Dexter Is Dead

SEVEN

Brian drove us a few miles through the relatively light morning traffic and then turned into the lot of a Walmart Supercenter. I raised an eyebrow at him as I realized where he was taking us. He smiled that terrible fake smile and said, “Only the finest for you, brother dearest.”

He parked as close as possible, and I unbuckled and opened the door, but I paused when I saw that Brian made no move to get out and accompany me. “If you don’t mind,” he said apologetically, “I would rather wait here.” He shrugged. “I don’t like crowds.”

“I don’t mind,” I said.

“Oh!” he said suddenly. “Do you have money?”

I looked at him for just a moment. I had so far been taking his uncharacteristic generosity somewhat for granted, and it occurred to me that perhaps I should not. He was my brother, and he was more like me than anyone else in the world — and for that very reason, it suddenly made no sense that he would be so very attentive and caring. But for the life of me, I could think of no possible hidden motive. Perhaps he really was just trying to be the ideal big brother. It was hard to believe, but what else was there? So I just shook it off and showed him what a really good fake smile looked like. “I’m covered,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

I walked into the store, still wondering, in spite of myself. Why would Brian spend so much time, money, and effort on anyone else, even me? I doubted very much that I would have, in his position. Yet he was, and the only explanation at the moment was the very obvious one, that we were brothers, and as a motive for good deeds, that made no sense at all.

It may be wrong of me to assume the worst, to fall reflexively into lizard-brain paranoia, but there it was. That was my world, and a great deal of experience and hard study of humans has done nothing to persuade me that anyone else is terribly different. People do things for selfish reasons. They help other people because they expect to get something in return: sex, money, advancement, or a bigger dessert, it doesn’t matter. There’s always something, no exceptions. For all the Mary Poppins care he was lavishing on me, Brian had to expect a significant payback. And I couldn’t think of one single thing that I could give my brother that he couldn’t get easier, and cheaper, by himself.

What did Brian want?

Of course, if I threw that question onto the floor among the larger and more savage questions that were ravaging my life, it would be torn to pieces and eaten in a heartbeat. Brian’s motives were almost certainly far from pure, but his being nice to me was not nearly as life-threatening as Detective Anderson, the state attorney, and my likely return to a cell. I truly believed that he was no actual danger to me, and I needed to concentrate on dealing with the very large and real dangers to my life, liberty, and pursuit of vivisection. Plus, I had to find underwear.

So I relaxed as I entered the store and fought my way through the savage crowd, neatly avoiding most of the attempts to ram me with shopping carts. It was actually very pleasant to unwind a little amid the atmosphere of mean-spirited homicidal selfishness. It was soothing, really. I felt right at home, so very much back among My People that for a little while I forgot my troubles and just let the healing waves of psychotic, pinchpenny malice wash over me.

I found some wonderful underwear, exactly like what I always wore, and a new toothbrush, a few shirts, pants — even a bright blue suitcase to keep it all in. And I bought a charger for my phone, and one or two other necessities. I wheeled it all up to the register and waited patiently in the checkout line, smiling as I shoved my cart at the people who tried various ruses to cut in front of me. It was fun, and I was good at it — after all, I grew up here, too. I am brimful of that wonderful Miami Spirit that says, “Up yours! I deserve it!” And I began to ease back into the old Dexter who really believed he did.

Brian was waiting patiently right where I left him, listening to the radio. I threw my packages into the backseat and then opened the passenger door and slid in. To my mild astonishment, the radio was playing a call-in show, the kind where distracted idiots blather their most intimate secrets to a nationally syndicated audience in the vain hope that a psychologist can convince them they are real, important, and worth more than the chemicals that compose their bodies. Of course, the program’s host is never actually a psychologist; she usually has a degree in volleyball from a community college. But she is reassuring, and sells a lot of cereal for the network.

I had always found this type of program only slightly more amusing than minor surgery without anesthetic. But Brian was frowning, head cocked to one side, and giving the appearance of listening intently as the host explained that bed-wetting was perfectly normal, even at your age, and the important thing was not to let it affect your self-worth. He glanced up at me as I closed the door, and looked a little embarrassed, as if I had caught him doing something naughty. “Guilty pleasure,” he said apologetically. He turned off the radio. “It’s just so very hard to believe such people exist.”

“They exist,” I assured him. “And they outnumber us by quite a lot.”

