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The knives stuck into the stand drew the eye; they could be taken to put them to his throat - not to kill, by any means, not these people, not Angela, not to rob her daughter of the mother - but without backup she would not threaten him, so, hearing Logan's footsteps, Dexter prepared himself mentally for the arrest.
He wondered eerily if it hurt them as much as it had hurt him when he thought the bloody secrets had surfaced and they saw in him was a murderer.
Dexter remembered walking down the corridor thinking the FBI knew who the Butcher had been dubbed.
It was a terrible feeling.
Angela asked one question after another, and fear was snaking down the spine, but his mind rationally dismissed all the accusations. Even the phrase "guilty by the totality of the circumstantial evidence" would not be accepted by a jury. He felt a strange pride mixed with pity, but as soon as he allowed a hint of it in his voice, a reminder about Iris, Angela erupted. The pain was killing her like Deb, her fingers trembled, and more shocking discoveries lay ahead.
All the city cops and Angel (whom he would have liked to see, but in peace) could do was press on, fingers crossed that Dexter would break. Alas, he wouldn't be cracked by the FBI either, and if a lawyer got involved...
He needed to distract her. If Kurt's case was closed, that "gallery" of bodies shown, half the weight would be lifted off her shoulders.
The other half no one could take off.
He thought bitterly that hatred and shattered trust were the easiest payoff when you are living with a serial killer. Of all his victims, only Lumen had escaped them, but it wasn't Dexter who had broken her. Now he needed help himself and didn't want Harrison, unprepared, subjected to even a minute of interrogation.
This had to be done at Angela's expense.
"Turn off the camera," Dexter asked. The objection was short-lived, and he managed to convince Kurt to go to the cabin.
"You're going to see what real evil looks like," he warned, wanting to rewind and kill Matt like old times rather than give in to emotion. "I was using the drone and happened to see what Kurt did there recently. You can charge me for not telling you about him right away, if that's what you want to do. Wait, don't go off on your own!"
Logan stood in the doorway dumbfounded, shifting his gaze back and forth between him and the sheriff. Angela wanted to yell, to put his in place, but Dexter knew how to manipulate and couldn't help but take advantage.
He couldn't imagine her going down to the basement and finding the bodies on display like exhibits, walking past each one and recognizing the girls she knew.
The pain she was experiencing now would be nothing compared to the future one.
"Are you kidding me?" Angela lowered her voice, restraining herself out of the last of her strength, and Dexter reconsidered what he'd said. Oh, that's right, he'd offered to leave him alone in an empty police station or take him with her. As a last resort to go threesome.
"Take your pick, Ange," Dexter shrugged and swallowed the comment about the psychologist service, which would also come in handy. "If it was a matter of principle, there should be another pair of handcuffs you could slip on your feet at the station. "
Getting into the police car, after the sergeant had been left in charge, he experienced mixed feelings. On the one hand, his fate was in limbo; on the other, the joy that Angela was going with him was overwhelming and gave him hope for a more peaceful outcome.
And who could have been more supportive and picking up the right words than the man who himself had killed? It was a paradox.
***
When Angela burst to the surface, panting, something flipped in his chest once, twice. He should have shown her the collection sooner, in time to support her being a boyfriend, not as the man who was suspected in a mountain of bodies at the bottom of the ocean. No matter how long she'd worked as an Iron Lake sheriff, it wasn't even close to what the Miami Metro Police faced every month. Then Angela grabbed for her phone, but after hesitating, with shaky hands she slipped it back into her pocket, stepped toward him, and pity faded into the background, giving way to the fear of getting killed.
"Were you even going to fucking tell me?! Or would you have kept quiet to the last?" Her voice rang, and Dexter leaned back involuntarily, frantically considering how to present the information. When he couldn't think of anything better to say than the truth, except to exclude his son, he looked her straight in the eye.
