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The next morning, as the sun was coming up, Cody and I were motoring slowly out of the canal by my
apartment in my seventeen-foot Whaler. Cody wore a blue-and-yellow life vest and sat very still on the
cooler. He slumped down just a little so that his head almost vanished inside the vest, making him look
like a brightly colored turtle.
Inside the cooler was soda and a lunch Rita had made for us, a light snack for ten or twelve people. I
had brought frozen shrimp for bait, since this was Cody s first trip and I didn t know how he might
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react to sticking a sharp metal hook into something that was still alive. I rather enjoyed it, of
course the more alive, the better! but one can t expect sophisticated tastes from a child.
Out the canal, into Biscayne Bay, and I headed across to Cape Florida, steering for the channel that cut
past the lighthouse. Cody didn t say anything until we came within sight of Stiltsville, that odd
collection of houses built on pilings in the middle of the bay. Then he tugged at my sleeve. I bent down
to hear him over the roar of the engine and the wind.
Houses, he said.
Yes, I yelled. Sometimes there are even people in them.
He watched the houses go by and then, when they began to disappear behind us, he sat back down on
the cooler. He turned around once more to look at them when they were almost out of sight. After that
he just sat until we got to Fowey Rock and I idled down. I put the motor in neutral and slid the anchor
over the bow, waiting to make sure it caught before turning the engine off.
All right, Cody, I said. It s time to kill some fish.
He smiled, a very rare event. Okay, he said.
He watched me with unblinking attention as I showed him how to thread the shrimp onto the hook.
Then he tried it himself, very slowly and carefully pushing the hook in until the point came out again.
He looked at the hook and then up at me. I nodded, and he looked back at the shrimp, reaching out to
touch the place where the hook broke through the shell.
All right, I said. Now drop it in the water. He looked up at me. That s where the fish are, I said.
Cody nodded, pointed his rod tip over the side of the boat, and pushed the release button on his little
Zebco reel to drop the bait into the water. I flicked my bait over the side, too, and we sat there rocking
slowly on the waves.
I watched Cody fish with his fierce blank concentration. Perhaps it was the combination of open water
and a small boy, but I couldn t help but think of Reiker. Even though I could not safely investigate him,
I was assuming that he was guilty. When would he know that MacGregor was gone, and what would
he do about it? It seemed most likely that he would panic and try to disappear and yet, the more I
thought about it, the more I wondered. There is a natural human reluctance to abandon an entire life
and start over somewhere else. Perhaps he would just be cautious for a while. And if so, I could fill my
time with the new entry on my rather exclusive social register, whoever had created the Howling
Vegetable of N.W. 4th Street, and the fact that this sounded rather like a Sherlock Holmes title made it
no less urgent. Somehow I had to neutralize Doakes. Somehow someway sometime soon I had to
Are you going to be my dad? Cody asked suddenly.
Luckily I had nothing in my mouth which might choke me, but for a moment it felt like there was
something in my throat, something the approximate size of a Thanksgiving turkey. When I could
breathe again, I managed to stammer out, Why do you ask?
He was still watching his rod tip. Mom says maybe, he said.
Did she? I said, and he nodded without looking up.
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My head whirled. What was Rita thinking? I had been so wrapped up in the hard work of ramming my
disguise down Doakes s throat that I had never really thought about what was going on in Rita s head.
Apparently, I should have. Could she truly be thinking that, that it was unthinkable. But I suppose in
a strange way it might make sense if one was a human being. Fortunately I am not, and the thought
seemed completely bizarre to me. Mom says maybe? Maybe I would be Cody s dad? Meaning, um
Well, I said, which was a very good start considering I had absolutely no idea what I might say next.
Happily for me, just as I realized nothing resembling a coherent answer was going to come out of my
mouth, Cody s rod tip jerked savagely. You have a fish! I said, and for the next few minutes it was
all he could do to hang on as the line whirred off his reel. The fish made repeated ferocious, slashing
zigzags to the right, the left, under the boat, and then straight for the horizon. But slowly, in spite of
several long runs away from the boat, Cody worked the fish closer. I coached him to keep the rod tip
up, wind in the line, work the fish in to where I could get a hand on the leader and bring it into the
boat. Cody watched it flop on the deck, its forked tail still flipping wildly.
A blue runner, I said. That is one wild fish. I bent to release it, but it was bucking too much for me
to get a hand on it. A thin stream of blood came from its mouth and onto my clean white deck, which
was a bit upsetting. Ick, I said. I think he swallowed the hook. We ll have to cut it out. I pulled my
fillet knife from its black plastic sheath and laid it on the deck. There s going to be a lot of blood, I
warned Cody. I do not like blood, and I did not want it in my boat, not even fish blood. I took the two
steps forward to open the dry locker and get an old towel I kept for cleaning up.
Ha, I heard behind me, softly. I turned around.
Cody had taken the knife and stuck it into the fish, watching it struggle away from the blade, and then
carefully sticking the point in again. This second time he pushed the blade deep into the fish s gills, and
a gout of blood ran out onto the deck.
Cody, I said.
He looked up at me and, wonder of wonders, he smiled. I like fishing, Dexter, he said.
CHAPTER 10
B Y MONDAY MORNING I STILL HAD NOT GOTTEN IN touch with Deborah. I called
repeatedly, and although I became so familiar with the sound of the tone that I could hum it, Deborah
did not respond. It was increasingly frustrating; here I was with a possible way out of the stranglehold
Doakes had put me in, and I could get no further with it than the telephone. It s terrible to have to
depend on someone else.
But I am persistent and patient, among my many other Boy Scout virtues. I left dozens of messages, all
of them cheerful and clever, and that positive attitude must have done the trick, because I finally got an
answer.
I had just settled into my desk chair to finish a report on a double homicide, nothing exciting. A single
weapon, probably a machete, and a few moments of wild abandon. The initial wounds on both victims
had been delivered in bed, where they had apparently been caught in flagrante delicto. The man had
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managed to raise one arm, but a little too late to save his neck. The woman made it all the way to the
door before a blow to the upper spine sent a spurt of blood onto the wall beside the door frame.
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