“I don’t know,” I said weakly. “It doesn’t seem right.”

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Deborah smiled gently. I would have felt more at ease if she had snarled and told me to fuck off, but she smiled and reached a hand across the desk to pat mine. “Dex,” she said softly, “the hard evidence is more than enough. The background fits. The motive is good. You admit you’re not having one of your . . . hunches.” She cocked her head to the side, still smiling, which made me even more uneasy. “This one is righteous, Bro. Whatever is bothering you, don’t pin it on this. He did it, we got him, that’s it.” She let go of my hand before either one of us could burst into tears. “But I’m a little worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” I said, and it sounded false even to me.

Deborah looked at me for a long moment, and then stood up.

“All right,” she said. “But I’m here for you if you need me.” And she turned and walked away.

Somehow I slogged through the gray soup of the rest of the day and made it all the way home to Rita’s at the end of the day, where the soup gelled into an aspic of sensory deprivation. I don’t know what we had for dinner, or what anyone might have said. The only thing I could bring myself to listen for was the sound of the Passenger rushing back in, and this sound did not come. And so I swam through the evening on automatic pilot and finally went to bed, still completely wrapped up in Dull Empty Dexter.

It surprised me a great deal to learn it, but sleep is not automatic for humans, not even for the semi-human I was becoming. The old me, Dexter of the Darkness, had slept perfectly, with great ease, simply lying down, closing his eyes, and thinking, “One two three GO.” Presto, sleep-o.

But the New Model Dexter had no such luck.

I tossed, I turned, I commanded my pitiful self to go immediately to sleep with no further dithering, and all to no avail. I could not sleep. I could only lie there wide-eyed and wonder why.

And as the night dragged on, so did the terrible, dreary introspection. Had I been misleading myself my entire life? What if I was not Dashing Slashing Dexter and his Canny Sidekick the Passenger? What if I was, in fact, actually only a Dark Chauffeur, allowed to live in a small room at the big house in exchange for driving the 108

JEFF LINDSAY

master on his appointed rounds? And if my services were no longer required, what could I possibly be now that the boss had moved away? Who was I if I was no longer me?

It was not a happy thought, and it did not make me happy. It also did not help me sleep. Since I had already tossed and turned exhaustively, without getting exhausted, I now concentrated on rolling and pitching, with much the same result. But finally, at around 3:30 a.m., I must have hit on the right combination of pointless movement and I dropped off at last into a shallow uncomfortable sleep.

The sound and smell of bacon cooking woke me up. I glanced at the clock—it was 8:32, later than I ever sleep. But of course it was Saturday morning. Rita had allowed me to doze on in my miserable unconsciousness. And now she would reward my return to the land of the waking with a bountiful breakfast. Yahoo.

Breakfast did, in fact, take some of the sourness out of me. It is very hard to maintain a really good feeling of utter depression and total personal worthlessness when you are full of food, and I gave up trying halfway through an excellent omelet.

Cody and Astor had naturally been awake for hours—Saturday morning was their unrestricted television time, and they usually took advantage of it to watch a series of cartoon shows that would certainly have been impossible before the discovery of LSD. They did not even notice me when I staggered past them on my way to the kitchen, and they stayed glued to the image of a talking kitchen utensil while I finished my breakfast, had a final cup of coffee, and decided to give life one more day to get its act together.

“All better?” Rita asked as I put down my coffee mug.

“It was a very nice omelet,” I said. “Thank you.”

She smiled and lunged up out of her chair to give me a peck on the cheek before flinging all the dishes in the sink and starting to wash them. “Remember you said you’d take Cody and Astor somewhere this morning,” she said over the sound of running water.

“I said that?”

“Dexter, you know I have a fitting this morning. For my wedding gown. I told you that weeks ago, and you said fine, you would DEXTER IN THE DARK

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take care of the kids while I went over to Susan’s for the fitting, and then I really need to go to the florist’s and see about some arrangements, even Vince offered to help me with that, he says he has a friend?”

“I doubt that,” I said, thinking of Manny Borque. “Not Vince.”

“But I said no thanks. I hope that was all right?”

“Fine,” I said. “We have only one house to sell to pay for things.”

“I don’t want to hurt Vince’s feelings and I’m sure his friend is wonderful, but I have been going to Hans for flowers since forever, and he would be brokenhearted if I went somewhere else for the wedding.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll take the kids.”

Tags: Jeff Lindsay Dexter Mystery
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