Dexter Is Dead

NINE

Rush hour started anyway when I was only about halfway home. I thought about it that way, “home,” out of some kind of strange mental reflex. Of course, the first part of the drive was the same one I used to take going home from work, back in the Golden Days when I actually had a home. And a job. One way or another, I would have a home again someday, either in a nice little house or in the Big House. But the idea of a job was starting to seem odd — especially a job working alongside all the people who were trying to frame me now. I wondered whether I would ever go back to work there.

In any case, the traffic had slowed to a vile-tempered crawl long before I got off the Palmetto Expressway and came down onto South Dixie. I tried, but I couldn’t make myself relax and get into the true spirit of it, honking and flipping people off. It just didn’t seem worth doing. I’d always enjoyed it in the past, but now…I wasn’t enjoying anything lately. Not getting out of jail, or Kraunauer’s suits — nothing at all. It was very disturbing, but on the list of Dexter’s Big Problems — Survival, Freedom, Life Itself — I couldn’t rank it very high.

Nevertheless, that was what I was musing about when I finally got to the hotel: Why couldn’t I take pleasure in anything? Had it been too long since I’d had a chance to unwind and enjoy a quiet evening with a Special Friend and a roll of duct tape? I tried to remember the last time and couldn’t. Patrick Bergmann, the idiot redneck who’d been stalking Jackie Forrest, didn’t really count. Smacking somebody with a boat hook in broad daylight just wasn’t the same thing as really taking time to get to know a person, really expressing myself in a pointed way, getting a New Friend to Open Up and share his feelings — muffled by a gag, of course. Some of those feelings were quite loud and shrill, and it wouldn’t do to bother the neighbors.

But how long had it been? It seemed like an awful long time ago. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time. That was even more disturbing. I tried harder, but my memory wouldn’t cooperate, no matter how much I furrowed my brow. And finally, I couldn’t think about anything else but trying to remember, and as I turned into the hotel parking lot, I was so busy flogging my memory that I almost didn’t see the police car parked at the lobby entrance.

Almost — at the last moment I did, in fact, see the patrol car, and I had absolutely no doubt that their presence at this hotel was no coincidence. They were here because they’d discovered that this was Dexter’s Secret Hideaway. I didn’t know if they were here to observe, to hassle me, or to rearrest me, but I didn’t look favorably on any of those choices, so I drove calmly around to the rear of the building and found a parking spot near the Dumpster, where they couldn’t see me getting out of the car.

I sat for a moment with the engine off. It was unlikely that they were here to arrest me — there was only one unit, which meant two uniformed officers. If they came for me—when they came — there would be several of those, plus a couple of motor-pool cars filled with detectives, and probably a satellite truck or two from the TV stations. So they were probably here just to watch, or to prod me a bit. But the smart thing to do was still to avoid the cops altogether; my morning chat with the two gendarmes in front of my house had proved that amply. So I got out of the rental car, locked it carefully — I knew well that Anderson was not above planting something incriminating — and used my room key to slip in the back door of the hotel.

I took the stairs up to the third floor, not really a hardship for me — although I found that I was actually breathing a little heavily by the time I passed the second floor. It reminded me forcibly that I had been sitting in a cell without my evening jog for much too long a spell. I would have to start again soon, or risk losing all my hard-won fitness.

Still, I did make it all the way up to the third floor without fainting. I peeked through the fire door to make sure nobody in a blue suit was watching. Nobody was. I stepped through and strolled down the hall to my room, thinking that the really clever move here was to grab my stuff, slide back down the stairs, and find a new hotel. I didn’t actually have anything to hide, of course. But if They knew where I was, They would hound me. The fact that They were here now was proof of that. I didn’t want a repeat of my encounter with the pair outside my house, and I didn’t want a cop sneering at me every time I stepped out of the shower. Far easier just to ease on down the road. It would only take a minute to pack, one of the few benefits of having almost nothing. I could go south and inland a bit, find another cheap and anonymous hotel, and then call Brian to let him know.

