Dexter's Final Cut

TWENTY-FIVE

In the night I woke up to the sound of sirens. They were a few miles away, winding up the scale in their flat, urgent wail, but the sound was coming closer, and without even thinking about it I knew what that meant and where they were headed: here, to this hotel, because another body had turned up, which meant-

Patrick, I thought. He’s done it again. And in my half-sleeping brain I could see his eager face as he slipped out of the chains I had put so carefully around him, and in half-waking horror I watched as he slowly, happily began to swim in toward the hotel, toward me, his rotting face set in a dead smile-

The image was too close and far too real and I jerked my eyes open. Impossible, I told myself. But in the darkened room with the sirens wailing and sleep still crusting my brain it did not seem impossible. He’s dead, I told myself, absolutely positively dead. And I knew this with complete certainty, but just as surely the sirens were coming closer, and just as surely I knew they were coming here.

I looked around the darkened room and tried to focus on real things: a chair, a table, a window. The ghosts began to fade back into dreams, and I took a deep breath-and then a new thought came barreling in, and in its own way it was just as troubling as the first nightmare:

What if I killed the wrong person?

What if that had been some Eagle Scout-innocent kayaker, who just happened to resemble a blurry picture on Facebook? And I had stabbed him and drowned him and sent him to feed the crabs, thinking it was Patrick-and now the real Patrick was right here, right now, in this hotel, and he had just killed someone, and he might even be on his way up here, to this room-

I was wide-awake now. I rolled off the couch and stood there for a moment, blinking stupidly, and then I picked up the Glock and padded across the floor to the door of Jackie’s room. I paused there for a moment, listening for any sound, and as I put my ear against the door it jerked open and I almost fell over.

Jackie stood there, eyes wide, one hand on the doorknob and one hand at her throat. She was wearing a plain cotton nightgown that came down to midthigh, and somehow, on her it seemed more enticing than anything Frederick’s of Hollywood could ever come up with. I gaped for just a moment before her voice brought me back to the real world.

“I heard the sirens,” she said. “I thought …” She glanced down and saw the pistol in my hand and her eyes went even wider. “Oh,” she said.

“I thought so, too,” I said, and she nodded.

For half a minute we both just stood there, listening as the sirens wound their way closer. There was never any doubt in my mind that they were headed here, but even so, we both held our breath as we heard the high, screaming note slide down the scale and then stop right below us, in the courtyard of the hotel. I went over and slid the balcony door open. I stepped out and looked down. Two patrol cars had parked at sloppy, cop-in-a-hurry angles. Their doors hung open and the flashing lights reflected up and onto the front of the hotel, and as I watched, more cars pulled in behind them, motorpool cars filled with detectives. I went back in and stood beside Jackie and we watched the lights flashing through the open balcony door until Jackie finally remembered to breathe.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, shit.”

“Yup,” I said.

Jackie inhaled raggedly, and then said, “It isn’t … I mean, we don’t know … Shit.” Even with the incomplete sentences, I followed her logic exactly. And although I wanted to reassure her, tell her it really wasn’t, it really couldn’t be, that half-dreamed image would not leave me, and I just stood there and felt the sweat come out of my hand and onto the grip of the Glock.

Jackie shook her head, and then walked quickly across the room to the couch and sat down, leaning forward, knees together, with her hands on the cushion beside them. I followed and sat beside her. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot to say. I remembered that I was still holding the Glock, and I slid the safety back on.

We were still sitting like that five minutes later when the house phone rang. I picked it up and said, “Yes?”

“What the fuck is going on?” a voice said; I recognized it as my sister, Deborah, and she sounded very tense. “Are you all right?”

“We’re fine, Debs,” I said, as soothingly as I could manage. “Are you here at the hotel?”

Debs breathed out, sounding almost like she was expelling a lungful of cigarette smoke. “I’m downstairs, in the lobby,” she said.

“What happened down there?” I asked, which was unnecessary. I was pretty sure I knew what had happened; I just didn’t know to whom.

