Jeffry Lindsay - Dearly devoted Dexter

“Like the other one,” I said.

“The one that never happened,” he said. “I know, I was there.”

I straightened up and took a breath, thinking how nice it was to be right. “This one never happened, either,” I said, and walked over to where Officer Snyder was chatting with the detective.

The detective in question was a pear-shaped man named Coulter. He was sipping from a large plastic bottle of Mountain Dew and looking out at the canal that ran by the backyard. “What do you think a place like this goes for?” he asked Snyder. “On a canal like that. Less than a mile from the bay, huh? Figure maybe what. Half a million? More?”

“Excuse me, Detective,” I said. “I think we have a situation here.” I’d always wanted to say that, but it didn’t seem to impress Coulter.

“A situation. You been watching CSI or something?”

“Burdett is a federal agent,” I said. “You have to call Captain Matthews right away and tell him.”

“I have to,” Coulter said.

“This is connected to something we’re not supposed to touch,” I said. “They came down from Washington and told the captain to back off.”

Coulter took a swig from his bottle. “And did the captain back off?”

“Like a rabbit in reverse,” I said.

Coulter turned and looked at Burdett’s body. “A fed,” he said. He took one more swig as he stared at the severed head and limbs. Then he shook his head. “Those guys always come apart under pressure.” He looked back out the window and pulled out his cell phone.

Deborah got to the scene just as Angel-no-relation was putting his kit back in the van, which was three minutes before Captain Matthews. I don’t mean to seem critical of the captain. To be perfectly fair, Debs didn’t have to put on a fresh spray of Aramis, and he did, and redoing the knot in his tie must have taken some time, too. Just moments behind Matthews came a car I had come to know as well as my own; a maroon Ford Taurus, piloted by Sergeant Doakes. “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” I said cheerfully. Officer Snyder looked at me like I had suggested we dance naked, but Coulter just pushed his index finger into the mouth of his soda bottle and let it dangle as he walked away to meet the captain.

Deborah had been looking the scene over from the outside and directing Snyder’s partner to move the perimeter tape back a little. By the time she finally walked over to talk to me, I had reached a startling conclusion. It had started as an exercise in ironic whimsy, but it grew into something that I couldn’t argue with, as much as I tried. I stepped over to Coulter’s expensive window and stared out, leaning on the wall and looking hard at the idea. For some reason, the Dark Passenger found the notion hugely amusing and began whispering frightful counterpoint. And finally, feeling like I was selling nuclear secrets to the Taliban, I realized it was all we could do. “Deborah,” I said as she stalked over to where I stood by the window, “the cavalry isn’t coming this time.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” she said.

“We are all there is, and we are not enough.”

She pushed a lock of hair away from her face and blew out a deep breath. “What have I been saying?”

“But you didn’t take the next step, Sis. Since we are not enough, we need help, somebody who knows something about this-”

“For Christ’s sake, Dexter! We’ve been feeding people like that to this guy!”

“Which means the only remaining candidate at the moment is Sergeant Doakes,” I said.

It might not be fair to say that her jaw dropped. But she did stare at me with her mouth open before turning to look at Doakes, where he stood beside Burdett’s body, talking to Captain Matthews.

“Sergeant Doakes,” I repeated. “Formerly Sergeant Doakes. Of the Special Forces. On detached service in El Salvador.”

She looked back at me, and then at Doakes again.

“Deborah,” I said, “if we want to find Kyle, we need to know more about this. We need to know the names on Kyle’s list and we need to know what kind of team it was and why all this is happening. And Doakes is the only one I can think of who knows any of it.”

“Doakes wants you dead,” she said.

“No working situation is ever ideal,” I said with my best smile of cheerful perseverance. “And I think he wants this to go away as badly as Kyle does.”

“Probably not as much as Kyle,” Deborah said. “Not as much as I do, either.”

“Well then,” I said. “This looks like your best shot.”

Deborah still didn’t look convinced for some reason. “Captain Matthews won’t want to lose Doakes for this. We’d have to clear it with him.”

I pointed to where that very same captain was conferring with Doakes. “Behold,” I said.

Deborah chewed her lip for a moment before she finally said, “Shit. It might work.”

“I can’t think of anything else that might,” I said.

She took another breath, and then as if someone had clicked a switch, she stepped toward Matthews and Doakes with her jaw clenched. I trailed along behind, trying hard to blend in with the bare walls so Doakes wouldn’t pounce and rip out my heart.

“Captain,” Deborah said, “we need to get proactive with this.”

Even though “proactive” was one of his favorite words, Matthews stared at her like she was a cockroach in the salad. “What we need,” he said, “is for these… people … in Washington to send somebody competent to clean up this situation.”

Deborah pointed at Burdett. “They sent him,” she said.

Matthews glanced down at Burdett and pushed his lips out thoughtfully. “What do you suggest?”

“We have a couple of leads,” she said, nodding toward me. I really wished she hadn’t, since Matthews swung his head in my direction and, much worse, so did Doakes. If his hungry-dog expression was any indication, he apparently hadn’t mellowed in his feelings toward me.

“What is your involvement with this?” Matthews asked me.

“He’s providing forensic assistance,” Deborah said, and I nodded modestly.

“Shit,” Doakes said.

“There’s a time factor here,” Deborah said. “We need to find this guy before he-before more of these turn up. We can’t keep a lid on it forever.”

“I think the term ‘media feeding frenzy’ might be appropriate,” I offered, always helpful. Matthews glared at me.

“I know the overall shape of what Kyle-of what Chutsky was trying to do,” Deborah went on. “But I can’t go on with it because I don’t know any background details.” She stuck her chin out in the direction of Doakes. “Sergeant Doakes does.”

Doakes looked surprised, which was obviously an expression he hadn’t practiced enough. But before he could speak Deborah plowed ahead. “I think the three of us together can catch this guy before another fed gets on the ground and catches up to what’s happened so far.”

“Shit,” Doakes said again. “You want me to work with him ?” He didn’t need to point to let everyone know he meant me, but he did anyway, pushing a muscular, knobby index finger at my face.

“Yeah, I do,” Deborah said. Captain Matthews was chewing on his lip and looking undecided, and Doakes said, “Shit,” again. I did hope that his conversational skills would improve if we were going to work together.

“You said you know something about this,” Matthews said to Doakes, and the sergeant reluctantly turned his glare away from me and onto the captain.

“Uh-huh,” said Doakes.

“From your, uh- From the army,” Matthews said. He didn’t seem terribly frightened by Doakes’s expression of petulant rage, but perhaps that was just the habit of command.