Jeffry Lindsay - Dearly devoted Dexter

The kitchen was practically a duplicate of the kitchen at the first house. There was a small and battered refrigerator, a hot plate, a card table with one folding chair, and that was it. Half a box of doughnuts sat on the counter, with a very large roach munching on one of them. He looked at me as if he was willing to fight for the doughnut, so I left him to it.

I came back in to the main room to find Chutsky still leaning on the table. “Hurry up,” he said. “For Christ’s sake let’s go.”

“One more room,” I said. I crossed the room and opened the door opposite the kitchen. As I had expected, it was a bedroom. There was a cot in one corner, and on the cot lay a pile of clothing and a cell phone. The shirt looked familiar, and I had a thought about where it might have come from. I pulled out my own phone and dialed Sergeant Doakes’s number. The phone on top of the clothing began to ring.

“Oh, well,” I said. I pushed disconnect and went to get Chutsky.

He was right where I had left him, although he looked like he would have run away if he could have. “Come on, for Christ’s sake, hurry up,” he said. “Jesus, I can almost feel his breath on my neck.” He twisted his head to the back door and then over to the kitchen and, as I reached to support him, he turned and his eyes snapped onto the mirror that hung on the wall.

For a long moment he stared at his reflection and then he slumped as if all the bones had been pulled out of him. “Jesus,” he said, and he started to weep again. “Oh, Jesus.”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get moving.”

Chutsky shuddered and shook his head. “I couldn’t even move, just lying there listening to what he was doing to Frank. He sounded so happy-‘What’s your guess? No? All right, then-an arm.’ And then the sound of the saw, and-”

“Chutsky,” I said.

“And then when he got me up there and he said, ‘Seven,’ and ‘What’s your guess.’ And then-”

It’s always interesting to hear about someone else’s technique, of course, but Chutsky seemed like he was about to lose whatever control he had left, and I could not afford to let him snuffle all over the other side of my shirt. So I stepped close and grabbed him by the good arm. “Chutsky. Come on. Let’s get out of here,” I said.

He looked at me like he didn’t know where he was, eyes as wide as they could go, and then turned back to the mirror. “Oh Jesus,” he said. Then he took a deep and ragged breath and stood up as if he was responding to an imaginary bugle. “Not so bad,” he said. “I’m alive.”

“Yes, you are,” I said. “And if we can get moving we might both stay that way.”

“Right,” he said. He turned his head away from the mirror decisively and put his good arm around my shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Chutsky had obviously not had a great deal of experience at walking with only one leg, but he huffed and clumped along, leaning heavily on me between each hopping step. Even with the missing parts, he was still a big man, and it was hard work for me. Just before the bridge he paused for a moment and looked through the chain-link fence. “He threw my leg in there,” he said, “to the alligators. He made sure I was watching. He held it up so I could see it and then he threw it in and the water started to boil like…” I could hear a rising note of hysteria in his voice, but he heard it, too, and stopped, inhaled shakily, and said, somewhat roughly, “All right. Let’s get out of here.”

We made it back to the gate with no more side trips down memory lane, and Chutsky leaned on a fence post while I got the gate open. Then I hopped him around to the passenger seat, climbed in behind the wheel, and started the car. As the headlights flicked on, Chutsky leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “Thanks, buddy,” he said. “I owe you big-time. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. I turned the car around and headed back toward Alligator Alley. I thought Chutsky had fallen asleep, but halfway along the little dirt road he began to talk.

“I’m glad your sister wasn’t here,” he said. “To see me like this. It’s- Listen, I really have to pull myself together before-” He stopped abruptly and didn’t say anything for half a minute. We bumped along the dark road in silence. The quiet was a pleasant change. I wondered where Doakes was and what he was doing. Or perhaps, what was being done to him. For that matter, I wondered where Reiker was and how soon I could take him somewhere else. Someplace quiet, where I could contemplate and work in peace. I wondered what the rent might be on the Blalock Gator Farm.

“Might be a good idea if I don’t bother her anymore,” Chutsky said suddenly, and it took me a moment to realize he was still talking about Deborah. “She’s not going to want anything to do with me the way I am now, and I don’t need anybody’s pity.”

“Nothing to worry about,” I said. “Deborah is completely without pity.”

“You tell her I’m fine, and I went back to Washington,” he said. “It’s better that way.”

“It might be better for you,” I said. “But she’ll kill me.”

“You don’t understand,” he said.

“No, you don’t understand. She told me to get you back. She’s made up her mind and I don’t dare disobey. She hits very hard.”

He was silent for a while. Then I heard him sigh heavily. “I just don’t know if I can do this,” he said.

“I could take you back to the gator farm,” I said cheerfully.

He didn’t say anything after that, and I pulled onto Alligator Alley, made the first U-turn, and headed back toward the orange glow of light on the horizon that was Miami.

WE RODE IN SILENCE ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE first real clump of civilization, a housing development and a row of strip malls on the right, a few miles past the toll booth. Then Chutsky sat up and stared out at the lights and the buildings. “I have to use a phone,” he said.

“You can use my phone, if you’ll pay the roaming charges,” I said.

“I need a land line,” he said. “A pay phone.”

“You’re out of touch with the times,” I said. “A pay phone might be a little hard to find. Nobody uses them anymore.”

“Take this exit here,” he said, and although it was not getting me any closer to my well-earned good night’s sleep, I drove down the off-ramp. Within a mile we found a mini-mart that still had a pay phone stuck to the wall beside the front door. I helped Chutsky hop over to the phone and he leaned up against the shield around it and lifted the receiver. He glanced at me and said, “Wait over there,” which seemed a little bit bossy for somebody who couldn’t even walk unassisted, but I went back to my car and sat on the hood while Chutsky chatted.

An ancient Buick chugged into the parking spot next to me. A group of short, dark-skinned men in dirty clothes got out and walked toward the store. They stared at Chutsky standing there on one leg with his head so very shaved, but they were too polite to say anything. They went in and the glass door whooshed behind them and I felt the long day rolling over me; I was tired, my neck muscles felt stiff, and I hadn’t gotten to kill anything. I felt very cranky, and I wanted to go home and go to bed.

I wondered where Dr. Danco had taken Doakes. It didn’t really seem important, just idle curiosity. But as I thought about the fact that he had indeed taken him somewhere and would soon begin doing rather permanent things to the sergeant, I realized that this was the first good news I’d had in a long time, and I felt a warm glow spread through me. I was free. Doakes was gone. One small piece at a time he was leaving my life and releasing me from the involuntary servitude of Rita’s couch. I could live again.