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I walked around his car and climbed in on the passenger side. “Well,” he said in greeting, “may I take it that things did not go as you hoped?”
“Indeed you may,” I said. I held up my wrists, which were visibly chafed and red from the handcuffs. “Somewhat less than optimal.”
“At least you can be grateful,” Brian said, “that I am not the type who insists on saying, told you so.”
“Didn’t you just say it?” I asked him.
“Nobody’s perfect,” he said, and put the car in gear. “What now?”
I sighed, suddenly feeling very weary of it all. The excitement of my new freedom, and the adrenaline of my encounter with Ramirez had faded. I just felt numb, tired, sick of the monstrous injustice piled at my door—and still angry that my own door was closed to me. I had no idea what to do next. I had thought ahead only as far as a shower in my own snug little shower stall, and some clean, fresh clothing. But now? “I don’t know,” I said, and the weariness showed in my voice. “I suppose it’s time for the hotel. But I don’t have any clean clothes, or…” I sighed again. “I don’t know.”
“Well, then,” Brian said, suddenly switching to a take-charge voice. “We can get you checked in anytime; that’s easy enough. But you should be presentable first.” He nodded at the knees of my pants. The dried blood was still there, quite visible. “We can’t have you wandering around looking like that.” He shook his head with an expression of distaste. “Nasty stuff. It just won’t do. People would talk.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I said. “So what do we do?”
Brian smiled and put the car in gear. “There’s a very ancient and wise saying of our people,” he said. “When in doubt, go shopping.”
It didn’t seem that wise to me. If I followed it literally, I would be spending all my time at the mall nowadays. But in this case, I supposed he was right. So I held up one weary finger in a valiant attempt at enthusiasm, and said, “Charge.”
Brian nodded. “Better than cash,” he said.
SEVEN
Brian drove us a few miles through the relatively light morning traffic and then turned into the lot of a Walmart Supercenter. I raised an eyebrow at him as I realized where he was taking us. He smiled that terrible fake smile and said, “Only the finest for you, brother dearest.”
He parked as close as possible, and I unbuckled and opened the door, but I paused when I saw that Brian made no move to get out and accompany me. “If you don’t mind,” he said apologetically, “I would rather wait here.” He shrugged. “I don’t like crowds.”
“I don’t mind,” I said.
“Oh!” he said suddenly. “Do you have money?”
I looked at him for just a moment. I had so far been taking his uncharacteristic generosity somewhat for granted, and it occurred to me that perhaps I should not
. He was my brother, and he was more like me than anyone else in the world—and for that very reason, it suddenly made no sense that he would be so very attentive and caring. But for the life of me, I could think of no possible hidden motive. Perhaps he really was just trying to be the ideal big brother. It was hard to believe, but what else was there? So I just shook it off and showed him what a really good fake smile looked like. “I’m covered,” I said. “Thank you very much.”
I walked into the store, still wondering, in spite of myself. Why would Brian spend so much time, money, and effort on anyone else, even me? I doubted very much that I would have, in his position. Yet he was, and the only explanation at the moment was the very obvious one, that we were brothers, and as a motive for good deeds, that made no sense at all.
It may be wrong of me to assume the worst, to fall reflexively into lizard-brain paranoia, but there it was. That was my world, and a great deal of experience and hard study of humans has done nothing to persuade me that anyone else is terribly different. People do things for selfish reasons. They help other people because they expect to get something in return: sex, money, advancement, or a bigger dessert, it doesn’t matter. There’s always something, no exceptions. For all the Mary Poppins care he was lavishing on me, Brian had to expect a significant payback. And I couldn’t think of one single thing that I could give my brother that he couldn’t get easier, and cheaper, by himself.
What did Brian want?
Of course, if I threw that question onto the floor among the larger and more savage questions that were ravaging my life, it would be torn to pieces and eaten in a heartbeat. Brian’s motives were almost certainly far from pure, but his being nice to me was not nearly as life-threatening as Detective Anderson, the state attorney, and my likely return to a cell. I truly believed that he was no actual danger to me, and I needed to concentrate on dealing with the very large and real dangers to my life, liberty, and pursuit of vivisection. Plus, I had to find underwear.
So I relaxed as I entered the store and fought my way through the savage crowd, neatly avoiding most of the attempts to ram me with shopping carts. It was actually very pleasant to unwind a little amid the atmosphere of mean-spirited homicidal selfishness. It was soothing, really. I felt right at home, so very much back among My People that for a little while I forgot my troubles and just let the healing waves of psychotic, pinchpenny malice wash over me.
I found some wonderful underwear, exactly like what I always wore, and a new toothbrush, a few shirts, pants—even a bright blue suitcase to keep it all in. And I bought a charger for my phone, and one or two other necessities. I wheeled it all up to the register and waited patiently in the checkout line, smiling as I shoved my cart at the people who tried various ruses to cut in front of me. It was fun, and I was good at it—after all, I grew up here, too. I am brimful of that wonderful Miami Spirit that says, “Up yours! I deserve it!” And I began to ease back into the old Dexter who really believed he did.
Brian was waiting patiently right where I left him, listening to the radio. I threw my packages into the backseat and then opened the passenger door and slid in. To my mild astonishment, the radio was playing a call-in show, the kind where distracted idiots blather their most intimate secrets to a nationally syndicated audience in the vain hope that a psychologist can convince them they are real, important, and worth more than the chemicals that compose their bodies. Of course, the program’s host is never actually a psychologist; she usually has a degree in volleyball from a community college. But she is reassuring, and sells a lot of cereal for the network.
I had always found this type of program only slightly more amusing than minor surgery without anesthetic. But Brian was frowning, head cocked to one side, and giving the appearance of listening intently as the host explained that bed-wetting was perfectly normal, even at your age, and the important thing was not to let it affect your self-worth. He glanced up at me as I closed the door, and looked a little embarrassed, as if I had caught him doing something naughty. “Guilty pleasure,” he said apologetically. He turned off the radio. “It’s just so very hard to believe such people exist.”
“They exist,” I assured him. “And they outnumber us by quite a lot.”
“So they do,” he said, starting the car. “But still hard to believe.”
Brian drove me to a hotel close to the university. Aside from being very near my old home, and my alma mater, it was cheap and clean, and I knew all the restaurants nearby. Once again he waited patiently outside while I checked in. When I had a room key in my hand, I went back out to his car. He rolled down the window and I leaned on the car door. “All set,” I said.
“No problems?” he asked—a little too innocently, I thought.
