The Darkness to Come (24 page)

He might have allowed Tanisha to live longer if she hadn’t started praying. She’d begun whispering fervent prayers, pleading with God to have mercy, not only on her soul, but on Dexter’s too—as if Dexter had done something wrong. He was only fulfilling his marriage vows, promises he’d spoken before God in His church. Who was she to judge him?

Her arrogance had pissed him off. He’d silenced her for good with a series of choice cuts with the Scimitar blade.

He wiped off the blood-streaked knife with a bath towel, and then rose from his seat on the edge of the tub and left the room, leaving Tanisha to soak in the muddy red water.

Downstairs, he found her purse sitting on a small glass table beside the garage door. He dug out her car keys. He’d decided to ditch the Chevy in favor of a faster, sleeker ride. Her Mustang would do the job.

In the garage, he punched the button to open the large sectional door. The door slowly clattered upward.

A van was parked in the driveway. The vehicle had backed up to the garage door, as if to make a delivery. Or a pick up.

The van was from Infinity Delivery Services.

“What the fuck?” Dexter said, his hand going to the knife in his jacket.

The van’s rear doors swung open. A slender white man clad in a black, military-style uniform was crouched inside, aiming a rifle at Dexter. He squeezed the trigger.

Dexter started to duck, but not before he heard a soft
pop
. Something punctured the side of his neck. He collapsed to the concrete floor, grabbed the projectile, and tore it out of his flesh. He glanced at it, though his eyesight was rapidly dimming.

Tranquilizer dart . . . who the fuck are these people . . .

That was his last thought before the darkness took him.

Chapter 39

Exhausted, Joshua fell asleep on the sofa in the family room, Coco nestled on his lap, his cell phone and the gun resting on an end table.

He dreamed about the beach again. The glorious sun, the pristine white sand. Rachel’s heart-rending smile. His son warm and alive on his hip, small finger pointing out to the sea and the ferry that plied the tranquil blue waters. The beach house ahead, and Rachel’s seductive wink as she led the way inside . . .

When Joshua bounced out of the dream, emotion gripping his chest like cold pincers, his cell phone was ringing.

A glance at the wall clock above the fireplace confirmed the time: five past one o’clock in the morning. Caller ID identified the call as originating from the St. Louis area code, from somewhere named Missouri Baptist Medical Center. A hospital?

He grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

Silence for a couple seconds. Then: “Joshua?”

It was a man with a brittle voice, and after he spoke Joshua’s name, he began to breathe laboriously, as if the effort of saying one word had fatigued him.

“This is Joshua. Is this Thad?”

“Yes . . . got . . . your message. Sorry . . . calling . . . so late . . . I’m in . . . hospital. My . . . sister checked . . . voice mail . . . said you called . . . I’ve been asleep for . . . awhile. Pain medication.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Joshua said. “Since you’re in the hospital, you can call me some other time, really. It’s no problem.”

“
No
,” Thad said, and his voice, for the moment, had steel in it. Then he breathed heavily for several seconds, gathering his strength. “You . . . need to know. About . . . him.”

“Dexter Bates?”

“He killed . . . my partner. Stabbed me . . .”

“Jesus.” Ice particles swam through Joshua’s blood. “I’m so sorry.”

“No . . . I’m sorry . . . I . . . told him . . . Joy was in . . . Atlanta . . .”

“Joy?”

“Rachel’s her . . . middle . . . name . . .”

“I never knew that,” Joshua said. “I’ve always known her as Rachel.”

“Changed . . . her name . . . to . . . hide.”

“She must’ve figured out that he would find her here, because she’s gone in hiding, for real this time,” Joshua said. “I have no idea where she’s gone. Do you?”

“No . . . Joy . . . kept her secrets, even . . . from good . . . friends.”

Thad had answered one of Joshua’s questions: the nature of his relationship to Rachel. But many more questions lingered.

“Why did Bates come to you, Thad?”

“Found out . . . I was sending money to Joy’s aunt Betty . . . on her behalf. He tracked . . . me down. Joy called me . . . warned me . . . but it . . . didn’t matter.” Thad choked back what sounded like a sob.

Joshua had no idea Rachel’s first name was really Joy, and had no idea that she had an aunt to whom she’d been secretly sending money. It was as though Thad was telling him about someone else. He was drowning in questions.

