Dexter at Dawn

Chapter Seven

by Technomad

After the tournament, Madame Duchamp came to dinner with us, at my invitation. She was voluble in Arya's praise. "Mademoiselle Stark shows great promise!" she told us, as we all tucked into a very nice seafood meal. "If she continues in our sport, she could participate in the Olympics one day!"

Arya was sitting nearby, eating fried clams and saying very little. At this, though, I saw a smile cross her face for an instant. She respected Madame Duchamp too much, as an elder and her teacher, to let on what she was really thinking.

Arya had opened up to me several times, when Astor and Cody weren't in earshot. Arya knew that telling them the whole truth about her former life in the world she claimed to have come from would shock her new foster brother and sister. Some of the things she had told me had shocked even me.

"Madame Duchamp is very nice," she had told me, "and a girl likes her very much and wants to learn what she can teach. However," she raised a finger, "what Madame Duchamp teaches is a sport. Sports have rules and limits. What Syrio Forel taught a girl was not a sport."

"What did this Mr. Forel teach you?" I asked, curious.

"What Syrio Forel taught a girl was how to kill grown men with a sword."

"Ah." I could see her point. In my line of work, I'd seen people who thought that boxing-ring rules, or dojo rules, applied to the street. All too often, their opponents had been delighted to demonstrate that this was not the case. When these altercations became fatal, my colleagues and I would be drawn into the picture.

Arya gave me a rather nasty smile. "If a girl were fighting for real, she would not be limited by 'right of way' rules. She could do things like throw sand into her opponent's face, throw her cloak or her coat over her opponent's sword for long enough to get through his defenses, and many other things like that."

"I trust you haven't spoken of this to Madame Duchamp?" I was a little worried that my newest disciple might be speaking of such things where others could hear. I'd already had to fend off some well-meant suggestions that she belonged in a mental institution when people heard her mentioning things that had happened to her before she appeared off Miami.

"No. Madame Duchamp is very nice and a girl would not wish to shock her."

After we had eaten, we bade Madame Duchamp a fond farewell and headed for home. Since it was the weekend, Astor and Cody were along, and they were happy to be back in the place they still thought of as their home. They were also glad to see Arya again, just as she was to see them.

They told me that so far, life with their father and his new girlfriend was tolerable. "He hasn't hit us, or anybody," Astor reported. "His girlfriend, Annie, is a pretty good cook. Not as good as Mom is, of course," she added loyally, "but not bad at all."

"Does he supervise your schoolwork?" I asked. Since I had come to live with Rita and her children, I had frequently found myself helping Astor wrestle with some homework that was giving her fits. She would get frustrated, then angry, and then Didactic Dexter would come to the rescue. Angry Astor was not her usual controlled self, but I had learned to tolerate it.

"Yes, he looks it over for us. He's not as good as you are, though." For some reason, this made me feel good inside. Monsters...like me...don't have normal feelings, but I was gratified that Astor preferred my help to that of her jailbird father.

"He doesn't know about a lot of things," Cody said, unexpectedly. "His girlfriend is more useful." We all stared at him like he'd grown a second head. Hearing that much out of Cody was all but unheard-of.

"All in all, a girl is very glad that Paul Bennett had no claim on a girl," Arya said. "A girl is happy to stay with Dexter and help him get Rita back."

I glanced at the clock. "And with that thought, it's time for you three to be in bed." Three disappointed looks greeted me, which I ignored. Daddy Dexter has learned to deal with that sort of thing. "Tomorrow evening, Astor, you and Cody have to go back to your father. Arya, you do remember that Monday, we're going back to Charleston. I'm sorry you can't come along, Astor, Cody, but your father wouldn't hear of it."

They really were pretty good kids. With only a little resistance, they were soon in pajamas and in bed. Astor and Arya were sharing a bed still, I noticed. Once the younger generation were safely asleep, Deborah and I settled back for some grown-up talk.

One thing I love about Deborah is that she's generally very hard to shock. Of course, being in the police force for so long has exposed her to enough that any naivete she ever had has long since vanished. "Right now, I wouldn't mind it a bit if Paul Bennett fit Harry's rules," I told her.