"I found this the night Kurt set fire to my house," he continued after catching his breath: "My intuition told me there was something wrong with him, so I just used the drone, sending Harrison wandering through the woods. Kurt set me up because I was trespassing on his turf", it wasn't the first time he'd changed events that no one would have checked: "He's got a camera hanging there. Look, being a forensic scientist, I've met such people, that's why he's attracted attention."
"Such people?" Angela repeated it. "Do you have a sense of who the killer is?"
It was a dangerous path he stepped onto with suspicion hanging over him like a sword of Damocles. Fear flashed in the depths of his pupils just for a moment, but it was enough for her.
Probably Logan wasn't a bad option after all, unlike him.
"Their eyes are blank," Dexter tried to explain.
"What's visible only to these such people?" Angela looked sick. She needed answers, and he ventured down the slippery slope.
- Perhaps.
The half-confession discouraged her, making her recoil. She involuntarily grabbed the radio, let go; pain distorted her features, the lips quivered as if she wanted to say something in anger or curse. It was a miracle the gun hadn't gone off. Suddenly Dexter thought: what were the odds that a normal person would want to kill a monster while saving people? Not that he didn't understand it, not after she's realising that there had been two serial killers around for a long time, one of whom was sitting opposite. He urgently needed to reduce the heat of the resulting tension, or the shot would not be avoided.
"Angela, look, you found the crime scene. It's over. The case is solved, the relatives can bury and mourn their daughters and sisters, thanks to you."
"Twenty-five years, so many victims," she wasn't going to calm down, but her attention had shifted to something else. She wanted to justify to herself. "There are three thousand inhabitants in Iron Lake. The last thing I'd think of someone who rarely came. Where's Kurt Caldwell, Dexter? If he's found, wouldn't they suddenly find ketamine in his blood? Oh, yeah, the body's probably burned.
"I don't know," he habitually lied. "And it's not your fault. Nobody backed you up or believed you. Now you can put out an APB on him, he's not going anywhere."
"You know, I really can't prove you're the Butcher," Angela grinned bitterly. "But it's not clear to me at all whether it's better to keep you in sight or let you go."
Dexter froze, sensing that the worst option was about to come to her mind.
"If you shoot, you won't get rid of the guilt," he replied in a level tone. "And I would never hurt you."
"What...?" she looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. A moment later, something frightening flashed through her mind, causing her hand to crawl toward the gun. "And would Harrison hurt Audrey? He broke a guy's joint in the struggle!"
Bloody hell.
"No, he was angry that I'd left him," another detail to add to the piggy bank about the alleged murderer, diverting suspicion away from his son. "But the therapist helped him, he's fine now. I haven't brought him up these years."
"If you take the blame, no one will teach him how to work the Dark Passenger," Deb whispered in his ear. "Be careful."
Angela turned her back on him, as if checking to see whether he would attack. Did she think she could handle it? Hided her tears? Gained rage by staring at the basement entrance? Dexter rubbed his wrists, stiff from the handcuffs. He didn't feel like pushing anymore when he'd managed to protect his son. He could try to escape, but that would blot out a future with Harrison. A future in which the son would learn from his father, fit into the circle of ordinary people, get a profession and manage to balance two opposing desires: to be like everyone else and to kill. Grandchildren would come along and maybe their family curse would be broken and the serial killer would raise a normal person.
A calmness came over him that he had never before experienced in his wildest dreams.
The car door slammed in front of him.
"Angel Batista is coming tomorrow, he'll deal with you," Angela answered the unspoken questions as she got behind the wheel and called for backup. Her hands were still trembling, but the breathing had evened out and the face took on an indifferent expression, as if nothing had happened. Surrendering, in her mind she plunged into new problems with reports and uncomfortable questions as the Iron Lake police missed a quarter of a century of a series of murders. Dexter nodded absently, staring at the road outside the window. Danger had passed, he'd emerged victorious once more, and a former friend was no threat. He was lucky, as always. The main thing now was never to be separated from Harrison, never to abandon him again and support him on difficult days, to help control the Dark Passenger. They will go away and build a new life.
But he really regretted that it won't include Angela and Audrey.