This time, though, there was a special edge to it with Cody and Astor, our own small secret adding a touch more zest. It was almost fun to watch them stalking the other children, my own little predators in training.
After half an hour of stalking and pouncing, however, it became apparent that we were severely outnumbered by even stealthier predators—mosquitoes, several billion of the disgusting little vampires, all ravenously hungry. And so, weak from loss of blood, Cody, Astor, and I staggered back into the D E A R LY D E V O T E D D E X T E R
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house and reconvened around the dining table for a session of hangman.
“I’ll go first,” Astor announced. “It’s my turn anyway.”
“Mine,” said Cody, frowning.
“Nuh-uh. Anyway, I got one,” she told him. “Five letters.”
“C,” said Cody.
“No! Head! Ha!” she howled in triumph, and drew the little round head.
“You should ask the vowels first,” I said to Cody.
“What,” he said softly.
“A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y,” Astor told him. “Everybody knows that.”
“Is there an E?” I asked her, and some of the wind went out of her sails.
“Yes,” Astor said, sulkily, and she wrote the E on the middle blank line.
“Ha,” said Cody.
We played for almost an hour before their bedtime. All too soon my magical evening drew to a close and I was once again on the couch with Rita. But this time, free as I was from spying eyes, it was an easy matter for me to disengage myself from her tentacles and head for home, and my own little bed, with well-meaning excuses of having partied too hard at Vince’s and a big day of work tomorrow. And then I was off, all alone in the night, just my echo, my shadow, and me. It was two nights until the full moon, and I would make this one well worth my wait. This full moon I would spend not with Miller Lite but with Reiker Photography, Inc. In two nights I would turn loose the Passenger at last, slide into my true self, and fling the sweat-stained costume of Dearly Devoted Dexter into the garbage heap.
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J E F F L I N D S A Y
Of course I needed to find proof first, but somehow I was quite confident that I would. After all, I had a whole day for that, and when the Dark Passenger and I work together everything seems to fall right into place.
And filled with such cheerful thoughts of dark delights I motored back to my comfy apartment, and climbed into bed to sleep the deep and dreamless sleep of the just.
The next morning my offensively cheerful mood continued. When I stopped for doughnuts on the way to work I gave in to impulse and bought a full dozen, including several of the cream-filled ones with chocolate icing, a truly extrava-gant gesture that was not lost on Vince, who had finally recovered. “Oh, my,” he said with raised eyebrows. “You have done well, O mighty hunter.”
“The gods of the forest have smiled upon us,” I said.
“Cream-filled or raspberry jelly?”
“Cream-filled, of course,” he said.
The day passed quickly, with only one trip out to a homicide scene, a routine dismemberment with garden equipment.
It was strictly amateur work; the idiot had tried to use an electric hedge clipper and succeeded only in making a great deal of extra work for me, before finishing off his wife with the pruning shears. A truly nasty mess, and it served him right that they caught him at the airport. A well-done dismemberment is neat, above all, or so I always say. None of this puddled blood and caked flesh on the walls. It shows a real lack of class.
I finished up at the scene just in time to get back to my little cubbyhole off the forensics lab and leave my notes on my desk. I would type them up and finish the report on Monday, no hurry. Neither the killer nor the victim was going anywhere.
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And so there I was, out the door to the parking lot and into my car, free to roam the land as I pleased. No one to follow me or feed me beer or force me to do things I would rather avoid.