Deb is the only other person I've confided in about how my late adoptive father, Harry Morgan, trained me in the rules I needed to follow to be a successful, free monster. At first, she'd been shocked, and torn between her duty to arrest me as a serial killer (although proof would have been all but impossible to find) and to protect me as her adopted brother. She'd reconciled herself to the situation, and she had admitted that she understood why her father had done what he did.

She gave me a rather evil smile. "Oh, I wish that he did," she admitted. "But rules are still rules. And we've got a good chance to resolve this legally, don't we?"

"I would prefer to do it that way," I said. "Little as I like Paul Bennett, it would be awkward, at best, if Astor and Cody found out that I'd killed their father."

"Well, when you get back to Charleston, you can talk to Ms. Talliaferro and see how things are progressing." With that, Deb got up; she had to go back to the police station. I went off to bed. Without Rita in it, the bed felt cold and lonely. That puzzled me, since I'd slept alone all my life before I met her.

That Monday, Arya and I flew off to Charleston again. Since this would likely take several days, I had had to tell the school that Arya wouldn't be in attendance. I didn't want to leave her at home alone, although she assured me that she was very self-sufficient.

"A girl has learned how to cook her own food since she has been here," she told me. "A girl can look out for herself and get herself to school."

"That would be dangerous, Arya," I told her. "Miami's got some very bad people in it."

"The world a girl came from had very bad people in it. A girl survived."

"Yes, but you aren't familiar with everything in Miami yet. And if I left you alone, the authorities would be very upset. They'd take you away and put you with a different family. Besides," I changed my tack, "don't you want to see Rita again? She's concerned about you!"

That changed Arya's mind quickly. "Of course a girl wants to see Rita!" She dashed off to pack her gear. Unlike the stories some of my work colleagues tell about traveling with their daughters, Arya (and Astor, for that matter) traveled as lightly as she could. She knew how many days we'd be away, and limited herself to enough changes of clothes so she'd always have something clean. I knew she'd be packing her knives, but as long as she didn't try to carry them on the plane, and didn't flash them in the wrong places, I was indifferent to that.

In Charleston, we got a taxi and headed to the hotel I'd booked. Once we had our rooms and had deposited our suitcases, we headed over to the jail where Rita was being held.

We'd arranged to let her know that we were coming, and when we came into the visiting room, Rita was escorted in on her side very soon. Her face lit up at the sight of our faces.

"Dexter! Arya! Oh, it's so good to see you again!" Then she began to tear up. "Why aren't Cody and Astor with you? I'd give anything to see them again!"

"Paul Bennett wouldn't let them come," Arya answered, before I could. "Paul Bennett has them during the week, while they come home over the weekends." A very dark look crossed her face for a second. "Back where she came from, a girl would know just how to deal with Paul Bennett!"

"Oh! Arya! You mustn't think of such things!" The things that Arya had told Rita about her former home had disturbed Rita enormously. She had waxed enormously indignant about a place that would allow a pre-teen girl to wander, homeless, for months and months. If she'd heard the stories Arya confided in me (once she decided that I could be trusted) she'd have had a heart attack.

Arya had learned to know Rita well enough in the time she'd lived with us to know not to pursue that subject. Instead, she launched into an account of her activities since her last visit. "A girl is doing well in school, and her teachers all praise her work highly. A girl also participated in her first fencing tournament."

"Oh! I wish I could have...what was it like? How did you do?"

"A girl took top honors for girls in the Unrated category. Every fencer starts out there. However, Madame Duchamp says that a girl will soon move up the ranks. She says a girl has real talent, and could end up competing in the Olympics if she continues as well as she has done."

"That would be so wonderful! I'd love to see...oh, I wish I could have been there...did you get pictures, Dexter?"

"Of course I did," I assured her, perfectly truthfully. While I'm new to fatherhood, I knew that chronicling one's offspring's triumphs in picture form was de rigeur. I'd busily taken still pictures and video of Arya's matches with my cell phone, ending up with a very nice picture of Arya accepting her plaque from Madame Duchamp. "I'll get the stills printed up somewhere here and get them to you tomorrow. I got video as well, but I don't know how I can show you that in there."

