He stared at her for a moment and then dropped his head again.
“I want to go home,” he said in a small, shaky voice.
“I’m sure you do, Jerry,” Deborah said. “But I can’t let you go right now.”
He just shook his head, and muttered something inaudible.
“What’s that, Jerry?” she asked in the same kind, patient voice.
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“I said, I don’t think I did anything,” he said, still without looking up.
“You don’t think so?” she asked him. “Shouldn’t we be kind of sure about that before we let you go?”
He raised his head to look at her, very slowly this time. “Last night . . .” he said. “Something about being in this place . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said.
“You’ve been in a place like this before, haven’t you, Jerry?
When you were young,” Deborah said, and he nodded. “And this place made you remember something?”
He jerked as if she’d spit in his face. “I don’t—it isn’t a memory,” he said. “It was a dream. It had to be a dream.”
Deborah nodded very understandingly. “What was the dream about, Jerry?”
He shook his head and stared at her with his jaw hanging open.
“It might help you to talk about it,” she said. “If it’s just a dream, what can it hurt?” He kept shaking his head. “What was the dream about, Jerry?” she said again, a little more insistently, but still very gently.
“There’s a big statue,” he said, and he stopped shaking his head and looked surprised that words had come out.
“All right,” Deborah said.
“It—it’s really big,” he said. “And there’s a . . . a . . . it has a fire burning in its belly.”
“It has a belly?” Deborah said. “What kind of statue is it?”
“It’s so big,” he said. “Bronze body, with two arms held out, and the arms are moving down, to . . .” He trailed off, and then mumbled something.
“What did you say, Jerry?”
“He said it has a bull’s head,” I said, and I could feel all the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight out.
“The arms come down,” he said. “And I feel . . . really happy. I don’t know why. Singing. And I put the two girls into the arms. I cut them with a knife, and they go up to the mouth, and the arms dump them in. Into the fire . . .”
“Jerry,” Debs said, even more gently, “your clothes had blood DEXTER IN THE DARK
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on them, and they’d been singed.” He didn’t say anything, and she went on. “We know you have blackouts when you’re feeling too much stress,” she said. He stayed quiet. “Isn’t it just possible, Jerry, that you had one of these blackouts, killed the girls, and came home? Without knowing it?”
He began shaking his head again, slowly and mechanically.
“Can you give me a better suggestion?” she said.
“Where would I find a statue like that?” he said. “That’s—how could I, what, find the statue, and build the fire inside it, and get the girls there, and—how could that be possible? How could I do all that and not know it?”