Dearly Devoted Dexter (Dexter 2)

No one to shine the unwanted light into Dexter’s shadows. I could be me again, Dexter Unchained, and the thought was far more intoxicating than all Rita’s beer and sympathy. It had been too long since I felt this way, and I promised myself I would never again take it for granted.

A car was on fire at the corner of Douglas and Grand, and a small but enthusiastic crowd had gathered to watch. I shared their good cheer as I eased through the traffic jam caused by the emergency vehicles and headed for home.

At home I sent out for a pizza and made some careful notes on Reiker; where to look for proof, what sort of thing would be enough—a pair of red cowboy boots would certainly be a good start. I was very nearly certain that he was the one; pedophile predators tend to find ways to combine business and pleasure, and child photography was a perfect example. But

“very nearly” was not certain enough. And so I organized my thoughts into a neat little file—nothing incriminating, of course, and it would all be carefully destroyed before show-time. By Monday morning there would be no hint at all of what I had done except a new glass slide in the box on my shelf. I spent a happy hour planning and eating a large pizza with anchovies and then, as the nearly full moon began to mutter through the window, I got restless. I could feel the icy fingers of moonlight stroking me, tickling at my spine, urging me into the night to stretch the predator’s muscles that had been dormant for too long.

And why not? It would do no harm to slide out into the chuckling evening and steal a look or two. To stalk, to watch 2 6 0

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unseen, to cat-foot down Reiker’s game trails and sniff the wind—it would be prudent as well as fun. Dark Scout Dexter must Be Prepared. Besides, it was Friday night. Reiker might very well leave the house for some social activity—a visit to the toy store, for instance. If he was out, I could slip into his house and look around.

And so I dressed in my best dark nightstalker clothes and took the short drive from my apartment, up Main Highway and through the Grove to Tigertail Avenue and down to the modest house where Reiker lived. It was in a neighborhood of small concrete-block houses and his seemed no different from all the others, set back from the road just far enough for a short driveway. His car was parked there, a little red Kia, which gave me a surge of hope. Red, like the boots; it was his color, a sign that I was on track.

I drove by the house twice. On my second pass the dome light in his car was on and I was just in time to catch a glimpse of his face as he climbed into the car. It was not a very impressive face: thin, nearly chinless, and partly hidden by long bangs and large-frame glasses. I could not see what he was wearing on his feet, but from what I could see of the rest of him he might well wear cowboy boots to make himself seem a little taller. He got into the car and closed the door, and I went on by and around the block.

When I came by again, his car was gone. I parked a few blocks away on a small side street and went back, slowly slipping into my night skin as I walked. The lights were all out at a neighbor’s house and I cut through the yard. There was a small guesthouse behind Reiker’s place, and the Dark Passenger whispered in my inner ear, studio. It was indeed a perfect place for a photographer to set up, and a studio was exactly D E A R LY D E V O T E D D E X T E R

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the right kind of place to find incriminating photographs.

Since the Passenger is seldom wrong about these things, I picked the lock and went in.

The windows were all boarded over on the inside, but in the dimness from the open door I could see the outline of darkroom equipment. The Passenger had been right. I closed the door and flipped up the light switch. A murky red light flooded the room, just enough to see by. There were the usual trays and bottles of chemicals over by a small sink, and to the left of that a very nice computer workstation with digital equipment. A four-drawer filing cabinet stood against the far wall and I decided to start there.

After ten minutes of flipping through pictures and nega-tives, I had found nothing more incriminating than a few dozen photos of naked babies posed on a white fur rug, pictures that would generally be regarded as “cute” even by people who think Pat Robertson is too liberal. There were no hidden compartments in the filing cabinet as far as I could tell, and no other obvious place to hide pictures.

Time was short; I could not take the chance that Reiker had simply gone to the store to buy a quart of milk. He might come back at any minute and decide to poke through his files and gaze fondly at the dozens of dear little pixies he had captured on film. I moved to the computer area.

Next to the monitor there was a tall CD rack and I went through the disks one at a time. After a handful of pro-gram disks and others hand-lettered greenfield or lopez, I found it.

“It” was a bright pink jewel case. Across the front of the case in very neat letters it said, nambla 9/04.

It may well be that NAMBLA is a rare Hispanic name. But 2 6 2

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it also stands for North American Man/Boy Love Association, a warm and fuzzy support group that helps pedo

philes maintain a positive self-image by assuring them that what they do is perfectly natural. Well, of course it is—so are cannibalism and rape, but really. One mustn’t.

I took the CD with me, turned out the light, and slid back into the night.

Back at my apartment it took only a few minutes to discover that the disk was a sales tool, presumably carried to a NAMBLA gathering of some kind and offered around to a select list of discriminating ogres. The pictures on it were arranged in what are called “thumbnail galleries,” miniature series of shots almost like the picture decks that Victorian dirty old men used to flip through. Each picture had been strategically blurred so you could imagine but not quite see the details.

And oh, yes: several of the shots were professionally cropped and edited versions of the ones I had discovered on MacGregor’s boat. So while I had not actually found the red cowboy boots, I had found quite enough to satisfy the Harry Code. Reiker had made the A-list. With a song in my heart and a smile on my lips, I trundled off to bed, thinking happy thoughts about what Reiker and I would be doing tomorrow night.

The next morning, Saturday, I got up a little late and went for a run through my neighborhood. After a shower and a hearty breakfast I went shopping for a few essentials—a new roll of duct tape, a razor-sharp fillet knife, just the basic necessities. And because the Dark Passenger was flexing and stretching to wakefulness, I stopped at a steak house for a late D E A R LY D E V O T E D D E X T E R

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lunch. I ate a sixteen-ounce New York strip, well done of course, so there was absolutely no blood. Then I drove by Reiker’s one more time to see the place again in daylight.

Reiker himself was mowing his lawn. I slowed for a casual look; alas, he was wearing old sneakers, not red boots. He was shirtless and on top of scrawny, he looked flabby and pale. No matter: I would put a little color into him soon enough.

It was a very satisfying and productive day, my Day Before. And I was sitting quietly back in my apartment wrapped in my virtuous thoughts when the telephone rang.