said. “We promise.”

“We’ll wait,” Cody said.

“We understand,” Astor said. “When can we start the cool stuff?”

“When I say,” I said. “Anyway, right now we have to go.”

She switched immediately back to snippy ten-year-old. “Now where do we have to go?”

“I have to go to work,” I said. “So I’m taking you with me.”

“To see a body ?” she asked hopefully.

I shook my head. “Just the head,” I said.

She looked at Cody and shook her head. “Mom won’t like it.”

“You can wait in the car if you want to,” I said.

“Let’s go,” said Cody, his longest speech all day.

We went.

DEBORAH WAS WAITING AT A MODEST $2 MILLION HOUSE on a private cul-de-sac in Coconut Grove. The street was sealed off from just inside the guard booth to the house itself, about halfway down on the left, and a crowd of indignant residents stood around on their carefully manicured lawns and walkways, fuming at the swarm of low-rent social undesirables from the police department who had invaded their little paradise. Deborah was in the street instructing a videographer in what to shoot and from what angles. I hurried over to join her, with Cody and Astor trailing along right behind.

“What the hell is that?” Deborah demanded, glaring from the kids to me.

“They are known as children,” I told her. “They are often a byproduct of marriage, which may be why you are unfamiliar with them.”

“Are you off your fucking nut bringing them here?” she snapped.

“You’re not supposed to say that word,” Astor told Deborah with a glare. “You owe me fifty cents for saying it.”

Deborah opened her mouth, turned bright red, and closed it again. “You gotta get them outta here,” she finally said. “They shouldn’t see this.”

“We want to see it,” Astor said.

“Hush,” I told them. “Both of you.”

“Jesus Christ, Dexter,” Deborah said.

“You told me to come right away,” I said. “I came.”

“I can’t play nursemaid to a couple of kids,” Deborah said.

“You don’t have to,” I said. “They’ll be fine.”

Deborah stared at the two of them; they stared back. Nobody blinked, and for a moment I thought my dear sister would chew off her lower lip. Then she shook herself. “Screw it,” she said. “I don’t have time for a hassle. You two wait over there.” She pointed to her car, which was parked across the street, and grabbed me by the arm. She dragged me toward the house where all the activity was humming. “Lookit,” she said, and pointed at the front of the house.

On the phone, Deborah had told me they found the heads, but in truth it would have taken a major effort to miss them. In front of the house, the short driveway curled through a pair of coral-rock gateposts before puddling into a small courtyard with a fountain in the middle. On top of each gatepost was an ornate lamp. Chalked on the driveway between the posts was something that looked like the letters MLK, except that it was in a strange script that I did not recognize. And to make sure that no one spent too long puzzling out the message, on top of each gatepost-

Well. Although I had to admit the display had a certain primitive vigor and an undeniable dramatic impact, it was really far too crude for my taste. Even though the heads apparently had been carefully cleaned, the eyelids were gone and the mouths had been forced into a strange smile by the heat, and it was not pleasant. Certainly no one on-site asked my opinion, but I have always felt that there should be no leftovers. It’s untidy, and it shows a lack of a real workmanlike spirit. And for these heads to be left so conspicuously-this was mere showing off, and demonstrated an unrefined approach to the problem. Still, there’s no accounting for taste. I’m always willing to admit that my technique is not the only way. And as always in aesthetic matters, I waited for some small sibilant whisper of agreement from the Dark Passenger-but of course, there was nothing.

Not a murmur, not a twitch of the wing, not a peep. My compass was gone, leaving me in the very unsettling position of needing to hold my own hand.

Of course, I was not completely alone. There was Deborah beside me, and I became aware that as I was pondering the matter of my shadow companion’s disappearance, she was speaking to me.

“They were at the funeral this morning,” she said. “Came back and this was waiting for them.”

“Who are they?” I asked, nodding at the house.

Deborah jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow. It hurt. “The family, asshole. The Ortega family. What did I just say?”

“So this happened in daylight?” For some reason, that made it seem a little more disturbing.

“Most of the neighbors were at the funeral, too,” she said. “But we’re still looking for somebody who might have seen something.” She shrugged. “We might get lucky. Who knows.”

I did not know, but for some reason I did not think that anything connected to this would bring us luck. “I guess this creates a little doubt about Halpern’s guilt,” I said.

“It damned well does not,” she said. “That asshole is guilty.”

“Ah,” I said. “So you think that somebody else found the heads, and, uh…”

“Fucking hell, I don’t know,” she said. “Somebody must be working with him.”

I just shook my head. That didn’t make any sense at all, and we both knew it. Somebody capable of conceiving and performing the elaborate ritual of the two murders would almost have to do it alone. Such acts were so highly personal, each small step the acting out of some unique inner need, that the idea of two people sharing the same vision was almost pure nonsense. In a weird way, the ceremonial display of the heads fit in with the way the bodies had been left-two pieces of the same ritual.

“That doesn’t seem right,” I said.

“Well then, what does?”

I looked at the heads, perched so carefully atop the lamps. They had of course been burned in the fire that had toasted the bodies, and there were no traces of blood visible. The necks appeared to have been cut very neatly. Other than that, I had no keen insight into anything at all-and yet there was Deborah, staring at me expectantly. It’s difficult to have a reputation for being able to see into the still heart of the mystery when all that notoriety rests on the shadowy guidance of an interior voice that was, at the moment, somewhere else altogether. I felt like a ventriloquist’s dummy, suddenly called upon to perform the whole act alone.

“Both the heads are here,” I said, since I clearly had to say something. “Why not at the other girl’s house? The one with the boyfriend?”

“Her family lives in Massachusetts,” Deborah said. “This was easier.”

“And you checked him out, right?”

“Who?”

“The dead girl’s boyfriend,” I said slowly and carefully. “The guy with the tattoo on his neck.”

“Jesus Christ, Dexter, of course we’re checking him out. We’re checking out everybody who came within half a mile of these girls in their whole fucking sad little lives, and you-” She took a deep breath, but it didn’t seem to calm her down very much. “Listen, I don’t really need any help with the basic police work, okay? What I need help with is the weird creepy shit you’re supposed to know about.”