"I'll look forward to seeing the pictures, at least!" For a second, Rita practically glowed with maternal pride. Even though she hadn't known Arya long, she'd taken the bereft, orphaned girl into her heart from the moment they'd met. Arya had responded, although always with a certain reserve. I could see that Arya feared losing Rita and the rest of us, as she had lost so much else. If she kept a bit of distance, it would hurt her less should she lose us.

That thought stiffened my resolve to see Rita freed. I thought a lot of Arya Stark. I had no children of my own (although I knew that Rita had hopes in that direction, that would depend on her being freed) but, if I'd had a daughter of my own, I would want her to be like Arya.

After we'd used up all the time we could with Rita, we went to see Ms. Taliaferro. Our lawyer knew we were coming, and greeted us with warm Southern hospitality. "Oh, do come in, Miss Stark, Mr. Morgan! It's so nice to see you!" Since we represented a source of income, I'm sure she was sincerely glad to see us, but it felt like she honestly liked us.

"A girl is glad to see you again, ma'am, but a girl wishes it was on the occasion of Rita Morgan's release," Arya replied, deadpan as usual. Ms. Taliaferro was a little nonplused, but after a second she smiled.

"You do have a talent for truthfulness, Miss Stark," she said. With that, we settled down in chairs and began going over the case.

Ms. Taliferro hadn't been able to get the charges against Rita dismissed. "Several witnesses have turned up, saying they saw her putting the drugs in her car. While these people have long records of their own, they tell a coherent story. And the judge we drew really, really doesn't like drugs."

I'd been afraid of something like that. There were a lot of judges who thought they were on a mission from God to eliminate all drugs from the face of the world. I thought that was insane. I thought that "harm reduction," by which I mean policies that reduced the harm drugs do to a minimal level, made much more sense.

I'd learned about "harm reduction" in a class I'd taken about medieval European society at college. While I was a Police Science major, I had to take some courses in other subjects, and this had seemed like a harmless choice. I had learned that the medieval Church's tolerance of the existence of brothels had not been hypocrisy, but recognition by the Church's leaders that men, being fallen and mortal, would sin, and their preference for keeping such things within reasonable bounds. This had struck me at the time as greatly more reasonable than the later reformers' zeal to eliminate all sin from the face of the earth.

But the world is what it is, and I had to deal with it as it is, not as I would wish it to be. "Tell me more about this judge. Are there any ways to get Rita's case heard before a different judge?"

"Judge Hamilton's known for his harsh views on drugs, and on crime in general. They call him 'Hardcore Hamilton' in the legal system. Criminals dread appearing before him. He favors the prosecution in every way he can, and seems to revel in giving out harsh sentences."

I did not like the idea of gentle Rita facing such a merciless man, and I could see that Arya was getting good and steamed. Had we been in Miami, I wouldn't have put it past Arya to slip out some night and see to it that 'Hardcore' Hamilton never had a chance to gaze down from his bench at Rita. With her unexpected talent at changing her face, and her apparent experience, she might have been able to get away with it. Unless she were caught in the act, or immediately afterward, she would be very unlikely to come under suspicion. Far less likely than Dexter would, had this judge fallen under the Rules of Harry.

But we were in Charleston, not Miami. Neither Arya nor I knew the town anything like well enough to try any such scheme. With a good deal of regret, I abandoned that idea, and I gave Arya a look signalling her to put such thoughts aside. She seemed to get the message. Like Astor and Cody, Arya was good at reading other people. In the life she'd described herself living before arriving in Miami, that had been a survival trait.

Ms. Taliferro gave me some legal papers to look over, and after a little more colloquy, we left her office. "Where do we go now?" asked Arya.

"Where we go is…" and my stomach rumbled. "Lunch!"

"Good! A girl is hungry, too!" I had known that would turn Arya's frown upside down. She had described great privations in the world she had come from, and appreciated good food as much as I did. Soon we'd found a very nice family-owned barbeque place, and were tucking into greasy, spicy delights.

With our stomachs purring with satisfaction, I told Arya what our next move was. "We're going to visit some bail bondsmen, and see if we can arrange to have Rita freed on bond. She does have a clean record, which should count in her favor. But we'd have to put up collateral to make that happen, and I personally don't have much. The house is in Rita's name."

"Could Rita put the house up herself?"

"I don't know. We'll have to talk to the bondsmen and see what they say."