Wonderful — I had a plan. I stuck the plastic key into the slot on Room 324 and waited for the light to blink green. It didn’t. I tried again, jiggling the handle, wiggling the key. Nothing. Out of nothing more than frustration and spite, I kicked the door. The light blinked green. I left the Do Not Disturb sign in place and strode confidently through the door and into my tiny but free domain. I managed two very nice strides before I looked at the bed and jerked to a halt as abruptly as if I’d been yanked backward by a rope. Not because I’d run out of striding room, and not because there was a cop on the bed.

There was somebody on the bed, but he didn’t look like a cop. He was short and stocky and dressed in dirty work clothes. His skin and hair were dark, and his face was scarred and pockmarked, almost as if it had caught fire and somebody put it out with a golf shoe. It was the look of a day laborer hoping for a green card, not a cop. And I really, truly, devoutly hoped he was not a cop in disguise.

Because he was also dead.

He lay on the right edge of my bed, one arm crossed peacefully over his chest, and the other dangling over the side. He looked just like he had been sitting on the edge of the bed and then suddenly fell asleep and flopped over. On the floor right under his dangling hand was a wicked-looking folding knife, the kind they call a tactical knife. It had a six-inch blade, and it had been used quite recently, judging by the color of the blood that decorated it.

For what seemed like a very long time I just stood and stared, stupid with shock. I am certainly not a stranger to violent death. I have been around dead bodies in both my personal life and my professional career, and I am not shocked, horrified, revolted, frightened, or dismayed by the sight of an obviously murdered body. Under different conditions, I might even enjoy one from time to time. But to find one here and now, in my room and in my present circumstances, was so calamitous, appalling, and perilous that I could not even think.

I finally became aware that my mouth was dry — I had been gaping, with my mouth hanging open. I closed it hard enough that my teeth made an audible click. I took a deep breath and tried to concentrate; this was no time to dither and gawk. I was a murder suspect, and there was a lobby filled with eager cops below, and here I stood consorting with a dead body in a room registered to me. No explanation I could possibly invent would get me out of this, not even if it was presented by Frank Kraunauer.

Action was required, decisive, effective, and immediate action. First step: Determine who had the audacity to be dead on my bed. I summoned all the shards of my cool analysis and stepped in for a closer look at my new roommate.

The bed around him was still relatively clean and blood-free, which was wonderful news. But the front of his shirt was soaked with the stuff, and it appeared to be coming from a wound in his chest, just left of center, right where the heart is located.

For a moment a little voice nagged at me that something was wrong, and I didn’t get it. Then, quite suddenly, the nickel dropped. This picture didn’t make sense, and not merely because it was in my room. The wound that must have killed him should have spouted a fountain of blood and colored the whole room; it hadn’t. That meant he had died rather quickly. Otherwise the wound would have pumped out a great nasty geyser, enough to soak the mattress and ruin the carpet. The heart stops gushing out blood when it stops pumping. So he had taken the wound, and enough time had passed for the blood to soak his shirt — ten seconds? Maybe a little more, but not much. Then he sat down on the bed and flopped over, dead, heart stopped before it could pump out any more. And that left me with a very interesting question:

How had he died?

I mean, obviously from a wound in the chest, yes — but was I supposed to believe he had stabbed himself? Because I didn’t. And that meant that somebody else had done it.

I looked around the room, hoping for some clue — a matchbook from a strip club, perhaps, or a monogrammed glove. No such luck. But I did notice something else: My closet door was ajar.

I admit that I have my foibles. They are almost all harmless, most of the time. One of these is that, when I check into a hotel room, I always look in the bathroom, then in the closet, and then I close both doors securely. I do this out of mere paranoia, just to satisfy my inner child that nothing is lurking, but I always do it.

But my closet door was now ajar, which meant that somebody had opened it. It wasn’t housekeeping — the Do Not Disturb sign would keep them away. So it was almost certainly my new and silent friend. It was possible he had searched the room. It was not possible that he had searched the room and then stabbed himself.

