Jeff Lindsay - Dexter by Design

“How come you're never on TV, Dexter?” she said accusingly.

I don't want to be on TV” I said, and she looked at me like I had suggested outlawing ice cream. “It's true” I said. “Imagine if everybody knew what I look like. I couldn't walk down the street without people pointing at me and talking behind my back.”

“Nobody points at Sergeant Debbie” she said.

I nodded. “Of course not”1 said. “Who would dare?” Astor looked like she was ready to argue, so I put my coffee cup down with a bang and stood up. “I'm off to another day of mighty work defending the good people of our city” I said.

“You can't defend people with a microscope” Astor said.

“That's enough, Astor” Rita said, and she hustled over to plant another kiss on me, on the face this time. I hope you catch this one, Dexter” she said. “It sounds awful.” I rather hoped we would catch this one, too. Four victims in one day seemed a little bit overzealous, even to me, and it would certainly create a city-wide atmosphere of paranoid watchfulness that would make it almost impossible for me to have any quiet fun of my own.

So it was with a real determination to see justice done that I went in to work. Of course, any real attempt at justice would have to start with the traffic, since Miami drivers have long ago taken the simple chore of going from one place to another and turned it into a kind of high-speed, heavily armed game of high stakes bumper cars. It's even more interesting because the rules change from one driver to the next. For example, as I drove along in the tight bundle of cars on the expressway, a man in the next lane suddenly started honking his horn. When I turned to look, he flipped me off, yelled, “Maricon!” and forced his way in front of me, and then over on to the shoulder, where he accelerated away.

I had no idea what had caused the display, so I simply waved at his car as it vanished in a distant concerto of honking and shouting.

The Miami Rush Hour Symphony.

I arrived at work a little bit early, but the building was already buzzing with frantic activity. The press room was overflowing with more people than I had ever seen before —at least, I assumed they were people, although with reporters you can never be sure. And the true seriousness of the situation hit me when I realized that there were dozens of cameras and microphones and no sign of Captain Matthews.

More unprecedented shocks awaited: a uniformed cop stood at the elevator and demanded to see my credentials before he let me past, even though he was a guy I knew slightly. And even worse when I finally got to the lab area, I found that Vince had actually brought in a bag of croissants.

“Good lord” I said, gazing at the flakes of crust that covered Vince's shirt front. I was just kidding, Vince.” I know” he said. “But it sounded kind of classy, so ...” He shrugged, which caused a trickle of croissant flakes to fall off him and onto the floor. “They make “em with chocolate filling” he said.

“And ham and cheese, too.”

“I don't think they'll approve of that in Paris” I said.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Deborah snarled from behind me as she snatched up a ham and cheese croissant.

“Some of us like to sleep from time to time” I said.

“Some of us don't get to sleep” she said. “Because some of us have been trying to work, surrounded by camera crews from fucking Brazil and who knows where.” She took a savage bite of croissant and, with a full mouth, looked at the rest of it in her hand and said, “Jesus Christ, what is this thing?”

“It's a French doughnut” I said.

Debs threw the rest of it at a nearby trash can and missed by about four feet. “Tastes like shit” she said.

“Would you rather try some of my jelly roll?” Vince asked her.

Debs didn't even blink. “Sorry, I'd need at least a mouthful, which you ain't got” she said, and she grabbed my arm. “Come on.” My sister led me down the hall to her cubicle and flung herself into the chair at her desk. I sat in the folding chair and waited for whatever onslaught of emotion she might have prepared for me.

It came in the form of a stack of newspapers that she started to throw at me, saying, “LA Times; Chicago Sun-Times; New York fucking Times; Der Spiegel; Toronto Star.” Just before I vanished completely under a pile of papers, battered insensible, I reached across and grabbed her arm, stopping her from flinging the Karachi Observer at me. “Debs” I said. I can see them better if they're not wedged into my eye sockets.”

“This is a shit-storm” she said, “like no shit-storm you have ever seen before.”

Truthfully, I had not seen many actual shit-storms, although one time in middle school Randy Schwartz flushed a cherry bomb down a full toilet in the boys rest room, forcing Mr O'Brien to go home early to change clothes. But clearly Debs was in no mood for fond reminiscence, even though neither of us had liked Mr O'Brien.

“I gathered that” I said, “from the fact that Matthews is suddenly invisible.”

She snorted. “Like he never existed.” I never thought we'd see a case so hot the captain didn't want to be on TV” I said.

“Four fucking bodies in one fucking day” she spat out. “Like nothing anybody has ever seen, and it lands in my lap.”

“Rita says you looked very nice on television” I said encouragingly, but for some reason that caused her to swipe at the pile of newspapers and knock several more onto the floor.

I don't wanna be on fucking television” she said. “Fucking Matthews has thrown me to the lions, because this is absolutely the biggest, most bad-ass godawful goddamn story in the whole fucking world right now, and we haven't even released any pictures of the bodies but somehow everybody knows there's something weird going on, and the mayor is having a shit-fit, and the fucking governor is having a shit-fit, and if I personally do not solve this thing by lunchtime the whole fucking state of Florida is going to fall into the ocean and I am going to be underneath it when it happens.” She slapped at the pile of newspapers again and this time at least half of them fell to the floor. That seemed to take all the fury out of her, because she slumped over and suddenly looked drained and exhausted. “I really need some help here, bro. I hate it like hell that I have to ask you, but —if you could ever really figure one of these out, this is the time.”

I wasn't really sure what to make of the fact that suddenly she “hated like hell” to ask me —after all, she had asked before, several times, apparently without hate. She seemed to be getting a little odd and even snarky lately on the subject of my special talents. But what the hell. While it is true that I am without emotion, I am not immune to being manipulated by it, and the sight of my sister so obviously at the end of her rope was more than I could comfortably side-step.

“Of course I'll help, Debs” I said. “I just don't know how much I can really do.”

“Well, fuck, you have to do something” she said. “We're going under here.”

It was nice that she said “we” and included me, although I had not been aware until right now that I, too, was going under. But the added sense of belonging did very little to jar my giant brain into action. In fact, the huge cranial complex that is Dexter's Cerebral Faculty was being abnormally quiet, just as it had been at the crime scenes. Nevertheless, it was clear that a display of good old team spirit was called for, so I closed my eyes and tried to look like I was thinking very hard.

All right then: if there were any real, physical clues, the tireless and dogged heroes of forensics would find them. So what I needed was some kind of hint from a source that my coworkers could not tap —the Dark Passenger. The Passenger, however, was being uncharacteristically silent, except for its mildly savage chuckling, and I wasn't sure what that meant. Normally, any display of predatory skill would evoke some kind of appreciation that quite often provided a small stab of insight into the killing. But this time, any such comment was absent. Why?