Dexter's Final Cut

NINETEEN

I kept my boat behind a private house on a canal, just south of the heart of Coconut Grove’s busy center. The house was on a quiet street, and the elderly couple who owned it lived in New Jersey most of the year, coming down to this house only for the coldest months of winter. They were quite happy to take the modest rental fee from me, and I was just as happy paying less than the going rate for dockage. On top of getting a bargain, I also got a relatively private place to keep my boat, which was occasionally a very good thing, considering that I sometimes put Certain Items onto my boat and carried them away to consign them to the final briny deep, and it was probably best that no one saw me doing this.

And on this bright and suddenly eventful day, it would have been worth twice what I paid for it, because this dock was only a ten-minute drive from the redolent Dumpster where Amila lay in sloppy repose.

I don’t even remember what feeble excuses I made as I hurried away from the scene and into my car. I think I said I was leaving early for my son’s teacher conference because I was worried about the traffic; not my best effort, but I was in a hurry, and no one seemed to notice that it didn’t make a great deal of sense.

In any case, once I got through the maddening snarl of traffic in the middle of the Grove, it was only ten minutes before I was on my boat and heading out the canal, quite a bit faster than the No Wake-Idle Speed that is generally required. But having made up my mind to do this and do it now, I had whipped myself into a lather of impatience, grinding my teeth at the thought that I would not be in time, that Patrick would paddle away, and I would miss my second and probably final chance to set things right in my own inimitable way.

And so I hurried out the canal, earning a wicked glare from a shirtless old man on the bank as I went past at a good ten knots, and a shout for good measure as I reached the mouth of the canal and nosed the boat up to full speed and onto a plane.

It was a straight line by water back to the far side of Dinner Key basin, where I devoutly hoped Patrick would still be waiting and watching, and I made the distance in half the time it had taken me to drive. There were several tricky patches of shallow water, but I headed straight through them at full speed, ignoring the possibility of hitting bottom and losing a propeller blade, and I would have gone even faster if I could have. I could not shake the worry that Patrick might be gone when I got there, and I gnashed my teeth impatiently the whole way.

It was only a bit more than twenty minutes from the time I had hurried off the dock to the time I nosed my boat around the first barrier island and into the boat basin, remarkably good time. But it was not the record-setting journey that put a smile in my heart and a song on my lips; it was the sight of the small yellow kayak, still bobbing in place, as I came off plane and slid down to idle speed inside the boat basin. Now that I knew he was still there, I could take my time, and I did not want to draw attention from anyone onshore-nor, heavens forfend, from the Marine Patrol, known as the AquaNazis by those of us who have been stopped and boarded by these diligent seagoing crime fighters.

And as I saw Patrick sitting there so placidly on his kayak, staring intently at all the fuss caused by his crude handiwork, it occurred to me that I had not even thought about how I would do this. I had hurried through the anxious hurly-burly of getting away, and then getting here, with never an idea of what to do when I got here, and now that I actually was here I did not know what to do next, and I took a deep and centering breath and looked at the thing from several angles. It was very bright broad daylight, and the sun would shine far too clearly on the wicked as well as the just, and I could not really be sure which one I was right now, but either way I was illuminated far too well.

Anyone onshore who saw me stick a knife into Patrick would have no such doubts about my affiliation-and there was a great crowd of possible onlookers: people on their boats at the dock, more people thronging at the yellow perimeter tape, and worse, an entire flock of law enforcement personnel. Any one of them might look up at just the wrong moment and see the very visible violence of Patrick’s well-deserved demise.

I looked around. Ahead of me, on the far side of Patrick, was the last barrier island that marked the end of Dinner Key’s harbor area. Onshore on the far side of that, and therefore invisible from here, was a park-had Patrick found a quiet spot there to leave his motorcycle? It would be largely deserted right now, especially with some real excitement on the nearby docks.

Off to my right, Biscayne Bay stretched away, down to Turkey Point on one side and Elliot Key on the other. There were a few boats scattered across the vast expanse of water, but nothing close enough to see what I might do.