“So they do,” he said, starting the car. “But still hard to believe.”

Brian drove me to a hotel close to the university. Aside from being very near my old home, and my alma mater, it was cheap and clean, and I knew all the restaurants nearby. Once again he waited patiently outside while I checked in. When I had a room key in my hand, I went back out to his car. He rolled down the window and I leaned on the car door. “All set,” I said.

“No problems?” he asked — a little too innocently, I thought.

“None at all,” I said. “Should there be?”

“One never knows,” he said happily.

I held up the little envelope that held the plastic key. “I’m in three twenty-four,” I said, and he nodded.

“All righty then,” he said.

For a moment we just looked at each other, and once more the wicked, unworthy thought occurred to me that eventually he would expect something in return, and payback was always a bitch in my family. But I pushed the spiteful notion away. “Thank you, Brian,” I said. “I really do appreciate all your help.”

He flashed that awful smile. “Don’t mention it,” he said. “Always glad to help.” I stood up and he called after me, “I’ll be in touch!” And then he rolled up the window and drove away.

Room 324 was, as you might expect, on the third floor of the hotel. It was nestled snugly in between the ice machine on one side and the elevator on the other, and had a breathtaking view of the building next door. But it was neat, comfortable, and completely anonymous, which suited me just fine for now.

I plugged in my phone to charge, and then unpacked my meager but functional wardrobe. And then I was done, out of important tasks, and surprisingly out of steam, too. I sank down on the bed and stared around at my new domain. It was a very small room, but it seemed huge after my super-snug cell at TGK, and all the extra space made me nervous. I would get used to it, of course — and probably just in time to be hauled back to TGK again when they decided to rearrest me.

Which they almost certainly would, and sooner rather than later. So what I really needed to do right now was explode into vigorous and positive action. That was my only hope — find a way to derail their train before it even left the station. Yup, that was the ticket. Charge. Get going. Do something.

And yet somehow I just couldn’t. It suddenly seemed futile, hopeless, a complete waste of time and energy. I was just one small bug on the windshield, and there were so many large and mighty wiper blades eager and ready to smear me off the glass. No matter what I tried to do, they were just too big, too powerful. And I was much too all alone, even with my fancy lawyer. I was David, but this time Goliath had a bazooka.

I felt the vitality drain right out of me as quickly and completely as if somebody had pulled a plug, and a dark bleak mist seemed to roll in and cover me. I’d let myself have hope, and I knew better than that. The only thing hope ever does is make the eventual inevitable disappointment hurt even more. I should have learned that by now — learned it for all time when Deborah showed up at last, and slapped me down because I had hoped. I was well and truly alone in a world that wanted nothing from me except to take away my life, and they would win. They had all the guns, they made the rules, and they always won. I was going down, and expecting any other outcome was sheer delusional fantasy. I should just get used to the thought that if I was very lucky, I would spend the rest of my life in a cell. It was going to happen, no matter what. There was no point in pretending, no point in trying to avoid it, no point in anything. Everyone who cared about me was either dead or had changed their minds — and the worst of it was, I couldn’t really blame them. I deserved to be shunned and locked up with all the other monsters. I was no different; I’d just been luckier. I’d had a wonderful run, longer than most, and now it was over. Accept it, get used to it, give up, and get it over.

I flopped back onto the bed. At least this mattress was thicker than the one in my cell. I lay back, determined to enjoy one last binge of comfort before they took me away forever, trying hard to enjoy the luxury of this huge, soft bed. Unfortunately, this particular mattress favored some new kind of ergonomic design; it was shaped like a soup bowl, with a large depression in the middle, and I rolled right into it as soon as I stretched out. Even so, it was a few notches above the pallet in my cell, so I wiggled around a bit until I got comfy. I did; it was very nice, even though it rolled me into the shape of a hula hoop. What a shame to leave all this behind forever.

I tried very hard to conjure some enthusiasm for fighting back and staying out of jail, where I could enjoy this kind of luxurious freedom whenever I wanted. Isn’t liberty worth a little effort? And, of course, there is more to freedom than soft, concave mattresses. There are other things in the world that are far more dear to Dexter’s heart — like food! Surely that was worth fighting for. Really good food, and a wonderful variety, anytime I wanted it, day or night!

