All through lunch I barely listen to Deb's commentary on the missing paperwork debacle and how much I scared Masuka. All I can think about is the note. I even consider telling Deb about it but I decide it's too complicated and takes me to the sort of conversation I don't want to have. The glove, the car registration that led me to her apartment? Not things I want to discuss with my sister, the cop.
So, instead, I nod and look out at the water and eat my pork sandwich. Am I going to call Lumen? I really don't know. The idea was a good one but now the sharp reality of that conversation we're going to have the first time we see each other again is not one I'm enjoying. I don't know what she's feeling, even her note doesn't really give anything away apart from the fact that she wants to talk. Correction, she maybe wants to talk. I rub my face with my hand. This is a disaster. Deb stops talking.
"Dex? What's up? God, what a douche I am! Here I am going on about my day when you're still thinking about this girl." She puts her hand on my arm and I smile, it feels tight, unnatural. In the warm sunshine all this is feeling faintly ridiculous. I don't feel these things, I never have, who am I trying to fool? But then I put my hand in my pocket and I feel the note there. I have a decision to make.
"Can we just sit for a minute?" I ask Deb and she pulls a face like this is the last thing she expected to hear from me, it probably is. My track record for 'comfortable silences' with my sister has previously been nil but this is the second time in two days that we've done this. It seems this thing with Lumen is having a ripple effect across my life. I try not to think about it. She nods and looks out to sea, pushing her 80s style sunglasses up her nose and sipping her iced coffee.
I watch the sparkle of light on the water and the muted sounds of holiday makers, volley ball players and jet skiers from down the sand and I try to sort my thoughts into a reasonable roll call. I recognise that this is a cusp. One of those moments where you either step forward and make things happen or you sit back down and stick with what you know. I'm usually good at this. My survival instinct, my lack of messy feelings, usually push me to the front of something new whether I like it or not. I plunge the needle in, I deal with Lila, I kill Liddy, I marry Rita. All things that made sense at the time. I see now that I am presented with an opportunity which I have not had before.
I met Lumen by accident, she fell down those attic steps and I reacted. I couldn't kill her, it wasn't in the code and I did the only thing I could think of at the time. Now I recognise that I could have done something else, she posed a threat to me and I've never had a problem dealing with threats before, but at the time it didn't seem that way. Maybe it was the way her limp body felt in my arms reminded me of how I last saw Rita. Maybe it was because, like Rita, she was a victim of monsters. Whatever it was, however it happened, I started to feel things for Lumen, things that felt real. Whatever the hell that means.
Deb shifts beside me and I glance sideways. She smiles softly and hooks her arm though mine. Public affection is not our strong point, though I know she can be like that with other people. I smile and I leave her hand tucked into the crook of my elbow.
So, I wasn't ready for those feelings. I didn't get time to decide if I wanted the relationship, it just happened. At first I didn't notice but then, when she mentioned her ex fiancé showing up, the idea that she could leave made me feel something. I don't know if Rita's death had made me more vulnerable or if I would have felt like this about her anyway. How can I tell? Jordan Chase said that it was the extraordinary circumstances that forged our bond. He scoffed at the idea that it was love. But extraordinary circumstances forged the person I am, why should who I love be any different? I sigh. Deb's hand flexes.
So this opportunity to decide what I want, to make an active choice about this relationship, is one that I didn't get the first time around. The enormity of the situation, the chance to open the door which might lead to a normal, human life is suddenly right in front of me. I close my eyes and feel the sun on my face. If I call Lumen, then I take that step. Whether or not she wants me is irrelevant, I now see this and it's the most obvious thing in the world. It's taking that chance. It's saying, I, Dexter Morgan, want this in my life. If I wasn't scared of rejection then it would mean there was nothing to reject. I'm not empty. I feel emotion. I blow out a long breath. I open my eyes. Deb is looking at me like she has never seen me before. Maybe she hasn't. Maybe no one has.
"Deb, I might need to ask you have the kids but I'm not sure when, it depends. Is that ok?" I don't tell her anymore but it doesn't feel as though I have to say anything. She nods.
"Sure. I've no plans until Monday night anyway. Just let me know. Will it be overnight?" she grins. I know what she's asking and I shake my head. Even though there's a clench of my gut when I think about spending the night with Lumen, it's not that easy. Deb cocks her head and nods.
We eat the rest of our lunch, chatting about Masuka. Deb wants to scare him some more but I think we should let my latest bombshell rock him for a little longer.
"Let him think about it a while, then we can get tactical." I grin and drink my iced coffee. Deb laughs.