And that meant there had been two people in my room.

And one of them was in my closet.

I felt my heart leap instantly into high gear and I looked around me for some kind of weapon. Nothing. Perhaps the chair — but wait. Calm down, dear Dexter, and spend one more moment in beautiful thought.

I did. I took a deep breath — keeping my eyes on the closet door, just in case — and I thought.

If somebody was waiting in the closet to leap out and cause me grievous bodily harm, possibly resulting in death, it would be stupid to wait this long. They would have done it almost immediately after I came in the door, well before I saw the other body and pulled my own weapon — not that I had one. But in principle, you jump the other guy before he figures out you’re there and takes countermeasures. No such thing had happened, and therefore…

Either there was no second stranger in my room — which meant that Stranger One really had stabbed himself — or Stranger Two was still there in the closet. And if he was, in fact, there in the closet, then either he meant me no harm, or he was no longer capable of doing any harm.

Slowly, and with all the caution I could muster, I stepped over to the closet. I listened for a moment and heard nothing. I stepped to one side, reached back, slid the door open, and waited. Ten seconds, twenty, thirty. No shots fired, no charging mastiffs, no flashing blades and cries of, Kali! Nothing.

Just as slowly, I peeked around and into the closet, and sure enough, there was Stranger Two.

He lay on one side in an impossibly uncomfortable position, slumped against the back wall of the closet with one arm pinned awkwardly under him and the other tucked behind him, between his back and the wall. His left eye socket was a nasty mess; something very sharp had clearly been shoved into it, far and hard enough to cause his present apparent lack of life. I knelt beside him in the doorway of the closet and looked closer.

Stranger Two was hatched from roughly the same gene pool as Stranger One. He was younger, and perhaps an inch taller, but he had the same olive complexion, stocky build, dark hair — even the same crappy skin. I didn’t need to feel for a pulse to be sure. He was indeed quite dead.

I stood, hitting my head on a coat hanger on the way up. I took a step back and tried to put together what had happened. The closet was next to the room’s door, on the left as you entered. It was the perfect place to wait; anyone entering would step into the room and be a step past the closet before they knew someone was there.

From the closet it was three good steps to the edge of my bed, where Stranger One had so thoughtlessly chosen to die. So: One comes into the room. Two steps out and stabs him — but no. Then the fatal wound would be in the back, not the chest. And One would have had no time to react and draw his knife.

This way, then: One has his knife out already. In fact, he uses it to jimmy the door, which also explained why I’d had trouble opening it with my key. He steps into the room, knife at the ready, every sense quivering and alert — and he sees or hears something in the closet. He pauses, ready for trouble.

In the meantime, Two is waiting in the closet. He assumes that whoever comes through the door will walk past, allowing him to leap out and dispatch them easily. But One has paused just inside the door; Two can’t see who it is or what he’s doing. Freeze frame; nobody moves. Tension mounts. Finally, unable to stand the strain any longer — and perhaps confident of his ability with a knife — One flips open the closet door.

But Two is waiting for him, with his knife ready. One sees this and raises his arm instinctively, leaving a clear target for Two’s knife, which plunges into One’s chest. At almost the same moment, One strikes back. With his arm held high, he stabs down from above, directly into Two’s eye, and his blade enters Two’s brain and kills him almost instantly.

As Two collapses onto the closet floor, One staggers on into the room, three steps to the bed, perhaps unaware that the wound he has taken is also fatal. He sits, and moments later, he joins his adversary in the dark and toasty-warm afterlife — dead so quickly there’s not even time for much blood flow.

Problem solved. Very nice work, Dexter. I now had a good idea of what had happened. It proved once again that my brain was returning to its natural lofty roost. But as satisfying as that was, there was one remaining question:

So what?

