Dexter by Design (Dexter 4)

So why should I “feel” anything? It is all very well for a human being to say, “I did something that made me feel bad.” But how could cold and empty Dexter possibly say anything of the sort? Even if I did feel something, the odds are very good that it would be something that most of us would agree is, after all, kind of bad. This society does not look with approval on emotions like “Need to Kill,” or “Enjoying Cutting,” and realistically those would be the most likely things to pop up in my case.

No, there was nothing to regret here—it was one small accidental and impulsive tiny little dismemberment. Applying the smooth and icy logic of Dexter’s great intellect resulted in the same bottom line no matter how many times I ran through it: Doncevic was no great loss to anybody, and he had at least tried to kill Deborah. Did I have to hope she would die, simply so I could feel good about myself?

But it was bothering me, and it continued to rankle throughout the morning and on into the afternoon when I stopped at the hospital on my lunch break.

“Hey, buddy,” Chutsky said wearily as I came into the room. “Not much change. She’s opened her eyes a couple of times. I think she’s getting a little stronger.”

I sat in the chair on the opposite side of the bed from Chutsky. Deborah didn’t look stronger. She looked about the same—pale, barely breathing, closer to death than life. I had seen this expression before, many times, but it did not belong on Deborah. It belonged on people I had carefully fitted out to wear that look as I pushed them down the dark slope and away into emptiness as the reward for the wicked things they had done.

I had seen it just last night on Doncevic—and even though I had not carefully chosen him, I realized the look truly belonged there, on him. He had put this same look on my sister, and that was enough. There was nothing here to stir unease in Dexter’s nonexistent soul. I had done my job, taken a bad person out of the crawling frenzy of life, and hurried him into a cluster of garbage bags, where he belonged. If it was untidy and unplanned, it was still righteous, as my law enforcement associates would say. Associates like Israel Salguero, who would now have no need to harass Deborah and damage her career just because the man with the shiny head was making noise in the press.

When I ended Doncevic, I had ended that mess, too. A small weight lifted. I had done what Dexter does, and done it well, and my little corner of the world was just a tiny bit better. I sat in the chair and chewed on a really terrible sandwich, chatting with Chutsky and actually getting to see Deborah open her eyes one time, for a full three seconds. I could not say for sure that she knew I was there, but the sight of her eyeballs was very encouraging and I began to understand Chutsky’s wild optimism a little more.

I went back to work feeling a great deal better about myself and things in general. It was a lovely and gratifying way to roll in from lunch, and the feeling lasted all the way into the building and up to my cubicle, where I found Detective Coulter waiting for me.

“Morgan,” he said. “Siddown.”

I thought it was very nice of him to invite me to sit in my own chair, so I sat down. He looked at me for a long moment, chewing on a toothpick that stuck out of one corner of his mouth. He was a pear-shaped guy, never terribly attractive, and at the moment even less so. He had crammed his sizable buttocks into the extra chair by my desk and, aside from the toothpick, he was working on a giant bottle of Mountain Dew, some of which had already stained his dingy white shirt. His appearance, together with the way he stared silently at me as if hoping I would burst into tears and confess to something, was extremely annoying, to say the least. So fighting off the temptation to collapse into a weeping heap, I picked up a lab report from my in-basket and began to read.

After a moment Coulter cleared his throat. “All right,” he said, and I looked up and raised a polite eyebrow at him. “We gotta talk about your statement.”

“Which one?” I said.

“When your sister got stabbed,” he said. “Couple of things don’t add up.”

“All right,” I said.

Coulter cleared his throat again. “So, uh—Tell me again what you saw.”

“I was sitting in the car,” I said.

“How far away?”

“Oh, maybe fifty feet,” I said.

“Uh-huh. How come you didn’t go with her?”

“Well,” I said, thinking it was really none of his business, “I really didn’t see the point.”

He stared some more and then shook his head. “You coulda helped her,” he said. “Maybe stopped the guy from stabbing her.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“You coulda acted like a partner,” he said. It was clear that the sacred bond of partnership was still pulling strongly at Coulter, so I bit back my impulse to say something, and after a moment he nodded and went on.

“So the door opens and boom, he sticks a knife in?”

“The door opens and Deborah showed her badge,” I said.

“You sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re fifty feet away?”

“I have really good eyesight,” I said, wondering if everyone who came in to see me today was going to be profoundly annoying.

“Okay,” he said. “And then what?”