CHAPTER 24

I HAD NO DREAMS, NO SENSE OF TRAVELING OUTSIDE my body; I saw no parade of ghostly images or headless, bloodless bodies. No visions of sugarplums danced in my head. There was nothing there, not even me, nothing but a dark and timeless sleep. And yet when the telephone woke me up I knew that the call was about Deborah, and I knew that she was not coming. My hand was already sweating as I grabbed up the receiver. “Yes,” I said.

“This is Captain Matthews,” the voice said. “I need to speak to Detective Morgan, please.”

“She isn't here,” I said, a small part of me sinking from the thought and what it meant.

“Hmmp. Aahh, well, that's not— When did she leave?”

I glanced at the clock instinctively; it was a quarter after nine and I fell deeper into the sweats. “She was never here,” I told the captain.

“But she's signed out to your place. She's on duty—she's supposed to be there.”

“She never got here.”

“Well goddamn it,” he said. “She said you have some evidence we need.”

“I do,” I said. And I hung up the telephone.

I did have some evidence, I was terribly sure of that. I just didn't quite know what it was. But I had to figure it out, and I did not think I had a great deal of time. Or to be more accurate, I did not think Deb had a great deal of time.

And again, I was not aware of how I knew this. I did not consciously say to myself, “He has Deborah.” No alarming pictures of her impending fate popped into my brain. And I did not have to experience any blinding insights or think, “Gee, Deb should have been here by now; this is unlike her.” I simply knew, as I had known when I woke up, that Deb had come for me, and she had not made it. And I knew what that meant.

He had her.

He had taken her entirely for my benefit, this I knew. He had been circling closer and closer to me—coming into my apartment, writing small messages with his victims, teasing me with hints and glimpses of what he was doing. And now he was as close as he could get without being in the same room. He had taken Deb and he was waiting with her. Waiting for me.

But where? And how long would he wait before he became impatient and started to play without me?

And without me, I knew very well who his playmate would be—Deborah. She had turned up at my place dressed for work in her hooker outfit, absolutely gift-wrapped for him. He must have thought it was Christmas. He had her and she would be his special friend tonight. I did not want to think of her like that, taped and stretched tight and watching slow awful pieces of herself disappear forever. But that was how it would be. Under other circumstances, it might make a wonderful evening's entertainment—but not with Deborah. I was pretty sure I didn't want that, didn't want him to do anything permanent and wonderful, not tonight. Later, perhaps, with someone else. When we knew each other a little better. But not now. Not with Deborah.

And with that thought of course everything seemed better. It was just so nice to have that settled. I preferred my sister alive, rather than in small bloodless sections. Lovely, almost human of me. Now that was settled: What next? I could call Rita, perhaps take in a movie, or a walk in the park. Or, let's see—maybe, I don't know . . . save Deborah? Yes, that sounded like fun. But—

How?

I had a few clues, of course. I knew the way he thought—after all, I had been thinking that way myself. And he wanted me to find him. He had been sending that message loud and clear. If I could put all the distracting stupidity out of my head—all the dreams and New Age fairy-chasing and everything else—then I was certain that I could arrive at the logical and correct location. He would not have taken Deb unless he thought he had given me everything a clever monster would need to know in order to find him.

All right then, clever Dexter—find him. Track down the Deb-napper. Let your relentless logic slash across the back trail like an icy wolf pack. Kick the giant brain into high gear; let the wind race across the rocketing synapses of your powerful mind as it speeds to its beautiful, inevitable conclusion. Go, Dexter, go!

Dexter?

Hello? Is anybody in there?

Apparently not. I heard no wind from rocketing synapses. I was as empty as if I had never been. There was no swirl of debilitating emotions, of course, since I didn't have any emotions to swirl. But the result was just as daunting. I was as numb and drained as if I really could feel something. Deborah was gone. She was in terrible danger of becoming a fascinating work of performance art. And her only hope of maintaining any kind of existence beyond a series of still pictures tacked up on a police lab board was her battered, brain-dead brother. Poor dog-dumb Dexter, sitting in a chair with his brain running in circles, chasing its tail, howling at the moon.

I took a deep breath. Of all the times I had ever needed to be me, this was one of the foremost. I concentrated very hard and steadied me, and as a small amount of Dexter returned to fill the echo in my brain cavity, I realized just how human and stupid I had become. There was really no great mystery here. In fact, it was patently obvious. My friend had done everything but send a formal invitation reading, “The honor of your presence is requested at the vivisection of your sister. Black heart optional.” But even this small blob of logic was wiped out of my throbbing skull by a new thought that wormed its way in, oozing rotten logic.