"Dexter, you are the most unscary guy I know! If I need advice about scaring anyone, you are the last person I would ask." She carries on laughing to herself, leaving me to ponder the complete success of my act over the last twenty five years. I'm better than I thought.
I drop Deb back at the station, fighting the urge to check my phone every minute in case Lumen got my note and calls me first. Crazy ideas are rushing around my head. Is it better if she calls and I don't hear? Then I can call back, not be surprised by her voice, be prepared. Fuck. This is more complicated than killing people.
"This is just great, Dex." Harry is smiling as he leans back against the headrest. "These are all the things normal people worry about. I never thought I'd see the day." There's enough 'old me' left to curl my lip at his comment but he just laughs. I tighten my grip on the steering wheel.
"This is hard." He nods, sympathetically.
"Yes, it's hard Dexter, because it involves someone else, their feelings, their reactions. This is a big step you're taking here. Are you sure you can cope?" I shake my head.
"I don't know. I just have to try it. If I don't then..."
"The monster wins?" offers Harry. I nod, grimly.
So I drive home, not collecting the kids from Sonja's just yet because I need to be alone to do this. It's strange how the quiet of the apartment is amplified by the kids' belongings strewn around the place, as though their presence makes everything louder, even silence. For a minute I tidy Harrison's toys into the plastic crate, fold Cody's t shirts and shorts and put Astor's sparse teenage girl cosmetics into some kind of pile. I stand in the middle of the room, a skateboard magazine in one hand and a pearl pink lipstick in the other and I realise I am stalling. I shake my head, drop them onto the coffee table and reach into my bag for my phone.
It makes me nervous to even look at it. I listen to the blood in my ears and marvel that I ever thought I would not feel that beat of excitement, of fear. See how far you've come, Dexter? For once it is me, not Harry, who asks the question.
I go into the bedroom because it seems more private. I sit on the bed and take a deep breath.
'Lumen, I'd like to see you. We could go for coffee? Dexter.' I press send. There. The two most momentous sentences of my life. No matter what happens now, I have opened that door. I sit and stare at the phone for a while. Half hoping, half fearing an answer. I seem to spend most of my time on the edge of hope and fear these days.
I drop the phone on the bed and begin to walk out of the room, maybe I'll have a shower, pick the kids up, take them out for pizza? The phone buzzes. I look at it, vibrating on the duvet like a rattlesnake. I pick it up and I realise I am cringing, my heart is thumping and my mouth is dry. I look with one eye at the screen. Deb calling. I flick it open.
"Dex, did you go home? We need you, down at the slaughterhouse by the quay, someone's found something disgusting. Looks like your field. Coming? Masuka's only going to fuck it up and LaGuerta's already pissed about the paperwork thing." The slaughterhouse? Lumen's kill. I need to get down there.
"Yeah, I'll be right there. What've they found?" Deb sounds serious when she answers.
"A whole load of fucked up shit, bro. Just get your ass down here so we know what's going on, ok?" She hangs up. Shit.
I park the SUV near to where Lumen parked her station wagon. Quinn is leaning on the side of the car, notepad in hand asking questions of some young guy in a boiler suit. The young guy looks green and he keeps sipping water from a bottle. Quinn nods when he sees me get out of the car.
"They're over there." He points with his pen to where yellow tape is fluttering and I can see Angel's broad frame squatting on his haunches to look at something on the ground. I can't see Deb or Masuka.
I flash my laminate to the uniformed cop who holds up the tape and waves me underneath. I cross to Angel and I can see now that he is looking closely at the concrete, he reaches out a hand and rubs the ground thoughtfully, lifting his fingers to his nose.
"Hey! What've you found?" I ask, trying to be breezy and remember how I usually sound at a crime scene but this is so much more than any other crime scene. It's Lumen's crime scene. Angel looks up squinting and nods to me.
"Oh, hey Dexter. New slaughterhouse worker found something pretty grim in one of those barrels." He points to five large metal canisters, all identical to the one in which I saw Lumen dump Daniels' body. I shield my eyes from the sun and point.
"In one of those? How come?" Angel stands up and shrugs, his mouth goes down at the edges like it does when he doesn't have an answer, it's a very Latin expression.
"Hey, no idea, amigo. Apparently it's his job to clean them out. Not the most pleasant job in the world but it got a lot worse today." I raise my eyebrows and nod. What did he find?
"Come and look at this!" It's Deb, walking out of the warehouse behind us and shaking her head. Her lips are tight, she looks angry. I exchange a glance with Angel who puts his hands in his pockets. He's not going in there again. I nod to Deb and go into the shade of the warehouse.
