I turned down a small side street, pulled over, and parked, D E A R LY D E V O T E D D E X T E R
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and the Taurus parked right behind me. For a moment, nothing happened; we both sat there in our cars, waiting. Was I going to be arrested? If someone had followed me from the marina, it could be a very bad thing for Dashing Dexter.
Sooner or later, MacGregor’s absence would be noticed, and even the most routine investigation would reveal his boat.
Someone would go to see if it was there, and then the fact that Dexter had been there in the middle of the day might seem very significant.
It’s little things like this that make for successful police work. Cops look for these funny coincidences, and when they find them they can get very serious with the person who is in too many interesting places by mere happenstance. Even if that person has a police ID and an amazingly charming fake smile.
There really seemed nothing for me to do except bluff my way through: find out who was following me and why, and then convince them it was a silly way to waste time. I put on my very best Official Greeting face, got out of my car, and stepped briskly up to the Taurus. The window rolled down and the always angry face of Sergeant Doakes looked out at me, like an idol for some wicked god, carved from a piece of dark wood.
“Why you leaving work in the middle of the day so much lately?” he asked me. His voice had no real expression in it but still managed to give the impression that whatever I said would be a lie and he would like to hurt me for it.
“Why, Sergeant Doakes!” I said cheerfully. “What an amazing coincidence. What are you doing here?”
“You got something to do more important than
your job?”
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J E F F L I N D S A Y
he said. He really seemed uninterested in maintaining any sort of flow in the conversation, so I shrugged. When faced with people who have very limited conversational skills and no apparent desire to cultivate any, it’s always easier simply to go along.
“I, um—I had some personal things to take care of,” I said.
Very weak, I agree, but Doakes displayed an unnerving habit of asking the most awkward questions, and with such an understated viciousness, that I found it hard enough not to stutter, let alone come up with something clever.
He looked at me for several endless seconds, the way a starving pit bull looks at raw meat. “Personal things,” he said without blinking. It sounded even stupider when he repeated it.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Your dentist is over in the Gables,” he said.
“Well—”
“Your doctor, too, over on Alameda. Got no lawyer, sister still at work,” he said. “What kind of personal things did I leave out?”
“Actually, um, I, I—” I said, and I was amazed to hear myself stammer, but nothing else came out, and Doakes just looked at me as though he was begging me to make a run for it so he could practice his wing shot.
“Funny,” he said at last, “I got personal things to do out here, too.”
“Really?” I said, relieved to find that my mouth was once again capable of forming human speech. “And what would that be, Sergeant?”
It was the first time I had ever seen him smile, and I have D E A R LY D E V O T E D D E X T E R
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to say that I would have greatly preferred it if he had simply jumped out of the car and bitten me. “I’m watching YOU,” he said. He gave me a moment to admire the high gloss of his teeth, and then the window rolled up and he vanished behind the tinted glass like the Cheshire cat.
C H A P T E R 5
Given enough time, i am sure i could come up with an entire list of things more unpleasant than having Sergeant Doakes turn into my own personal shadow.
But as I stood there in my high-fashion foul-weather gear and thought of Reiker and his red boots slipping away from me, it seemed bad enough, and I was not inspired to think of anything worse. I simply climbed into my car, started the engine, and drove through the rain to my apartment. Ordi-narily, the homicidal antics of the other drivers would have comforted me, made me feel right at home, but for some reason the maroon Taurus following so close behind took away the glow.