Darkly dreaming Dexter

“Hah. You got that right.” She gave me a long look, then turned and walked away.

I don't know why, but I watched her go. I really couldn't think of anything else to do. Just before she passed out of sight around the corner, she smoothed her skirt across her hips and turned to look at me.

Then she was gone, off into the vague mysteries of Homicidal Politics.

And me? Poor dear dazed Dexter? What else could I do? I sank into my office chair and pushed the play button on my answering machine. “Hi, Dexter. It's me.” Of course it was. And as odd as it was, the slow, slightly raspy voice sounded like “me” was Rita. “Mm . . . I was thinking about last night.

Call me, mister.” As LaGuerta had observed, she sounded kind of tired and happy. Apparently I had a real girlfriend now.

Where would the madness end?

CHAPTER 18

FOR A FEW MOMENTS I JUST SAT AND THOUGHT about life's cruel ironies. After so many years of solitary self-reliance, I was suddenly pursued from all directions by hungry women. Deb, Rita, LaGuerta—they were all apparently unable to exist without me. Yet the one person I wanted to spend some quality time with was being coy, leaving Barbie dolls in my freezer. Was any of this fair?

I put my hand in my pocket and felt the small glass slide, snug and secure in its ziplock. For a moment it made me feel a little better. At least I was doing something. And life's only obligation, after all, was to be interesting, which it certainly was at the moment. “Interesting” did not begin to describe it. I would trade a year off my life to find out more about this elusive will-o'-the-wisp who was teasing me so mercilessly with such elegant work. In fact, I had come far too close to trading more than a year with my little Jaworski interlude.

Yes, things were certainly interesting. And were they really saying in the department that I had a feeling for serial homicide? That was very troubling. It meant my careful disguise might be close to unraveling. I had been too good too many times. It could become a problem. But what could I do? Be stupid for a while? I wasn't sure I knew how, even after so many years of careful observation.

Ah, well. I opened the case file on Jaworski, the poor man. After an hour of study, I came to a couple of conclusions. First, and most important, I was going to get away with it, in spite of the unforgivable sloppy impulsiveness of the thing. And second—there might be a way for Deb to cash in on this. If she could prove this was the work of our original artist while LaGuerta committed herself to the copycat theory, Deb could suddenly turn from somebody they didn't trust to get their coffee into flavor of the month. Of course, it was not actually the work of the same guy, but that seemed like a very picky objection at this point. And since I knew without any possibility of doubt that there were going to be more bodies found very soon, it wasn't worth worrying about.

And naturally, at the same time, I had to provide the annoying Detective LaGuerta with enough rope to hang herself. Which might also, it occurred to me, come in handy on a more personal level. Pushed into a corner and made to look like an idiot, LaGuerta would naturally try to pin the blame on the nitwit lab tech who had given her the erroneous conclusion—dull dim Dexter. And my reputation would suffer a much-needed relapse into mediocrity. Of course, it would not jeopardize my job, since I was supposed to analyze blood spatter, not provide profiling services. That being the case, it would help to make LaGuerta look like the nitwit she was, and raise Deborah's stock even more.

Lovely when things work out so neatly. I called Deborah.

At half-past one the next day I met Deb at a small restaurant a few blocks north of the airport. It was tucked into a little strip mall, between an auto parts store and a gun shop. It was a place we both knew well, not too far from Miami-Dade Headquarters, and they made the best Cuban sandwiches in the world right there. Perhaps that seems like a small thing, but I assure you there are times when only a medianoche will do, and at such times Cafe Relampago was the only place to get one. The Morgans had been going there since 1974.

And I did feel that some small light touch was in order—if not an actual celebration, then at least an acknowledgment that things were looking up ever so slightly. Perhaps I was merely feeling chipper because I had let off a little steam with my dear friend Jaworski, but in any case I did feel unaccountably good. I even ordered a batido de mame, a uniquely flavored Cuban milk shake that tastes something like a combination of watermelon, peach, and mango.

Deb, of course, was unable to share my irrational mood. She looked like she had been studying the facial expressions of large fish, dour and droopy in the extreme.

“Please, Deborah,” I begged her, “if you don't stop, your face will be stuck like that. People will take you for a grouper.”

“They're sure not going to take me for a cop,” she said. “Because I won't be one anymore.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “Didn't I promise?”

“Yeah. You also promised that this was going to work. But you didn't say anything about the looks I'd get from Captain Matthews.”

“Oh, Deb,” I said. “He looked at you? I'm so sorry.”

“Fuck you, Dexter. You weren't there, and it's not your life going down the tubes.”

“I told you it was going to be rough for a while, Debs.”

“Well at least you were right about that. According to Matthews, I am this close to being suspended.”

“But he did give you permission to use your free time to look into this a little more?”

She snorted. “He said, ‘I can't stop you, Morgan. But I am very disappointed. And I wonder what your father would have said.'”

“And did you say, ‘My father never would have closed the case with the wrong guy in jail'?”

She looked surprised. “No,” she said. “But I was thinking it. How did you know?”

“But you didn't actually say it, did you, Deborah?”

“No,” she said.

I pushed her glass toward her. “Have some mame, sis. Things are looking up.”

She looked at me. “You sure you're not just yanking my chain?”

“Never, Deb. How could I?”

“With the greatest of ease.”

“Really, sis. You need to trust me.”

She held my eye for a moment and then looked down. She still hadn't touched her shake, which was a shame. They were very good. “I trust you. But I swear to God I don't know why.” She looked up at me, a strange expression flitting back and forth across her face. “And sometimes I really don't think I should, Dexter.”

I gave her my very best reassuring big-brother smile. “Within the next two or three days something new will turn up. I promise.”

“You can't know that,” she said.

“I know I can't, Deb. But I do know. I really do.”

“So why do you sound so happy about it?”

I wanted to say it was because the idea made me happy. Because the thought of seeing more of the bloodless wonder made me happier than anything else I could think of. But of course, that was not a sentiment Deb could really share with me, so I kept it to myself. “Naturally, I'm just happy for you.”

She snorted. “That's right, I forgot,” she said. But at least she took a sip of her shake.

“Listen,” I said, “either LaGuerta is right—”

“Which means I'm dead and fucked.”

“Or LaGuerta is wrong, and you are alive and virginal. With me so far, sis?”

“Mmm,” she said, remarkably grumpy considering how patient I was being.

“If you were a betting gal, would you bet on LaGuerta being right? About anything?”

“Maybe about fashion,” she said. “She dresses really nice.”

The sandwiches came. The waiter dropped them sourly in the middle of the table without a word and whirled