I had been asleep when Deb disappeared.

Could that mean that once again I had done it without knowing it? What if I had already taken Deb apart somewhere, stacked the pieces in some small, cold storage room and—

Storage room? Where had that come from?

The closed-in feeling . . . the rightness of the closet at the hockey rink . . . the cool air blowing across my spine . . . Why did that matter? Why did I keep coming back to that? Because no matter what else happened, I did; I returned to those same illogical sense memories, and there was no reason for them that I could see. What did it mean? And why did I actually give a single hummingbird's fart what it meant? Because whether it meant something or not, it was all I had to go on. I had to find a place that matched that sense of cool and pressing rightness. There was simply no other way to go: find the box. And there I would find Deb, too, and find either myself or my not-self. Wasn't that simple?

No. It wasn't simple at all, just simpleminded. It made absolutely no sense to pay any attention to the ghostly secret messages floating up at me from my dreams. Dreams had no existence in reality, left no Freddy Krueger–crossover claw marks on our wake-up world. I couldn't very well dash out of the house and drive aimlessly around in a psychic funk. I was a cool and logical being. And so it was in a cool and logical manner that I locked my apartment door and strolled to the car. I still had no idea where I was going, but the need to get there quickly had grabbed the reins and whipped me down to the building's parking area, where I kept my car. But twenty feet away from my trusty vehicle I slammed to a stop as though I had run into an invisible wall.

The dome light was on.

I had certainly not left it on—it had been daylight when I parked, and I could see that the doors were closed tightly. A casual thief would have left the door ajar to avoid the noise from closing it.

I approached slowly, not at all sure what I expected to see or whether I really wanted to see it. From five feet away I could see something in the passenger seat. I circled the car carefully and peered down at it, my nerves tingling, and peeked in. And there it was.

Barbie again. I was getting quite a collection.

This one was dressed in a little sailor hat and a shirt with a bare midriff, and tight pink hot pants. In one hand she clutched a small suitcase that said CUNARD on the side.

I opened the door and picked up the doll. I pulled the little suitcase from Barbie's hand and popped it open. Some small something fell out and rolled onto the floorboard. I picked it up. It looked an awful lot like Deborah's class ring. On the inside of the band was etched D.M., Deborah's initials.

I collapsed onto the seat, clutching Barbie in my sweaty hands. I turned her over. I bent her legs. I waved her arms. And what did you do last night, Dexter? Oh, I played with my dolls while a friend chopped up my sister.

I did not waste any time wondering how Cruise Line Hooker Barbie had gotten into my car. This was clearly a message—or a clue? But clues really ought to hint at something, and this one seemed to lead in the wrong direction. Clearly he had Debbie—but Cunard? How did that fit in with tight cold killing space? I could see no connection. But there was really only one place in Miami where it did fit.

I drove up Douglas and turned right through Coconut Grove. I had to slow down to thread my way through the parade of happy imbeciles dancing between the shops and cafés. They all seemed to have far too much time and money and very few clues beyond that, and it took me much longer than it should have to get through them, but it was hard to be too upset since I didn't actually know where I was going. Onward to somewhere; along Bayfront Drive, over to Brickle, and into downtown. I saw no huge neon signs bedecked with flashing arrows and encouraging words to direct me: “This way to the dissection!” But I drove on, approaching American Airlines Arena and, just beyond, MacArthur Causeway. In the quick glimpse I got on the near side of the arena, I could see the superstructure of a cruise ship in Government Cut, not a Cunard Lines ship, or course, but I peered anxiously for some sign. It seemed obvious that I was not actually being directed onto a cruise ship; too crowded, too many snooping officials. But somewhere nearby, somewhere related—which of course had to mean what? No further clues. I looked hard enough at the cruise ship to melt the poop deck, but Deborah did not spring from the hold and dance down the gangway.

I looked some more. Beside the ship, cargo cranes reared up into the night sky like abandoned props from Star Wars. A little farther and the stacks of cargo boxes were just barely visible in the dark below the cranes, great untidy heaps of them, scattered across the ground as if a gigantic and very bored child had flung out his toy box full of building blocks. Some of the storage boxes were refrigerated. And then beyond these boxes—

Back up just for a moment, dear boy.