What did it matter how this happened? The only really vital piece of knowledge was why it had happened to me, and that might as well be written in Aramaic and sealed in a cave. With only two dead bodies to go by, there was no way I could know why these two had come to my room to die — and that meant that I was just as ignorant about whether they had living friends, who might be on their way up here right now to see what was taking so long.

There was only one piece of that important question that I could unravel, because in general terms there were only two possible explanations for why it happened here, in my room. First, it was entirely coincidental. This was Miami, after all. Random murders happen all the time, and they have to happen somewhere. The killers had simply chosen the handiest room, and that just happened to be mine. I thought about that for nearly a full second before concluding that it was nearly as likely that the sun would come up in the west, and just stay there for a few weeks.

All right, coincidence was laughable, and that led inevitably to the second possibility: The two strangers had deliberately come to my room, knowing it was my room, in order to (a) snoop, (b) kill me, or (c) something I didn’t have enough data to guess. That was more likely — but it also meant that there were two sides in the struggle, and apparently neither side looked on poor mistreated Me with anything approaching Loving Compassion.

I am quite comfortable with the notion that someday, somewhere, I may meet some benighted, unenlightened individual who decides they just don’t like me. Different strokes for different folks, and so on.

Carrying this thought to its logical conclusion, I can even accept that in some distant time and place, one of these people may decide he dislikes me enough to kill me.

But two teams of people? In the same time and place? And both teams finding my existence so distasteful that they break into my room carrying sharp instruments?

Who would want to kill me that much? And what had I done to deserve two separate squads of haters?

Of course, Anderson, or someone lurking in his shadow, was the most obvious suspect. But I could not believe he would approve something that was a major felony. His faults were so numerous they left almost no room for virtues, and he would certainly fool around with misdemeanors, if it served the end of Dishing Dexter. But murder was a bit much, even for him. Even if his victim was somebody who richly deserved to die, what kind of law enforcement officer could possibly countenance murder, even of another killer? It was unimaginable. Besides, he was clearly having too much fun keeping me alive and miserable.

So who did that leave? Who else really had it in for me enough to try to kill me? Could it be some random vigilante? Somebody who was so enraged to see me released that he decided to take things into his own hands? It was possible, but it seemed just a trifle far-fetched. And then to imagine two of them competing to be first to take my scalp…No. It just wouldn’t do.

But there wasn’t anybody else who hated me this much — at least, not among the living. If you could choose from among those I had helped over the edge and into death, you could easily make up two teams — even an entire league. Other than that, though, it seemed impossible. In truth, aside from my recent unwelcome burst of publicity, nobody even knew I existed. I had worked very hard my whole life to keep a low profile. I had worked even harder to be certain that no surviving friends, relatives, or business associates of my Playmates knew who and what I was. Who did that leave?

Without thinking, I sat on the edge of the bed to ponder. My weight caused the body to roll toward the crater in the middle of the mattress, and one of its arms flopped over toward me. If nothing else, it confirmed that the body was freshly killed. It also confirmed that I was still stupid. I got up quickly and moved over to the desk and pulled out the chair.

I sat, and unconsciously assumed an erect upright position. My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Parker, had always insisted that we sit up straight. She said it encouraged a good flow of blood up the spine and into the brain, which would help us think and learn better. We had always laughed at her for this lunatic idea — behind her back, of course; Mrs. Parker had a temper. After all these years, though, it now seemed that she might be right. Because after only a few seconds of sitting up straight in the wooden desk chair, I had an Actual Thought.

I couldn’t possibly figure out who these dead strangers were, not just from looking at them. And if I didn’t know who, I couldn’t tell why. Beyond the fact that it’s always nice to know who hates you enough to kill you, I needed to know who before I could decide what to do about it. And that’s when my Actual Thought spoke to me.

All right, Dexter, it said. Then try to figure out who knew that this was your room.