But there was only one that he absolutely needed to have the answer to.

“Thad, please tell me. What was her relationship to Dexter?”

“She was . . . his wife.”

A decade ago, when Joshua was attending art school, he’d been in a car accident. It had been a rainy afternoon, with poor traffic conditions on the highway, and a pick-up truck on his left had slewed into his lane, smashing against his SUV. Joshua’s vehicle spun off the road and flipped over three times, and as the SUV tumbled over the earth, end over end, his life had quite literally flashed before his eyes. Fortunately, he’d survived and sustained only minor injuries.

When Thad announced that Rachel was the wife of Dexter Bates, the life Joshua had created with her flashed before his eyes.

Bumping into Rachel while perusing an art exhibit at a local museum. Going out on their first date, coffee at a local cafe. Holding her hand. Kissing her, for the first time. The incredible anticipation and eventual joy of making love to her. Declaring their love for each other. Purchasing the engagement ring. Proposing on bended knee. Getting married at his family church, and the hotel reception. Buying a house together, moving in, intermingling their lives, nurturing their love.

But all of it had been built on ground seeded with lies.

So, have you ever been married?
he’d asked her on their first date.

She’d dipped her gaze into her coffee for a beat, and then met his eyes.
No. Have you?

Deep down, he’d always known that Rachel had been hiding a secret such as this from him. But he hadn’t wanted to push her for it, hadn’t wanted to probe too deep and discover the painful truth. It had been easier to lead a superficial life of blissful denial.

“She . . . never . . . told you?” Thad asked, his whispery voice reeling Joshua back into the present.

“No.”

“I’m sorry,” Thad said. “Maybe she never told you . . . ‘cause she . . . divorced him—”

“She divorced him? When?”

“Right after he . . . went to prison . . .”

Joshua went to the kitchen table and snatched up the inmate record. Bates had been incarcerated over four years ago, which meant Rachel had been divorced from him for nearly as long.

It was one bright spot in the whole mess. At least his marriage to Rachel was valid, and she hadn’t insulted him by marrying him while she was still legally wed to Bates.

But why had she lied to him about her past? Why?

“Gotta . . . go . . . now,” Thad said. “Tired. When you . . . find Joy . . . tell her . . . I tried . . .”

“I will,” Joshua said. “Thank you so much for the information—you’ve helped a lot. I’m sure you’ll pull through this. I’ll pray for you, man. I mean that.”

“Thanks . . . brother,” Thad said.

And then he added a comment that Joshua would not understand until later.

“Be . . . careful . . . we didn’t see Dexter . . . until it was too late.”

Chapter 40

When Dexter awoke, the world was so black and fuzzy he thought he’d gone blind.

Fear spiking his chest, he blinked, shook his head as if clearing away dust. His vision swam into focus, a development that he immediately regretted.

The doctor from his fearsome visions was seated in front of him, gazing intently at him. He looked exactly as he had appeared in Dexter’s nightmares. Café au lait complexion. Curly brown hair. Wire-rim glasses framing hawkish eyes. He wore a black leather jacket, however, not the white lab coat he donned in Dexter’s feverish dreams.

Dexter wondered if he was dreaming again—he felt as if he could be. He was woozy, and felt vaguely disconnected from his body. But they had shot him with a tranquilizer of some kind, and he might merely be reacting to the drugs.

“You’re awake,” the doctor said. He had a mellifluous voice, and he enunciated each word as crisply as a radio announcer. “Excellent. I’ve been looking forward to speaking with you, Mr. Bates.”

Dexter looked around, realized that he was in the back of the delivery van. The interior resembled a command center of some kind. The walls were alive with electronic instruments bristling with knobs and levers, ghost-pale monitors, and pulsing lights of various colors. An IV drip apparatus dangled from a hook, and stainless steel shelves bore syringes, a stethoscope, and other medical implements. There was other equipment, too, tools that defied Dexter’s knowledge.

He and the doctor were the only people in the compartment; a smoked-glass partition separated them from the front. Dexter glimpsed a driver and a passenger, and heard the tires singing across the pavement. They were on the road, traveling to destinations unknown.

