Dexter by Design (Dexter 4)

They went through their ritual of drinking coffee and talking quietly, as they did every day, and it was such a perfect Norman Rockwell picture that I would certainly have forgotten it almost instantly if not for what happened later that evening.

Doris was already in bed. She had taken to going to sleep earlier and earlier as her cancer got worse and she needed more pain medicine. Harry, Deborah, and I had gathered in front of the TV set as we usually did. We were watching a sitcom, I don’t remember which. There were so many of them at the time that they all could have been lumped together under the title of Funny Minority and the White Guy. The whole purpose of all these shows seemed to be letting us all know that in spite of our small differences we were really all the same. I kept waiting for some clue that this might include me, but neither Freddie Prinze nor Redd Foxx ever chopped up a neighbor. Still, everyone else seemed to enjoy the show. Deborah laughed out loud now and then, and Harry kept a contented smile on his face, and I did my best just to keep a low profile and fit in amid the hilarity.

But in the middle of the climactic scene, right when we were about to learn that we are all the same and then hug, the doorbell rang. Harry frowned a little bit, but he got up and went to the door with one eye still on the TV. Since I had already guessed how the show would end and I was not particularly moved by artificial hugs of compassion, I watched Harry. He turned on the outside light, peeked through the eyehole, and then unlocked and opened the door.

“Gus,” he said, with surprise. “Come on in.”

Gus Rigby was Harry’s oldest friend on the force. They had been best man at each other’s wedding, and Harry was godfather to Gus’s daughter, Betsy. Since his divorce, Gus was always at our house for holidays and special occasions, although not as often now that Doris was sick, and he always brought a key lime pie.

But he didn’t look terribly social now, and he was not carrying a pie. He looked angry and frazzled, and he said, “We gotta talk,” and pushed past Harry into the house.

“About what?” Harry said, still holding the door open.

Gus turned and snarled at him, “Otto Valdez is out on the street.”

Harry stared at him. “How did he get out?”

“That lawyer he’s got,” Gus said. “He said it was excessive force.”

Harry nodded. “You were rough on him, Gus.”

“He’s a baby-raper,” Gus said. “You want me to kiss him?”

“All right,” Harry said. He closed and locked the door. “What is there to talk about?” he said.

“He’s after me now,” Gus said. “The phone rings and nobody’s there, just breathing. But I know it’s him. And I got a note under my front door. At my home, Harry.”

“What did the lieutenant say?”

Gus shook his head. “I want to do this myself,” he said. “On the side. And I want your help.”

With the wonderful timing that happens only in real life, the TV show came to an end and the laugh track blasted out right on the toes of Gus’s words. Deborah laughed, too, and finally looked up. “Hi, Uncle Gus,” she said.

“Hello, Debbie,” Gus said. “You’re more beautiful every day.”

Debs scowled. Even then she was embarrassed by her good looks, and she didn’t like being reminded of it. “Thank you,” she said grumpily.

“Come on into the kitchen,” Harry said, taking Gus by the elbow and leading him away.

I knew perfectly well that Harry was taking Gus into the kitchen to keep me and Deborah from hearing what would be said, and naturally enough that made me want to hear it all the more. And since Harry had not specifically said, “Stay here and do not listen …,” why, it would hardly be eavesdropping at all!

So I got up from in front of the TV set very casually and went down the hall toward the bathroom. I paused in the hallway and looked back: Deborah was already engrossed in the next program, and so I slid into a small patch of shadow and listened.

“… courts will handle it,” Harry was saying.

“Like they handled it so far?” Gus said, sounding angrier than I had ever heard him. “Come on, Harry, you know better than that.”

“We’re not vigilantes, Gus.”

“Well maybe we should be, goddamn it.”

There was a pause. I heard the refrigerator door open and then the sound of a beer can opening. A moment went by and nothing was said.

“Listen, Harry,” Gus said at last. “We’ve been cops for a long time now.”

“Coming up on twenty years,” Harry said.

“And from the first day on the job, didn’t it hit you that the system just doesn’t work? That the biggest assholes always find a way to fall out of jail and back onto the streets? Huh?”