Jeff Lindsay - Dexter by Design

“Doesn't really add up.” I gave him a look of pained confusion, which wasn't entirely acting. “What do you mean?” I said.

He took another swig of soda. “You always play by the rules” he said. “Your sister's a cop. Your dad was a cop. You never get in any kind of trouble, ever. Mister Boy Scout. And now you decide you're Rambo?” He made a face as if somebody had put garlic in his Mountain Dew. “Am I missing something? You know, something that makes sense?”

“She's my sister” I said, and it sounded incredibly feeble, even to me.

“Yeah, I got that already” he said. “You got nothing else?” I felt trapped in slow motion while large and ponderous things whizzed past me. My head throbbed and my tongue was too thick,

and all my legendary cleverness had deserted me. Coulter watched me as I numbly and painfully shook my head, and I thought, This is a very dangerous man. But out loud, all I could manage was, “I'm sorry.” He looked at me for just a moment longer, then turned away. I think maybe Doakes was right about you” he said, and then he walked across the street to talk to the fire-fighters.

Well. The mention of Doakes was the perfect end to an absolutely enchanting conversation. I barely stopped myself from shaking my head again, but the temptation was strong, because it seemed to me that what had been a sane and well-ordered universe just a few days ago was suddenly beginning to spin wildly out of control. First I walk into a trap and nearly turn into the Inhuman Torch, and then a man I had regarded as a foot soldier in the war against intelligence turned out to be far deeper than I had known —and to top it off, he was apparently in league with the last few living pieces of my nemesis, Sergeant Doakes, and he seemed very likely to take up where Doakes had left off, in the pursuit of poor persecuted Dexter.

Where would this end?

If this was not bad enough —which, frankly, I thought it was I was still in terrible danger from Weiss and whatever his plan of attack might be.

All in all, it occurred to me that this would be a very good time to be somebody else. Unfortunately, that was a trick I had so far failed to master. With nothing else to do except ponder the almost certain doom headed toward me at such terrible speed from so many different directions, I walked down the block to my car. And of course, because apparently I had not suffered nearly enough, a slim and ghostly figure came off the curb and glided into step beside me.

“You were here when this happened” said Israel Salguero.

“Yes” I said, wondering if next a satellite would fall from orbit and onto my head.

He was silent for a moment and then he stopped walking, and I turned to face him. “You know I am not investigating you” he said.

I thought that was very nice to hear, but considering how things had gone the last few hours I thought it would be best just to nod, so I did.

“But apparently what happened here is connected to the incident involving your sister, and that I am investigating” he said, and I was glad I hadn't said anything. So glad, in fact, that I decided that silence would be a good policy to continue.

“You know that one of the most important things I am charged to uncover is any kind of vigilante activity on the part of any of our officers” he said.

“Yes” I said. Only one word, after all.

He nodded. He still had not taken his eyes off my face.

“Your sister has a very promising career ahead of her” he said.

“It would be a very great shame if something like this hurt her.”

“She's still unconscious” I said. “She hasn't done anything.”

“No, she hasn't done anything” he said. “What about you?” I just tried to find the guy who stabbed her” I said. I didn't do anything wrong.”

“Of course” he said. He waited for me to say something else, but I didn't and so after what seemed like several weeks, he smiled and patted my arm and walked away across the street to where Coulter was standing and swigging from his Mountain Dew bottle.

I watched as the two of them spoke, turned to face me, and then turned away again to look at the smouldering house.

Thinking that this afternoon couldn't possibly get any better, I turned and trudged to my car. The windshield was cracked from a flying piece of house.

I managed not to burst into tears. I got in and drove home, peering through the cracked glass and listening to my head throb.

RITA WAS NOT HOME YET WHEN I ARRIVED, SINCE I'D gotten there a bit early as a result of my explosive misfortune.

The house seemed very empty, and I stood inside the front door for a minute just listening to the unnatural silence. A pipe ticked in the back of the house, and then the air conditioner came on, but these were not living sounds and I still felt as if I had stumbled into a movie where everyone else had been whisked away in a spaceship. The lump on my head was still throbbing, and I was very tired and very alone. I went to the couch and fell onto it as if I suddenly had no bones left to hold me up.

I lay there for some time —a kind of strange interval in the urgency. I knew I still had to explode into action, track down Weiss, head him off at the pass and beard him in his den, but for some reason I was completely unable to move, and the mean little voice that had been urging me on did not sound terribly convincing at the moment, as if it, too, needed a coffee break. So I just lay there, face down, trying to feel the sense of emergency that had deserted me, and failing to feel anything except, as mentioned, fatigue and pain.

If somebody had shouted at me, “Look out behind you! He's got a gun!” I would have replied with no more than a weary mumble, “Tell him to take a number and wait.” I woke up, I don't know how much later, to an overwhelming sense of blue, which made no sense at all until I was able to focus my eyes. There stood Cody, no more than six inches away from my head, in his apparently brand new Cub Scout uniform. I sat up, which caused my head to clang like a gong, and looked at him.

“Well” I said. “You certainly look official.”

“Look stupid” he said. “Shorts.” I looked at him in his dark blue shirt and shorts, the little hat perched on top of his head and the neckerchief in its slide around his neck, and it didn't seem fair to pick on the shorts. “What's wrong with shorts?” I said. “You wear shorts all the time.”

“Uniform shorts” he said, as if it was some kind of impossible assault on the last frontier of human dignity.

“Lots of people wear uniform shorts” I said, desperately flinging my battered brain through its paces in search of an example.

Cody looked very doubtful. “Who?” he said.

“Well, ah, the mail man wears shorts—” I broke off quickly; the look he was giving me was louder and more pointed than anything he could have said. “And, um, the British soldiers wore shorts in India” I said, with incredibly feeble hope.

He stared at me for a moment longer without saying anything, as if I had let him down badly when all the chips were on the table.

And before I could think of another brilliant example, Rita came charging into the room.

“Oh, Cody, you didn't wake him up, did you? Hello, Dexter, we've been shopping, we got all the things Cody needs for the Cub Scouts, he doesn't like the shorts, I think because Astor said something, my God what happened to your head?” she said, running through two octaves and eight emotions without breathing.

“It's nothing” I said. “Just a flesh wound” which was something I'd always wanted to say, even though I didn't really know what that meant. Weren't all wounds flesh wounds, unless they bypassed the flesh somehow and went right to the bone?