Read Dexter Is Dead for Free Online

Who, it must be said, were perfectly free to wander around and sit on the swings and eat pizza or whatever they wanted. It was a monstrous injustice approaching even the unfairness of my imprisonment, but there it was, and at last my wits returned and brought with them a large helping of indignation.
    “Deborah, that’s completely unfair,” I said. “I have been in here without any kind of…” And I trickled to a truly feeble halt, because once again, Deborah was holding the phone away from her head and waiting for me to stop talking.
    When I did, she let it hang for another minute before she finally picked up the phone. “The papers give me full custody of the kids,” she said. “I’m leaving them with the guard.” She waved the papers. “Sign them.” She began to stand up, and panic flooded into me, from the basement up. My last, my only hope, and she was leaving.
    “Deborah, wait!” I called.
    Deborah paused in an awkward position, a kind of squat between standing and sitting, and it seemed to my fevered brain that she stayed like that for an awfully long time, as though she couldn’t wait to leave, but some stupid obligation had frozen her in place and kept her from fleeing something distasteful. We both thought she was going to leave anyway. But then, to my idiotic relief, she sat down and picked up the phone again. “What,” she said, in a voice as dead as it could be and still come from a living human mouth.
    Once more I could only blink stupidly. The “what” of it seemed painfully obvious, so patently clear that I couldn’t think of any way to say it that wasn’t insulting her intelligence. I said it anyway. “I need your help,” I said.
    And just to prove that she could insult my intelligence right back, she said, “For what?”
    “To get out of here,” I said. “To find a way to prove that…that—”
    “That you’re innocent?” she snarled. “Bullshit.”
    “But—I
am
innocent!”
    “The hell you are,” she said, looking and sounding angry for the first time, but at last she was finally showing a little emotion. “
You
left Jackie alone,
you
abandoned Rita and let her get killed, and
you
handed Astor over to a homicidal
pedophile
!” I could see the knuckles of her hand clutching the phone turning white. She took a deep breath, and her face settled back into cold indifference. “Show me the innocent part, Dexter. Because I don’t see it.”
    “But…but, Debs,” I whimpered. “I didn’t kill anybody.”
    “
This
time!” she snapped.
    “Well, but…but,” I stammered, “but that’s what I’m in here for.
This
time. And I didn’t…”
    “
This
time,” she repeated softly. But even though her voice had softened, her eyes were still hard and bright. She leaned in close to the window. “How many other times
did
you kill somebody, Dexter? How many more times
would
you if you got out?” It was a fair question, and the answer would certainly compromise my innocent plea, so I wisely said nothing, and Deborah went on.
    “I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “I can’t help it. I know you
say
Dad set the whole thing up so you—” She looked away again. “I can’t do it anymore. I thought I could live with it, close one eye and just…” She looked back at me, and there was no softness in her anywhere. “But now this, and I don’t have any idea who the fuck you are anymore. Maybe I never did—and you could’ve been lying all along about Daddy, and…I mean, he was a cop, and a
Marine
vet! What would
he
have said, Dexter? What would Daddy say about the shit you just pulled?”
    She glared at me, and I realized she really wanted an answer, but all I could think of to say was,
“Semper fi…”
    Deborah looked at me a little longer. Then she leaned back in her chair. “I wake up at night, and I think about all the people you killed. And I think about all the people you’ll kill if you get out again. And if I help you get out, I am as good as killing