Dearly Devoted Dexter

CHAPTER 22

SERGEANT DOAKES DROVE ME BACK TO HEADQUARTERS. It was a strange and unsettling experience to sit so close to him, and we found very little to say to each other. I caught myself studying his profile out of the corner of my eye. What went on in there? How could he be what I knew he was without actually doing something about it? Holding back from one of my playdates was setting my teeth on edge, and yet Doakes apparently didn’t have any such trouble. Perhaps he had gotten it all out of his system in El Salvador. Did it feel any different to do it with the official blessings of the government? Or was it simply easier, not having to worry about being caught?

I could not know, and I certainly could not see myself asking him. Just to underline the point, he came to a halt at a red light and turned to look at me. I pretended not to notice, staring straight ahead through the windshield, and he faced back around when the light changed to green.

We drove right to the motor pool and Doakes put me in the front seat of another Ford Taurus. “Gimme fifteen minutes,” he said, nodding at the radio. “Then call me.” Without another word, he got back into his car and drove away.

Left to my own devices, I pondered the last few surprise-filled hours. Deborah in the hospital, me in league with Doakes-and my revelation about Cody during my near-death experience. Of course, I could be totally wrong about the boy. There might be some other explanation for his behavior at the mention of the missing pet, and the way he shoved the knife so eagerly into his fish could have been perfectly normal childish cruelty. But oddly enough, I found myself wanting it to be true. I wanted him to grow up to be like me-mostly, I realized, because I wanted to shape him and place his tiny feet onto the Harry Path.

Was this what the human reproductive urge was like, a pointless and powerful desire to replicate wonderful, irreplaceable me, even when the me in question was a monster who truly had no right to live among humans? That would certainly explain how a great many of the monumentally unpleasant cretins I encountered every day came to be. Unlike them, however, I was perfectly aware that the world would be a better place without me in it-I simply cared more about my own feelings in the matter than whatever the world might think. But now here I was eager to spawn more of me, like Dracula creating a new vampire to stand beside him in the dark. I knew it was wrong-but what fun it would be!

And what a total muttonhead I was being! Had my interval on Rita’s sofa really turned my once-mighty intellect into such a quivering heap of sentimental mush? How could I be thinking such absurdities? Why wasn’t I trying to devise a plan to escape marriage instead? No wonder I couldn’t get away from Doakes’s cloying surveillance-I had used up all my brain cells and was now running on empty.

I glanced at my watch. Fourteen minutes of time wasted on absurd mental blather. It was close enough: I lifted the radio and called Doakes.

“Sergeant Doakes, what’s your twenty?”

There was a pause, then a crackle. “Uh, I’d rather not say just now.”

“Say again, Sergeant?”

“I have been tracking a perp, and I’m afraid he made me.”

“What kind of perp?”

There was a pause, as though Doakes was expecting me to do all the work and hadn’t figured out what to say. “Guy from my army days. He got captured in El Salvador, and he might think it was my fault.” Pause. “The guy is dangerous,” he said.

“Do you want backup?”

“Not yet. I’m going to try to dodge him for now.”

“Ten-four,” I said, feeling a little thrill at getting to say it at last.

We repeated the basic message a few times more, just to be sure it would get through to Dr. Danco, and I got to say “ten-four” each time. When we called it a night around 1:00 AM, I was exhilarated and fulfilled. Perhaps tomorrow I would try to work in “That’s a copy” and even “Roger that.” At last, something to look forward to.

I found a squad car headed south and persuaded the cop driving to drop me at Rita’s. I tiptoed over to my car, got in, and drove home.

When I got back to my little bunk and saw it in a state of terrible disarray, I remembered that Debs should have been here but was, instead, in the hospital. I would go see her tomorrow. In the meantime, I’d had a memorable but exhausting day; chased into a pond by a serial limb-barber, surviving a car crash only to be nearly drowned, losing a perfectly good shoe, and on top of all that, as if that wasn’t bad enough, forced to buddy up with Sergeant Doakes. Poor Drained Dexter. No wonder I was so tired. I fell into bed and went to sleep at once.

Early the next day Doakes pulled his car in beside mine in the parking lot at headquarters. He got out carrying a nylon gym bag, which he set down on the hood of my car. “You brought your laundry?” I asked politely. Once again my lighthearted good cheer went right by him.

