Double Dexter

TWENTY-FIVE

It may be that I will have to rethink the possibility of a kind and caring Deity, because I did live through the night. This did not come without a price, however. Frank s nearly endless list of the terrors of the wild had included dozens of lethal insects, and yet he had left out one of the most common the mosquito. Perhaps upset at being left off the list, the mosquito hordes had gathered their vast army inside our tent, and they spent the night making sure that I would never forget them again. When I woke up, much too early, my face and hands, which had been exposed all night, were covered with bites, and as I sat up I was actually a little bit dizzy from the loss of blood.

Cody was in slightly better shape, since he had been so worried about rabid alligators and zombies with metal hooks that he had wiggled all the way down inside his sleeping bag and left only his nose sticking out. But the tip of his nose was crowded with red dots, as if the insects had held a competition to see how many bites they could fit onto the smallest area of exposed skin.

We crawled weakly out of the tent, scratching ourselves vigorously, and somehow staggered over to the fire circle without fainting. Frank already had a cooking fire going, and I perked up a little when I saw he had some water boiling in a kettle. But because the Universe was clearly set on punishing Dexter for all his real and imagined sins, no one had brought any kind of coffee, not even instant, and the boiling water was all used to make hot chocolate.

The morning crawled on through breakfast and into Organized Activities. Frank started the boys on a snipe hunt, which was mostly intended to humiliate the new Cubs who had not been camping with the pack before. Each of these Newbies was given a large paper bag and a stick and told to beat the bushes with the stick and yodel until the snipes ran out and jumped into the bag. Luckily, Cody was too suspicious to fall for this hoax, and he stood beside me and watched the hilarity with a puzzled frown, until a giggling Frank finally called off the game.

After that, everyone got out their nature booklets, and we all wandered into the Lethal Forest again to see how many different things from the booklet we could identify before one of them killed us. Cody and I did very well, finding many of the birds, and almost all the plants. I even discovered some poison ivy. Unfortunately, I found it in a very direct way. I saw what I thought was a black scorpion crawling away, and when I carefully pushed aside some foliage to show it to Cody, he pointed at the plant I was holding and held up his booklet.

Poison ivy, he said. He pointed to the illustration, and I nodded; it was a perfect match. I was actually holding poison ivy in my unprotected hands. Since they were already covered with mosquito bites, it seemed redundant, but clearly I was in for an epic itch. Now if only an endangered species of eagle would attack me and claw out my eyeballs, my Wilderness Adventure would be complete. I scrubbed with soap and water and even took an antihistamine, but my already itchy hands were throbbing and swelling up by the time we hiked back to our cars for the drive home.

Other campers who had not had such wonderful luck encountering Our Lethal Forest Friends milled around and called to each other happily, while I cradled my hands and waited for everyone to arrive in the parking lot and find their assigned vehicle. For some reason, possibly just one more mean trick on me by a positively cranky Fate, Doug Crowley s group all arrived together, got into the beat-up old Cadillac, and drove away for home while Cody and I were still waiting for Mario. I watched the old car cruise past and head out of the parking lot and then turn right onto the highway. The car gave a funny lurch and backfired once, causing a strange rattling sound as the piston knocked at the same time the loose front bumper shook. Then the old Caddy accelerated and was gone down the road, and I turned away and leaned on my car, watching the trailhead for any sign of Mario.

Mario did not appear. A fly began to circle my head obsessively, searching for whatever it is that flies always want. I didn t know what it was, but I was evidently full of it, because the fly found me overwhelmingly attractive. It circled, darted in toward my face, and circled some more, and it would not give up and go away. I swatted at the fly, but I couldn t touch it, and my flailing didn t seem to discourage it. I wondered whether the fly was poisonous, too. If not, I would certainly be allergic to it. I swatted again with no luck, maybe because my hands were swollen from the poison ivy and mosquito bites. Or maybe I was just getting old and slow. I probably was, just when I needed all my reflexes at peak ability to deal with the threats coming at me, known and unknown.

I thought about Hood and Doakes, and wondered what they had been doing to frame me while I was busy infecting myself with plant and insect venom. I hoped that the lawyer Rita was arranging would help, but I had a very bad feeling that he wouldn t. I have been in and around the law my whole life, and it s always seemed to me that when you need a lawyer it s already too late.

Then I thought about my Shadow, and I wondered how and when he would come at me. It sounded so melodramatic, right out of an ancient comic book. The Shadow is coming. Mooo-hahaha. Goofy rather than dangerous, as far as the sound was concerned, but then sounds can be misleading. Like the sound of Crowley s car backfiring it sounded like the car was about to fall apart, but obviously the old thing made it here safely. And I had heard that sound before.

