Jeffry Lindsay - Dexter in the Dark

So in all likelihood, we were on our way to see the body of somebody we were sure was a killer, and he had been killed the same way as his own victims. If I had been my cheerful old self, I would certainly have enjoyed the delicious irony, but in my present condition it seemed like just another annoying affront to an orderly existence.

But Deborah gave me very little time to reflect and become grumpy; she whipped through the traffic in the center of Coconut Grove and pulled into the parking area beside Bayfront Park, where the familiar circus was already under way. Three police cruisers were pulled up, and Camilla Figg was dusting for fingerprints on a battered red Geo parked at one of the meters-presumably Kurt Wagner’s car.

I got out and looked around, and even without an inner voice whispering clues, I noticed right away that there was something wrong with this picture. “Where’s the body?” I asked Deborah.

She was already walking toward the gate of the yacht club. “Out on the island,” she said.

I blinked and got out of the car. For no reason I could name, the thought of the body on the island raised the hair on the back of my neck, but as I looked out over the water for the answer, all I got was the afternoon breeze that blew across the pines on the barrier islands of Dinner Key and straight through the emptiness inside me.

Deborah jogged me with her elbow. “Come on,” she said.

I looked in the backseat at Cody and Astor, who had just now mastered the intricacies of the seat-belt release and were trickling out of the car. “Stay here,” I said to them. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Where are you going?” Astor said.

“I have to go out to that island,” I said.

“Is there a dead person there?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

She glanced at Cody, then back at me. “We want to go,” she said.

“No, absolutely not,” I said. “I got in enough trouble the last time. If I let you see another dead body your mother would turn me into one, too.”

Cody thought that was very funny and he made a small noise and shook his head.

I heard a shout and looked through the gate into the marina. Deborah was already at the dock, about to step into the police boat tied up there. She waved an arm at me and yelled, “Dexter!”

Astor stomped her foot to get my attention, and I looked back at her. “You have to stay here,” I said, “and I have to go now.”

“But Dexter, we want to ride on the boat,” she said.

“Well, you can’t,” I said. “But if you behave I’ll take you on my boat this weekend.”

“To see a dead person?” Astor said.

“No,” I said. “We’re not going to see any more dead bodies for a while.”

“But you promised!” she said.

“Dexter!” Deborah yelled again. I waved at her, which did not seem to be the response she was looking for, because she beckoned furiously at me.

“Astor, I have to go,” I said. “Stay here. We’ll talk about this later.”

“It’s always later,” she muttered.

On the way through the gate I paused and spoke to the uniformed cop there, a large heavy man with black hair and a very low forehead. “Could you keep one eye on my kids there?” I asked him.

He stared at me. “What am I, day-care patrol?”

“Just for a few minutes,” I said. “They’re very well behaved.”

“Lookit, sport,” he said, but before he could finish his sentence there was a rustle of movement and Deborah was beside us.

“God damn it, Dexter!” she said. “Get your ass on the boat!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to find somebody to watch the kids.”

Deborah ground her teeth together. Then she glanced at the big cop and read his name tag. “Suchinsky,” she said. “Watch the fucking kids.”

“Aw, come on, Sarge,” he said. “Jesus Christ.”

“Stick with the kids, goddamn it,” she said. “You might learn something. Dexter-get on the goddamn boat, now!”

I turned meekly and hurried for the goddamn boat. Deborah strode past me and was already seated when I jumped on, and the cop driving the boat headed for one of the smaller islands, weaving between the anchored sailboats.

There are several small islands on the outside of Dinner Key Marina that provide protection from wind and wave, one of the things that makes it such a good anchorage. Of course, it’s only good under ordinary circumstances, as the islands themselves proved. They were littered with broken boats and other maritime junk deposited by the many recent hurricanes, and every now and then a squatter would set up housekeeping, building a shack from shattered boat parts.

The island we headed for was one of the smaller ones. Half of a forty-foot sports fisherman lay on the beach at a crazy angle, and the pine trees inland of the beach were hung with chunks of Styrofoam, tattered cloth, and wispy shreds of plastic sheeting and garbage bags. Other than that, it was just the way the Native Americans had left it, a peaceful little chunk of land covered with Australian pines, condoms, and beer cans.

Except, of course, for Kurt Wagner’s body, which had most likely been left by someone other than Native Americans. It was lying in the center of the island in a small clearing, and like the others, it had been arranged in a formal pose, with the arms folded across the chest and the legs pressed together. The body was headless and unclothed, charred from being burned, very much like the others-except that this time there had been a small addition. Around the neck was a leather string holding a pewter medallion about the size of an egg. I leaned closer to look; it was a bull’s head.

Once again I felt a strange twinge in the emptiness, as if some part of me were recognizing that this was significant, but didn’t know why or how to express it-not alone, not without the Passenger.

Vince Masuoka was squatting next to the body examining a cigarette butt and Deborah knelt down beside him. I circled them one time, looking at it from all angles: Still Life with Cops. I was hoping, I suppose, that I would find a small but significant clue. Perhaps the killer’s driver’s license, or a signed confession. But there was nothing of the kind, nothing but sand, pockmarked from countless feet and the wind.

I went down on one knee beside Deborah. “You looked for the tattoo, right?” I asked her.

“First thing,” Vince said. He extended a rubber-gloved hand and lifted the body slightly. There it was, half covered with sand but still visible, only the upper edge of it cut off and left, presumably, with the missing head.

“It’s him,” Deborah said. “The tattoo, his car is at the marina-it’s him, Dexter. And I wish I knew what the hell that tattoo meant.”

“It’s Aramaic,” I said.

“How the fuck would you know that?” Deborah said.

“My research,” I said, and I squatted down next to the body. “Look.” I picked a small pine twig out of the sand and pointed with it. Part of the first letter was missing, cut off along with the head, but the rest was plainly visible and matched my language lesson. “There’s the M , what’s left of it. And the L , and the K .”

“What the hell does that mean?” Deborah demanded.

“Moloch,” I said, feeling a small irrational chill just saying the word here in the bright sunshine. I tried to shake it off, but a feeling of uneasiness stayed behind. “Aramaic has no vowels. So MLK spells Moloch.”

“Or milk,” Deborah said.

“Really, Debs, if you think our killer would tattoo milk on his neck, you need a nap.”

“But if Wagner is Moloch, who killed him?”

“Wagner kills the others,” I said, trying very hard to sound thoughtful and confident at the same time, a difficult task. “And then, um…”