“If this works at all, either he gets me or I get him,” he said. He zipped open the bag. “If I get him, it’s over. If he gets me…” He took out a GPS receiver and placed it on the hood. “If he gets me, you’re my backup.” He showed me a few dazzling teeth. “Think how good that makes me feel.” He took out a cell phone and placed it next to the GPS unit. “This is my insurance.”

I looked at the two small items on the hood of my car. They did not seem particularly menacing to me, but perhaps I could throw one and then hit someone on the head with the other. “No bazooka?” I asked.

“Don’t need it. Just this,” he said. He reached into the gym bag one more time. “And this,” he said, holding out a small steno notebook, flipped open to the first page. It seemed to have a string of numbers and letters on it and a cheap ballpoint was shoved through the spiral.

“The pen is mightier than the sword,” I said.

“This one is,” he said. “Top line is a phone number. Second line is an access code.”

“What am I accessing?”

“You don’t need to know,” he said. “You just call it, punch in the code, and give ’em my cell phone number. They give you a GPS fix on my phone. You come get me.”

“It sounds simple,” I said, wondering if it really was.

“Even for you,” he said.

“Who will I be talking to?”

Doakes just shook his head. “Somebody owes me a favor,” he said, and pulled a handheld police radio out of the bag. “Now the easy part,” he said. He handed me the radio and got back into his car.

Now that we had clearly laid out the bait for Dr. Danco, step two was to get him to a specific place at the right time, and the happy coincidence of Vince Masuoka’s party was too perfect to ignore. For the next few hours we drove around the city in our separate cars and repeated the same message back and forth a couple of times with subtle variations, just to be sure. We had also enlisted a couple of patrol units Doakes said just possibly might not fuck it up. I took that to be his understated wit, but the cops in question did not seem to get the joke and, although they did not actually tremble, they did seem to go a little overboard in anxiously assuring Sergeant Doakes that they would not, in fact, fuck it up. It was wonderful to be working with a man who could inspire such loyalty.

Our little team spent the rest of the day pumping the airwaves full of chatter about my engagement party, giving directions to Vince’s house and reminding people of the time. And just after lunch, our coup de grâce. Sitting in my car in front of a Wendy’s, I used the handheld radio and called Sergeant Doakes one last time for a carefully scripted conversation.

“Sergeant Doakes, this is Dexter, do you copy?”

“This is Doakes,” he said after a slight pause.

“It would mean a lot to me if you could come to my engagement party tonight.”

“I can’t go anywhere,” he said. “This guy is too dangerous.”

“Just come for one drink. In and out,” I wheedled.

“You saw what he did to Manny, and Manny was just a grunt. I’m the one gave this guy to some bad people. He gets his hands on me, what’s he gonna do to me?”

“I’m getting married, Sarge,” I said. I liked the Marvel Comics flavor of calling him Sarge. “That doesn’t happen every day. And he’s not going to try anything with all those cops around.”

There was a long dramatic pause in which I knew Doakes was counting to seven, just as we had written it down. Then the radio crackled again. “All right,” he said. “I’ll come by around nine o’clock.”

“Thanks, Sarge,” I said, thrilled to be able to say it again, and just to complete my happiness, I added, “This really means a lot to me. Ten-four.”

“Ten-four,” he said.

Somewhere in the city I hoped that our little radio drama was playing out to our target audience. As he scrubbed up for his surgery, would he pause, cock his head, and listen? As his scanner crackled with the beautiful mellow voice of Sergeant Doakes, perhaps he’d put down a bone saw, wipe his hands, and write the address on a scrap of paper. And then he would go happily back to work-on Kyle Chutsky?-with the inner peace of a man with a job to do and a full social calendar when he was done for the day.

Just to be absolutely sure, our squad-car friends would breathlessly repeat the message a few times, and without fucking it up; that Sergeant Doakes himself would be at the party tonight, live and in person, around nine o’clock.

And for my part, with my work done for a few hours, I headed for Jackson Memorial Hospital to look in on my favorite bird with a broken wing.

