Dearly Devoted Dexter (24 page)

Just to be absolutely sure, our squad-car friends would breathlessly repeat the message a few times, and without fucking it up; that Sergeant Doakes himself would be at the party tonight, live and in person, around nine o’clock.

And for my part, with my work done for a few hours, I headed for Jackson Memorial Hospital to look in on my favorite bird with a broken wing.

Deborah was wrapped in an upper-body cast, sitting in bed in a sixth-floor room with a lovely view of the freeway, and although I was sure they were giving her some kind of painkiller, she did not look at all blissful when I walked into her room. “Goddamn it, Dexter,” she greeted me, “tell them to let me the hell out of here. Or at least give me my clothes so I can leave.”

“I’m glad to see you’re feeling better, sister dear,” I said. “You’ll be on your feet in no time.”

“I’ll be on my feet the second they give me my goddamn clothes,” she said. “What the hell is going on out there? What have you been doing?”

“Doakes and I have set a rather neat trap, and Doakes is the bait,” I said. “If Dr. Danco bites, we’ll have him tonight at my, um, party. Vince’s party,” I added, and I realized I wanted to distance myself from the whole idea of being engaged and it was a silly way to do it, but I felt better anyway—which apparently brought no comfort to Debs.

“Your engagement party,” she said, and then snarled. “Shit. You got Doakes to set himself up for you.” And I admit it sounded kind of elegant when she said it, but I didn’t want her thinking such things; unhappy people heal slower.

“No, Deborah, seriously,” I said in my best soothing voice. “We’re doing this to catch Dr. Danco.”

She glared at me for a long time and then, amazingly, she sniffled and fought back a tear. “I have to trust you,” she said. “But I hate this. All I can think about is what he’s doing to Kyle.”

“This will work, Debs. We’ll get Kyle back.” And because she was, after all, my sister, I did not add, “or most of him anyway.”

“Christ, I hate being stuck here,” she said. “You need me there for backup.”

“We can handle this, Sis,” I said. “There will be a dozen cops at the party, all armed and dangerous. And I’ll be there, too,” I said, feeling just a little miffed that she so undervalued my presence.

But she continued to do so. “Yeah. And if Doakes gets Danco, we get Kyle back. If Danco gets Doakes, you’re off the hook. Real slick, Dexter. You win either way.”

“That had never occurred to me,” I lied. “My only thought is to serve the greater good. Besides, Doakes is supposed to be very experienced at this sort of thing. And he knows Danco.”

“Goddamn it, Dex, this is killing me. What if—” She broke off and bit her lip. “This better work,” she said. “He’s had Kyle too long.”

“This will work, Deborah,” I said. But neither one of us really believed me.

The doctors quite firmly insisted on keeping Deborah for twenty-four hours, for observation. And so with a hearty hi-ho to my sister, I galloped off into the sunset, and from there to my apartment for a shower and change of clothes. What to wear? I could think of no guidelines on what we were wearing this season to a party forced on you to celebrate an unwanted engagement that might turn into a violent confrontation with a vengeful maniac. Clearly brown shoes were out, but beyond that nothing really seemed de rigueur. After careful consideration I let simple good taste guide me, and selected a lime green Hawaiian shirt covered with red electric guitars and pink hot rods. Simple but elegant. A pair of khaki pants and some running shoes, and I was ready for the ball.

But there was still an hour left before I had to be there, and I found my thoughts turning again to Cody. Was I right about him? If so, how could he deal with his awakening Passenger on his own? He needed my guidance, and I found that I was eager to give it to him.

I left my apartment and drove south, instead of north to Vince’s house. In fifteen minutes I was knocking at Rita’s door and staring across the street at the empty spot formerly occupied by Sergeant Doakes in his maroon Taurus. Tonight he was no doubt at home preparing, girding his loins for the coming conflict and polishing his bullets. Would he try to kill Dr. Danco, secure in the knowledge that he had legal permission to do so? How long had it been since he killed something? Did he miss it? Did the Need come roaring over him like a hurricane, blowing away all the reason and restraints?

