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at the moment as the fact that they obviously wanted something and thought we
had it. "Come on," I said. "Everybody out of here." Rita turned to look at me,
but Cody stood his ground. "Move," I said, and Astor took Rita by the hand and
hurried through the door. I put a hand on Cody's shoulder and pushed him after
his mother, gently prying the plunger from his hands, and then I turned to
face the window.
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The noise continued, a hard scratching that sounded like someone was trying
to claw through the glass. Without any real conscious thought I stepped
forward and whacked the window with the rubber head of the toilet plunger.
The sound stopped.
For a long moment there was no sound except for my breathing, which I
realized was somewhat fast and ragged. And then, not too far away, I heard a
police siren cutting through the silence. I backed out of the bathroom,
watching the window.
Rita sat on the bed with Cody on one side of her and Astor on the other. The
children seemed quite calm, but Rita was clearly on the edge of hysteria.
"It's all right," I said. "The cops are almost here."
"Will it be Sergeant Debbie?" Astor asked me, and she added hopefully, "Do
you think she'll shoot somebody?"
"Sergeant Debbie is in bed, asleep," I said. The siren was near now, and with
a squeal of tires it came to a stop in front of our house and wound its way
down through the scale to a grumbling halt. "They're here," I told them, and
Rita lunged up off the bed and grabbed the children by the hand.
The three of them followed me out of the bedroom, and by the time we got to
the front door there was already a knock sounding on the wood, polite but
firm. Still, life teaches us caution, so I called out, "Who is it?"
"This is the police," a stern masculine voice said. "We have a report of a
possible break-in." It sounded authentic, but just to be sure, I left the
chain on as I opened the door and looked out. Sure enough, there were two
uniformed cops standing there, one looking at the door and one turned away,
looking out into the yard and the street.
I closed the door, took the chain off, and reopened it. "Come in, Officer," I
said. His name tag said Ramirez, and I realized I knew him slightly. But he
made no move to enter the house; he simply stared down at my hand.
"What kind of emergency is this, chief?" he said, nodding at my hand. I
looked and realized I was still holding the toilet plunger.
"Oh," I said. I put the plunger behind the door in the umbrella stand.
"Sorry. That was for self-defense."
"Uh-huh," Ramirez said. "Guess it would depend what the other guy had." He
stepped forward into the house, calling over his shoulder to his partner,
"Take a look around the yard, Williams."
"Yo," said Williams, a wiry black man of about forty. He walked down into the
yard and disappeared around the corner of the house.
Ramirez stood in the center of the room, looking at Rita and the kids. "So,
what's the story here?" he asked, and before I could answer he squinted at me.
"I know you from somewhere?" he said.
"Dexter Morgan," I said. "I work in forensics."
"Right," he said. "So what happened here, Dexter?"
I told him.
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TWENTY-EIGHT
THE COPS STAYED WITH US FOR ABOUT FORTY MINUTES.They looked around the yard
and the surrounding neighborhood and found nothing, which did not seem to
surprise them, and which truthfully was not a great shock to me, either. When
they were done looking Rita made them coffee and fed them some oatmeal cookies
she had made.
Ramirez was certain it had been a couple of kids trying to get some kind of
reaction from us, and if so they had certainly succeeded. Williams tried very
hard to be reassuring, telling us it was just a prank and now it was over, and
as they were leaving Ramirez added that they would drive by a few times the
rest of the night. But even with these soothing words still fresh, Rita sat in
the kitchen with a cup of coffee for the rest of the night, unable to get back
to sleep. For my part, I tossed and turned for more than three minutes before
I drifted back to slumberland.
And as I flew down the long black mountain into sleep, the music started up
again. And there was a great feeling of gladness and then heat on my face&
And somehow I was in the hallway, with Rita shaking me and calling my name.
"Dexter, wake up," she said. "Dexter."
"What happened?" I said.
"You were sleepwalking," she said. "And singing. Singing in your sleep."
And so rosy-fingered dawn found both of us sitting at the kitchen table,
drinking coffee. When the alarm finally went off in the bedroom, she got up to
turn it off and came back and looked at me. I looked back, but there didn't
seem to be anything to say, and then Cody and Astor came into the kitchen, and
there was nothing more we could do except stumble through the morning routine
and head for work, automatically pretending that everything was exactly the
way it should be.
But of course it wasn't. Someone was trying to get into my head, and they
were succeeding far too well. And now they were trying to get into my house,
and I didn't even know who it was, or what they wanted. I had to assume that
somehow it was all connected to Moloch, and the absence of my Presence.
The bottom line was that somebody was trying to do something to me, and they
were getting closer and closer to doing it.
I found myself unwilling to consider the idea that a real live ancient god
was trying to kill me. To begin with, they don't exist. And even if they did,
why would one bother with me? Clearly some human being was using the whole
Moloch thing as a costume in order to feel more powerful and important, and to
make his victims believe he had special magical powers.
Like the ability to invade my sleep and make me hear music, for instance? A
human predator couldn't do that. And it couldn't scare away the Dark
Passenger, either.
The only possible answers were impossible. Maybe it was just the crippling
fatigue, but I couldn't think of any others that weren't.
When I arrived at work that morning, I had no chance to think of anything
better, because there was an immediate call to a double homicide in a quiet
marijuana house in the Grove. Two teenagers had been tied up, cut up, and then
shot several times each, just for good measure. And although I am certain that
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I should have considered this a terrible thing, I was actually very grateful
for the opportunity to view dead bodies that were not cooked and beheaded. It
made things seem normal, even peaceful, for just a little while. I sprayed my
luminol hither and yon, almost happy to perform a task that made the hideous
music recede for a little while.
But it also gave me time to ponder, and this I did. I saw scenes like this
every day, and nine times out of ten the killers said things like "I just
snapped" or "By the time I knew what I was doing it was too late." All grand
excuses, and it had seemed a bit amusing to me, since I always knew what I was
doing, which was why I did it.
And at last a thought wandered in-I had found myself unable to do anything at [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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