“Is that a no?”
She moved her head an inch to the right. “That door over there,” she said. “They’re waiting.”
They were indeed. At the head of the conference table Captain Matthews sat with a cup of coffee and a scowl. Ranged around the table were Deborah and Doakes, Vince Masuoka, Camilla Figg, and the four uniformed cops who had been setting the perimeter at the little house of horror when we arrived. Matthews nodde
d at me and said, “Is this everybody?”
Doakes stopped glaring at me and said, “Paramedics.”
Matthews shook his head. “Not our problem. Somebody will talk to them later.” He cleared his throat and looked 6 8
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down, as though consulting an invisible script. “All right,” he said, and cleared his throat again. “The, uh, the event of yesterday which occurred at, um, N.W. 4th Street has been inter-dicted, ah, at the very highest level.” He looked up, and for a moment I thought he was impressed. “Very highest,” he said.
“You are all hereby ordered to keep to yourselves what you may have seen, heard, or surmised in connection with this event and its location. No comment, public or private, of any kind.” He looked at Doakes, who nodded, and then he looked around the table at all of us. “Therefore, ah . . .”
Captain Matthews paused and frowned as he realized that he didn’t actually have a “therefore” for us. Luckily for his reputation as a smooth talker, the door opened. We all turned to look.
The doorway was filled with a very big man in a very nice suit. He wore no tie and the top three buttons of his shirt were undone. A diamond pinkie ring glittered on the little finger of his left hand. His hair was wavy and artfully mussed. He looked to be in his forties, and time had not been kind to his nose. A scar ran across his right eyebrow and another down one side of his chin, but the overall impression was not disfigurement so much as decoration. He looked at us all with a cheerful grin and bright, empty blue eyes, pausing in the doorway for a dramatic moment before he looked to the head of the table and said, “Captain Matthews?”
The captain was a reasonably large man and masculine in a very well-kept way, but he looked small and even effeminate compared to the man in the doorway, and I believe he felt it. Still, he clenched his manly jaw and said, “That’s right.”
The big man strode in to Matthews and held out his hand.
D E A R LY D E V O T E D D E X T E R
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“Nice to meet you, Captain. I’m Kyle Chutsky. We talked on the phone.” As he shook hands, he glanced around the table, pausing at Deborah before moving back to Matthews. But after only half a second his head snapped back around and he locked stares with Doakes, just for a moment. Neither one of them said anything, moved, twitched, or offered a business card, but I was absolutely positive they knew each other.
Without acknowledging this in any way, Doakes looked down at the table in front of him and Chutsky returned his attention to the captain. “You have a great department here, Captain Matthews. I hear nothing but good things about you guys.”
“Thank you . . . Mr. Chutsky,” Matthews said stiffly. “Have a seat?”
Chutsky gave him a big, charming smile. “Thanks, I will,”
he said, and slid into the empty seat next to Deborah. She didn’t turn to look at him, but from my spot across the table I could see a slow flush climbing up her neck, all the way to her scowl.
And at this point, I could hear a little voice in the back of Dexter’s brain clearing its throat and saying, “Excuse me, just a minute—but what the hell is going on here?” Perhaps someone had slipped some LSD into my coffee, because this entire day was beginning to feel like Dexter in Wonderland. Why were we even here? Who was the battered big guy who made Captain Matthews nervous? How did he know Doakes? And why, for the love of all that is shiny, bright, and sharp, was Deborah’s face turning such an unbecoming shade of red?
I often find myself in situations where it seems to me like everyone else has read the instruction book while poor Dex-
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ter is in the dark and can’t even match tab A with slot B. It usually relates to some natural human emotion, something that is universally understood. Unfortunately, Dexter is from a different universe and does not feel nor understand such things. All I can do is gather a few quick clues to help me decide what kind of face to make while I wait for things to settle back onto the familiar map.
I looked at Vince Masuoka. I was probably closer to him than any of the other lab techs, and not just because we took turns bringing in doughnuts. He always seemed to be faking his way through life, too, as if he had watched a series of videos to learn how to smile and talk to people. He was not quite as talented at pretending as I was, and the results were never as convincing, but I felt a certain kinship.
Right now he looked flustered and intimidated, and he seemed to be trying hard to swallow without any real luck.
No clue there.
Camilla Figg was sitting at attention, staring at a spot on the wall in front of her. Her face was pale, but there was a small and very round spot of red color on each cheek.
Deborah, as mentioned, was slumping down in her chair and seemed very busily engaged in turning bright scarlet.