Ten days in jail. I wait. To a lesser man, the endless spell of oppressive nothingness might seem stifling, even soul-destroying. But, of course, Dexter has no soul, if such things even exist. And so I find a great deal to do. I count the concrete blocks in my wall. I arrange my toothbrush. I attempt mental games of chess, and when I can’t remember where the pieces are, I switch to checkers and then, when that fails, to Go Fish. I always win.
I pace my cell. It’s large enough to permit me almost two full steps. When I tire of this, I do push-ups. I do a little tai chi, bumping my fists on the walls with nearly every move.
And I wait. From my wide reading, I know that the greatest danger of solitary incarceration is the temptation to succumb to the dreadful weight of tedium, sink into the stress-free bliss of insanity. I know that if I do, I will never get out, never resume my safe and sane normal life of happy wage slave by day, even happier Knight of the Knife by night. I must hold on, keep a tight grip on what passes for sanity in this vale of tears, hold on white-knuckled to the absurd and baseless belief that innocence still counts for something and I Am Truly Innocent…relatively speaking. In this case, at least.
I have certain knowledge, based on vast experience with That Old Whore Justice, that Actual Innocence has nearly as much influence on my fate as the starting lineup for the Marlins. But I cling to hope anyway, because anything else is unthinkable. How can I face even one more hour of this if I don’t believe that eventually it will end—with me on the outside? Even the thought of endless cheeselike sandwiches is no comfort. I must believe, blindly, unreasonably, even stupidly, that someday Truth will out, Justice will prevail, and Dexter will be free to run laughing into the sunlight. And, of course, smirking into the moonlight, sliding softly through the velvet dark with a knife and a need—
I shiver. Mustn’t get ahead of myself. Must avoid such thoughts, fantasies of freedom that steal focus from right now and what to do about it. I must remain here mentally, as well as physically, right here in my snug little cell, and concentrate on getting out.
Once more I flip through my mental ledger and add up the blurred and uncertain figures. On the plus side, I really and truly am innocent. I didn’t do it. Not even some of it. Not me.
On the minus side, it sure looks like I did.
And worse, the entire Miami police force would like to s
ee someone like me convicted for these crimes. They very publicly promised to protect our two Famous Actors, and more publicly failed to do so. And if the killer was some plausible insider—me again—they are off the hook. So if the officer in charge is willing to bend things a little bit, he almost certainly will.
Even more minus: Detective Anderson is in charge. He will not merely bend things; he will mangle them, hammer them into the shape he wants, and serve them up in sworn testimony. He has, in fact, already done so, and it must be said that the legion of Wonderful Haircuts that constitutes the media has been eating it up, for the very simple reason that it is simple, as simple as they are, which is possibly even simpler than Anderson, a shudder-inducing thought. They have lunged to grab my guilt with both greedy fists, and the photo of Dexter Arrested, according to Lazlo, has festooned the front pages and adorned the evening news for over a week now. The picture shows me draped in chains, head bowed, face set in a mask of stunned indifference, and I must say I look extremely guilty, even to me. And I do not need to point out that, moral clichés to the contrary, Appearances do not Deceive, not in our age of Instant Summarized Sound-Bite Certainty. I am guilty because I look guilty. And I look guilty because Detective Anderson wishes it.
Anderson wants me dead, enough so that he will cheerfully perjure himself to get me halfway there. Even if he didn’t loathe me, he would do it because he has a professional hatred for my sister, Sergeant Deborah, who he quite rightly sees as a rival, and one who must eventually surpass him by a considerable margin. But if her brother—c’est moi!—is a convicted murderer, this would almost certainly derail the mighty choo-choo of Deb’s career track, and consequently advance his.
I do the math. On one side: Anderson, the entire police force, the media, and most likely the pope himself.
On the other side, my innocence.
This does not add up to a terribly encouraging bottom line.
But surely there is more. Certainly it could never end like this. Somewhere, somehow, isn’t it absolutely essential to the immutable principals of Balance, Righteousness, and a healthy GNP that some small but powerful hole card exists? Shouldn’t it be true that some unknown but potent force will emerge and set things right? Somehow, somewhere, isn’t there something?