I blinked. Where had that thought come from?

I swatted at the fly again and missed. I was certain I had heard that distinctive clattering backfire not too long ago, but I couldn t remember when. But so what? Not important. Just more clutter in my overloaded mental works. Funny sound, though, very singular, and I was sure I d heard it before. Bang, rattle-rattle. But my brain stayed blank; perhaps the poor ravaged thing was collapsing into premature senility. Quite likely an inevitable side effect of the recent combination of peril and frustration and loss of blood from the mosquitoes. Even the one time I had slipped out for a little amusement had gone wrong; I played that evening back mentally, once again remembering the horrible surprise in the grubby little house. And it had started out with such a promising feel to it, from the dark and deserted street outside when I felt so eager, ready, unstoppable even, when I had been unexpectedly lit up by a passing car

Without realizing what I was doing I found myself standing up straight and staring out at the highway. It was a stupid thing to do; Crowley s car was long gone. I stared after it anyway, for a very long time, until I finally became aware that Cody was jerking on my arm and saying my name.

Dexter. Dexter. Mario s here. Dexter, let s go, he said, and I became aware that he had said it more than once, but it didn t matter, because I was also aware of something much more important.

I knew when I had heard that backfire before.

Bang. Double rattle.

Dexter stands there bathed in the light of an old car s high beams, holding his gym bag filled with party favors and blinking at the light. Just standing on the sidewalk, wrapped in the cool cocoon of my Need-filled disguise, and as the car turns the corner I am suddenly lit up like I am on center stage and singing the title song of a Broadway show and whoever is in that car can see me as clearly as if it is a bright summer afternoon.

Just that one frozen moment of perfect illumination; then the car speeds up:

Bang. Double rattle.

And it hurries away, around the next corner and into the night and away from the grubby little house on the dark street, away from the neighborhood where Dexter has found his Witness s Honda.

And Dexter thinks no more about it and goes on into the house, and is still staring at the Almost-familiar Thing on the table when the sirens begin to wind closer because someone had known exactly when I went in, and timed their call to 911 perfectly because he had seen me outside, lit up in his high beams, and when he was sure it was me he had put his foot down hard on the accelerator to get away and make his call

Bang. Double rattle.

Away into the night while Dexter slipped inside for his gaping and drooling lesson.

And now he has told me he is coming Closer, to mock me, to punish me, to become me

And he has come closer, all the way up to my face.

Doug Crowley is Bernie Elan; my Shadow.

I had thought it was self-indulgent nonsense, blather from a deranged doofus, and I would be more than a match for whatever he could come up with. But then Camilla turned up dead and I was blamed for it.

And just like he had promised, I looked very bad all of a sudden.

He had gotten into Camilla s apartment and seen all the pictures of me, and even left one of his own Camilla and me face-to-face, the final clinching shot in his collage, the ideal way to set me up and take me down. And he had killed Camilla to push all the suspicion on to me. It was very neat; whether I was ever actually arrested or not didn t matter. I was pinned in the spotlight, under constant scrutiny, and therefore completely helpless to do anything. One small part of me actually paused and admired the way he had worked it. But it was a very small part, and I crushed it quickly and felt myself begin to smolder. Closer than you think, he had said, and he had done exactly that. His stupid, awkward attempt at conversation that I had found so irritating; I had wondered why he wouldn t go away and leave me alone. And now I knew why. He had been riding up into my face and touching me to say, This could have been your death, and you are too slow and stupid to stop me.

Boo.

And he was right. He had proved it. I hadn t suspected anything, felt nothing but irritation as he had goggled down at me and blathered nonsense and then walked away, no doubt lit up inside like the Fourth of July sky. And I didn t even know it until right now.

Bang. Double rattle.

Gotcha.

Dexter? Cody said one more time, and he sounded a little worried. I looked at him frowning at me and tugging at my arm. Mario and Steve Binder stood behind him, watching me and looking uncomfortable.

Sorry, guys, I said. I was just thinking about something. And it is a tribute to my long years of diligent training that even though my brain was screaming at me to run to action stations and open fire with all guns, I still managed to maintain my cheerful disguise and get all three boys into the car and start driving, and I even remembered the right direction to take us all home.

