BooksBarbecue
Back Dexter in the Dark
Chapters (41)
  1. Dexter in the Darkby Jeff Lindsay
  2. IN THE BEGINNING
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. NINE
  12. TEN
  13. ELEVEN
  14. TWELVE
  15. THIRTEEN
  16. FOURTEEN
  17. FIFTEEN
  18. SIXTEEN
  19. SEVENTEEN
  20. EIGHTEEN
  21. NINETEEN
  22. TWENTY
  23. TWENTY-ONE
  24. TWENTY-TWO
  25. TWENTY-THREE
  26. TWENTY-FOUR
  27. TWENTY-FIVE
  28. TWENTY-SIX
  29. TWENTY-SEVEN
  30. TWENTY-EIGHT
  31. TWENTY-NINE
  32. THIRTY
  33. THIRTY-ONE
  34. THIRTY-TWO
  35. THIRTY-THREE
  36. THIRTY-FOUR
  37. THIRTY-FIVE
  38. THIRTY-SIX
  39. THIRTY-SEVEN
  40. THIRTY-EIGHT
  41. THIRTY-NINE

I shook my head to silence it and nearly fell over. I felt a hand grabbing my arm to steady me, but whether it was Debs, Vince, or Moloch himself, I couldn't tell. From far away a voice was calling my name, but it was singing it, the cadence rising up to the far-too-familiar rhythm of that music. I closed my eyes and felt heat on my face and the music got louder. Something shook me and I opened my eyes.

The music stopped. The heat was just the Miami sun, with the wind whipping in the clouds of an afternoon squall. Deborah held both my elbows and shook me, saying my name over and over patiently.

"Dexter," she said. "Hey Dex, come on. Dexter. Dexter." "Here I am," I said, although I was not entirely sure of that. "You okay, Dex?" she said. "I think I stood up too fast," I said. She looked dubious. "Uh-huh," she said. "Really, Debs, I'm fine now," I said. "I mean, I think so." "You think so," she said. "Yes. I mean, I just stood up too fast."

She looked at me a moment longer, then let go and stepped back. "Okay," she said. "Then if you can make it to the boat, let's get back." It may be that I was still dizzy, but there seemed to be no sense in her words, almost as if they were just made-up syllables. "Get back?" I said.

"Dexter," she said. "We got six bodies, and our only suspect is on the ground here with no head." "Right," I said, and I heard a faint drumbeat under my voice. "So where are we going?"

Deborah balled up her fists and clenched her teeth. She looked down at the body, and for a moment I thought she was actually going to spit. "What about the guy you chased into the canal?" she said at last.

"Starzak? No, he said…" I stopped myself from finishing, but not quite soon enough, because Deborah pounced. "He said? When did you talk to him, goddamn it?"

To be fair to me, I really was still a little bit dizzy, and I had not thought before I spoke, and now I was in a somewhat awkward spot. I could not very well tell my sister that I had spoken to him just the other night when I had taped him to his workbench and tried to cut him up into small neat pieces. But the blood must have been flowing back into my brain, because I very quickly said, "I mean, he seemed," I said. "He seemed to be just a…I don't know," I said. "I think it was personal, like I cut him off in traffic."