I admired my sister’s ability to identify the “important thing,” but I really felt I should point out that it was the wrong one, because it did not include me. “Samantha didn’t want to be got,” I said. “She wants to be eaten.”
Deborah shook her head. “Nobody wants that,” she said. “She said that because she’s maybe a little fucked-up, and she started to identify with the assholes that grabbed her. But wants to be? I mean, eaten?” She made the sour-lemon face again and shook her head. “Come on, Dex.”
I could have told her that I was quite convinced, and that she would be, too, if she talked to Samantha for five minutes. But when Deborah makes up her mind, it takes a written order from the police commissioner to change it, and I didn’t think there was one in the works.
“And besides,” she said, “she’s back with her family now, and they can get her a shrink or whatever. The more important thing for us is to wrap this thing up, round up Bobby Acosta and the last of the group.”
“The coven,” I told her, and maybe I was being pedantic. “Samantha says it’s called a coven.”
Deborah frowned. “I thought that was witches,” she said. “It’s apparently cannibals, too,” I said.
“I don’t think you can call a group of guys a coven,” she said stubbornly. “I think it has to be witches. You know, women.”
It seemed like such a small point, especially after all I had just been through, and I was far too tired to argue it. Happily, my time with Samantha had prepared me to give exactly the right response. “Whatever,” I said. Deborah seemed satisfied with that, and after a few more empty remarks we were at my street. Deborah let me out in front of my house and drove off, and I thought no more about it in the pleasure of being home.
Home was waiting for me, and for some reason I found that surprising and touching. Deborah had called Rita and told her I would be late, not to worry, everything was fine, which seemed very close to callous overconfidence on her part. Rita had seen the news, though, which had made the capture into the evening’s lead story—and really, how could they possibly resist? Cannibals, missing teen, Everglades shootout—it was a perfect story. There had already been a phone call from a premium cable network, trying to get the rights to the story.
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In spite of Deborah’s reassurance, Rita had known somehow that I was right in the middle of things and in grave danger, and she responded like a true champion. She was waiting for me at the door in a state of ditherhood that was unmatched in my experience. “Oh, Dexter,” she sniffled as she half-drowned me in hugs and kisses. “We were so—It was on the news, and I saw you there, but even after Deborah called,” she said, and kissed me again. “The children were watching TV, and Cody said, ‘It’s Dexter,’ and I looked—It was a newsbreak,” she said, I suppose reassuring me that I had not made a surprise guest appearance on SpongeBob. “Oh, my God,” she went on, pausing to shudder and then hug me, burying her head up to the shoulders in my neck. “You shouldn’t have to do those things,” she said, with a great deal of justice. “You’re supposed to do forensics and—You don’t even have a gun, and it isn’t—How can they—But your sister said, and on TV they said it was the cannibals and they had you, and at least you found that girl, which I know was very important, but oh, my God, cannibals, I can’t even think how—And they had you, and they could have—” And she finally broke off, possibly from oxygen deprivation, and concentrated on snuffling into my shirt for a minute.
I took advantage of the break to look around with satisfaction at my modest kingdom. Cody and Astor were sitting on the couch watching us with matching expressions of disgust at the emotional exhibition, and right next to them sat my brother, Brian, beaming a huge and dreadful smile at one and all. Lily Anne was in her basket beside the couch, and she waved her toes at me in a warm and heartfelt greeting. It was a perfect family picture, suitable for framing; The Hero Returns to His Home. And although I was not completely pleased to see Brian here I could think of no reason to wish him gone, either. Besides, all the good will was infectious, even the artificial stuff coming from my brother, and the air was filled with a wonderful, saliva-inducing aroma that I recognized as one of the great miracles of the modern world: Rita’s roast pork.
Dorothy was right. There’s no place like home.
It would have been terribly rude to tell Rita she had snuffled long enough, but I had been through an awful lot, including starvation, and the smell that filled the house was setting off a frenzy in my guts that made the overdose of ecstasy look tame. Rita’s roast pork was a great work of art that could have made a statue lunge off its pedestal and cry, “Yummy!” So after I managed to disengage myself and dry my shoulder, I thanked her profusely and headed straight for the table, with only a brief pause to see Lily Anne and count her fingers and toes, just to make sure they were all still there.
And so we sat around the table, looking like a perfect family portrait, and it occurred to me how deceptive pictures can be. At the head of the table, of course, sat Dex-Daddy, a true monster trying to be a little more human. At his left was Brother Brian, a far worse monster and still completely unrepentant; and across from him sat two fresh-faced, innocent-seeming children, who wanted nothing more than to be just like their wicked uncle. And all of them wearing totally fake expressions of the deepest, most mundane humanity possible. It would have made a wonderful subject for Norman Rockwell, especially if he was feeling particularly sardonic.
Dinner went its tasty way, the silence broken mostly by lip smacking, moans of pleasure, and Lily Anne demanding to be fed, probably overcome by the smell and sound of the pork roast. Rita would occasionally shatter the silence with small non sequiturs of concern, rambling on until someone held out their plate for more—which we all did several times, except Lily Anne. And as the meal meandered on to its end and we proved again that “leftover roast pork” was an oxymoron in our house, I was very glad indeed to have returned in one piece to my little nest.
The feeling of bloated satisfaction continued, even after dinner, when Cody and Astor stampeded for the Wii and a game that involved killing awful-looking monsters, and I sat on the couch burping Lily Anne while Rita cleaned up. Brian sat next to me, and we watched the kids absentmindedly for a while before Brian finally spoke.
“Well,” he said at last. “So you survived your run-in with the coven.”
“Apparently,” I said.
He nodded and, as Cody obliterated a very nasty-looking creature, Brian called out, “Good one, Cody!” After a moment he turned back to me and said, “And have they caught the head witch yet?”
“George Kukarov,” I said. “He was shot and killed on the scene.”
“The man who ran that club, Fang?” he said, with surprise in his voice.
“That’s right,” I said. “And I have to say it was a very good shot, and just in time.”
Brian was silent for a minute, and then said, “I always thought the head of a coven had to be a woman.”
This was the second time tonight someone had argued with me about this, and I was a little tired of hearing about it. “It really isn’t my problem,” I said. “Deborah and her task force will round up the rest of them.”
“Not if she thinks that Kukarov guy is the leader,” he said.
Lily Anne erupted with a small but explosive belch, and I felt it soak slowly through the towel and into my shirt as she settled her head down and nodded off to sleep. “Brian,” I said. “I have spent a very bad day with these people, and I’m all done. I don’t care if the real leader of the coven is a man, or a woman, or a two-headed lizard from the Planet Nardone. It’s Deborah’s problem, and I’m all done with it—and why do you care, anyway?”
“Oh, I don’t care,” he said. “But you’re my little brother. Naturally I’m interested.”
And I might have said something else, something really cutting, but Astor overwhelmed any possible response with an anguished wail of “Nooooooo!” and we both jerked around to look at the TV screen, just in time to see the little golden-haired figure that represented her on-screen being eaten by a monster. Cody said, “Ha,” quietly but triumphantly, and raised his controller; the game went on, and I thought no more about witches, covens, and my brother’s interest in them.
The evening wound relentlessly on to its conclusion. I found myself yawning, hugely and loudly, and even though it was a little bit embarrassing, I could not stop myself. Of course, the dreadful ordeal I had been through was taking its toll on my poor battered system, and I am sure that roast pork is loaded with tryptophan or something like it. Perhaps it was the combination, but whatever the case it soon became plain to all that Dex-Daddy was on the ropes and about to join Lily Anne in Dreamland.