Rita hissed at me. It was so startling that I could do nothing but gawp, and then she threw the balled-up paper towels at me. They opened up in midair and fluttered to the floor a few feet away from me, and Rita said, “I don’t give a damn what you call it.” And she turned around and stomped into the kitchen, returning a moment later with more paper towels, and very pointedly ignoring me.
I watched a little longer, hoping for some clue, but Rita only ignored me even more thoroughly. I lik
e a good puzzle as much as anybody else, but this one seemed much too abstract for me, and in any case I had more important answers to find. So I decided it was just one more thing I didn’t understand about human behavior, and I opened the door and trotted out into the late afternoon heat.
I turned to the left at the end of my front walk and started jogging. The first name I had copied from the list was Alissa Elan: a strange name, but I took it as a good omen. Elan, as in zest, zeal, panache. It was exactly what I had been missing lately: Dexter’s Deadly Dash. Perhaps I would rekindle it tonight when I saw Ms. Alissa’s Honda. And as if there really was some kind of magic in that first name, “Alissa,” I suddenly felt like I had been smacked on the head with something large, heavy, and wet, and I stopped dead in the middle of the street, and if there had been any traffic at all I wouldn’t have noticed if it ran right over me because I had just realized that Alissa began with the letter “A.”
My Shadow had blogged endlessly about the Evil Bitch known only as A, and yet until now I had not checked the list for “A’s.” I had obviously been watching too much TV—far too many gray cells had gone off-line and my once-mighty brain was in a sad state of decrepitude. But I did not linger and indulge myself in an appreciation of my own stupidity. Better late than never, and I had found it. This was it, I was sure of it, the one I had been looking for, and I let that surge of unreasonable glee push me into a trot, down the street and away into late-afternoon certainty.
The house was a little more than a mile away, but on the far side of U.S. 1. So far I had seen only the houses on my side of the highway, since crossing on foot in the evening was hazardous. But if I could get across safely, I could loop past it, turn north to see the second entry, and be home in less than an hour.
I ran for about fifteen minutes on the west side of U.S. 1, jogging slowly through an area that had never quite recovered from Hurricane Andrew. The houses were small and looked neglected, even the ones that were occupied, and on most of them it was very hard to see the address. The numbers were worn off, or covered with vegetation, or missing altogether. There were a number of older, battered cars lining the street, and many of them were abandoned wrecks. A dozen dirty kids were playing in and around them. More kids were kicking a soccer ball back and forth in the parking lot of a battered two-story apartment building. I watched the children as I jogged, wondering whether they might hurt themselves climbing all over the old and rusty cars, and I almost missed it.
I had just heard the thump of a well-kicked ball and turned my head to look as the soccer ball soared through the parking lot to the cries of, “Julio! ¡Aquí!” But as I mentally applauded Julio’s skill, the ball sailed past the front of the building and I saw the address above the door: 8834. The number I was looking for was 8837; I had let myself get distracted and almost gone right past.
I slowed my jog to a walk and then came to a stop in front of the apartment building, putting my foot up on a crumbling concrete block wall as if I was tying my shoelace. As I fiddled with the lace I glanced across the street—and there it was. Wedged in beside a huge and untrimmed hedge in front of the house across the street, there it really was.
The house itself was small, almost a cottage, and so overgrown that I couldn’t even see the windows. A huge, knotted vine spread over the top of the house, as if it was holding the roof down so it wouldn’t crumble and fall off. There was barely enough yard in front to park the Honda, and a rusted chain-link fence closed off the backyard. The nearest streetlight was half a block away, and with the row of untended trees along the street, anything that happened at the little house after dark would be almost invisible, which made me truly hope this really was it. The car was pulled in behind a large bougainvillea that took up half the yard and poured down across the roof of the house, and I could see only one small chunk of the rear section that stuck out from the shrubbery. But the certainty grew as I looked at the car.
It had probably started life as a neat little Honda with a metallic blue finish and bright chrome strips on the side. Now it was a mess: faded, dented, sagging slightly to one side, most of the chrome pulled off, the color battered away into a kind of uncertain medley of gray, blue, and primer.
And spread across that small section of the trunk there is a large rust stain, like a metallic birthmark, and my pulse bumps up a couple of notches as dark interior wings begin to flutter.
But far too many cars have rusty patches; I need to be sure, and so I push down the anticipation that is rising up inside. I straighten slowly and put my hands on my back, stretching as if I had run a little too hard, and I look casually at the tail end of the car. I can’t see, can’t be sure; the bougainvillea hides too much.
