Description: Dexter pays Rita a visit—but not before performing a disappearing act of his own.
A/N: Feedback makes the world go 'round. I know. I read it on Wikipedia.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dexter looked at his cell phone for the hundredth time. He'd gotten this show up and running by 10:15, which had to be some kind of personal record. But he'd spent the last 25 minutes waiting for one thing.
"God, I thought you would never wake up," he exclaimed as his victim du jour roused from sleep. "Your narcotics tolerance has to be zero. I've had women half your size wake up faster. Have you ever even been to the dentist?"
"Where am I?" Phillips asked. Dexter stood up and spread out his arms while slowly twirling around.
"In a spectacular place of magic," he intoned.
Phillips seemed to see him for the first time. "You're the guy from the carnival last night."
"So I am. By the way, your card tricks suck. Well, the first one did anyway. The back of the card was a different color from the rest of the deck. You thought I wouldn't notice?"
"Most people don't."
Dexter shrugged. "Well, my girlfriend was certainly impressed."
"Your girlfriend? I thought that was your wife."
"Why?"
"'Cause she had a wedding ring on."
Wedding ring? How had he not noticed? Was Rita married? She couldn't be.
"You're just finding that out?"
Dexter rushed Phillips, and plucked him on the forehead. "Shut up. I'm asking the questions." He set up two photos on his make-shift easel. "Do you recognize these people?"
Phillips shook his head. "Never seen them before in my life."
Dexter produced a knife from behind him and held it an inch away from Phillips' face. "Does this jog your memory?"
The man quaked visibly. "José Ramirez and Eric Martin."
Dexter nodded, then shrugged. "I'll stab you anyway." He plunged the knife into the man's abdomen, and Phillips let out an excruciating wail as tears were pressed from his eyes. A moment later, he opened them, before realizing he hadn't been stabbed. Dexter chuckled to himself.
"Trick knife. See." He pushed down several times on the blade. "It's retractable."
"Why are you doing this to me?" the man cried.
"WHY DID YOU KILL THEM?" Dexter roared.
"I didn't!" Phillips insisted.
"I think you did. Wanna know why?"
"I didn't," he repeated, more feebly this time.
"Let me tell you a story and then we'll see if it rings any bells. Two years ago, you were the Mad Hatter, one of the most prosperous freelance professional clowns in greater Miami. Sure, you did the occasional grand opening and car show, but your bread and butter was this."
He held up an 8 ½ X 11 sheet of lavender paper that had printing on both sides.
"The monthly newsletter of the Miami-Dade County Public School System, where you had an ad riiiiight—," he pointed to the lower back corner, "here."
Phillips shrugged his shoulders. "That doesn't prove anything."
Dexter whipped out a knife and pointed it at Phillips. "Shut the hell up," he demanded. "This is my story, OK? Now, thousands of school-age children and their parents saw your clown-for-hire ad every month. You were in such demand that you could charge pretty much whatever you wanted, and you did. You made so much money, in fact, that you could afford a three-quarters-of-a-million dollar house while maintaining a wife, two kids and a nasty little gambling debt on the side. That is… until this man—," he added another photo to the gallery, "Guillermo Ramirez became superintendent. Ramirez cut you out of the newsletter and pasted in his nephew… a new kid fresh out of clown school. Your income dropped by 40% in the first six months."
Phillips began to visibly writhe from the memory.
"But that's just where your problems began. You started missing mortgage payments, cars started getting repossessed, you started drinking more and soon your wife and kids were gone. Which left just you and your cuddly bookie—Agwe Marcelin—who was more than happy to send his friends to your hotel room threatening to break your legs. Meanwhile, José was living the life you used to have."
"I went to one of his shows," Phillips said, contempt on his face. "That douchebag's assistant was older than him. He was dropping props like a damn amateur."
"So you killed him? That's a little drastic."
"I didn't mean to kill him. I went by his condo, thought we could work something out. Maybe we could share the ad space, or I was even willing to work for him—maybe start a partnership. I humbled myself. And that arrogant prick laughed in my face." Phillips turned away. "Something in me snapped. The next thing I knew he was bleeding on the floor and I had blood on my hands."
"You could have done the honorable thing. Called 911. Turned yourself in. Instead you moved clear across town, had your 'Mad Hatter' tattoo refashioned to read 'Chatterbox', started going by Chago Lopezand joined the circus. By tomorrow you would have been home free. You came so close." Dexter crouched by his ear. "FYI: you're way to White to pass for Cuban."
Phillips's anger was palpable.
Dexter stood back up. "I just wanna know: Why'd you kill the other guy?"
"For screwing my wife," he growled. "After that first time, killing gets easier."
"Tell me about it," Dexter said, and sat down. A minute passed.
"Now what?" Phillips asked.
"Now," Dexter said with a twinkle in his eye. "For my final act, I make you disappear."
"Why?" Phillips asked. "You kill people, I kill people. We're the same."
"But unlike you," Dexter said. "I kill murderers. You just kill people who screw you…or your wife."
"Please, please," the man pleaded. "We could keep each other's secrets. I'm very good at keeping secrets."
"Speaking of which," Dexter said. "How did you do your second trick?"
Phillips shook his head. "I'll take it to my grave."
Dexter shrugged. "Suit yourself." And with that, he drove a real knife straight through Phillips' aorta.
Dexter was almost catatonic by the time he pulled up to Rita's house. He checked himself in the rear view and took a hard breath, before slapping his face a couple times. Then he went up to the door and knocked.
