Dexter by Design: Dexter Morgan (4) by Jeff Lindsay

Author:Jeff Lindsay [Lindsay, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780385530149
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2009-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

“IT WAS THE PROPANE,” DETECTIVE COULTER TOLD ME. I leaned against the side of the EMS truck holding an ice pack to my head. My wounds were very minor, considering, but because they were on me they seemed more important, and I was not enjoying them, nor the attention I was getting. Across the street the rubble of Wimble’s house smoldered and the firefighters still poked and squirted at steaming piles of junk. The house was not totally destroyed, but a large chunk of the middle of it from roof to foundation was gone and it had certainly lost a great deal of market value, dropping instantly into the category of Very Airy Fixer-Upper.

“So,” Coulter said. “He lets the gas out from the wall heater in that soundproof room, tosses in something to set it off, we don’t know what yet, and he’s out the door and away before it all goes boom.” Coulter paused and took a long swig from the large plastic bottle of Mountain Dew he carried. I watched his Adam’s apple bob under two thick rolls of grimy flab. He finished drinking, poked his index finger into the mouth of the bottle, and wiped his mouth on his forearm, staring at me as if I was keeping him from using a napkin.

“Why would he have a soundproof room, you think?” he said.

I shook my head very briefly and stopped because it hurt. “He was a video editor,” I said. “He probably needed it for recording.”

“Recording,” said Coulter. “Not chopping people up.”

“That’s right,” I said.

Coulter shook his head. Apparently it didn’t hurt him at all, because he did it for several seconds, looking over at the smoking house. “So, and you were here, because why?” he said. “I’m not real clear on that part, Dex.”

Of course he was not real clear on that part. I had done everything I could to avoid answering any questions about that part, clutching my head and blinking and gasping as if in terrible pain every time someone approached the subject. Of course I knew that sooner or later I would have to provide a satisfactory answer, and the sticky part was that “satisfactory” thing. Certainly I could claim I’d been visiting my ailing granny, but the problem with giving such answers to cops is that they tend to check them, and alas, Dexter had no ailing granny, nor any other plausible reason to be here when the house exploded, and I had a very strong feeling that claiming coincidence would not really get me terribly far, either.

And in all the time since I had picked myself up off the pavement and staggered over to lean on a tree and admire the way I could still move all my body parts—the whole time I was getting patched up and then waiting for Coulter to arrive—all these long minutes-into-hours, I had not managed to come up with anything that sounded even faintly believable. And with Coulter now turning to stare at me very hard indeed, I realized my time was up.

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