The door opened. Rita beamed and lunged at me, wrapping me in a hug and kissing me on the face. “Hey, handsome,” she said. “Come on in.”

I hugged back briefly for form’s sake and then disengaged myself. “I can’t stay very long,” I said.

She beamed bigger. “I know,” she said. “Vince called and told me. He was so cute about the whole thing. He promised he would keep an eye on you so you wouldn’t do anything too crazy. Come inside,” she said, and dragged me in by the arm. When she closed the door she turned to me, suddenly serious. “Listen Dexter. I want you to know that I am not the jealous type and I trust you. You just go and have fun.”

“I will, thank you,” I said, although I doubted that I would. And I wondered what Vince had said to her to make her think that the party would be some kind of dangerous pit of temptation and sin. For that matter, it might well be. Since Vince was largely synthetic, he could be somewhat unpredictable in social situations, as shown by his bizarre duels of sexual innuendo with my sister.

“It was sweet of you to stop here before the party,” Rita said, leading me to the couch where I had spent so much of my recent life. “The kids wanted to know why they couldn’t go.”

“I’ll talk to them,” I said, eager to see Cody and try to discover if I had been right.

Rita smiled, as if thrilled to learn that I would actually talk to Cody and Astor. “They’re out back,” she said. “I’ll go get them.”

“No, stay here,” I said. “I’ll go out.”

Cody and Astor were in the yard with Nick, the surly clot from next door who had wanted to see Astor naked. They looked up as I slid the door open, and Nick turned away and scurried back to his own yard. Astor ran over to me and gave me a hug, and Cody trailed behind, watching, no emotion at all on his face. “Hi,” he said, in his quiet voice.

“Greetings and salutations, young citizens,” I said. “Shall we put on our formal togas? Caesar calls us to the senate.”

Astor cocked her head to one side and looked at me as if she had just seen me eat a raw cat. Cody merely said, “What,” very quietly.

“Dexter,” Astor said, “
why
can’t we go to the party with you?”

“In the first place,” I told her, “it’s a school night. And in the second place, I am very much afraid this is a grown-up party.”

“Does that mean there will be naked girls there?” she asked.

“What kind of a person do you think I am?” I said, scowling fiercely. “Do you really think I would
ever
go to a party with no naked girls?”

“Eeeeeewwww,” she said, and Cody whispered, “Ha.”

“But more important, there will also be stupid dancing and ugly shirts, and these are not good for you to see. You would lose all your respect for grown-ups.”

“What respect?” Cody said, and I shook him by the hand.

“Well said,” I told him. “Now go to your room.”

Astor finally giggled. “But we want to go to the party,” she said.

“I’m afraid not,” I said. “But I brought you a piece of treasure so you won’t run away.” I handed her a roll of Necco wafers, our secret currency. She would split it evenly with Cody later, out of sight of all prying eyes. “Now then, young persons,” I said. They looked up at me expectantly. But at that point I was stuck, all aquiver with eagerness to know the answer but not at all sure where or even how to start asking. I could not very well say, “By the way, Cody, I was wondering if you like to kill things?” That, of course, was exactly what I wanted to know, but it didn’t really seem like the kind of thing you could say to a child—especially Cody, who was generally about as talkative as a coconut.

His sister, Astor, though, often seemed to speak for him. The pressures of spending their early childhood together with a violent ogre for a father had created a symbiotic relationship so close that when he drank soda she would burp. Whatever might be going on inside Cody, Astor would be able to express it.

“Can I ask something very serious?” I said, and they exchanged a look that contained an entire conversation, but said nothing to anyone else. Then they nodded to me, almost as if their heads were mounted together on a Foosball rod.

“The neighbor’s dog,” I said.

“Told you,” Cody said.

“He was always knocking over the garbage,” Astor said. “And pooping in our yard. And Nicky tried to make him bite us.”

“So Cody took care of him?” I asked.