But that unfortunately gave me an image of Dashing Dexter with cape and sword, valiantly fighting for the honor of a pizza, and that was a little too hard to take seriously as a motive for getting up off the bed. Besides, the food would never again be as good as it had been every night with Rita — and Rita was dead, killed by my very own personal brand of idiotic ineptitude.

The food had been even better with Jackie Forrest, my silver-screen sweetheart, the ticket to a new and shinier life — and the same sheer blind staggering stupidity had welled up out of me and killed her, too. Both of them dead, their bodies laid at my feet, because my monstrous ignorant prideful brainless incompetence had killed them just as surely as if I’d shot them dead. It was all on me and my stupid useless three-thumbed idiocy.

And this was the same great set of skills and smarts that I wanted to raise up against the entire justice system? How do those odds look, Dexter? One hapless, hopeless clown who has proven that he can’t find the floor even by falling face-first onto it? Lined up against him we have the cops, the courts, the penal system, the U.S. marshals, the Marines, and possibly the Taliban….Did you really think you’d do any better this time, Dexter Doofus? Why not face the fact that all you ever were was lucky? And when you let Jackie Forrest die your luck ran out, all of it, for all time. The only good news is that there was nobody left to kill with your incompetence.

I closed my eyes and let the misery wash over me. I was very glad that I can’t feel human emotions. If I could, I would probably start to cry.

But once again, that little spark of self-awareness, that tiny demon that watches Me, started to giggle, and it tweeted me a picture: Dexter in the Dumps, sprawled on a saggy mattress in a cheap hotel and prepared to weep away this life of care that I have lived. I fall upon the thorns of life! Woe is me! And so forth!

And once again the picture was idiotic enough to stir me up from my torpid stew. All right, everything was bleak, black, hopeless, pointless, meaningless, empty of purpose. What had changed? Nothing at all — I had just forgotten, somehow, that life was struggle, and the only reward was to be allowed to live a little longer and struggle harder. Family life had set me up, and then the dazzling illusion of the life I might have had with Jackie had knocked me down. But all that was over, and we were back to basics. And when you came right down to it, the only purpose to life that I have ever been able to find is not to die. You couldn’t let them push you out the door to go gentle into that good night. You had to rage, rage, and slam that door on the bastards’ fingers. That was the contest — to delay the end of your personal match as long as you could. The point was not to win; you never did. Nobody can win in a game that ends with everybody dying — always, without exception. No, the only real point was to fight back and enjoy the combat. And by gum, I would.

I opened my eyes. “Rah-rah,” I said softly. “Yay, Dexter.”

All right, I accepted the challenge. Dexter would duel.

I might not win — I almost certainly would not win. But they would know they’d been in a fight.

With that decided, I felt better right away. Well done, Dexter. Show that good old team spirit. Wave the flag, give ’em hell, and all that.

Just one small question — how?

It was wonderful to resolve to Do Something, of course, but that meant I had to define “Something,” fill in the blanks, dig out a few specific worms and decide where the fish might bite them. And that meant I had some powerful Thinking to do, which, on sober reflection, was not a terribly encouraging prospect.

My once-mighty brain had not really distinguished itself lately, and I was no longer filled with cocky can-do confidence at the prospect of hurling it into the fray. But it was all I had — and really, didn’t it deserve one last chance to redeem its honor? Especially since this really was likely to be the last chance.

Of course it did; it was doing the best it could do, poor thing. So I turned it loose on the problem with an encouraging pat on the back. Go on, Brain. I know you can do it….

Shyly at first, and then with increasing confidence, my thoughts began to form. First, there were two immediately obvious points of attack. The first was to find proof that somebody else did it. That should have been simple — even elementary, a word my brain suggested to show that it was getting back just a little panache. But after all, somebody else actually did do it — Robert Chase. But he was universally beloved, particularly by the cops, who he’d buddied up with. I would have to find very solid proof of his guilt, and that would be tough. Anderson would control all the forensic evidence, and he’d choke off anything that pointed to someone who was not named Dexter.

And that led to the second point, which was Anderson himself. If I could discredit him, the rest would be much easier. And if not discredit, then perhaps something a little more, um…permanent? As well as entertaining? Brian was quite correct when he suggested that one small accident would go far toward setting everything right. And Anderson had earned it several times over. It would even be fun. But it wouldn’t go quite far enough; someone else would almost certainly pick up the torch and continue the race toward Dexter’s Destruction. And sadly enough, it would probably be Deborah. Even sadder, she was almost certainly far too eager to take on the job. She was a lot smarter than Anderson, and she would not make the same stupid mistakes. She would plod grimly ahead until she had enough rope to hang me, and then, if our recent tête-à-tête was any sign, she would even offer to tie the noose herself.