Happily for us all, Mario was much quieter on the long ride back. He had stumbled onto a wasp mound and gotten three or four stings before he escaped, which just proves that insects are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. The other boy, Steve Binder, just sat silently beside him in the backseat, frowning. Every now and then he would turn and stare at Mario s wasp stings, poke one with a finger, and smirk when Mario jumped. Even in my profound mental funk, I began to warm up to Steve Binder just a little.

Other than those few interruptions, the drive home was quiet, and I used the relative silence to think, which was something I desperately needed to do right now. With a few minutes of reflection I pulled myself off high alert and began to sort through things calmly and rationally. All right: The Caddy s sound was distinctive, but that was not conclusive proof of anything. Sounds like that might come from any old car. And to think of Crowley as being dangerous in any way took some hard work. He was so completely soft, inept, his presence almost intangible which the writer of Shadowblog had made a point of saying about himself. It was where the name Shadowblog came from. I walk into a room and it s like they can t even see me, like I m no more than a fucking shadow. A perfect description of Crowley, if shadows could be annoying.

But to think of it as a disguise, the same kind as mine? Ridiculous it was too good, maybe even better than mine, which I did not want to admit at all. And it was impossible that it could be good enough to fool me and fool the Passenger, too. Nobody was that good especially nobody who had so much trouble faking a real-looking smile. To think that anything with an appearance that soft and insubstantial could hammer Camilla Figg to death it was absurd. It made no sense at all.

I remembered my admiration of the heron back in the swamp: so cute and fuzzy, and so very deadly. Was it possible that Crowley was not a bland doofus at all, but was actually another of Nature s great achievements, something like the heron, which looked so tame and pleasant that it got right on top of you and got its beak into you while you were still admiring the plumage?

It was possible. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was likely, too.

Crowley was my Shadow.

He had stalked me, framed me, and then come right up to me to gloat about it. And now he was going to push me out of my life and into the Dark Forever, where I had sent so many deserving friends. And then what would he do, take my place? Become the new Dark Avenger? Turn himself into Dexter Mark II, a double with a new look, softer and more harmless-looking? Lure his victims in with the appearance of bland and annoying Normality and then bang! Speared and swallowed, just like the heron s prey.

Maybe it should have been comforting to think that someone wanted to continue my Good Works after I was gone, but I was not comforted, not at all. I liked being me and doing what I did, and I was not done yet, not by a long shot. I planned to go on being Dexter for a very long time, finding the wicked and sending them on their way, and I had one very immediate candidate in mind. It had become personal. I knew that was a bad thing, against the Harry Code and everything I knew to be right and true, but I wanted Doug Crowley, or Bernie Elan, or whoever he wanted to be. More than I had ever wanted anything, I wanted to get my hands on him and tape him to a table and watch him squirm and see his eyes bulge out with terror and smell the fear sweat as it broke out all over him and then slowly, very slowly, raise up a small and very sharp blade and as his eyes go red with knowing that the agony is coming I will smile and I will begin his very own end.

He thought he was so clever, coming right up to my face and mumbling stupidly, while all the while he was playing his game, touching me lightly instead of killing me. He had been counting coup on me, that ancient game of the Plains Indians. It was the ultimate insult if you were a Lakota, a failure of manhood so shameful it could actually end a warrior s life when it happened, to be touched by an enemy while you stood helpless but I was not a Native American. I was Dexter, the One, the Only, and Crowley had overlooked one important thing:

The Lakota lost.

They rode off into the history books with their honor intact, but they lost the war and everything else because they came up against people who preferred to kill and didn t even know that they had been insulted and that was also a very good description of me. I did not play those kindergarten games. I came, I duct-taped, I conquered. That was who I am.

And he dared to think he could be me? And start off with such a lousy job of it? He had no idea what being Me really meant he had missed the point completely. But he was about to find out that Dexter s Point is on the end of a knife, and Dexter has no equal and no competition, and no one was ever going to take his place, least of all a chinless geek who had to steal my methods because he didn t even have his own personality. Crowley was going to learn firsthand why there could never be a Dexter Double, and that lesson would be his very last and his most painful, and he would take it with him into the red darkness and as he spun away into All Over Forever he would know he had been taught the Ultimate Lesson by the Old Master.

Doug Crowley was going to go the way of all flesh, and as quickly as possible I would find him and flense him and send him off to the ocean s floor in four neat and separate garbage bags, and I would do it before he could write another taunting drivel-filled blog bragging about his insult to me. I would tape him and teach him what it truly meant to be Me, and I would make him wish he had chosen someone else to fill out his shadow, and the only question at all was a very simple one-word query:

How?