“Exactly the point,” I told him. “That’s why you always have to look normal, act normal, make everyone else think you are normal.
And the other thing you have to do is exactly what I tell you, or I won’t do this.” He didn’t look quite convinced, but he was weakening. “Cody,” I said. “You have to trust me, and you have to do it my way.”
“Have to,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Have to.”
He looked at me for a very long moment, then switched his stare to his sister, who looked back at him. It was a marvel of sub-vocal communication; I could tell that they were having a long, very intricate conversation, but they didn’t make a sound until Astor shrugged and turned back to me. “You have to promise,” she said to me.
“All right,” I said. “Promise what?”
“That you’ll start teaching us,” she said, and Cody nodded.
“Soon.”
I took a deep breath. I had never really had any chance of going to what I consider a very hypothetical heaven, even before this. But to go through with this, agreeing to turn these ragged little monsters into neat, well-schooled little monsters—well, I would certainly hope I was right about the hypothetical part. “I promise,” I said. They looked at each other, looked at me, and left.
And there I was with a bag full of toys, a pressing engagement, and a somewhat shriveled sense of urgency.
Is family life like this for everyone? If so, how does anyone sur-
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vive it? Why do people have more than one child, or any at all?
Here I was with an important and fulfilling goal in front of me, and suddenly I get blindsided by something no soccer mom ever had to face and it was nearly impossible to remember what I was thinking only moments ago. Even with an impatient growl from the Dark Passenger—strangely muted, as if just a little confused—it took me several moments to pull myself together, from Dazed Daddy Dexter back to the Cold Avenger once again. I found it difficult to call back the icy edge of readiness and danger; it was difficult, in fact, to remember where I had left my car keys.
Somehow I found them and stumbled out of my study, and after mumbling some heartfelt nothing to Rita, I was out the door and into the night at last.
F O U R
Ihad followed Zander long enough to know his routine, and since this was Thursday night, I knew exactly where he would be. He spent every Thursday evening at One World Mission of Divine Light, presumably inspecting the livestock. After about ninety minutes of smiling at the staff and listening to a brief service he would write a check for the pastor, a huge black man who had once played in the NFL. The pastor would smile and thank him, and Zander would slip quietly out the back door to his modest SUV and drive humbly to his house, all aglow with the vir-tuous feeling that comes only from true good works.
But tonight, he would not drive alone.
Tonight Dexter and his Dark Passenger would go along for the ride and steer him to a brand-new kind of journey.
But first the cold and careful approach, the payoff to the weeks of stealthy stalking.
I parked my car only a few miles from Rita’s house at a large old shopping area called Dadeland and walked to the nearby Metrorail station. The train was seldom crowded, even at rush hour, but there were enough people around
that no one paid any atten-
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tion to me. Just a nice man in fashionably dark clothes carrying a gym bag.
I got off one stop past downtown and walked six blocks to the mission, feeling the keen edge sharpening itself within me, moving me back to the readiness I needed. We would think about Cody and Astor later. Right now, on this street, I was all hard, hidden brightness. The blinding orange-pink glare of the special crime-fighting streetlights could not wash away the darkness I wrapped tighter around me as I walked.
The mission sat on the corner of a medium-busy street, in a con-verted storefront. There was a small crowd gathered in front—no real surprise, since they gave out food and clothing, and all you had to do to get it was to spend a few moments of your rum-soaked time listening to the good reverend explain why you were going to hell. It seemed like a pretty good bargain, even to me, but I wasn’t hungry. I moved on past, around back to the parking lot.
Although it was slightly dimmer here, the parking lot was still far too bright for me, almost too bright even to see the moon, although I could feel it there in the sky, smirking down on our tiny squirming fragile life, festooned as it was with monsters who lived only to take that life away in large, pain-filled mouthfuls. Monsters like me, and like Zander. But tonight there would be one less.
I walked one time around the perimeter of the parking lot. It appeared to be safe. There was no one in sight, no one sitting or dozing in any of the cars. The only window with a view into the area was a small one, high up on the back wall of the mission, fitted with opaque glass—the restroom. I circled closer to Zander’s car, a blue Dodge Durango nosed in next to the back door, and tried the door handle—locked. Parked next to it was an old Chrysler, the pastor’s venerable ride. I moved to the far side of the Chrysler and began my wait.