And what might that be? I was getting closer to Patrick all the time and I had still come up with nothing, no way to do what I truly needed to do. I looked all around for inspiration, and then I looked again at Patrick floating there so smug and happy, and it sent a trickle of sharp irritation rushing through me; this was his fault. He was putting me through all this bother, the ignorant savage. The hammer-brained unrefined knuckleheaded amateur, floating there without a care, while his betters were forced to rush madly about and improvise a way to clean up his slapdash all-thumbs mess. It was too much, too annoying, and I hissed out a sharp and cranky breath-

And, breathing back in, I felt the brilliant light of this sun-blighted afternoon slide its way down the spectrum to a cool and deadly violet, felt the worry and the flutters drop away and drown in the blooming shadows, and very slowly-happily felt all things workaday worrisome slump into the trash can and all the wonderful steady readiness of the Dark Passenger’s icy calm rise up from the Dexter Deep and slither snugly into place to take control of this sun-dark day.…

And we are ready.

And we know what to do, and how to do it, and we know that somehow it will work.

And so we begin to do it.

We move slowly toward the drooling dolt in the kayak, one hand on the throttle, feeling the purr of ready power there, and the answering rumble of the much greater power idling just below the surface of the happy boater’s smile we have tacked onto our face. Closer …

Not close enough, not yet. He does not notice us yet, does not look up, does not look away. He does nothing but lounge there, leaning back in his yellow plastic boat, staring intently in toward the dock as if this is all there is to the world and there could not possibly be some deadly slithering Something sliding toward him with such icy glee.

He stares unaware, watching only the dock, where a buzz of joy floats out at us across the water-a joy that should not be there in the presence of that clumsy horror in the Dumpster, a joy that should only be our quiet reward in this sunny midnight, and one small flicker of a glance tells us that Jackie has arrived and the crowd has forgotten all about why they have gathered and can think only about her golden presence, and my unsuspecting playmate is no different, no more aware than his kayak that we are only a handful of heartbeats from uncoiling onto his slack-jawed doze and taking him far away out of the bright warm sunshine and into the deep cold dark forever-

Closer …

And he looks up at last; some small tick or whir of the engine alerts him that we are oh so very near, and he turns to gape at us, and there is the face from Facebook, with its secret smirk of look-what-I-done, and he stares without seeing for only a moment, and then he turns away to focus again on the golden-haired woman on the dock, thinking once more his hungry thoughts and having no tiny flicker of a clue that Something much hungrier is here to gobble him up.

Closer …

And he looks at us again, and this time we are a little too close to be just casual passing traffic, and a frown creases his face, a frown that turns slowly, delightfully, into alarm-does he recognize this face we wear? Does he know us and realize at last that we have come for him, come to stop his clumsy fun and end his lethal bumbling and finish him altogether?

Perhaps he does; he lurches upright, clutching at his paddle as if it can save him from what is coming, what will soon happen, what must happen to him, and he digs the blades of the paddle into the water very hard-left, left, left, and right, as he spins the boat away in a growing panic that is very rewarding to watch. What does he imagine is coming for him? Arrest? Imprisonment? The mighty Hand of Justice? A steely handcuff and a stern reading of his rights, and then a long slow wait in a series of small and smelly rooms with iron bars on doors and windows?

Would he paddle away any faster if he knew that there was no iron-barred room, no handcuffs, and no arrest churning happily along in his wake? That the only justice for him will be the final kind, from the High Court of Pain, and his rights are limited to only one: He has the right to shuffle off his mortal coil and spin away into the Dark Forever, and there is no appeal, no parole, and no way out at all.

Because we are on him, no matter how rapidly he paddles. We are right there with him, quite content to take our time and watch him splash his paddles in and out of the water so very earnestly. Left, right, left, right-faster and faster. For him it is a sprint, a race to safety at truly dizzying speed, very fast indeed-for a kayak.

Not for our motorboat.

To us, with our hand on the throttle, it is an amusement, a toying with the mouse before our claws come out, and we stay with him, ever so slightly easing up closer and closer-

He is really moving very well now, digging the paddle blades into the water with a good and rapid rhythm, and glancing back to see us smiling calmly, happily slipping only a tiny bit closer, and closer, and he tries, he really does try hard, to make his little yellow boat into a wonder of speed; jaw clamped tight, veins bulging in his face and arms, he tries so hard, so valiantly, as if mere sincere effort can outrun the laws of nature, and we are so very impressed at his labors that we nearly pause and applaud.