The list of people who knew I had checked in here was much smaller. I had to assume that Anderson and other interested cops might know. And anybody else who could sneak in the back door of a database could find out, if they wanted to know badly enough. I could have done it myself in under ten minutes, simply by checking for a credit card. The moment I used a card with my name on it my location became public knowledge. And the record would state quite clearly the name and address of the hotel, and then—

I blinked. I had just had another thought, something very significant; I was quite sure of it. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was there. I rewound my thoughts, marching them by again at a slower speed. I sat up even straighter in my chair as I scanned — and there it was. I don’t know if I found it because I had such excellent posture, but just in case, I sent a little mental thank-you card back through time to Mrs. Parker.

It was indeed quite true that anybody with a computer and half a brain could track me by following what I did with my credit card. But there was a tiny factoid that was even truer.

I hadn’t used my credit card.

Brian had used his credit card.

What had he called it? A “nice anonymous” card. I’d thought nothing of it at the time, so I tried to make up for that lapse now. Brian could not possibly have a credit rating of any kind; he had no fixed address — for that matter, I wasn’t sure he even had a fixed identity. That obviously meant that the card was either fake or stolen. Most financial companies would look on this with very strong disapproval. But as evil and mercenary as they are, most credit card companies stop just a wee bit short of actually killing people who abuse them, even if unwillingly.

Could it be the hypothetical person Brian had possibly stolen the card from? That was a little more likely — but then why were there two of him?

I thought deeper. Aside from this faux card, Brian had a sudden excess of cash, enough to hire Kraunauer. Where do sudden large chunks of money come from, and what connection could they have to the corpses in my room? I stood and looked at them again, first on the bed, then in the closet, and then I went back and stood over One, where he lay so peacefully on my bed.

All of us who work in law enforcement are taught to shun racial profiling, so I tried not to leap to any conclusions that might offend anyone, no matter their ethnic background. But it was not possible to avoid the observation that the dead men looked very much like they might be Mexican or Central American. And having said that, one could not help adding, with all possible political correctness, that if indeed they were Mexican or Central American, and since they had actually been violently murdered, and it had happened right here in Miami — and if, additionally, there truly were significant amounts of money lurking in the background, then it was at least possible—possible, mind you, no more than a chance that had very little to do with the men’s ethnic identity — it was, as I say, possible that drugs might be involved somewhere along the line.

Brian would certainly have no moral scruples about the drug trade. In truth, he had no actual morals at all. He had all the advantages I enjoyed of being heartless, soulless, empty inside, and devoid of human feelings — but he was not burdened with any of my disadvantages of artificially grafted-on standards. The business of buying and selling drugs would seem like a perfect opportunity for profit, and even self-expression, considering the nature of the competition. He might well have gotten involved in some way. And knowing Brian, he could just as easily have done something that made someone in this ultraviolent world just a trifle peeved.

That didn’t explain who my new friends were. But it did offer the first clear explanation of how and why, and it had the added virtue of being very easy to check.

I picked up my phone and called.

After only three rings, Brian answered. “Brother,” he said with low-quality artificial bonhomie. “How art thou?”

“Not bad,” I said. “A great deal better than my uninvited company.”

“Company?” he said. “Is this wise in your present circumstance?”

“Terribly unwise,” I said. “Especially since they are both exceptionally dead.”

For a long moment Brian said nothing.

“Should I add that I have no idea who they are?” I said at last. “And that I also didn’t do it?”

“Good additions,” Brian said softly, and there was a dangerous edge to his voice I hadn’t heard before. “Describe them.”

“Both about five-foot-six and stocky,” I said. “The nearer one is mid-thirties, dark hair, olive skin, pockmarked face.”

Brian hissed. “The left wrist,” he said. “Please examine it.”

I stepped over to the bed and flipped the left arm off the chest. There was a tattoo, about four inches long. It showed a bleeding Jesus wrapped in the coils of a cobra. “Interesting tattoo,” I said into the phone.

“Jesus with a snake?” Brian said.

“Yes,” I said. “You know this guy?”

“Stay put,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

“Brian, there are cops in the lobby,” I said. But he had already hung up.