Deborah was wrapped in an upper-body cast, sitting in bed in a sixth-floor room with a lovely view of the freeway, and although I was sure they were giving her some kind of painkiller, she did not look at all blissful when I walked into her room. “Goddamn it, Dexter,” she greeted me, “tell them to let me the hell out of here. Or at least give me my clothes so I can leave.”

“I’m glad to see you’re feeling better, sister dear,” I said. “You’ll be on your feet in no time.”

“I’ll be on my feet the second they give me my goddamn clothes,” she said. “What the hell is going on out there? What have you been doing?”

“Doakes and I have set a rather neat trap, and Doakes is the bait,” I said. “If Dr. Danco bites, we’ll have him tonight at my, um, party. Vince’s party,” I added, and I realized I wanted to distance myself from the whole idea of being engaged and it was a silly way to do it, but I felt better anyway-which apparently brought no comfort to Debs.

“Your engagement party,” she said, and then snarled. “Shit. You got Doakes to set himself up for you.” And I admit it sounded kind of elegant when she said it, but I didn’t want her thinking such things; unhappy people heal slower.

“No, Deborah, seriously,” I said in my best soothing voice. “We’re doing this to catch Dr. Danco.”

She glared at me for a long time and then, amazingly, she sniffled and fought back a tear. “I have to trust you,” she said. “But I hate this. All I can think about is what he’s doing to Kyle.”

“This will work, Debs. We’ll get Kyle back.” And because she was, after all, my sister, I did not add, “or most of him anyway.”

“Christ, I hate being stuck here,” she said. “You need me there for backup.”

“We can handle this, Sis,” I said. “There will be a dozen cops at the party, all armed and dangerous. And I’ll be there, too,” I said, feeling just a little miffed that she so undervalued my presence.

But she continued to do so. “Yeah. And if Doakes gets Danco, we get Kyle back. If Danco gets Doakes, you’re off the hook. Real slick, Dexter. You win either way.”

“That had never occurred to me,” I lied. “My only thought is to serve the greater good. Besides, Doakes is supposed to be very experienced at this sort of thing. And he knows Danco.”

“Goddamn it, Dex, this is killing me. What if-” She broke off and bit her lip. “This better work,” she said. “He’s had Kyle too long.”

“This will work, Deborah,” I said. But neither one of us really believed me.

____________________

The doctors quite firmly insisted on keeping Deborah for twenty-four hours, for observation. And so with a hearty hi-ho to my sister, I galloped off into the sunset, and from there to my apartment for a shower and change of clothes. What to wear? I could think of no guidelines on what we were wearing this season to a party forced on you to celebrate an unwanted engagement that might turn into a violent confrontation with a vengeful maniac. Clearly brown shoes were out, but beyond that nothing really seemed de rigueur. After careful consideration I let simple good taste guide me, and selected a lime green Hawaiian shirt covered with red electric guitars and pink hot rods. Simple but elegant. A pair of khaki pants and some running shoes, and I was ready for the ball.

But there was still an hour left before I had to be there, and I found my thoughts turning again to Cody. Was I right about him? If so, how could he deal with his awakening Passenger on his own? He needed my guidance, and I found that I was eager to give it to him.

I left my apartment and drove south, instead of north to Vince’s house. In fifteen minutes I was knocking at Rita’s door and staring across the street at the empty spot formerly occupied by Sergeant Doakes in his maroon Taurus. Tonight he was no doubt at home preparing, girding his loins for the coming conflict and polishing his bullets. Would he try to kill Dr. Danco, secure in the knowledge that he had legal permission to do so? How long had it been since he killed something? Did he miss it? Did the Need come roaring over him like a hurricane, blowing away all the reason and restraints?

The door opened. Rita beamed and lunged at me, wrapping me in a hug and kissing me on the face. “Hey, handsome,” she said. “Come on in.”

I hugged back briefly for form’s sake and then disengaged myself. “I can’t stay very long,” I said.

She beamed bigger. “I know,” she said. “Vince called and told me. He was so cute about the whole thing. He promised he would keep an eye on you so you wouldn’t do anything too crazy. Come inside,” she said, and dragged me in by the arm. When she closed the door she turned to me, suddenly serious. “Listen Dexter. I want you to know that I am not the jealous type and I trust you. You just go and have fun.”