But he is around that last barrier island now, and he is angling in toward the park onshore and quite possible escape, and he can almost taste it now, almost feel the thrill of getting away, leaping up onto the seawall and off into freedom, his hard-earned getaway from the strangely sluggish pursuer who still idles along behind him, slow and smiling, and perhaps there is a small space in his panic where he begins to wonder why.

Why do we move so slowly closer? Why don’t we pounce, or shout, or shoot? Why do we simply smile, and smile, and be a villain, and ease so slightly closer a little bit at a time?

Why indeed? He does not yet know, can’t hope to know, but it is really very simple. Too simple for this senseless simpleton.

We are smiling because we are happy.

And we are happy because we have been waiting for him to do just exactly this, and now he has done it for us, just as if he had studied his part in our Dark Script, and he has done all the right things just right and the time is now.

Now, when he has finally fled to the far side of the little island; now, when he is away at last from the boat basin, invisible at last to the rows of yachts, shielded from sight by the island, hidden from the dock with its crowd of cops and gawkers, and still half a mile from shore. Now, when everything is as perfectly Just Right as it can ever be and all our joyful gleaming readiness is poised and polished and ready to spring into this perfect moment-

Now.

And our hand flexes forward on the throttle, and the growl of our happiness swells up with the growing roar of the engine, and our boat surges forward-not too fast, but fast enough, faster than any kayak, no matter how panicked its paddler.

And he has time for no more than one startled strangled yelp of complaint, an abrupt yodel of protest that this could possibly happen to wonderful him, and then it has already happened. Our boat thumps the side of the kayak, thumps it hard, with all the force of our weight and greater speed, and all the wicked need that holds the wheel and still smiles, smiles even wider now, with a true delight at the lovely things that are finally happening to the ignorant and well-deserving clot in the kayak.

But he is not in the kayak, not now, not anymore. Now he is in the water and flailing away, grabbing for something that floats, or something that makes sense, and there is nothing there of either kind for him to latch onto. The kayak is already scudding away, far out of reach and upside down, and the shore is even farther away, and only one small fishing boat with a cheerfully smiling captain is anywhere in his sight. And so he flounders there in the water, and coughs and splashes, and he yells out, “What the fuck!” and we circle carefully around and slowly crawl between him and the shore.

“Sorry!” we call out, with perfect insincerity. “Didn’t see you!”

And he splashes some more, but then he slows down his epic struggles, because it makes no sense that we really did hit him like that on purpose, and he is in the water right here in the sunlight, and in any case we are smiling and saying sorry and there is truly nowhere to go. So he treads water as we creep up to him, glaring up at us with suspicion and resentment, and he shouts again. “Fucking douche!” he yells, and there is a very broad smear of Tennessee on his words. “You seen me fine!”

“Sorry!” we say again, and we reach down beside us, under the gunwale, to the boat hook where it nestles in its clamps, and we pry it out and hold it up. “Grab onto this!” we call cheerfully. “We’ll pull you out!”

He blinks and stares at the boat hook as it drifts closer to his face. “Who’s we?”

It is Us, of course, the Dark We, the not-quite-visible but oh so very strong and cunning We of the shadowed inside smile, the happy wicked smile that spreads outward from the cold core and onto the mask of bright dopiness we wear to hide the razor teeth-but we do not tell him this; we do not tell him he is outnumbered by no more than this very real, very happy smile-we say instead no more than, “Grab the hook!” and add a cheerful, “Oops!” as the boat hook purposely-accidentally thumps against his temple. One small and careful thump, beautifully crafted to look like a mishap and perfectly calculated to stun him just enough so that for one weak and gargled moment it all goes ever-so-slightly dim for him and he breathes water.

“Sorry!” we call as he sputters back to dizzy wide-eyed panic. “Grab the boat hook!” we yell, more frightful urgency in our voice as we drift slowly away from where he flails at the endless deep that will soon be his home.

And he lunges for the boat hook, a wild and gratifying surge of panic that lifts him up and out of the water just enough so he can clamp both frantic hands onto the shaft of the boat hook.