"Dexter," Rita said as she opened the door, clearly stunned…and bleary eyed. She looked down at her watch. "It's 1:30."
"I know, I know," Dexter responded apologetically. "I had no idea we were going to run that long. Today was brutal." Rita nodded sympathetically, but wasn't exactly inviting him in. "I was... hoping it wasn't too late to still stop by."
"Yeah, it's fine," she said, collecting herself. She let him in. He took a seat on the couch.
"Are you hungry?" she said. "I can warm up some meatloaf that was left over from dinner."
Dexter was starving, actually, but was too self-conscious to say so. She seemed to sense this and walked towards the kitchen to make him a plate.
"How was your day?" he asked.
"Uneventful," she answered as she took a pan out of the fridge. "On Saturdays I usually let the kids sleep in while I do some housework, then we have a late breakfast and walk to the park."
"Sounds… nice," Dexter said.
"It kind of is," she agreed. She popped the food in the microwave and stopped it right before it beeped.
She returned balancing the plate, a root beer and a bottle of ketchup. Dexter checked her finger for a ring; if she were wearing one the night before, it was gone now. "Here. Be careful it's hot."
"Thanks," he said. The meatloaf was joined by mashed potatoes with gravy and a pile of sliced carrots. He ate heartily, and she watched him for a few moments before speaking.
"Dexter," she said in a way that suggested that she was getting down to the main event. "I wanted you to come by tonight because I feel like I haven't been completely honest with you."
"No?" he said, and stopped eating.
She shook her head. "I told you that I wasn't ready for a relationship because I was scared. My last relationship was not a good one for me. It ended in a lot of heartache and confusion, and I thought that maybe I would just be better off by myself. But then, you showed up last week, and it's been wonderful having someone around to talk to and who takes an interest in me and my children. And I realized that I don't have to be alone."
Dexter nodded. This sounded… good. "I feel the same way."
But Rita still looked distressed.
"So, what's the problem?" Dexter asked.
She struggled with the words. "I feel like there's a block, or a barrier to me." She stopped. "I don't know how to explain this."
Dexter had an idea of what she meant. "Deb told me how you two met."
"She did?"
"Yeah. She said she was called out to a dispute?"
Rita nodded sadly. "My husband was a horrible person."
Dexter helped her out. "He was… verbally abusive."
She nodded. "And also—"
"Physically abusive."
"Yes. Physically abusive. But also…" She paused suddenly, a distressed pallor coming over her face. Her bottom lip began to tremble, and she dropped her head into her hand. "He would force himself on me Dexter," she said finally, and began to cry.
Dexter went into panic mode. Sirens went off in his head: TEARS! TEARS! TEARS!
He placed his plate on the coffee table, and moved closer to her. He had no idea what to do. He fidgeted for a minute, then reached out his hand…and patted her on the head.
"It'll be OK," he whispered.
Rita looked all the way up until she was staring at the hand above her head, then she turned to Dexter—whose face was a motley mix of concern, cheeriness and panic—and busted out laughing.
"What's so funny?" Dexter asked, impossibly confused. She was laughing so hard she couldn't answer. "What is it?"
"You," she said, after she regained her composure. She wiped tears from her eyes that came as much from her laughing as they did from her crying. "It's that childlike innocence again." She clasped her hands together. "You're just so sweet."
At that moment, Dexter came to the realization that he may never, ever have any clue of what was going on with Rita. But that seemed... OK. "Thank you."
"I'm sorry, Dexter," she said after a while. "This is all probably very confusing for you."
"Not at all," he lied. "To be honest, I have my own... demons if you will. But, Rita, I'm willing to take a chance on us … if you are too."
A smile came across her face. "I am," she said, and took Dexter's hand.
His near-empty plate caught her eye. "Would you like the rest of the meatloaf? There's only one slice left anyway."
"Sure," Dexter replied. "Thank you." She lifted up his plate, but knocked over the ketchup as she did. A little squirted out of the bottle and onto the table.
"Clumsy me," she said, and headed to the kitchen. Dexter stared at the splatter on the table and had an epiphany.
"That's it," he whispered.
"What's it?" Rita asked.
"We already have our suspects," he answered.
"I'm… I'm not following."
Dexter pulled out his phone and made a call.
"Maria speaking," came a groggy voice on the other end.
"This is Dexter."
"Dexter?" she repeated. "What in the world could you want at this hour?"
"I figured it out. They all killed each other."
"What?"
"Those kids today… they all killed each other. All day I stared at the exit wounds and bullet paths, and based on the positioning of the bodies and the blood patterns, I concluded that there were multiple shooters from different directions. But the multiple shooters were the victims themselves."
"Hold on," LaGuerta said. "You mean to tell me our suspects are all in the morgue?"
"I think so."
"That's hard to believe Dex. I mean, we've had shootouts where one or two shooters get caught in their own crossfire, but all five? Besides there were no guns found at the scene."
"I know it's far-fetched, but the blood doesn't lie. If you check their hands, I bet you'll find gunpowder residue. Maybe some of their buddies came and collected the guns after the shootout and dumped them."
"Wow, Dex—you really have a theory there. But, it's the only one we have. I'll check into it more in the morning. See you tomorrow?"
"Bright and early."
"Good," LaGuerta said. "Now go get some sleep."
Rita plopped down on the couch and handed him the last slice of meatloaf. Then she wiped the ketchup off the table. "Your mind never stops does it?"
Dexter popped some meat into his mouth and flashed a bright smile. "Nope."