Jeffry Lindsay - Dexter in the Dark

The front door of the car opened and Deborah hurled herself behind the wheel. “Let’s go,” she said. “Get in your seat.” She slammed the key into the ignition and had the car started before I could even inhale to speak.

“Wait a minute,” I said after I managed to find a little air to work with.

“I don’t have a goddamned minute,” she said. “Come on.”

“He was here, Debs,” I said.

“For Christ’s sake, Dex, who was here?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Then how the fuck do you know he was here?”

I leaned forward and handed her the card. “He left this,” I said.

Deborah took the card, glanced at it, and then dropped it on the seat as if it was made out of cobra venom. “Shit,” she said. She turned off the car’s engine. “Where did he leave it?”

“With Cody,” I said.

She swiveled her head around and looked at the three of us, one after the other. “Why would he leave it with a kid?” she asked.

“Because-” Astor said, and I put a hand on her mouth.

“Don’t interrupt, Astor,” I said, before she could say anything about seeing shadows.

She took a breath, but then she thought better of it and just sat there, unhappy at being muzzled but going along with it for the time being. We sat there for a moment, the four of us, one big unhappy extended family.

“Why not stick it on the windshield, or send it in the mail?” Deborah said. “For that matter, why the hell give us the damn thing at all? Why even have it printed, for Christ’s sake?”

“He gave it to Cody to intimidate us,” I said. “He’s saying, ‘See? I can get to you where you’re vulnerable.’”

“Showing off,” Deborah said.

“Yes,” I said. “I think so.”

“Well goddamn it, that’s the first thing he’s done that made any sense at all.” She slapped the heels of her hands on the steering wheel. “He wants to play catch-me-if-you-can like all the other psychos, then by God I can play that game, too. And I’ll catch the son of a bitch.” She looked back at me. “Put that card in an evidence bag,” she said, “and try to get a description from the kids.” She opened the car door, vaulted out, and went over to talk to the big cop, Suchinsky.

“Well,” I said to Cody and Astor, “can you remember what this man looked like?”

“Yes,” said Astor. “Are we really going to play with him like your sister said?”

“She didn’t mean ‘play’ like you play kick the can,” I said. “It’s more like he’s daring us to try to catch him.”

“Then how is that different from kick the can?” she said.

“Nobody gets killed playing kick the can,” I told her. “What did this man look like?”

She shrugged. “He was old.”

“You mean, really old? White hair and wrinkles?”

“No, you know. Old like you,” she said.

“Ah, you mean old ,” I said, feeling the icy hand of mortality brush its fingers across my forehead and leave feebleness and shaky hands in its wake. It was not a promising start toward getting a real description, but after all, she was ten years old and all grown-ups are equally uninteresting. It was clear that Deborah had made the smart move by choosing to speak to Officer Dim instead. This was hopeless. Still, I had to try.

A sudden inspiration hit me-or at any rate, considering my current lack of brain power, something that would have to stand in for inspiration. It would at least make sense if the scary guy had been Starzak, coming back after me. “Anything else about him you remember? Did he have an accent when he spoke?”

She shook her head. “You mean like French or something? No, he just talked regular. Who’s Kurt?”

It would be an exaggeration to say that my little heart went flip-flop at her words, but I certainly felt some kind of internal quiver. “Kurt is the dead guy I just looked at. Why do you want to know?”

“The man said,” Astor said. “He said someday Cody would be a much better helper than Kurt.”

A sudden, very cold chill rolled through Dexter’s interior climate. “Really,” I said. “What a nice man.”

“He wasn’t nice at all, Dexter, we told you. He was scary.”

“But what did he look like, Astor?” I said without any real hope. “How can we find him if we don’t know what he looks like?”

“You don’t have to catch him, Dexter,” she said, with the same mildly irritated tone of voice. “He said you’ll find him when the time is right.”

The world stopped for a moment, just long enough for me to feel drops of ice water shoot out of all my pores as if they were spring-loaded. “What exactly did he say?” I asked her when things started up again.

“He said to tell you you’ll find him when the time is right,” she said. “I just said.”

“How did he say it?” I said. “‘Tell Daddy?’ ‘Tell that man?’ What?”

She sighed again. “Tell Dexter ,” she said, slowly so I would understand. “That’s you. He said, ‘Tell Dexter he’ll find me when the time is right.’”

I suppose I should have been even more scared. But strangely enough, I wasn’t. Instead, I felt better. Now I knew for sure-someone really was stalking me. Whether a god or a mortal, it didn’t matter anymore, and he would come get me when the time was right, whatever that meant.

Unless I got him first.

It was a silly thought, straight out of a high-school locker room. I had so far shown absolutely no ability to stay even half a step ahead of whoever this was, let alone find him. I’d done nothing but watch as he stalked me, scared me, chased me, and drove me into a state of dark dithering unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

He knew who, what, and where I was. I didn’t even know what he looked like. “Please, Astor, this is important,” I said. “Was he real tall? Did he have a beard? Was he Cuban? Black?”

She shrugged. “Just, you know,” she said, “a white man. He had glasses. Just a regular man. You know.”

I didn’t know, but I was saved from admitting it when Deborah yanked open the driver’s door and slid back into the car. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “How can a man be that dumb and still tie his own shoes?”

“Does that mean Officer Suchinsky didn’t have a lot to say?” I asked her.

“He had plenty to say,” Deborah said. “But it was all brain-dead bullshit. He thought the guy might have been driving a green car, and that’s about it.”

“Blue,” Cody said, and we all looked at him. “It was blue.”

“Are you sure?” I asked him, and he nodded.

“So do I believe a little kid?” Deborah asked. “Or a cop with fifteen years on the force and nothing in his head but shit?”

“You shouldn’t keep saying those bad words,” Astor said. “That’s five and a half dollars you owe me. And anyway, Cody’s right, it was a blue car. I saw it, too, and it was blue.”

I looked at Astor, but I could feel the pressure of Deborah’s stare on me and I turned back to her.

“Well?” she said.

“Well,” I said. “Without the bad words, these are two very sharp kids, and Officer Suchinsky will never be invited to join Mensa.”

“So I’m supposed to believe them,” she said.

“I do.”

Deborah chewed on that for a moment, literally moving her mouth around as if she was grinding some very tough food. “Okay,” she said at last. “So now I know he’s driving a blue car, just like one out of every three people in Miami. Tell me how that helps me.”

“Wilkins drives a blue car,” I said.

“Wilkins is under surveillance, goddamn it,” she said.

“Call them.”

She looked at me, chewed on her lip, and then picked up her radio and stepped out of the car. She talked for a moment, and I heard her voice rising. Then she said another of her very bad words, and Astor looked at me and shook her head. And then Deborah slammed herself back into the car.