No, if Deborah was suddenly in charge of investigating Dexter’s guilt, things would be a lot worse than they were now. She might actually uncover evidence of some of the things I had really done. And then I would probably be back to Option One anyway — a sad accident for Deborah. I wasn’t sure I was entirely ready to arrange that, not just yet. It was no longer unthinkable, though, which was certainly a large change. I remembered that night a few paltry years ago when I had stood above her taped, helpless form, knife in hand, every cell in me torn neatly in half between cutting and not cutting, Brian urging me on and the still small voice of Dear Dead Harry telling me it was forbidden.

I wasn’t hearing that voice a whole lot lately. I wondered why. Maybe it was a realization that Harry’s Plan had holes in it; it wasn’t perfect. It had let me down. And maybe it was Deborah’s complete rejection of any kinship between us — I was no longer a Morgan, and therefore no longer subject to Harry’s posthumous manipulation. I was my own man now, and after all, I had never really been her brother. If I suddenly felt an urge to dispose of Deborah, why shouldn’t I? And I would, too — if I felt like it. I just didn’t, not quite, not yet.

So, casual assassination aside, what were my options at the moment? They seemed rather limited: trust in Kraunauer, trust in Brian, or take a little independent action of my own.

Trust had always been something I had trouble with. Perhaps it’s a character flaw. But putting my life into someone else’s hands seemed a little rash. To me, even putting my lunch in someone else’s hands was lunatic irresponsibility. So even though I had every reason to believe that Kraunauer could pull off another miracle, and even though I had no reason to think that Brian would suddenly stab me in the back like Deborah had done, I decided that Option Three, independent action, was my best course.

Either find evidence that Robert was guilty, or reveal to the world that Anderson was playing dirty. Good — I would start with both and see which one paid off first.

I looked at the bedside clock; as hard to believe as it might be, it was still only a little after ten. I had a meeting with Kraunauer at two — and after that, I would begin.

I felt much better once I’d made my choice — so much better, in fact, that I fell asleep almost at once.

—

When I woke up, I had no idea where I was, or how much time had passed, and I spent several minutes lying on my back and blinking stupidly at the ceiling. It was the wrong ceiling, unfamiliar, and I was sure I’d never seen it before. My back hurt, too; it was bent in a strange half circle, as if I had fallen asleep inside a huge beach ball.

Slowly, memory came back: I was in a soup-bowl bed in a hotel room because I was out of jail and Anderson had sealed my house as evidence. But I was free; I didn’t have to stay in a tiny cell and wait for odd sandwiches. It was a nice day outside and I could go out and enjoy it if I wanted to, walk the three blocks to the Italian restaurant and eat something that was actually good. I could do whatever I wanted — for the moment. But my first job was to work at making this giddy freedom a more permanent thing. I thought of Kraunauer — and had a brief moment of panic; I was supposed to meet him at two. Had I slept through it? What time was it? I rolled over and scrabbled out of the crater in the center of the bed with some difficulty and looked at the clock: eleven-twelve. Still plenty of time.

Since I was in no hurry, I didn’t rush up off the bed. I kicked my legs over the edge and sat there for another minute or two, trying to organize my thoughts.

It is all very well to decide on independent action. The problem comes when you realize that it is, by its nature, independent. That means that you don’t have anybody else to tell you what to do or how to do it, and that generally means that a great deal of deliberation is required before you get to the actual Action part. I pride myself on my vast talent for deliberation, but for some reason the circuits all seemed a bit rusty today. Maybe I had been sidelined for too long. Perhaps sitting in a tiny cell with every decision made for you tended to encourage your mental processes to take early retirement. Whatever the case, it was surprisingly hard to kick-start the mighty turbines of Dexter’s Giant Brain, and it was another five solid minutes of stupid blinking before I began to have cogent thoughts.

