Jeffry Lindsay - Darkly dreaming Dexter

My backseat alarm clock went off. I had to move away, and right now. I was standing suspiciously in a well-guarded area, and it was night; any moment one of the guards was certain to take an interest in the handsome young man peering intelligently through the fence. I would have to move on and find some way in as I rolled along in my car. I stepped back from the fence, giving it one last, loving look. Right there where my feet had touched the fence, a break was barely visible. The fence links had been snipped just enough to allow entry for one human being, or even a good copy like me. The flap was pinned in place by the weight of the parked truck so it would not swing out and give itself away. It must have been done recently, this evening, since the truck had arrived.

My final invitation.

I backed away slowly, feeling an automatic hello-there kind of absentminded smile climb up on my face as a disguise. Hello there, officer, just out for a walk. Lovely evening for a dismemberment, isn't it? I cheerfully scuffed over to my car, looking around at nothing but the moon over the water, whistling a happy tune as I climbed in and drove away. No one seemed to be paying any attention whatsoever-except, of course, for the Hallelujah chorus in my mind. I nudged my car into a parking place over by the cruise ship office, perhaps one hundred yards from my little handmade gate into Paradise. A few other cars were scattered nearby. No one would pay any mind to mine.

But as I parked another car slid into the spot next to me, a light blue Chevy with a woman behind the wheel. I sat still for a moment. So did she. I opened my door and got out.

So did Detective LaGuerta.

IHAVE ALWAYS BEEN VERY GOOD AT AWKWARD social situations, but I must admit that this one had me stumped. I just didn't know what to say, and for a moment I stared at LaGuerta and she looked back at me with her eyes unblinking and her fangs slightly exposed, like a predatory feline trying to decide whether to play with you or eat you. I could think of no remark that did not begin with a stammer, and she seemed interested only in watching me. So we simply stood there for a long moment. At last she broke the ice with a light quip.

“What's in there?” she asked, nodding toward the fence, some one hundred yards away.

“Why, Detective!” I gushed, hoping that she wouldn't notice what she had said, I suppose. “What are you doing here?”

“I followed you. What's in there?”

“In there?” I said. I know, a really dumb remark, but honestly, I had just about run out of the smart ones and I can't be expected to come up with something good under such circumstances.

She cocked her head to one side and poked her tongue out, letting it run along her bottom lip; slowly to the left, right, left, and back into her mouth again. Then she nodded. “You must think I'm stupid,” she said. And of course that thought had crossed my mind fleetingly once or twice, but it didn't seem politic to say so. “But you got to remember,” she went on, “I'm a full detective, and this is Miami. How do you think I got that, huh?”

“Your looks?” I asked, giving her a dashing smile. It never hurts to compliment a woman.

She showed me her lovely set of teeth, even brighter in the high crime lights that lit up the parking area. “That's good,” she said, and she moved her lips into a strange half smile that hollowed her cheeks and made her look old. “That's the kind of shit I used to fall for when I thought you liked me.”

“I do like you, Detective,” I told her, perhaps a little too eagerly. She didn't seem to hear me.

“But then you push me on the floor like I'm some kind of pig, and I wonder what's wrong with me? I got bad breath? And it hits me. It's not me. It's you. There's something wrong about you.”

Of course she was right, but it still hurt to hear her say so. “I don't- What do you mean?”

She shook her head again. “Sergeant Doakes wants to kill you and he doesn't even know why. I should've listened to him. Something is wrong about you. And you're connected to this hooker stuff some way.”

“Connected- What do you mean?”

This time there was an edge of savage glee to the smile she showed me and the trace of accent snuck back into her voice. “You can save the cute acting for your lawyer. And maybe a judge. 'Cause I think I got you now.” She looked at me for a long hard moment and her dark eyes glittered. She looked as inhuman as I am and it made a small shiver run across the back of my neck. Had I truly underestimated her? Was she really this good?

“And so you followed me?”

More teeth. “That's right, yeah,” she said. “Why are you looking around at the fence? What's in there?”

I am sure that under ordinary circumstances I would have thought of this before, but I plead duress. It truly didn't occur to me until that very moment. But when it did, it was like a small and painful light flashing on. “When did you pick me up? At my house? At what time?”

“Why do you keep changing the subject? Something's in there, huh?”

“Detective, please-this could be very important. When and where did you start to follow me?”

She studied me for a minute, and I began to realize that I had, in fact, underestimated her. There was a great deal more to this woman than political instinct. She really did seem to have something extra. I was still not convinced that any of it was intelligence, but she did have patience, and sometimes that was more important than smarts in her line of work. She was willing to simply wait and watch me and keep repeating her question until she got an answer. And then she would probably ask the same question a few more times, wait and watch some more, to see what I would do. Ordinarily I could outwit her, but I could not possibly outwait her, not tonight. So I put on my best humble face and repeated myself. “Please, Detective…”

She stuck her tongue out again, and then finally put it away. “Okay,” she said. “When your sister was gone for a few hours and no word where, I started to think maybe she's up to something. And I know she can't do anything herself, so where would she go?” She arched an eyebrow at me, then continued in a triumphant tone. “To your place, that's where! To talk with you!” She bobbed her head, pleased with her deductive logic. “And so I think about you for a while. How you're always showing up and looking, even when you don't have to. How you figure out those serial killers sometimes, except this one? And then how you fuck me over with that stupid list, make me look stupid, push me on the fucking floor-” Her face looked harder, a little older again for a moment. Then she smiled and went on. “I said something out loud, in my office, and Sergeant Doakes says, ‘I told you about him but you don't listen.' And all of a sudden it's your big handsome face all over the place and it shouldn't be.” She shrugged. “So I went to your place, too.”

“When? At what time, did you notice?”

“Naw,” she said. “But I'm only there like twenty minutes and then you come out and play with your faggot Barbie doll and then drive over here.”

“Twenty minutes-” So she hadn't been there in time to see who or what had taken Deborah. And quite probably she was telling the truth and had simply followed me to see-to see what?

“But why follow me at all?”

She shrugged. “You're connected to this thing. Maybe you didn't do it, I don't know. But I'm gonna find out. And some of what I find is gonna stick to you. What's in there, in those boxes? You gonna tell me, or we just going to stand here all night?”

In her own way, she had put her finger right on it. We could not stand here all night. We could not, I was sure, stand here much longer at all before terrible things happened to Deborah. If they hadn't already happened. We had to go, right now, go find him and stop him. But how did I do that with LaGuerta along for the ride? I felt like a comet with a tail I didn't want.