“I will, thank you,” I said, although I doubted that I would. And I wondered what Vince had said to her to make her think that the party would be some kind of dangerous pit of temptation and sin. For that matter, it might well be. Since Vince was largely synthetic, he could be somewhat unpredictable in social situations, as shown by his bizarre duels of sexual innuendo with my sister.

“It was sweet of you to stop here before the party,” Rita said, leading me to the couch where I had spent so much of my recent life. “The kids wanted to know why they couldn’t go.”

“I’ll talk to them,” I said, eager to see Cody and try to discover if I had been right.

Rita smiled, as if thrilled to learn that I would actually talk to Cody and Astor. “They’re out back,” she said. “I’ll go get them.”

“No, stay here,” I said. “I’ll go out.”

Cody and Astor were in the yard with Nick, the surly clot from next door who had wanted to see Astor naked. They looked up as I slid the door open, and Nick turned away and scurried back to his own yard. Astor ran over to me and gave me a hug, and Cody trailed behind, watching, no emotion at all on his face. “Hi,” he said, in his quiet voice.

“Greetings and salutations, young citizens,” I said. “Shall we put on our formal togas? Caesar calls us to the senate.”

Astor cocked her head to one side and looked at me as if she had just seen me eat a raw cat. Cody merely said, “What,” very quietly.

“Dexter,” Astor said, “why can’t we go to the party with you?”

“In the first place,” I told her, “it’s a school night. And in the second place, I am very much afraid this is a grown-up party.”

“Does that mean there will be naked girls there?” she asked.

“What kind of a person do you think I am?” I said, scowling fiercely. “Do you really think I would ever go to a party with no naked girls?”

“Eeeeeewwww,” she said, and Cody whispered, “Ha.”

“But more important, there will also be stupid dancing and ugly shirts, and these are not good for you to see. You would lose all your respect for grown-ups.”

“What respect?” Cody said, and I shook him by the hand.

“Well said,” I told him. “Now go to your room.”

Astor finally giggled. “But we want to go to the party,” she said.

“I’m afraid not,” I said. “But I brought you a piece of treasure so you won’t run away.” I handed her a roll of Necco wafers, our secret currency. She would split it evenly with Cody later, out of sight of all prying eyes. “Now then, young persons,” I said. They looked up at me expectantly. But at that point I was stuck, all aquiver with eagerness to know the answer but not at all sure where or even how to start asking. I could not very well say, “By the way, Cody, I was wondering if you like to kill things?” That, of course, was exactly what I wanted to know, but it didn’t really seem like the kind of thing you could say to a child-especially Cody, who was generally about as talkative as a coconut.

His sister, Astor, though, often seemed to speak for him. The pressures of spending their early childhood together with a violent ogre for a father had created a symbiotic relationship so close that when he drank soda she would burp. Whatever might be going on inside Cody, Astor would be able to express it.

“Can I ask something very serious?” I said, and they exchanged a look that contained an entire conversation, but said nothing to anyone else. Then they nodded to me, almost as if their heads were mounted together on a Foosball rod.

“The neighbor’s dog,” I said.

“Told you,” Cody said.

“He was always knocking over the garbage,” Astor said. “And pooping in our yard. And Nicky tried to make him bite us.”

“So Cody took care of him?” I asked.

“He’s the boy,” said Astor. “He likes to do that stuff. I just watch. Are you going to tell Mom?”

There it was. He likes to do that stuff. I looked at the two of them, watching me with no more worry than if they had just said they liked vanilla ice cream better than strawberry. “I won’t tell your mom,” I said. “But you can’t tell anybody else in the world, not ever. Just the three of us, nobody else, understand?”

“Okay,” Astor said, with a glance at her brother. “But why, Dexter?”

“Most people won’t understand,” I said. “Not even your mom.”

“You do,” said Cody in his husky near-whisper.

“Yes,” I said. “And I can help.” I took a deep breath and felt an echo rolling through my bones, down across the years from Harry so long ago to me right now, under the same Florida nightscape Harry and I had stood under when he said the same thing to me. “We have to get you squared away,” I said, and Cody looked at me with large blinkless eyes and nodded.

“Okay,” he said.