“There’s a dead woman up there, one floor down from yours,” Debs said, and her voice sounded very harsh. “She’s pretty torn up, but she’s carrying a driver’s license in the name of Katherine Podrowski. That mean anything to you?”

“Podrowski?” I said, and behind me I heard Jackie gasp and then make a brief whimpering sound.

“Kathy …?” she said.

“A room service waiter saw blood coming under the door. He used a passkey, took one look, and he’s still crying,” Debs said. “It sounds like our guy did it again.”

“But …” I said, and happily for me, I stopped before I said anything more.

“Is it Kathy?” Jackie said in a hoarse and frightened whisper.

“She’s been ripped up, gutted, and her eye is missing,” Deborah went on, rather relentlessly, I thought, and very definitely harshly now.

“Which eye?” I asked her.

Deborah hissed, long and loud.

“I’m coming up,” she said, and hung up the phone.

I hung up, too, and went back to sit beside Jackie. “It’s Kathy,” I said.

“Oh, dear God,” Jackie said. She hugged herself, and then she began to shake, and then she was crying. “Oh, my God,” she said. For a few moments she cried and rocked, arms locked tight around herself. Then she took a long and ragged breath, and leaned forward over her knees. “Oh, Jesus, oh, shit,” she said. “This is my fault; it’s all my fault.” And she put her hands over her face and, after a moment, her shoulders began to shake again.

As I have mentioned, I don’t really understand most of human behavior, but I do know a standard cue when I see one, and when a woman hides her face in her hands and cries, any man seated next to her is supposed to provide comfort and support. So I did that, putting one arm around Jackie and patting her shoulder gently with my hand.

“It’s not your fault,” I said, which was true enough to be obvious. “You didn’t ask for a psychotic stalker.”

She sniveled loudly, the first unattractive thing I had seen her do. “I should have told them,” she said. “I should have … So selfish, and now Kathy is dead.”

“There’s no way you could have known he would do this,” I said. “It’s really not your fault.” And it might not be completely flattering to me, but I was actually feeling very proud of the way I kept finding appropriate things to say to her. After all, most of my brainpower was devoted to trying to figure out who had killed Kathy, since I was pretty sure it wasn’t Patrick.

“It is. It is my fault,” she insisted. “If I hadn’t been so concerned with my own stupid career-and now Kathy is dead for a stupid TV show I don’t even like!” Her shoulders shook harder, and then she gave a wail, combined with a snuffle, and she turned to me, shoving her face against my chest, and as she did I became very aware that her nightgown was really quite thin, and I was still dressed for sleep-which is to say, bare chested and wearing only a pair of battered boxer shorts. My other arm went around her reflexively and I held her, feeling tears and other things sliding down my side and wondering why I didn’t mind.

Because I didn’t mind; in fact, I was rather enjoying myself. I stopped patting her and instead began to rub her shoulder, in a way I hoped was as soothing to her as it was to me. Her skin was warm and dry and very soft, and I could still smell a faint tang of perfume coming off it, and I began to imagine all kinds of unthinkable things that really didn’t fit the mood of recent murder.

Luckily for all of us, an authoritative pounding sounded on the door to the suite, and I pried myself away from Jackie and went to the door. “Who is it?” I said, rather unnecessarily.

“Who the fuck do you think it is?” snarled somebody who could only be Deborah. “Open the fucking door!”

I opened the fucking door and Deborah shoved furiously past me and into the room. She stopped when she saw Jackie slumped on the couch, red eyed and runny nosed and, it must be admitted, not really looking her very best. Debs turned back to me, and for the first time seemed to notice that my attire was somewhat informal. She shook her head, still clearly smoldering about things in general and looking for something to scorch. As usual, it turned out to be me.

“Nice panties,” she said, glancing pointedly at my boxers. “You plan to chase this guy like that?”

I truly wanted to tell Deborah that I wasn’t going to be chasing this guy at all, not without a scuba tank-but I couldn’t. Debs knows what I am, and in her limited way she almost approves-but Jackie did not, could not, and that would have made the conversation very awkward. And I was still closing my mouth when that tiny, mean-spirited uncertainty crept back in, the completely ridiculous, illogical thought that I might have killed the wrong person. So instead I simply said, “Does it really look like the same killer?”