Who was that whispering to me, muttering what soft words to all-alone darkly driving Dexter? Who sat behind me now; whose dry chuckling filled the backseat? And why? What message was rattling into my brainless, echo-empty head?

Storage boxes.

Some of them refrigerated.

But why the storage boxes? What possible reason could I have to be interested in a pile of cold, tightly enclosed spaces?

Oh, yes. Well. Since you put it that way.

Could this be the place, the future home of the Dexter's Birthplace Museum? With authentic, lifelike exhibits, including a rare live performance by Dexter's only sister?

I yanked my steering wheel hard, cutting off a BMW with a very loud horn. I extended my middle finger, for once driving like the Miami native I was, and accelerated over the causeway.

The cruise ship was off to the left. The area with all the boxes was on the right, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. I drove around one time on the access road, wrestling a rising tide of certainty and a swelling chorus of what sounded like college fight songs from the Dark Passenger. The road dead-ended at a guard booth well before I got to the containers. There was a gate with several uniformed gentlemen lounging about, and no way through without answering some fairly embarrassing questions. Yes, officer, I wondered if I could come in and look around? You see, I thought it might be a good place for a friend of mine to slice up my sister.

I cut through a line of orange cones in the middle of the road thirty feet from the gate and turned around, back the way I had come. The cruise ship loomed on the right now. I turned left just before I came to the bridge back to the mainland and drove into a large area with a terminal on one end and a chain-link fence on the other. The fence was gaily decorated with signs that threatened dire punishment to anyone who strayed into the area, signed by U.S. Customs.

The fence led back to the main road along a large parking lot, empty at this time of night. I cruised its perimeter slowly, staring at the containers on the far side. These would be from foreign ports, needing to go through customs, access tightly controlled. It would be much too difficult for anyone to get in and out of this area, especially if they were carrying questionable loads of body parts and the like. I would either need to find a different area or admit that chasing vague feelings dredged up from a series of taunting dreams and a scantily clad doll was a waste of time. And the sooner I admitted that, the better my chance of finding Deb. She was not here. There was no reason she should be.

At last, a logical thought. I felt better already, and certainly would have been smug about it—if I had not seen a familiar panel truck parked right up against the inside of the fence, parked to display the lettering on the side that said ALLONZO BROTHERS. My private crowd in the basement of my brain sang too loudly for me to hear myself smirk, so I pulled over and parked. The clever-boy part of me was knocking on the front door of my brain and calling out, “Hurry! Hurry! Go-go-go!” But around back the lizard slithered up to the window and flicked its cautious tongue, and so I sat for a long moment before I finally climbed out of the car.

I walked to the fence and stood like a bit-part actor in a World War II prison camp movie, my fingers locked in the mesh of the fence, peering hungrily at what lay beyond, only a few impossible yards away. I was sure that there must be a very simple way for a marvelously intelligent creature like me to get in, but it was some indication of the state I was in that I could not seem to fasten one thought onto another. I had to get in, but I could not. And so I stood there clinging to the fence and looking in, knowing full well that everything that mattered was right there, only a few yards away, and I was completely unable to fling my giant brain at the problem and catch a solution as it bounced back. The mind picks some very bad times to take a walk, doesn't it?

My backseat alarm clock went off. I had to move away, and right now. I was standing suspiciously in a well-guarded area, and it was night; any moment one of the guards was certain to take an interest in the handsome young man peering intelligently through the fence. I would have to move on and find some way in as I rolled along in my car. I stepped back from the fence, giving it one last, loving look. Right there where my feet had touched the fence, a break was barely visible. The fence links had been snipped just enough to allow entry for one human being, or even a good copy like me. The flap was pinned in place by the weight of the parked truck so it would not swing out and give itself away. It must have been done recently, this evening, since the truck had arrived.

My final invitation.

I backed away slowly, feeling an automatic hello-there kind of absentminded smile climb up on my face as a disguise. Hello there, officer, just out for a walk. Lovely evening for a dismemberment, isn't it? I cheerfully scuffed over to my car, looking around at nothing but the moon over the water, whistling a happy tune as I climbed in and drove away. No one seemed to be paying any attention whatsoever—except, of course, for the Hallelujah chorus in my mind. I nudged my car into a parking place over by the cruise ship office, perhaps one hundred yards from my little handmade gate into Paradise. A few other cars were scattered nearby. No one would pay any mind to mine.

But as I parked another car slid into the spot next to me, a light blue Chevy with a woman behind the wheel. I sat still for a moment. So did she. I opened my door and got out.

So did Detective LaGuerta.