Mrs. Aldovar, as advertised, was out cold on the floor.
FOUR
FOR A VERY LONG MOMENT WE ALL STOOD IN A FROZEN tableau of hostile indecision. Debs and Recht stared at each other, Deke breathed through his mouth, and I tried to decide whether assisting the fallen woman was technically within my jurisdiction as a blood-spatter analyst. And then there was a clatter at the front door and I heard a minor commotion behind me.
“Shit,” a male voice called out, quite clearly. “Shit, shit, shit.”
It was impossible to argue with the general sentiment, but nevertheless I turned around to see if I could gather some specifics. A middle-aged man hurried toward us. He was tall and soft-looking and had close-cropped gray hair and a matching beard. He slid to one knee beside Mrs. Aldovar and picked up her hand. “Hey, Emily? Honey?” he said as he patted her hand. “Come on, Em.”
I have spent my entire career working with first-rate professional investigators, and some of it must have rubbed off on me, because I almost immediately deduced that this had to be Mr. Aldovar. And my sister is no slouch, either, because she had arrived at the same startling conclusion. She managed to rip her gaze away from Recht and look down to the man on the floor.
“Mr. Aldovar?” she said.
“Come on, honey,” he said, hopefully not to Deborah. “Yes, I’m Michael Aldovar.”
Mrs. Aldovar opened her eyes and wobbled them from side to side. “Michael?” she muttered.
Deborah knelt down beside them, apparently thinking that conscious parents are more interesting than the fainted kind. “I’m Sergeant Morgan,” she said. “I’m investigating your daughter’s disappearance.”
“I don’t have any money,” he said, and Deborah looked startled for a moment. “I mean, if there’s a ransom, or—She knows that. Samantha can’t think—Has there been any phone call?”
Deborah shook her head as if trying to shake water off. “Can you tell me where you’ve been, sir?”
“There was a conference in Raleigh,” Mr. Aldovar said. “Medical statistics. I had to—Emily called and said Samantha had been kidnapped.”
Deborah looked up at Recht and then quickly back to Mr. Aldovar. “It wasn’t kidnapping,” she said.
He didn’t move at all for a second, and then he looked directly at Deborah, still holding his wife’s hand. “What are you saying?” he said.
“Can I talk to you for a moment, sir?” Deborah said.
Mr. Aldovar looked away, then down at his wife. “Can we get my wife into a chair or something?” he said. “I mean, is she all right?”
“I’m fine,” Mrs. Aldovar said. “I just …”
“Dexter,” Debs said, jerking her head at me. “Get some smelling salts or something. You and Deke help her up.”
It’s always nice to have a question answered, and now I knew. Apparently, it actually was within my jurisdiction to help women who faint at a crime scene.
So I squatted down beside Mrs. Aldovar, and Deborah led Mr. Aldovar off to one side. Deke looked at me anxiously, reminding me very much of a large and handsome dog who needs a stick to fetch. “Hey, you got some of that smelling stuff?” he said.
Apparently it had become universally accepted that Dexter was the Eternal Keeper of the Smelling Salts. I had no idea where that baffling canard had come from, but in truth, I was completely without.
Luckily, Mrs. Aldovar apparently was not interested in sniffing anything. She gripped my arm, and Deke’s, and murmured, “Help me up, please,” and the two of us heaved her to her feet. I looked around for a horizontal surface uncluttered by law enforcement where we could deposit her, and spotted a dining table complete with chairs in the next room.
Mrs. Aldovar did not need a great deal of help getting into the chair. She sat right down as if she had done the same thing many times before.
I looked back into the next room. Special Agent Recht and her generic companion were edging their way toward the door, and Deborah was very carefully not noticing them. She was instead busy chatting with Mr. Aldovar. Angel Batista-No-Relation was standing on the patio, just outside a sliding glass door, dusting the glass for fingerprints. And I knew that just down the hallway, the huge bloodstain still hung on the wall, calling for Dexter. This was my world, the land of violence, gore, and mayhem. Both personally and professionally, this was where I had lived my whole life.
But today it had lost the rosy glow that had for so many years kept me enchanted. I did not want to be here, browsing through the residue of someone else’s happy frolic—and even more, I did not want to be off on a carefree romp of my own. I needed different vistas today. I had come to the old turf unwillingly, out of duty to Deborah, and now I wanted to go back to my new country, where all was bright and beautiful, the Land of Lily Anne.
Deborah glanced up at me without any real recognition and then back to Mr. Aldovar. I was scenery to her, part of what a crime scene looked like, Dexter as Background. Enough: It was time for me to leave,
to go back to Lily Anne and Wonder.
And so without lingering for any awkward farewells, I slid out the door and walked back to my car, where it still sat nestled in by the Dumpster. I drove to the hospital in the prelude to evening rush hour, a magical time when everyone on the road felt empowered and entitled to all the lanes at once because they had left work early, and in my past life I had taken great joy in the sight of so much naked contempt for life. Today it left me cold. These people were endangering others, not something I could tolerate in a world where I would soon be driving Lily Anne to ballet lessons. I drove at a careful ten miles per hour over the speed limit, which only served to enrage most of the other drivers. They flew past me on both sides, honking and extending their middle fingers, but I held firm to my safe and sane course, and soon I arrived at the hospital, without any actual exchange of gunfire.
As I came off the elevator on the floor for maternity I paused for a second as the faint echo of a whisper rattled off the back wall of Dexter’s Dark Subbasement. This was where I had almost seen somebody who might have been watching me for some reason. But the thought came out sounding so ludicrous that I could do no more than shake my head and send a distant Tut-tut to the Passenger. “Almost Somebody” indeed. I moved on past, turning the corner to the nursery.