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77
I did not, in fact, have any desire to walk back to work. On the other hand, I still had almost half a milk shake and I did not want to leave that, either. I stood up and followed, but I softened the blow by grabbing the uneaten half of Deborah’s sandwich and taking it with me as I lurched out the door after her.
Soon we were rolling through the front gate of the university campus. Deborah spent part of the ride talking on the radio and arranging for people to meet us at the kilns, and the rest of the ride clenching her teeth and muttering.
We turned left after the gate and headed down the winding road that leads to the ceramic and pottery area. I had taken a class in pottery there my junior year in an effort to widen my horizons, and found out that I was good at making very regular-looking vases but not terribly successful at creating original works of art, at least not in that medium. In my own area, I flatter myself that I can be creative, as I had recently demonstrated with Zander.
Angel-no-relation was already there, carefully and patiently looking through the first kiln for any sign of practically anything.
Deborah went over and squatted beside him, leaving me alone with the last three bites of her sandwich. I took the first bite. A crowd was beginning to gather by the yellow tape. Perhaps they were hoping to see something too terrible to look at: I never knew why they gathered like that, but they always did.
Deborah was now on the ground beside Angel, who had his head inside the first of the kilns. This would probably be a long wait.
I had barely put the last bite of sandwich into my mouth when I became aware that I was being watched. Of course I was being looked at, anyone on the business side of the yellow tape always was.
But I was also being watched—the Dark Passenger clamored at me that I had been singled out by something with an unhealthy interest in special wonderful me, and I did not like the feeling. As I swallowed the last of the sandwich and turned to look, the whisper inside me hissed something that sounded like confusion . . . and then settled into silence.
And as it did I felt again the wave of panicked nausea and the 78
JEFF LINDSAY
bright yellow edge of blindness, and I stumbled for a moment, all my senses crying out that there was danger but my ability to do anything about it completely gone. It lasted only a second. I fought my way back to the surface and looked harder at my surroundings—nothing had changed. A handful of people stood looking on, the sun shone brightly, and a gentle wind riffled through the trees.
Just another perfect Miami day, but somewhere in paradise the snake had reared its head. I closed my eyes and listened hard, hoping for some hint about the nature of the menace, but there was nothing but the echo of clawed feet scrabbling away.
I opened my eyes and looked around again. There was a crowd of perhaps fifteen people pretending not to be fascinated by the hope of seeing gore, but none of them stood out in any way. None of them were skulking or staring evilly or trying to hide a bazooka under their shirt. In any normal time, I might have expected my Passenger to see a dark shadow around an obvious predator, but there was no such assistance now. As far as I could see, nothing sinister loomed in the crowd. So what had set off the Passenger’s fire alarm? I knew so little about it; it was just there, a presence filled with wicked amusement and sharp suggestions. It had never showed confusion before, not until it saw the two bodies by the lake. And now it was repeating its vague uncertainty, only half a mile from the first spot.
Was it something in the water? Or was there some connection to the two burned bodies here at the kilns?
I wandered over to where Deborah and Angel-no-relation were working. They didn’t seem to be finding anything particularly alarming, and there were no jolts of panic roiling out from the kiln to the place where the Dark Passenger was hiding.
If this second retreat was not caused by something in front of me, then what caused it? What if it was some kind of weird interior erosion? Perhaps my new status of impending husband-hood and stepfather-ness was overwhelming my Passenger. Was I becoming too nice to be a proper host? This would be a fate worse than someone else’s death.
I became aware that I was standing just inside the yellow crime-scene tape, and a large form was lurking in front of me.
DEXTER IN THE DARK
79
“Uh, hello?” he said. He was a big, well-muscled young speci-men with longish, lank hair and the look of someone who believed in breathing through the mouth.
“How can I help you, citizen?” I said.
“Are you, uh, you know,” he said, “like a cop?”
“A little bit like one,” I said.
He nodded and thought about that for a moment, looking around behind him as if there might be something there he could eat. On the back of his neck was one of those unfortunate tattoos that have become so popular, an Oriental character of some kind. It probably spelled out “slow learner.” He rubbed the tattoo as if he could hear me thinking about it, then turned around to me and blurted out, “I was wondering about Jessica.”
“Of course you were,” I said. “Who wouldn’t?”
“Do they know if it’s her?” he said. “I’m like her boyfriend.”
The young gentleman had now succeeded in grabbing my professional attention. “Is Jessica missing?” I asked him.
He nodded. “She was, you know, supposed to work out with me? Like every morning, you know. Around the track, and then some abs. But yesterday she doesn’t show up. And same thing this morning. So I started thinking, uh . . .” He frowned, apparently at the effort of thinking, and his speech trickled to a halt.