Free Dexter 3 - Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay Page B

everyone truly have a better time if they were
served a series of apparently alien objects of uncertain use and origin instead
of cold cuts? There is a great deal I don't understand about human beings, but
this really seemed to take the cake-assuming we would have a cake at all, which
     
    in my opinion was not a
sure thing. There was one thing I understood quite well, however, and that was
Deborah's attitude about punctuality. It was handed down from our father, and
it said that lateness was disrespect and there were no excuses.
    So I pried Vince's fingers
off my arm and shook his hand. “I'm sure we're all going to be very happy
with the food,” I said. He held on to my hand. “It's more than
that,” he said. “Vince-” “You're making a statement about
the rest of your life,” he said. "A really good statement, that your
and
    Rita's life together-“
”My life is in danger if I don't go, Vince,“ I said. ”I'm really
happy about this," he said, and it was so unnerving to see him display an
apparently authentic
    emotion that there was
actually a little bit of panic to my flight away from him and down the hall to
the
    conference room. The room
was full, since this was becoming a somewhat high-profile case after the
hysterical news stories of the evening before about two young women found
burned and headless. Deborah glared at me as I slipped in and stood by the
door, and I gave her what I hoped was a disarming smile. She cut off the
speaker, one of the patrolmen who had been first on the scene.
    “All right,” she
said. “We know we're not going to find the heads on the scene.” I had
thought that my late entrance and Deborah's vicious glare at me would certainly
win the award for
    Most Dramatic Entrance, but I was dead wrong. Because
just as Debs tried to get the meeting moving again, I was upstaged as
thoroughly as a candle at a firebombing. “Come on, people,” Sergeant
Sister said. “Let's have some ideas about this.” “We could drag
the lake,” Camilla Figg said. She was a thirty-five-year-old forensics
geek and usually
    kept quiet, and it was rather surprising to hear her speak. Apparently
some people preferred it that way, because a thin, intense cop named Corrigan
jumped on her right away. “Bullshit,” said Corrigan. “Heads
float.” “They don't float-they're solid bone,” Camilla insisted.
    “Some of 'em are,” Corrigan said, and he got
his little laugh. Deborah frowned, and was about to step in with an
authoritative word or two, when a noise in the hall stopped her.
    CLUMP.
    Not that loud, but somehow
it commanded all the attention there was in the room.
     
    CLUMP.
    Closer, a little louder, for all the world approaching us now like
something from a low-budget horror movie…
    CLUMP.
    For some reason I couldn't hope to explain, everyone in the room seemed
to hold their breath and turn slowly toward the door. And if only because I
wanted to fit in, I began to turn for a peek into the hall myself, when I was
stopped by the smallest possible interior tickle, just a hint of a twitch, and
so I closed my eyes and listened. Hello? I said mentally, and after a very
short pause there was a small, slightly hesitant sound, almost a clearing of
the mental throat, and then-
    Somebody in the room muttered, “Holy sweet Jesus,” with the
kind of reverent horror that was always guaranteed to pique my interest, and
the small not-quite-sound within purred just a bit and then subsided. I opened
my eyes.
    I can only say that I had been so happy to feel the Passenger stirring
in the dark backseat that for a moment I had tuned out everything around me.
This is always a dangerous slip, especially for artificial humans like me, and
the point was driven home with an absolutely stunning impact when I opened my
eyes.
    It was indeed low-budget horror, Night of the Living
Dead, but in the flesh and not a movie at all, because standing in the doorway,
just to my right, staring at me, was a man who was really