He tried to move, but couldn’t. He was seated in a padded chair, wrists cuffed behind him. His ankles were shackled, too.

He’d been stripped out of his clothing and wore only a thin, white patient’s gown. The cold air in the van pimpled his skin.

“What the fuck is this all about?” Dexter asked. “Who are you?”

“My name is Dr. Devereaux. We’ve been monitoring you, Mr. Bates. You are a subject in an important project that we’ve been conducting for some time.”

“I’ve seen you before,” Dexter said. “Can’t remember where, or when. The details are vague . . .”

“As they should be. We installed a memory block prior to your release from the penitentiary. You may recall snippets of images, but little else.”

“You’re from IDS,” Dexter said. “I saw the vans following me, got the duffel bag.”

“Indeed, I am. Infinity Delivery Services.” Devereaux smiled.

“Don’t lie to me. That’s not what the acronym means.”

“Of course, it doesn’t.” Devereaux laughed with self-deprecating humor. “I’m the research director for Infinity Defense Systems. We operate with the blessing—and let’s not forget, the generous funding—of our nation’s military.”

“Doing what?”

Devereaux paused. “You were trained as a lawyer, not a scientist, Mr. Bates. I fear an explanation of our work may only confuse you.”

“Don’t patronize me, you mulatto motherfucker.”

The doctor’s thin lips tightened. “Perhaps I should have left you to rot in prison.”

“So it was you guys who bounced me out of the joint!” Dexter grinned. “I knew someone had pulled some strings to get me paroled so early. Thank you, kind sir.”

“Don’t mention it,” Devereaux said, and muttered something about how he hadn’t planned to give him that information.

“Let’s get back to the work you do for Uncle Sam,” Dexter said.

“You’re not controlling this conversation!” Spittle showered from Devereaux’s lips, and he started to rise out of his seat, crimson blooming in his cheeks.

“I apologize,” Dexter said. “I was out of line. Please, continue at whatever pace you wish.”

“You aren’t sorry.” Devereaux sat, removed a handkerchief, and blotted perspiration from his forehead. He smiled grimly. “You’re only behaving according to your psychopathology.”

“My what?”

Devereaux leaned forward, smooth and in control again. He leveled his index finger at Dexter.

“You are a pure psychopath, Mr. Bates. You lack a conscience. You have no empathy. Your only motive is self-interest. You are aware of the morality of right and wrong, and you brazenly ignore what is considered wrong if it doesn’t suit your purposes.”

“I’m
not
a psychopath. Don’t you ever say that to me again or I’ll stick my foot so far up your mulatto ass you’ll be tasting shoe polish.”

“Ah, I see I’ve touched a nerve.” Devereaux tilted back in the chair, smiled smugly. “I’ve read all of your mental health evaluations. You possess every symptom on the psychopathy checklist, in abundance.”

“Those prison counselors are full of shit.”

“Are they? You’ve been tracking down your wife, murderously and single-mindedly, since your release two days ago. You’ve slain, at most recent count, four completely innocent individuals, in the service of your obsessive mission.”

How did this guy know what he had been doing? These assholes must have been following him more closely than he’d thought. The revelation rocked Dexter, but he tried not to show it.

“You can’t prove any of that,” Dexter said.

Devereaux only smiled. “You misunderstand my intent, Mr. Bates. I am not here to charge you with a crime. In regard to the vicious murders you’ve committed—
I don’t care
.”

 Dexter blinked. This was becoming the weirdest conversation he’d ever had in his life. “You don’t care?”

“We
chose
you because you are a psychopath. We
chose
you because you were determined to hunt down your wife. We
chose
you because you have no reservations about using violence to further your demented ends. In innumerable ways, Mr. Bates, you were a perfect subject for our research.”

Dexter let the doctor’s words settle in his mind. He didn’t like any of it. This man was telling him that he’d been the equivalent of a guinea pig. To think that these motherfuckers had been using him . . . if he’d had the use of his hands, he would have knocked that arrogant, self-satisfied smile off Devereaux’s face.

“We removed you from prison early Monday morning, gave you official parole papers, and the items contained in the duffel bag—yes, including the knife, your weapon of choice. We abandoned you in the car on the shoulder of the road, a couple hours’ drive from your hometown of Chicago. Then we waited, and watched, with great interest.”