Deborah glared at me. “How many of these freaks you think we got running around?” she said, and I had a very uncomfortable moment before she added, “I haven’t seen the body yet, but it sounds the same.”

“Oh,” I said, with a small flutter of hope. Jackie snuffled loudly, and I remembered why. “Do they have a positive ID?”

“The driver’s license picture matches up,” Deborah said. “It’s her, no doubt. Kathy Podrowski.” And she looked at Jackie and said, rather unnecessarily, “Your assistant.”

Jackie made a sound somewhere between a moan and a retch, and Deborah turned back to me. “We both know what this means,” she said. “And we both know what we have to do about it.”

“Yes,” I said. “You have to tell the officer in charge what we’ve been sitting on.”

“That’s right,” she snarled.

“Um,” I said. “Who has the lead?”

Deborah’s face got even angrier, which was impressive. “Anderson,” she spat.

I blinked. “But that’s …” I said, but Debs shook her head bitterly.

“Two drive-bys this week, plus a ritual beheading, and the cannibal thing in the Grove,” she said. “So Anderson comes up in the rotation again, because I am busy covering up this psycho bullshit and when Captain Matthews finds out I’ll be lucky if I only get busted down to Code Enforcement and- Shit, Dexter!”

There was a faint sound of throat clearing from the couch, and we both turned to Jackie. She was sitting up very straight, knees together, one hand held at her throat. Her eyes were red rimmed, but she had stopped sniffling and was clearly trying to control her emotions. “If it could hurt your career …” she said tentatively.

“Don’t even say it,” Deborah snapped.

Jackie looked puzzled, then shocked. She shook her head. “Oh, no,” she said. “I was just … I was going to say, I can tell them it was my fault. Which it is, because your orders were to do what I asked, and …” She raised a hand, then dropped it to the couch beside her. “I just … I don’t want anybody else to get hurt,” she finished weakly. She met Deborah’s glare for a moment without blinking, and then she glanced away. “It’s my fault,” she said, and she looked so small and vulnerable that I wanted to kill things for her.

Deborah didn’t seem to feel the same way. “It doesn’t matter what you tell them,” she said harshly. “I’m a sworn officer and I am supposed to know better.” She stared at Jackie, but Jackie didn’t look up, and after a moment Deborah’s look softened just a bit and she said, “It’s not your fault. I’m the one who- I do know better than this, and I did it anyway.” Deborah straightened up like she was getting ready to face a firing squad-which she was, administratively speaking. “I fucked up. I had the responsibility, so I take the heat,” she said. She took a deep breath, turned away, and headed for the door with such a precise march step that I could almost hear “Colonel Bogey” playing.

“Deborah,” I said. She looked at me bleakly with one hand on the doorknob, but I couldn’t think of anything to say to make it better. “Um … good night …?”

Debs looked at me without expression for what seemed like a long time. Then she just shook her head, opened the door, and left.

I went over and put the chain and the security lock back on. I stood there for a moment, thinking about what Kathy’s death meant. Whether the chat with Deborah had sent a jolt of adrenaline into my brain, or I was just coming fully awake, I began to see small and troubling inconsistencies. If somebody was able to get into Kathy’s room, wouldn’t it be just as easy to get in here, into our room? And even more basic: Why Kathy? She was not blond, not young, and definitely not attractive. Her body had not been dumped somewhere public, and Debs said there was blood coming under the door, which did not fit the way the other victims had been butchered. Of course, Patrick could have been rushed, might have had to hurry more than he liked, and so-

But no: absolutely not. It truly was impossible, and I pushed the thought firmly away. It was not Patrick, could not be Patrick. I had killed him and no other, and Patrick was dead and gone, half eaten already by hungry sea life. And no matter how popular the notion was on TV at the moment, I refused to believe that he had come back from the dead. It was very definitely not Patrick.

So who was it?

Who had killed Kathy, and why?

