Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay Page B

callow young monster, I never wondered if Harry might not feel the same.
    “In your case, you have to be
more
patient, because you’ll be thinking you’re clever enough to get away with it,” he said. “You’re not. Nobody is.” He paused to cough again, and this time it took longer and seemed to go deeper. To see Harry like this—indestructible, supercop, foster-father Harry, shaking, turning red and weepy-eyed from the strain—was almost too much. I had to look away. When I looked back a moment later, Harry was watching me again.
    “I know you, Dexter. Better than you know yourself.” And this was easy to believe until he followed up with, “You’re basically a good guy.”
    “No I’m not,” I said, thinking of the wonderful things I had not yet been allowed to do; even wanting to do them pretty much ruled out any kind of association with goodness. There was also the fact that most of the other pimple-headed hormone-churning twinkies my age who were considered good guys were no more like me than an orangutan was. But Harry wouldn’t hear it.
    “Yes, you are,” he said. “And you have to believe that you are. Your heart is pretty much in the right place, Dex,” he said, and with that he collapsed into a truly epic fit of coughing. It lasted for what seemed like several minutes, and then he leaned weakly back onto his pillow. He closed his eyes for a moment, but when he opened them again they were steely Harry blue, brighter than ever in the pale green of his dying face. “Patience,” he said. And he made it sound strong, in spite of the terrible pain and weakness he must have felt. “You still have a long way to go, and I don’t have a whole lot of time, Dexter.”
    “Yes, I know,” I said. He closed his eyes.
    “That’s just what I mean,” he said. “You’re supposed to say no, don’t worry, you have plenty of time.”
    “But you don’t,” I said, not sure where this was going.
    “No, I don’t,” he said. “But people pretend. To make me feel better about it.”
    “Would you feel better?”
    “No,” he said, and opened his eyes again. “But you can’t use logic on human behavior. You have to be patient, watch and learn. Otherwise, you screw up. Get caught and . . . Half my legacy.” He closed his eyes again and I could hear the strain in his voice. “Your sister will be a good cop. You,” he smiled slowly, a little sadly, “you will be something else. Real justice. But only if you’re patient. If your chance isn’t there, Dexter, wait until it is.”
    It all seemed so overwhelming to an eighteen-year-old apprentice monster. All I wanted was to do The Thing, very simple really, just go dancing in the moonlight with the bright blade flowing free—such an easy thing, so natural and sweet—to cut through all the nonsense and right down to the heart of things. But I could not. Harry made it complicated.
    “I don’t know what I’ll do when you’re dead,” I said.
    “You’ll do fine,” he said.
    “There’s so much to remember.”
    Harry reached a hand out and pushed the button that hung on a cord beside his bed. “You’ll remember it,” he said. He dropped the cord and it was almost as though it pulled the last of the strength from him as it flopped back down by the bedside. “You’ll remember.” He closed his eyes and for a moment I was all alone in the room. Then the nurse bustled in with a syringe and Harry opened one eye. “We can’t always do what we think we have to do. So when there’s nothing else you can do, you wait,” he said, and held out his arm for his shot. “No matter what . . . pressure . . . you might feel.”
    I watched him as he lay there, taking the needle without flinching and knowing that even the relief it brought was temporary, that his end was coming and he could not stop it—and knowing, too, that he was not afraid, and that he would do this the right way, as he had done everything else in his life the right way. And I knew this,