There is.
Unknown to the forces of evil and indifference that grind so ponderously powerfully slow, there is an equal and opposing force that even now must be gathering its irresistible strength for one mighty, liberating blast of Truth that will topple the whole rotten mess and set Dexter Free.
Deborah. My sister.
She will come and save me. She must.
This, I must confess, is my one Happy Thought. Deborah is my Forlorn Hope, the tiny ray of sunshine trickling into the dark and dreary night of Dexter’s Detention. Deborah will come. She must, she will. And she will help me, her only living relative, the last of the Morgans. Together we will find a way to prove my innocence and spring me from this, my soul-crushing confinement. She will breeze in like the winds of April, and the doors will spring open at her touch. Deborah will come and end Dexter’s Durance Vile. Put aside for the moment the memory of Deborah’s last words to me. These words were far from supportive, and some might even say they were rather Final. They were spoken in the heat of an unpleasant moment, and not to be taken at face value in any permanent sense. Remember instead the deep and abiding bonds of family that lock us unchangeably together. Deborah will come.
The fact that she has not come yet, has not in any way communicated with me, should not really trouble me. It is almost certainly a strategic move, creating the appearance of indifference to lull our enemies into complacency. When the time is right, she will come, I must not doubt it. Of course she will come; she’s my sister. This implies quite strongly that I am her brother, and it’s exactly the sort of thing one does for Family. I would do it for her, willingly and even cheerfully, and so I know for a stone-cold fact that she will do it for me. Without even a moment of doubt, I know it. Deborah will come.
Eventually. Sooner or later. I mean, where is she?
The days pass, and inevitably they turn into weeks—two of them now—and she has not come. She has not called; she has not written. No secret note written in butter and pressed into my sandwich. Nothing at all, and I am still here, in my ultrasecure cell, my little kingdom of solitude. I read, I ponder, and I exercise. And what I exercise most is my healthy sense of very justified bitterness. Where is Deborah? Where is Justice? Both are as elusive as Diogenes’ Honest Man. I ponder the thought that I, above all, should be reduced to hoping for real justice—a justice that, if it frees me as it should, has clearly done an outrageous Injustice by turning me loose to resume my beloved pastime. It is ironic, like so much of my present circumstance.
But out of the many ironies in my current unhappy contretemps, perhaps the worst of all is that I, Dexter the Monster, Dexter the Ultimate Outsider, Dexter the Nonhuman—I, too, am reduced in extremis to that ultimate human lament:
Why Me?
TWO
The days pass indistinguishably. Dull routine plods along in the wake of dull routine. Nothing, in short, Happens that has not already happened yesterday and the day before, and will almost certainly happen again the next day, and the next, and the next, ad infinitum. No visitors, no mail, no calls, no sign at all that Dexter still has any sort of existence outside of this unchanging unending unpleasant one.
And yet, I hope. This cannot continue eternally, can it? Something must someday happen. It is not possible that I should be a permanent fixture here, on the ninth floor of TGK, perpetually repeating the same small and meaningless rituals by rote. Someone will realize a monstrous injustice has been done, and the machine will spit me out. Or perhaps Anderson himself, overcome with shame, will perform a public mea culpa and set me free in person. Of course, it is more likely that I should burrow through the concrete block walls with my toothbrush—but surely there will be something. And if nothing else, sooner or later, some bright day, Deborah will come.
Of course she will. I hold on to that certainty, raising it in my mind to the status of Immutable Eternal Truth, something as certain as the law of gravity. Deborah will come. In the meantime, I know that at the very least, TGK is not a prison. It is merely a detention center, intended for temporarily housing the provisionally wicked until such time as their promotion to Enemy of Society is made permanent. They can’t keep me here forever.
I mention this in passing to my shepherd, Lazlo, as he escorts me to my daily stint of sitting in the yard and enjoying the rain. They can’t, I say, keep me here forever.