I have to get closer. I need some stupid excuse to move into the yard and peer behind the leaves and see if the taillight on the far side is the telltale dangling light I remember so well, but I can think of nothing. Very often in the past I have been The Man With The Clipboard, or The Guy With The Tool Belt, and this has gotten me as close as I ever needed to be. But tonight I am already Dude Jogging By; I can’t change costumes now, and I am running out of excuses for lingering here. I put my foot up on the wall again and stretch the leg muscles, furiously rejecting a series of truly stupid ideas for going into the yard and peeking behind that horrible giant bougainvillea, until I have almost decided to risk the stupidest and most obvious—just step into the yard and look, and then jog away. Ridiculous, dangerous, and totally contrary to the picture I cherish of a somewhat more than clever Me, but I am out of time and have no better ideas—
Somewhere far away, sitting on a cloud perhaps, there must be some whimsical dark deity that really likes me, because just before I let frustration push me into stupidity, I dimly hear the voices of the soccer players, calling out in three languages to look out, mister! And before I can even realize that I am the only mister in the area, the soccer ball thumps into my head, bounces up into the air, and then rolls across the street.
I watch the ball roll, just a little dazed, not so much from the thump on the head, but from the sheer happy, improbable, stupidly lucky coincidence of it. And the ball rolls across the street, into the yard of the grubby little house, and comes to rest against the Honda’s rear tire.
“Sorry, mister,” I hear one of the kids say.
I look into the parking lot at where they stand in an uncertain knot, watching carefully to see if I will take the ball and run away, or perhaps even start shooting at them. So I give them a reassuring smile and say, “No problem. I’ll get it.”
I walk across the street and step into the yard where that wonderful, beautiful prince of all soccer balls has rolled to a stop. I loop to the left ever so slightly as I approach the Honda, trying not to look like I am staring at the car with feverish greed. Three steps into the yard, five, six—and there it is.
For a few long and delightful seconds I pause and just look at it and let the adrenaline flood into me. There it is, that telltale dangling left taillight, the same one I saw when I was seen, the same one that blinked at me as it raced away on the Palmetto on-ramp. There is no more doubt. This is the Honda I have been looking for. Deep inside the Dark Tower of Dexter there is a rumbling hiss of satisfaction, and I feel a shadowy tickle at the base of my spine that moves slowly up my back to my neck, and then settles across my face like a mask.
We have found our Witness.
And now he becomes our prey.
From inside the moldering, vine-covered house I hear voices rising in a very nasty argument, and then the front door slams. I tear my eyes away from that gorgeous dangling light and turn to look, just in time to see a man’s back as he spins away and hurries back inside again to finish the fight. I feel a flutter of apprehension; he must have seen me—but the front door slams behind him; my luck has held, and his voice rises inside, hers answers, and I have found him and he doesn’t know it and now it truly begins to end for my Witness. So I walk quickly the rest of the way across the grass to the Honda, pat it affectionately, and pick up the ball.
The soccer players are still standing in their insecure cluster, and I hold up the ball to them and smile. They look at it like it might be an improvised explosive device; they don’t move. They watch me with great care as I throw the ball back to them. And then it bounces twice, one of the boys grabs it, and they all race away to the far end of the parking lot, and the game picks right back up where it left off.
I look fondly at the dirty little cottage and marvel at my luck. The overgrown yard, the street without lights—the setting is perfect, almost as if we have designed it ourselves as the ideal spot for an evening of dark-hearted fun. It is shrouded, tucked away in the shadows—the fussiest monster could not ask for a better playground.
A shiver of anticipation trembles the flagpoles of Castle Dexter. We have searched, we have found it, and there is suddenly a great deal to do, and very little time to do it. Everything has to be just right, exactly the way it should be, the way it always is, always has to be, so we can slide back here tonight—tonight!—back through the comfy dark to slice our way to blissful release and the promise of safety as we trim away this small and ugly blister that has been rubbing up against the heel of our comfort. And now the chafing unwanted threat was in our sights and as good as taped to a table, and soon all would be gleaming happiness once more. One, two, three, snicker-snee, and Dexter’s life would return to its bright plastic case, all happy fake normal and human. But first—a program of
careful but rapid preparation, and then a very sharp word from Our Sponsor.
A deep breath to beat down the rising tide of need and let shadowy balance back in; it must be done, but it must be done right. And slowly, carefully, casually, we turn our face away from the house and the Honda in its yard, and we jog back the way we had come. Home for now, but we would be back, very soon, as soon as it was dark.
And Dark is coming, with a capital “D.”
It was a sweaty but very contented Dexter who jogged onto his street, slowed to a walk, and sauntered into his house. And that contentment surged to a level that might almost have been happiness when I went in the front door and saw my children gathered on the sofa, blissfully killing things with their Wii, because Astor looked up—it was Cody’s turn in the game—and said, “Mom wants to see you. She’s in the kitchen.”