“He’s the boy,” said Astor. “He likes to do that stuff. I just watch. Are you going to tell Mom?”

There it was.
He likes to do that stuff.
I looked at the two of them, watching me with no more worry than if they had just said they liked vanilla ice cream better than strawberry. “I won’t tell your mom,” I said. “But you can’t tell anybody else in the world, not ever. Just the three of us, nobody else, understand?”

“Okay,” Astor said, with a glance at her brother. “But why, Dexter?”

“Most people won’t understand,” I said. “Not even your mom.”

“You do,” said Cody in his husky near-whisper.

“Yes,” I said. “And I can help.” I took a deep breath and felt an echo rolling through my bones, down across the years from Harry so long ago to me right now, under the same Florida nightscape Harry and I had stood under when he said the same thing to me. “We have to get you squared away,” I said, and Cody looked at me with large blinkless eyes and nodded.

“Okay,” he said.

CHAPTER 23

V
INCE MASUOKA HAD A SMALL HOUSE IN NORTH
Miami, at the end of a dead-end street off N.E. 125th Street. It was painted pale yellow with pastel purple trim, which really made me question my taste in associates. There were a few very well-barbered bushes in the front yard and a cactus garden by the front door, and he had a row of those solar-powered lamps lighting the cobblestone walkway to his front door.

I had been there once before, a little more than a year ago, when Vince had decided for some reason to have a costume party. I had taken Rita, since the whole purpose of having a disguise is to be seen wearing it. She had gone as Peter Pan, and I was Zorro, of course; the Dark Avenger with a ready blade. Vince had answered the door in a body-hugging satin gown with a basket of fruit on his head.

“J. Edgar Hoover?” I asked him.

“You’re very close. Carmen Miranda,” he had said before leading us in to a fountain of lethal fruit punch. I had taken one sip and decided to stick with the sodas, but of course that had been before my conversion to a beer-swilling red-blooded male. There had been a nonstop soundtrack of monotonous techno-pop music turned up to a volume designed to induce voluntary self-performed brain surgery, and the party had gotten exceedingly loud and hilarious.

As far as I knew, Vince had not entertained since then, at least not on that scale. Still, the memory apparently lingered, and Vince had no trouble in gathering an enthusiastic crowd to join in my humiliation with only twenty-four-hours’ notice. True to his word, there were dirty movies playing all over the house on a number of video monitors he had set up, even out back on his patio. And, of course, the fruit-punch fountain was back.

Because the rumors of that first party were still fresh on the grapevine, the place was packed with rowdy people, mostly male, who attacked the punch like they had heard there was a prize for the first one to achieve permanent brain damage. I even knew a few of the partiers. Angel Batista-no-relation was there from work, along with Camilla Figg and a handful of other forensic lab geeks, and a few cops I knew, including the four who had not fucked it up for Sergeant Doakes. The rest of the crowd seemed to be pulled off South Beach at random, chosen for their ability to make a loud, high-pitched WHOO! sound when the music changed or the video monitor showed something particularly undignified.

It didn’t take long at all for the party to settle into something we would all regret for a very long time. By a quarter of nine I was the only one left who could still stand upright unassisted. Most of the cops had camped out by the fountain in a grim clot of rapidly bending elbows. Angel-no-relation was lying under the table sound asleep with a smile on his face. His pants were gone and someone had shaved a bare streak down the center of his head.

Things being as they were, I thought this would be an ideal time to slip outside undetected to see if Sergeant Doakes had arrived yet. As it turned out, however, I was wrong. I had taken no more than two steps toward the door when a great weight came down on me from behind. I spun around quickly to find that Camilla Figg was attempting to drape herself across my back. “Hi,” she said with a very bright and somewhat slurred smile.

“Hello,” I said cheerfully. “Can I get you a drink?”

She frowned at me. “Don’t need drink. Jus wanna say hello.” She frowned harder. “Jeez Christ you’re cute,” she said. “Always wand to tell you that.”