Jeffry Lindsay - Dexter in the Dark

“Son of a bitch,” she said.

“They lost him?”

“No, he’s right there, at his house,” she said. “He just pulled in and went in the house.”

“Where did he go?”

“They don’t know,” she said. “They lost him on the shift change.”

“What?”

“DeMarco was coming in as Balfour was punching out,” she said. “He slipped away while they were changing. They swear he wasn’t gone more than ten minutes.”

“His house is a five-minute drive from here.”

“I know that,” she said bitterly. “So what do we do?”

“Keep them watching Wilkins,” I said. “And in the meantime, you go talk to Starzak.”

“You’re coming with me, right?” she said.

“No,” I said, thinking that I certainly didn’t want to see Starzak, and that for once I had a perfect excuse in place. “I have to get the kids home.”

She gave me a sour look. “And what if it isn’t Starzak?” she said.

I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t know either.” She started the engine. “Get in your seat.”

IT WAS WELL PAST FIVE O’CLOCK BY THE TIME WE GOT BACK to headquarters and so, in spite of some very sour looks from Deborah, I loaded Cody and Astor into my own humble vehicle and headed for home. They remained subdued for most of the ride, apparently still a little bit shaken by their encounter with the scary guy. But they were resilient children, which was amply demonstrated by the fact that they could still talk at all, considering what their biological father had done to them. So when we were only about ten minutes from the house Astor began to return to normal.

“I wish you would drive like Sergeant Debbie,” she said.

“I would rather live a little longer,” I told her.

“Why don’t you have a siren?” she demanded. “Didn’t you want one?”

“You don’t get a siren in forensics,” I said. “And no, I never wanted one. I would rather keep a low profile.”

In the rearview mirror I could see her frown. “What does that mean?” she asked.

“It means I don’t want to draw attention to myself,” I said. “I don’t want people to notice me. That’s something you two have to learn about,” I added.

“Everybody else wants to be noticed,” she said. “It’s like all they ever do, is do stuff so everybody will look at them.”

“You two are different,” I said. “You will always be different, and you will never be like everybody else.” She didn’t say anything for a long time and I glanced at her in the mirror. She was looking at her feet. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” I said. “What’s another word for normal?”

“I don’t know,” she said dully.

“Ordinary,” I said. “Do you really want to be ordinary?”

“No,” she said, and she didn’t sound quite so unhappy. “But then if we’re not ordinary, people will notice us.”

“That’s why you have to learn to keep a low profile,” I said, secretly pleased at the way the conversation had worked around to prove my point. “You have to pretend to be really normal.”

“So we shouldn’t ever let anybody know we’re different,” she said. “Not anybody.”

“That’s right,” I said.

She looked at her brother, and they had another of those long silent conversations. I enjoyed the quiet, just driving through the evening congestion and feeling sorry for myself.

After a few minutes Astor spoke up again. “That means we shouldn’t tell Mom what we did today,” she said.

“You can tell her about the microscope,” I said.

“But not the other stuff?” Astor said. “The scary guy and riding with Sergeant Debbie?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“But we’re never supposed to tell a lie,” she said. “Especially to our own mother.”

“That’s why you don’t tell her anything,” I said. “She doesn’t need to know things that will make her worry too much.”

“But she loves us,” Astor said. “She wants us to be happy.”

“Yes,” I said. “But she has to think you are happy in a way she can understand. Otherwise she can’t be happy.”

There was another long silence before Astor finally said, just before we turned onto their street, “Does the scary guy have a mother?”

“Almost certainly,” I said.

Rita must have been waiting right inside the front door, because as we pulled up and parked the door swung open and she came out to meet us. “Well, hello,” she said cheerfully. “And what did you two learn today?”

“We saw dirt,” Cody said. “From my shoe.”

Rita blinked. “Really,” she said.

“And there was a piece of popcorn, too,” Astor said. “And we looked in the microphone and we could tell where we had been.”

“Micro scope ,” Cody said.

“Whatever,” Astor shrugged. “But you could tell whose hair it was, too. And if it was a goat or a rug.”

“Wow,” Rita said, looking somewhat overwhelmed and uncertain, “I guess you had quite a time then.”

“Yes,” Cody said.

“Well then,” Rita said. “Why don’t you two get started on homework, and I’ll get you a snack.”

“Okay,” Astor said, and she and Cody scurried up the walk and into the house. Rita watched them until they went inside, and then she turned to me and held onto my elbow as we strolled after them.

“So it went well?” she asked me. “I mean, with the-they seemed very, um…”

“They are,” I said. “I think they’re beginning to understand that there are consequences for fooling around like that.”

“You didn’t show them anything too grim, did you?” she said.

“Not at all. Not even any blood.”

“Good,” she said, and she leaned her head on my shoulder, which I suppose is part of the price you have to pay when you are going to marry someone. Perhaps it was simply a public way to mark her territory, in which case I guess I should be very happy that she chose not to do so with the traditional animal method. Anyway, displaying affection through physical contact is not something I really understand, and I felt a bit awkward, but I put an arm around her, since I knew that was the correct human response, and we followed the kids into the house.

I’m quite sure it isn’t right to call it a dream. But in the night the sound came into my poor battered head once again, the music and chanting and the clash of metal I had heard before, and there was the feeling of heat on my face and a swell of savage joy rising from the special place inside that had been empty for so long now. I woke up standing by the front door with my hand on the doorknob, covered with sweat, content, fulfilled, and not at all uneasy as I should have been.

I knew the term “sleepwalking,” of course. But I also knew from my freshman psychology class that the reasons someone sleepwalks are usually not related to hearing music. And I also knew in the deepest level of my being that I should be anxious, worried, crawling with distress at the things that had been happening in my unconscious brain. They did not belong there, it was not possible that they could be there-and yet, there they were. And I was glad to have them. That was the most frightening thing of all.

The music was not welcome in the Dexter Auditorium. I did not want it. I wanted it to go away. But it came, and it played, and it made me supernaturally happy against my will and then dumped me by the front door, apparently trying to get me outside and-

And what? It was a jolt of monster-under-the-bed thought straight from the lizard brain, but…