Dexter in the Dark (Dexter 3)

I nodded as if what she had said made sense. “Yes, you could,”

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JEFF LINDSAY

I said. “And then I could do something like this—give me your hand.”

Astor eyed me for a few seconds as if she was afraid I would cut her arm off, but then she held it out slowly. I held it and, using a fingernail clipper from my pocket, I scraped under her fingernails.

“Wait until you see what you have here,” I said.

“But I washed my hands,” Astor said.

“Doesn’t matter,” I told her. I put the small specks of stuff onto another glass slide and fixed it to the microscope. “Now then,” I said.

CLUMP.

It really is a bit melodramatic to say that we all froze, but there it is—we did. They both looked up at me and I looked back at them and we all forgot to breathe.

CLUMP.

The sound was getting closer and it was very hard to remember that we were in police headquarters and perfectly safe.

“Dexter,” Astor said in a slightly quavery voice.

“We are in police headquarters,” I said. “We’re perfectly safe.”

CLUMP.

It stopped, very close. The hair went up on the back of my neck and I turned toward the door as it swung slowly open.

Sergeant Doakes. He stood there in the doorway, glaring, which seemed to have become his permanent expression. “You,” he said, and the sound was nearly as unsettling as his appearance as it rolled out of his tongue-less mouth.

“Why yes, it is me,” I said. “Good of you to remember.”

He clumped one more step into the room and Astor scrambled off her stool and scurried to the windows, as far away from the door as she could get. Doakes paused and looked at her. Then his eyes swung back to Cody, who slid off his stool and stood there unblinking, facing Doakes.

Doakes stared at Cody, Cody stared back, and Doakes made what I can only call a Darth Vader intake of breath. Then he swung his head back to me and clumped one rapid step closer, nearly losing his balance. “You,” he said again, hissing it this time. “Kigs!”

DEXTER IN THE DARK

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“Kigs?” I said, and I really was puzzled and not trying to provoke him. I mean, if he insisted on stomping around and frightening children, the least he could do is carry a notepad and pencil to communicate with.

Apparently that thoughtful gesture was beyond him, though.

Instead he gave another Darth Vader breath and slowly pointed his steel claw at Cody. “Kigs,” he said agian, his lips drawn back in a snarl.

“He means me,” Cody said. I turned to him, surprised to hear him speak with Doakes right there, like a nightmare come to life.

But of course, Cody didn’t have nightmares. He simply looked at Doakes.

“What about you, Cody?” I said.

“He saw my shadow,” Cody said.

Sergeant Doakes took another wobbly step toward me. His right claw snapped, as if it had decided on its own to attack me.