Masuka is there with what's left of the bodies of two girls. From the decay I'd guess they've been here a couple of weeks. I make a quick guess that they are Daniels' first victims. This is why Lumen chose this place to get rid of him. There was poetry in her thinking. I smile to myself but then quickly make it a grimace when Masuka looks up from where he is taking samples.
"Dude, this city gets worse every fucking year," he says simply, with more feeling than I think I've heard from him before. I can only nod, but I take comfort in the fact that I know that the monster responsible for these two little bodies has been dealt with.
"Is there something I can do? Have you done the DNA swabs? Is there any blood? Wound patterns?" Masuka shakes his head.
"No, just this slash to the throat, just like the others. Left to right, deep cut, they bled out pretty much instantly I think." He stops talking and looks out of the dark mouth of the warehouse, out into the sunshine. "Is it me Dex, or do these things seem extra sick on days as beautiful as this?" He waves the gloved hand, still holding a scalpel for scraping in the direction of the light. I watch the bright gleam of the meal and nod.
"Call me if you need any help. I'll be outside." I say and he nods and goes back to work. Not one comment about threesomes, any crude innuendo or sly remark. Shit, he must be fucked up about this.
I walk over to where Quinn and Deb are talking; a uniformed cop is taking the witness to the station now Quinn has finished with his questions.
"What's in the other canisters?" Deb is asking, pointing at the other large metal tubs along the wall. I frown, which one was Lumen's? I can't tell.
"Acid." Says Quinn reading back his notes. "It's how they get rid of the carcasses. That guy's job is to clean the empty ones. Except, this one wasn't empty." He frowns and shakes his head. Acid. She's better than I thought. Acid designed to eat through animal corpses will eliminate any evidence of human remains and, unless you're going to sift through the contents with some pretty heavy methods, you'll never get caught. Unluckily for him, Bryan Daniels wasn't so smart.
"You think it's the same guy as downtown?" I say to Deb. She looks at me though the lenses of her sunglasses, the dark brown of the glass making her seem tired. She nods.
"Yeah, MO is the same. God fucking damn!" she kicks the ground violently. "Why can't we just catch this cocksucker?" She clenches her jaw.
"Are there any newer bodies? These have been here for weeks." I say, looking at Quinn. He gets my point.
"Maybe this guy's moving through? We haven't got any newer movements on him than last weekend. Seems weird that he'd suddenly stop and start like this. Maybe we should put the word out? See if anyone else has had something like this recently?" Deb nods, already turning back to the car, disgust with what she's seen written in the lines of her body. Quinn looks at me.
"Make sure she's ok." I say to him, he puts his tongue out and rubs it along his lower lip like he's thinking. He nods curtly.
"I will." He pauses and I can see he's uncertain of what to say next. "Deb says we might have the kids this weekend..." I look at him. He raises his eyebrows like he's wondering if he's said something wrong. I just nod. I don't like Quinn. He had Liddy follow me, thought I had something to do with Rita's death and now he's living with my sister. I don't find any of that behaviour endearing. "Yeah, well, just wanted to say that's great. Cody and Astor are... great kids." He ends and I nod again. "And Harrison," he says hastily. I nod again.
"Right, well, I'll go find Deb," he says and walks away. I can tell he's cursing me under his breath.
I go back to the SUV when I've checked with Masuka that there's nothing for me to do. I re-check the samples he's taken. Anyway, Deb's right, the last thing we need is LaGuerta on our backs about shoddy forensic work. I sit in the car and think about how close Lumen just came to being part of an investigation. Her ideas have creativity but they're not cold enough, not calculating enough, to keep her out of harm.
"She needs you Dex." Harry says, looking out into the bright sunshine to the dark doorway of the warehouse. "You need to teach her how to follow the Code." I nod and start the engine. Harry's right, Lumen needs me if she's going to carry on killing. I'd never make a mistake like that. Maybe she can teach me about how to be human and I can teach her how to be a monster. I smile, a marriage made in hell.
I take out my phone to call Astor and get the kids' pizza orders; maybe we should take Sonja too? It never hurts to be in the nanny's good books, especially when you never know when you might have to pull a night shift. The screen says I have a message. I notice my thumb trembles as I open the phone to read.
"Would love to see you. How about Saturday at 1? The cafe by the marina? Where we used to meet? L'. I look at the phone for a long time, reading and rereading. I realise I am smiling.
So, you guys have been awesome so far and I hope I can keep your interest. I know you're all dying for Lumen and Dexter to get together and that chapter is written but you have to wait a little while. The characters have ideas of their own and when I settle down to write something I have to let go and let them have the reins. Thanks for the kind reviews and comments. You make this so much more fun.
Thanks VB for the commas, capitals and care. Cx