The bondsmen were sympathetic, but not encouraging. Since the house wasn't in my name, I couldn't put it up as collateral for Rita's bail, and we didn't have anything like the money that would be needed otherwise. My own salary was quite adequate for everyday needs, and I'd saved up money, but my savings were nowhere near the amount that it would take. Rita herself had some savings, but I couldn't access them, and they weren't enough, either.

"If your wife grants you power of attorney, Mr. Morgan, you can offer your home as collateral, but until she does, our hands our tied," the bondsman said. "I wish it were otherwise, but there's nothing I can do."

I understood that these people were not in business out of the goodness of their hearts, but I had hoped for a solution that would at least free Rita. I could see that Arya was disappointed, too. When we left, we sat on a park bench and ran over possibilities.

"I'll see if I can get power of attorney, Arya," I said. "That would give me the right to deal with Rita's affairs as though I were her. I don't know how difficult that will be, and it might take some time. One factor we've got to deal with is that Rita's considered a flight risk."

"Rita is one of the most trustworthy persons a girl knows," Arya commented. She licked contentedly at the ice-cream cone I had bought her. She had never encountered ice cream before coming to Miami, and had immediately fallen in love with it. "A girl would trust her with anything."

"You know this and I know this, Arya," I said, finishing off my own cone, "but the system knows nothing of it. Rita does live in Miami, and the Bahama Islands, which are not US territory, are not far away. If Rita were really a drug 'kingpin'…"

"What is a 'kingpin,' Dexter? A girl does not know what that word means."

"A 'kingpin' is a word used to designate a major figure in the world of crime," I explained. "In crime, there are often organizations, and some of them are quite wealthy. Drug smugglers and dealers often accumulate vast amounts of money, and can use that money to facilitate their activities. If they can escape to foreign jurisdictions, they can live out their lives in great comfort."

. "But Rita is not a 'kingpin,' Dexter. She is a wife and a mother. Her children need her." A strangte, sad look came across her face, as she looked into her memories. "A girl knows this. All too well a girl knows this."

"We'll do all we can, Arya," I tried to assure her, as my phone suddenly rang.

It was a call from my employers down in Miami. They needed me back there. There'd been a spectacular homicide, although they didn't give any details. There had apparently been copious amounts of blood spilled, and I was needed to make sense of what had happened."

"Come along, Arya," I told her. "We're going back to Miami early." Soon we were on a plane, headed back to the Sunshine State.

For the next few days, we settled back into our routine. Arya went to school, I went to work (the murder they had needed me on was, indeed, spectacular. When you have a family who thinks that machetes are a proper tool with which to settle disputes, this sort of thing happens.) and Deborah dropped in of an evening to see how we were getting along.

When the weekend came, Cody and Astor returned, showing happiness in their own understated way to be back home. They went off with Deborah one Saturday morning, and when they came back, I could tell that they had a secret. Deborah was carrying a long slender package, and I wondered what was in it.

"We were exploring a second-hand store, and Astor spotted this," Deb explained. "We thought it was just the thing for you, Arya. Congratulations on your first fencing tournament victory!"

Arya opened the package, her face full of honest curiosity. Inside, there was a sword. A real sword. It was light and slender, with a rather elaborate hilt. Her eyes went huge.

"That's some sort of lodge sword," Deb said. "I don't know which lodge it is. It isn't Masonic. I know what Masonic symbols look like and those aren't them. It's real steel. You've said that you missed your 'Needle,' so we thought this might do as a substitute."

Arya's eyes welled with tears. "A girl...a girl has her Needle back!" She sniffled. "This is almost exactly like the sword a girl's brother Jon Snow gave to her!" She drew the sword slowly, warning us "Stay clear!" When it was out of the sheath, I could see that it'd been well-kept-up. There was not a speck of rust on it. Arya's expression was indescribable. It combined grief for her losses with joy. She sheathed her new sword, treating it with the reverence due to a holy relic.

"A girl lost her father. Then a girl lost her family. Then a girl lost her whole world. But a girl has found a new family!" She broke down sobbing for the first time since I'd known her. I wasn't sure what to do, but Deborah and Astor and Cody all gathered around to comfort her. In their embrace, she sobbed even more.