I looked at my phone and wondered whether I should call Brian back. I decided not to. He probably wouldn’t answer, and anyway, I felt that somehow the phone had let me down. I didn’t trust it anymore.

But I had to do something. “On my way” could mean a few minutes — but it also might mean half an hour or more. I still had no idea what was going on here, but whatever it was, I didn’t think I could simply stand in my room and wait for the next piece of the puzzle to fall into place. The stakes were very high, and the next piece might well land on my head. Clearly I needed to get out of this room as quickly as possible.

On the other hand, I also needed to meet Brian, and he was coming here. But once again, my newly revived brain rose to the challenge, and this time I wasn’t even sitting straight. Brian would arrive and, just as I had, he would see the cop car out front and proceed to the rear door.

I left the room, making double sure the door latched securely behind me, and the Do Not Disturb sign was still in place. I walked to the stairway. I went all the way down to the ground floor and stood to one side of the door, so I could see out into the parking area without being too easily seen myself.

Ten minutes passed. A woman in a business suit walked by outside and climbed into her car — or at any rate, I assumed it was her car. If not, she was a very smooth car thief.

Five more minutes went by. Two teenage kids came clattering down the stairs from the second floor and slammed out the door to the lobby without paying me any attention.

I looked out the window in the back door. I couldn’t see very much, but none of it was moving. I wondered whether Brian had met with some kind of accident — or, all things considered, more likely an on-purpose. How long should I wait for him? Sooner or later something unpleasant was almost certain to happen. The cops would decide to come up to my room and push me around, or the maid would come to change the sheets. It was even possible that whoever had sent the two Strangers would send another one. Failing that, they might come around in person to make another corpse out of anyone hanging around in my room — or in the stairwell, for that matter. Where the hell was Brian?

I looked out the window again. No sign of him; nothing but a white van. It rolled slowly closer, until I could see the side of it. In big black letters, it said, ATWATER BROTHERS CARPET.

I blinked. Atwater again? Really?

The van backed up into a position that blocked the door where I stood, and a moment later Brian appeared. He wore a pair of tattered gray coveralls and carried a heavy canvas tool bag, and when he put his hand on the door he saw me, and nodded.

I opened the door and Brian stepped through. “Brother,” he said. “We may not have a lot of time.”

“That thought had occurred to me,” I said. “Along with a few others of a more personal nature.”

He showed me his teeth and took my elbow. “Time for recriminations later,” he said. “Right now there’s work to do.”

I nodded and let him hurry me along up the stairs and down the hall to Room 324. I opened the door and we went in, and Brian stepped directly over to look at the body on the bed.

“Octavio,” he said. “As I feared.”

“You do know him,” I said.

He nodded. “He was an ally. Perhaps even a friend.”

“Friendship is such a fragile thing,” I said.

“Like life itself,” Brian said, looking down at Octavio with an expression that might almost have been regret, if I hadn’t known Brian so well.

“I don’t want to intrude on your grief,” I said. “But—”

His head snapped up and he looked at me, all traces of expression completely gone. “Yes,” he said briskly. “You said there were two?”

“I did,” I said. I motioned him over to the closet, and he pushed the door open and knelt beside Stranger Two for no more than three seconds. Then he stood and said, “I don’t know him.”

“Well,” I said. “Even so…”

“Right,” Brian said. “Let’s get them out of here.” He reached into his canvas bag and took out a rolled-up gray cloth something. “Put this on,” he said, tossing it to me.

I unrolled coveralls that matched his own, and pulled them on over my clothes. By the time I had them buttoned up, Brian had rolled up the bedspread, with Octavio snugly inside. “If you would, brother?” he said politely. “Take that end, please.”

I picked up the near end of the bundle. It felt like the feet. Brian picked up the other end, nodding toward the door, and together we clumsied Octavio out, into the hall, and down the stairs. For some reason dead bodies always seem to be heavier than live ones, and Octavio was no exception. He was surprisingly heavy for such a small corpse, and by the time we had him down the stairs to the back door I was thoroughly winded, and had acquired a brand-new cramp in my back muscles.

