Jeffry Lindsay - Dearly devoted Dexter

Captain Matthews paused and frowned as he realized that he didn’t actually have a “therefore” for us. Luckily for his reputation as a smooth talker, the door opened. We all turned to look.

The doorway was filled with a very big man in a very nice suit. He wore no tie and the top three buttons of his shirt were undone. A diamond pinkie ring glittered on the little finger of his left hand. His hair was wavy and artfully mussed. He looked to be in his forties, and time had not been kind to his nose. A scar ran across his right eyebrow and another down one side of his chin, but the overall impression was not disfigurement so much as decoration. He looked at us all with a cheerful grin and bright, empty blue eyes, pausing in the doorway for a dramatic moment before he looked to the head of the table and said, “Captain Matthews?”

The captain was a reasonably large man and masculine in a very well-kept way, but he looked small and even effeminate compared to the man in the doorway, and I believe he felt it. Still, he clenched his manly jaw and said, “That’s right.”

The big man strode in to Matthews and held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Captain. I’m Kyle Chutsky. We talked on the phone.” As he shook hands, he glanced around the table, pausing at Deborah before moving back to Matthews. But after only half a second his head snapped back around and he locked stares with Doakes, just for a moment. Neither one of them said anything, moved, twitched, or offered a business card, but I was absolutely positive they knew each other. Without acknowledging this in any way, Doakes looked down at the table in front of him and Chutsky returned his attention to the captain. “You have a great department here, Captain Matthews. I hear nothing but good things about you guys.”

“Thank you… Mr. Chutsky,” Matthews said stiffly. “Have a seat?”

Chutsky gave him a big, charming smile. “Thanks, I will,” he said, and slid into the empty seat next to Deborah. She didn’t turn to look at him, but from my spot across the table I could see a slow flush climbing up her neck, all the way to her scowl.

And at this point, I could hear a little voice in the back of Dexter’s brain clearing its throat and saying, “Excuse me, just a minute-but what the hell is going on here?” Perhaps someone had slipped some LSD into my coffee, because this entire day was beginning to feel like Dexter in Wonderland. Why were we even here? Who was the battered big guy who made Captain Matthews nervous? How did he know Doakes? And why, for the love of all that is shiny, bright, and sharp, was Deborah’s face turning such an unbecoming shade of red?

I often find myself in situations where it seems to me like everyone else has read the instruction book while poor Dexter is in the dark and can’t even match tab A with slot B. It usually relates to some natural human emotion, something that is universally understood. Unfortunately, Dexter is from a different universe and does not feel nor understand such things. All I can do is gather a few quick clues to help me decide what kind of face to make while I wait for things to settle back onto the familiar map.

I looked at Vince Masuoka. I was probably closer to him than any of the other lab techs, and not just because we took turns bringing in doughnuts. He always seemed to be faking his way through life, too, as if he had watched a series of videos to learn how to smile and talk to people. He was not quite as talented at pretending as I was, and the results were never as convincing, but I felt a certain kinship.

Right now he looked flustered and intimidated, and he seemed to be trying hard to swallow without any real luck. No clue there.

Camilla Figg was sitting at attention, staring at a spot on the wall in front of her. Her face was pale, but there was a small and very round spot of red color on each cheek.

Deborah, as mentioned, was slumping down in her chair and seemed very busily engaged in turning bright scarlet.

Chutsky slapped the palm of his hand on the table, looked around with a big happy smile, and said, “I want to thank you all for your cooperation with this thing. It’s very important that we keep this quiet until my people can move in on it.”

Captain Matthews cleared his throat. “Ahem. I, uh, I assume you will want us to continue our routine investigative procedures and the, uh, interrogating of witnesses and so on.”

Chutsky shook his head slowly. “Absolutely not. I need your people all the way out of the picture immediately. I want this whole thing to cease and desist, disappear-as far as your department is concerned, Captain, I want it never to have happened at all.”

“Are YOU taking over this investigation?” Deborah demanded.

Chutsky looked at her and his smile got bigger. “That’s right,” he said. And he probably would have kept smiling at her indefinitely if not for Officer Coronel, the cop who had sat on the porch with the weeping and retching old lady. He cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, okay, just a minute here,” and there was a certain amount of hostility in his voice that made his very slight accent a little more obvious. Chutsky turned to look at him, and the smile stayed on his face. Coronel looked flustered, but he met Chutsky’s happy stare. “Are you trying to stop us from doing our jobs here?”

“Your job is to protect and serve,” Chutsky said. “In this case that means to protect this information and serve me.”

“That’s bullshit,” Coronel said.

“It doesn’t matter what kind of shit it is,” Chutsky told him. “You’re gonna do it.”

“Who the fuck are you to tell me that?”

Captain Matthews tapped the table with his fingertips. “That’s enough, Coronel. Mr. Chutsky is from Washington, and I have been instructed to render him every assistance.”

Coronel was shaking his head. “He’s no goddamn FBI,” he said.

Chutsky just smiled. Captain Matthews took a deep breath to say something-but Doakes moved his head half an inch toward Coronel and said, “Shut your mouth.” Coronel looked at him and some of the fight went out of him. “Don’t want to mess with this shit,” Doakes went on. “Let his people handle it.”

“It isn’t right,” said Coronel.

“Leave it,” said Doakes.

Coronel opened his mouth, Doakes raised his eyebrows-and on reflection, looking at the face underneath those eyebrows, perhaps, Officer Coronel decided to leave it.

Captain Matthews cleared his throat in an attempt to take back control. “Any more questions? All right then-Mr. Chutsky. If there’s any other way we can help…”

“As a matter of fact, Captain, I would appreciate it if I could borrow one of your detectives for liaison. Somebody who can help me find my way around, dot all the t’s, like that.”

All the heads around the table swung to Doakes in perfect unison, except for Chutsky’s. He turned to his side, to Deborah, and said, “How about it, Detective?”

I HAVE TO ADMIT THE SURPRISE ENDING TO CAPTAIN Matthew’s meeting caught me off guard, but at least I now knew why everyone was acting so much like lab rats thrown into a lion’s cage. No one likes to have the Feds come in on a case; the only joy in it is making things as hard as possible for them when they do. But Chutsky was apparently such a very heavy hitter that even this small pleasure would be denied to us.

The significance of Deborah’s bright red skin condition was a deeper mystery, but it wasn’t my problem. My problem had suddenly become a little bit clearer. You may think that Dexter is a dull boy for not putting it together sooner, but when the nickel finally dropped it was accompanied by a desire to smack myself on the head. Perhaps all the beer at Rita’s house had short-sheeted my mental powers.