“Great!” we call with gleeful relief-because we have him now. We have hooked our fish, set the barb unshakably into the soft flesh of his drooling gape, and so we reel him in, pulling him close and up to the side of the boat. And we haul our catch upward to where he can slap both hands onto the gunwale and let go of the pole, and we drop the boat hook to kneel on the deck and apparently offer him our left hand to help him onward, upward, into the boat.

Our left hand only, but he takes it and we pull him slightly higher. And still all unaware and dizzy and dripping wet, he dangles there half in the water and half out, just as he is now, in this perfect, wonderful, hurried, unplanned moment, already dangling half out of life.

He holds our left hand, balanced there between everything and nothing, and we hold him right there, our faces close together. Our left hand only, and he looks for our right hand to lift him out completely and he does not see it, and he looks back at us with a confusion that is tinged with anger, alarm, and desperation.

“What the fuck?” he says.

And the moment is here-the moment we have waited for, and planned for far too briefly, and we hesitate because it is not right. We have not proved his guilt, not Harry-sure, and we have not truly planned, and for just a moment we pause, bobbing in an uncertain boat on a sea of doubt.

And Patrick sees this, too, and sees that whatever might be happening, it is not what he thinks should be happening, and with his face so close to ours we can see that he is gathering himself for some purposeful thing, some sudden lunge or leap, and as ever-grateful always, just in the nick, we know exactly what to do.

“Jackie Forrest,” we say.

And it works, as it always does. Patrick freezes. For a moment he forgets to breathe, and that is a shame, because his breaths are numbered now and it is a very small number. And he stares back at us, so very near, and we watch his eyes-watch and truly feel a fond and warm regard for this savage bumbler. Because we always need the Harry Proof to earn these moments of wonder and bliss, and we have nothing like that proof this time-and Patrick has come to our rescue.

We watch him, and the look that climbs up into his bright and stupid eyes is everything we need. Just from the four syllables of that name, Jackie Forrest, everything he has done and planned to do is there in his eyes, a parade of pictures as full of guilt as a twenty-page confession. He did it, beyond question; this look could not lie. It is certainly and doubtlessly him, and without waiting for any kind of no-I-didn’t we bring up our right hand, the hand that has waited so patiently just out of sight, and we slide in the knife that has hovered there hoping for just this moment, slip in the blade once and carefully into just the right spot, and Patrick stiffens, gasps, and stares at us as he feels the knife go in and suddenly, terribly knows what is happening. And we watch the slow and fragile beauty of that moment as it flickers across the tiny twin screens of his pale blue eyes: the moment of indignant denial that this could ever happen to special precious me, then the bright bloom of world-ending agony as he knows that yes, it can and then yes, it has as the careful beat of the bioclock ticks one more time and then suddenly, unthinkably, stops.…

And then the most beautiful moment of all, as that thought swims away forever, that thought and all others, paddling off with every single trace of all that is Me; they swim away in a whirl of dark water, away from the small and pointless lump of meat and purpose that was Patrick and into the surging tide of blank and thoughtless night that has no end, away from everything he ever thought or ever was or ever wanted to be, away from the tiny bright shore that was life and into the rapid endless whirlpool of Nevermore.

And we watch and marvel as even that final flicker fades into the dim distance and the ever-same film of emptiness slides over the now-empty eyes. And the thing we are holding, the thing that was Patrick, lady-killer, alive with bright and boundless energy-that thing is now no more than an empty box, an unlovely container that will rot and fall apart faster than cheap cardboard in the rain, and as we see those eyes go dull we are truly moved, as we always are: moved, transported, lifted up for such a bright and rapid moment-and then dropped down again, drained, emptied of everything that matters, and as close to happy as we can ever be.

It is done. We have done it and it is over.

And now the colors of the day wash upward, into the brighter end of the spectrum where they belong, and the hard dark blade of doing it melts back once more into snug and tired satisfaction of a job well done, and I pull the clumsy, empty thing the rest of the way up, over the gunwale, and onto the deck. I leave it lying there and take the boat’s controls, motoring slowly away from the shore in the suddenly too-bright, too-empty afternoon.