Finally I got up and staggered to the little bathroom. I splashed cold water on my face, and watched in the mirror as the water dripped off and ideas began to trickle back in. “Independent action”—at the moment I wasn’t really even independent. In fact, as I thought about it, I realized that I was stuck here, just as certainly as I’d been stuck in TGK, because Miami is not a city built on the premise that mass transportation is a really good idea. And in spite of the fact that I was only a few blocks from the Metromover, I couldn’t really get anywhere and do anything without a car. Kraunauer’s office, for example, was miles from the nearest Metromover station. I needed a car.

And I had one — somewhere. With any luck at all it was still mine, and still somewhere within the Metro Dade area.

So my first step was to get my car back. I nodded at my reflection: Nice work, Dexter. That was real thinking there.

The last time I’d seen my battered but trusty little car, it had been parked on the street near the house that was supposed to become Our New House, the Dream Home that had a pool and separate rooms for the kids and nearly every modern convenience. Instead, it was now the house where Robert Chase and Rita had died and, not coincidentally, where I had been arrested. I had to assume that it, too, was evidence now. I could also be pretty sure that somebody had found my car nearby — probably not Anderson himself, but somebody a few pegs down on the food chain who had to do some actual grunt work.

It might well be that my car was now evidence, too — but at least I knew how to find out. I pulled off the wire charging my phone and began to call around.

Half an hour later I had found out that my car was, in fact, impounded — but it was not in the actual impound lot. In fact, nobody seemed to have any idea where it might be, and I was not successful at getting anybody to see this as their problem. Since losing an impounded vehicle was highly irregular, I had to assume that I was seeing Anderson’s fine handiwork again. He had probably donated my car to an artificial-reef program and taken the tax deduction for himself.

I actually admired Anderson’s thoroughness; he seemed to have thought of nearly everything. It wasn’t at all his usual slapdash knuckleheaded style of doing things — or to be more accurate, his style of Not Doing things. He had clearly taken a special interest in making me as miserable as possible.

Whatever the case, I didn’t have a car, and I needed one. And because my Magnificent Mind was functioning at last, it was the work of mere moments for me to find a solution to this vexing problem. I called a nearby rental office. It took two more phone calls, but I found one that agreed to bring the car to me, and within a surprisingly short time the agreeable clerk called me from the lobby. I hung the Do Not Disturb sign on my doorknob and went down, and before I knew it I was behind the wheel of my very own vehicle again, relishing the new-car smell and the security of knowing that I’d bought the supplemental insurance and I could hit something if I really wanted to. Now if only I could find Detective Anderson in a pedestrian crosswalk…

I drove the rental clerk back to his office and then turned out onto Dixie Highway. I was free, I was mobile, and truly independent at last.

So what should I do with all this intoxicating freedom? And was it true, after all, that freedom was just another word for nothing left to lose? I had already lost my family, my house, all my clothes, my car — I should have felt really free. I didn’t — I felt cheated, robbed, and victimized. But at least they’d left me my arms and legs, and my powerful-again brain. That alone put me way ahead of Anderson. Although he probably had more clean socks.

Still, that made me feel a little better — enough to realize that I was hungry. I glanced at the dashboard clock; less than an hour before my meeting with Kraunauer. Not a lot of time. I ran my mind over the list of gourmet dining establishments in Miami that might fit my somewhat narrow needs: sandwich, good, fifteen minutes…It was a surprisingly small list. In fact, it was a completely blank list. There was no place that was close and quick that also offered something that was actually good to eat. I would have to do without. I heard a small grumble of protest from my stomach; it seemed to say, Not really…? And it was a fair complaint. Maybe I could eliminate one of my three qualifications? It had to be fast, no matter what, since time waits for no man, and neither did Frank Kraunauer. That meant it really had to be close, too. That left only “good,” and to eliminate that meant an outright abuse of the values for which I lived.

On the other hand, half a block ahead of me I saw a famous burger logo flashing beside the road. My stomach immediately responded to the sight with a shout of, Go for it! No, I said firmly. I refuse. I will not sink so low.

My stomach rumbled threateningly. You’ll be sorry….

I told my stomach that I am more than my hunger. I exceed the sum total of any want that is merely physical. And we have standards, damn it! Would we really settle for anything less than excellence, out of mere convenience?

Apparently we would. Seven minutes later I was wiping the last tendrils of grease from my chin and throwing away the meager detritus of my shameful downfall. Lo, how far the proud Dexter has fallen, I thought, and I heard the burbling echo as my stomach replied, And loving it.