Brian bumped the door open with his backside, and we carried Octavio the short distance to the back of the van. Showing surprising strength, Brian held the bundle with one hand while he opened the van’s rear door, and then lifted the body up and in while I came forward with my end. I looked casually around as Brian pulled the bedspread out and slammed the doors shut. I saw nothing at all except a few dozen parked cars.

“All right,” Brian said. “Next?”

We went back up the stairs and repeated the process with Stranger Two. Luck was with us, and we saw no one — and hopefully no one saw us, either. In any case, it was only a few more minutes before we had the second body in the van. I stretched and wondered whether I would ever again have feeling in my back that wasn’t pain.

Brian slammed the van’s back doors, locked them, and nodded at me. “One more trip,” he said.

“Really?” I said. “I only counted two bodies.”

“Your things,” he said, moving past me to the hotel door. “It might be best if you check out now?” He turned and showed me a small and knowing smirk. “Even better if you do it by phone,” he said.

“You may be right,” I said.

He nodded. “It had to happen someday.”

We went up together, pausing cautiously on the third-floor landing, and again at the door to my room — or ex-room, to be more precise. There was no sign of anything or anyone, and I went on in. It took me less than a minute to gather my meager possessions, and we trudged back down the stairs and out to the parking lot. I walked past the van and threw my suitcase into the trunk of my rental car while Brian climbed into the driver’s seat of the van.

“Follow me,” he said, and then added, “Not too far.”

“All right,” I said. I got into the rental car and followed Brian as he nosed slowly out of the lot.

The police car was still parked by the front door, and there was no sign of its occupants. We crawled by and out onto U.S. 1, and a few blocks up, Brian made a U-turn and drove south. I followed along, wondering what he had gotten himself into, and why it should be my problem.

A few minutes south, Brian pulled into a strip mall that held, among other things, an all-night doughnut shop, and I nodded. Nobody would notice my rental car here. I parked it in a spot close enough to the doughnut shop that some of the bright fluorescent lights spilled onto the car, and walked to the far corner of the lot, where Brian sat in the van, engine idling. I climbed into the passenger seat, and he drove back out onto U.S. 1 again, heading south.

Neither of us spoke for several minutes, until finally, as we passed Sunset Drive, I couldn’t take it anymore.

“I’m very sorry about your friend,” I said.

Brian sighed. “Yes,” he said.

I stared at him expectantly, but he said no more, and I was miffed enough to feel that I shouldn’t have to drag it out of him, so I was silent, too. We drove still farther south, almost all the way down to Homestead. Then Brian turned off U.S. 1 and headed west, inland, turning several times. We straightened out at last on a long stretch of badly maintained pavement that led due west. The sun was going down, and it shone directly in my eyes, so I turned sideways and looked out the window. There wasn’t a lot to see in this old residential area. The houses gradually got older and smaller and farther apart, and then finally they disappeared altogether and we were driving along a dirt road through a landscape of scrub, canals, and saw grass. We had come to the very edge of the Everglades. I looked at Brian, hoping he might be ready to explain all, but he looked straight ahead at the road and the setting sun.

After another ten minutes of awkward silence, Brian finally turned off the dusty road and drove us through a gate in an old and sagging chain-link fence. The gate itself hung forlornly from one rusty hinge. There was an ancient faded sign on it, but I couldn’t see what it said.

A hundred yards or so past the gate we came to the lip of a large old quarry filled with milky water, and Brian put the van into park. He turned the engine off, and we continued our silence for a moment. The engine ticked a few times as it cooled, and not too far away an entire symphonic chorus of insects began their evening concert.

And then Brian shook his head, took a deep breath, and turned to me.

“And now, brother,” he said, in a dead and very serious voice, “I’m afraid I have to tell you that you have placed us both in grave danger.” He leaned closer. “I need to know who you told about your hotel room.”