Dexter by Design (Dexter 4)

Well. The mention of Doakes was the perfect end to an absolutely enchanting conversation. I just barely stopped myself from shaking my head again, but the temptation was strong, because it seemed to me that what had been a sane and well-ordered universe just a few days ago was suddenly beginning to spin wildly out of control. First I walked into a trap and nearly turned into the Inhuman Torch, and then a man I had regarded as a foot soldier in the war against intelligence turned out to be a covert general—and to top it off, he was apparently in league with the last few living pieces of my nemesis, Sergeant Doakes, and he seemed very likely to take up where Doakes had left off, in the pursuit of poor persecuted Dexter. Where would this end?

And if this was not bad enough—which, frankly, I thought it was—I was still in terrible danger from Weiss and whatever his plan of attack might be.

All in all, it occurred to me that this would be a very good time to be somebody else. Unfortunately, that was a trick I had so far failed to master. With nothing else to do except ponder the almost certain doom headed toward me at such terrible speed from so many different directions, I walked down the block to my car. And of course, because apparently I had not suffered nearly enough, a slim and ghostly figure came off the curb and glided into step beside me.

“You were here when this happened,” said Israel Salguero.

“Yes,” I said, wondering if next a satellite would fall from orbit and onto my head.

He was silent for a moment and then he stopped walking, and I turned to face him. “You know I am not investigating you,” he said.

I thought that was very nice to hear, but considering how things had gone the last few hours, I thought it would be best just to nod, so I did.

“But apparently what happened here is connected to the incident involving your sister, and that I am investigating,” he said, and I was glad I hadn’t said anything. So glad, in fact, that I decided that silence would be a good policy to continue.

“You know that one of the most important things I am charged to uncover is any kind of vigilante activity on the part of any of our officers,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. After all, only one word.

He nodded. He still had not taken his eyes off my face.

“Your sister has a very promising career ahead of her,” he said. “It would be a very great shame if something like this hurt her.”

“She’s still unconscious,” I said. “She hasn’t done anything.”

“No, she hasn’t done anything,” he said. “What about you?”

“I just tried to find the guy who stabbed her,” I said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Of course,” he said. He waited for me to say something else, but I didn’t, and so after what seemed like several weeks, he smiled and patted my arm and walked away across the street to where Coulter was standing and swigging from his Mountain Dew bottle. I watched as the two of them spoke, turned to face me, and then turned away again to look at the smoldering house. And thinking that this afternoon couldn’t possibly get any better, I turned and trudged to my car.

The windshield was cracked from a flying piece of house.

I managed not to burst into tears. I got in and drove home, peering through the cracked glass and listening to my head throb.

TWENTY-THREE

RITA WAS NOT HOME YET WHEN I ARRIVED, SINCE I’D gotten there a bit early as a result of my explosive misfortune. The house seemed very empty, and I stood inside the front door for a minute just listening to the unnatural silence. A pipe ticked in the back of the house, and then the air conditioner came on, but these were not living sounds and I still felt as if I had stumbled into a movie where everyone else had been whisked away in a spaceship. The lump on my head was still throbbing, and I was very tired and very alone. I went to the couch and fell onto it as if I suddenly had no bones left to hold me up.

I lay there for some time in a kind of strange interval in the urgency. I knew I still had to explode into action, track down Weiss, head him off at the pass, and beard him in his den, but for some reason I was completely unable to move, and the mean little voice that had been urging me on did not sound terribly convincing at the moment, as if it, too, needed a coffee break. So I just lay there, facedown, trying to feel the sense of emergency that had deserted me, and failing to feel anything except, as mentioned, fatigue and pain. And if somebody had shouted at me, “Look out behind you! He’s got a gun!” I would have replied with no more than a weary mumble, “Tell him to take a number and wait.”

I woke up, I don’t know how much later, to an overwhelming sense of blue, which made no sense at all until I was able to focus my eyes. And there stood Cody, no more than six inches away from my head, in his apparently brand-new Cub Scout uniform. I sat up, which caused my head to clang like a gong, and looked at him.

“Well,” I said. “You certainly look official.”

“Look stupid,” he said. “Shorts.”

I looked at him in his dark blue shirt and shorts, the little hat perched on top of his head and the neckerchief in its slide around his neck, and it didn’t seem fair to pick on the shorts. “What’s wrong with shorts?” I said. “You wear shorts all the time.”

“Uniform shorts,” he said, as if it was some kind of impossible assault on the last frontier of human dignity.

“Lots of people wear uniform shorts,” I said, desperately flinging my battered brain through its paces in search of an example.

Cody looked very doubtful. “Who?” he said.

“Well, ah, the mailman wears shorts—” I broke off quickly; the look he was giving me was louder and more pointed than anything he could have said. “And, um, the British soldiers wore shorts in India,” I said, with incredibly feeble hope.

He stared at me for a moment longer without saying anything, as if I had let him down badly when all the chips were on the table. And before I could think of another brilliant example, Rita came charging into the room.