And what, if anything, did I do about it? After all, it really wasn’t my problem. Kathy had hated me, and I had no reason to care. Her death, no matter how unpleasant, had absolutely nothing to do with me, and there was no reason at all I should give it a second thought.

Of course Jackie was upset, but she would find a new assistant. She should be more worried about losing the role that had brought her to Miami. Because Deborah really would have to report the threat of a stalker. Even if I told my sister that the stalker was no more, she could not very well tell another detective.

And so Debs was probably right-she was in trouble. How much trouble would depend on a lot of things, like what kind of spin she gave it when she told Matthews what had happened. There were possibilities; by emphasizing very carefully that she had been following orders, assisting the production, and that she had given Detective Anderson the relevant information but he had been busy making a complete mess of the investigation, it could be done. Deborah might come out of it unharmed. Of course, it would have to be done very subtly, but still-

And as that word “subtly” passed through my mind, I sighed. Deborah was as subtle as a steam shovel. She would not have even an inkling of how to go about something like this. I might be able to script it for her, but she could never perform it as written. I knew my sister well, and although she had vast ability as a cop, she had absolutely none as a politician. She had never been able to make herself play the game properly, and she wasn’t going to start now. Besides, she had already worked herself up into a masochistic frenzy and was clearly almost eager to take the bullet here, because it was the Right Thing to do-as if that ever really meant anything.

No: The way things stood right now, Deb’s goose was cooked. And when that happened, Dexter was bound to end up as dessert. I was supposed to know where the line was, just as clearly as she did, and I had just as certainly crossed it. I wasn’t sure what my punishment would be-Code Enforcement had no forensics department-but it would almost certainly be something unpleasant. Suspension, probably loss of pay-and just when I needed the money most.

“Dexter,” Jackie said softly, and I jerked around to face her. For a moment, lost in my unpleasant thoughts, I had forgotten she was there. “What will happen?” she said. “To Deborah? And to you.”

I shook my head. “Too soon to say,” I said.

“But it might be bad?”

“Maybe,” I said, and she looked down at her knees. They were very nice knees, but I could see no overwhelming reason for her to look at them. I watched her, but she didn’t do anything else interesting, and after a moment a huge yawn took me over and I realized that I was very tired. It was, after all, still the middle of the night, and pretending to be eternally vigilant really does take a lot of energy. Suddenly I wanted nothing in the world more than just to lay me down and sleep-and Jackie was sitting on my bed, which would make stretching out and going to sleep a little awkward, or at least very crowded. I had just composed a polite way to ask Jackie to move off the couch so I could lie down and sleep when she blurted out, still staring at her knees, “He’ll come back, won’t he.”

At first I didn’t know what she meant, and then I wasn’t sure what to say. After a few seconds of puzzled silence she finally looked up at me and said, “The killer. Patrick. He’s going to come back and try again.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said.

“He will,” she said. “I know he will. And next time …”

Jackie shuddered, but she didn’t say anything more, so I went back to my prepared remarks on the subject of slumber. “Anyway,” I said, “tomorrow is a long day.” I went over to the couch and stood above her, looking down longingly at my place of rest. “We should try to get some sleep,” I told her.

She stood up abruptly, and in trying to get out of her way I almost fell onto the coffee table. She grabbed at my arm and steadied me, but when I straightened up she didn’t let go. Instead, she pulled herself closer and looked up at me, and her violet eyes were huge and seemed to go on forever.

“He will come back,” she said. “I know he will.” She took a deep and uneven breath. “He could even be here in the hotel right now.”

She was much closer to me than she needed to be to tell me that, but I didn’t complain. I just swallowed and answered her with a mouth that was suddenly very dry for some reason. “Well, maybe,” I said, and somehow she found a way to move even closer.

“I don’t want to be alone,” she said. “Not tonight. I’m … scared.” She raised her face up to mine with her eyes wide and wild, and I felt myself falling forward into an endless violet sea.

I didn’t get very much sleep that night, but I didn’t really mind. It turned out I wasn’t nearly as tired as I’d thought.