Jeff Lindsay - Dexter by Design

“Shit,” Deborah said. “Shit shit shit.” I looked at her with raised eyebrows, and she shook her head.

She seemed deflated, the anger and tension drained out of her. I know it's stupid,” she said. I just hoped she might have seen something. I mean ...” She shrugged and turned away, looking in the direction of the body in the doorway. “We'll never find the gay tourists, either. Not in South Beach,” she said.

“They can't have seen anything anyway,” I said.

“In broad daylight. And nobody saw anything?”

“People see what they expect to see,” I said. “He probably used a delivery van, and that would make him invisible.”

“Well, shit,” she said again, and it didn't seem like a good time to criticize her for such a limited vocabulary. She faced me again. I don't suppose you got anything helpful from looking at this one?”

“Let me take some pictures and think about it,” I said.

“That's a no, right?”

“It's not a stated no,” I said. “It's an implied no.” Deborah held up a middle finger. “Imply this,” she said, and turned away to look at the body again.

IT IS SURPRISING, BUT TRUE: COLD COQ AU VIN REALLY doesn't taste as good as it should. Somehow the wine gives off an odor of stale beer, and the chicken feels slightly slimy, and the whole experience becomes an ordeal of grim perseverance in the face of bitterly disappointed expectations. Still, Dexter is nothing if not persistent, and when I got home around midnight I worked through a large portion of the stuff with truly stoic fortitude.

Rita did not wake up when I slipped into bed, and I did not dawdle over long on the shores of sleep. I closed my eyes, and it seemed like almost immediately the clock radio beside the bed began to scream at me about the rising tide of dreadful violence threatening to overwhelm our poor battered city.

I pried open an eye and saw that it really was six o'clock and time to get up. It didn't seem fair, but I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower, and by the time I reached the kitchen Rita had breakfast on the table. I see you had some of the chicken,” she said, a little grimly, I thought, and I realized a little blarney was called for.

“It was wonderful,” I said. “Better than what we had in Paris.” She brightened a little, but shook her head. “Liar,” she said. “It never tastes right when it's cold.”

“You have the magic touch,” I said. “It tasted warm.”

She frowned and brushed a lock of hair off her face. “I know you have to, you know...” she trailed off. I mean, your job is... But I wish you could have tasted it when -1 mean, I really do understand,” she said, and I was not sure I could say the same thing. Rita put a plate of fried eggs and sausage in front of me and nodded at the small TV set over by the coffee maker. “It was all over the news this morning, about... That's what it was, wasn't it? And they had your sister on, saying that, you know. She didn't look very happy”

“She's not happy at all,” I said. “Which doesn't seem right, since she has a really challenging job, and her picture is on TV. Who could ask for more?”

Rita did not smile at my light-hearted jest. Instead she pulled a chair over next to mine and, sitting down and clasping her hands in her lap, she frowned even deeper. “Dexter,” she said, “we really need to talk.”

I know from my research into human life that these are the words that strike terror into men's souls. Conveniently enough, I have no soul, but I still felt a surge of discomfort at what those ominous syllables might mean. “So soon after the honeymoon?” I said, hoping to deflect at least some small bit of seriousness.

Rita shook her head. “It's not -1 mean ...” She fluttered one hand, and then let it drop back into her lap. She sighed deeply. “It's Cody,” she said at last.

“Oh,” I said, without even a clue of what sort of “it” Cody might be. He seemed perfectly all right to me —but then, I knew better than Rita that Cody was not at all the small, quiet human child he seemed to be, but instead a Dexter-in-training.

“He still seems, so ...” She shook her head again and looked down, her voice dropping. I know his ... father ... did some things that... hurt him. Probably changed him forever. But...” She looked up at me, her eyes bright with tears. “It isn't right; he shouldn't still be like this. Should he? So quiet all the time, and ...” She looked down again. “I'm just afraid for what, you know ...” A tear fell onto her lap and she sniffled. “He might be ... you know ... permanently ...”

Several more tears joined the first one, and even though I am generally helpless in the face of emotion, I knew that some kind of reassuring gesture was called for here.

“Cody will be fine,” I said, blessing my ability to lie convincingly.

“He just needs to come out of his shell a little bit.” Rita sniffled again. “Do you really think so?”

“Absolutely,” I said, putting a hand over hers, as I had seen in a movie not too long ago. “Cody is a great kid. He's just maturing a little slower than others. Because of what happened to him.” She shook her head and a tear hit me in the face. “You can't know that,” she said.

I can,” I told her, and oddly enough, now I was actually telling the truth. “I know perfectly well what he's going through, because I went through it myself.” She looked at me with very bright, wet eyes. “You —you never talked about what happened to you,” she said.

“No,” I said. “And I never will. But it was close enough to what happened to Cody, so I do know. Trust me on this, Rita.” And I patted her hand again, thinking, Yes, trust me. Trust me to turn Cody into a well-adjusted, smoothly functioning monster, just like me.

“Oh, Dexter” she said. I do trust you. But he's so ...” She shook her head again, sending a spray of tears around the room.

“He'll be fine,” I said. “Really. He just needs to learn to be with other kids his own age.” And learn to pretend to be like them, I thought, but it didn't seem terribly comforting to say aloud, so I didn't.

“If you're sure,” Rita said with a truly enormous snuffle.

“I'm sure,” I said.

“All right,” she said, reaching for a napkin off the table and blotting at her nose and eyes. “Then let's just ...” Sniffle. Honk. I guess we just think of ways to get him to mix with other kids.”

“That's the ticket,” I said. “We'll have him cheating at cards in no time.”

Rita blew her nose a last, long time.

“Sometimes I couldn't tell that you're being funny,” she said. She stood up and kissed me on the top of the head. “If I didn't know you so well.”

Of course, if she really knew me as well as she thought, she would stab me with a fork and run for her life, but maintaining our illusions is an important part of life's work, so I said nothing, and breakfast went on in its wonderfully soothing monotony. There is a real pleasure in being waited upon, especially by someone who really knows what she's doing in the kitchen, and it was worth listening to all the chatter that went with it.

Cody and Astor joined us as I started my second cup of coffee, and the two of them sat side by side with identical expressions of heavily sedated incomprehension on their faces. They didn't have the benefit of coffee, and it took them several minutes to realize that they were, in fact, awake. It was Astor, naturally enough, who broke the silence.

“Sergeant Debbie was on TV” she said. Astor had developed a strange case of hero-worship for Deborah, ever since she found out that Debs carried a gun and got to boss around big beefy uniformed cops.

“That's part of her job” I said, even though I realized it would probably feed the hero-worship.