Dexter's Final Cut

TWO

“Listen,” Robert Chase said to me as we walked down the hall together toward my lab. “We need to get a few ground rules straight, all right?”

I looked at him, seeing only his profile, since he was staring straight ahead through his sunglasses. “Rules?” I said. “What do you mean?”

He stopped walking and turned to face me. “It’s Derrick, right?” he said, holding out a hand.

“Dexter,” I said. “Dexter Morgan.” I shook his hand. It was soft, but his grip was firm.

“Right. Dexter,” he said. “And I’m Robert. Okay? Just Robert.” He held up a warning finger. “Not Bob,” he said.

“Of course not,” I said. He nodded as if I had said something thoughtful and continued walking down the hall. “Okay,” he said, holding up the palm of his hand and waving it. “I’m just a regular guy. I like the same things you like.”

That didn’t seem possible, considering what I actually like, but I decided not to challenge him. “Okay,” I said.

“I don’t ride around in a Ferrari, or snort coke off a hooker’s tits, all right?”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, good.”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” he said, with a thoughtful and manly smile. “I like the ladies. Absolutely love ’em.” He glanced at me to make sure I believed him, and then went on. “But I don’t do the whole … celebrity thing. Okay? I’m a working actor, not a star. I do a job, just like you do, and when I’m done for the day I like to relax, have a few beers, watch a ball game. Perfectly normal stuff. You know? Not clubbing and groupies and party all night. That’s …” He shook his head. “That’s bullshit.”

It was all very interesting, but I have found that most of the time, when someone underlines something that much, they are either trying to convince themselves-or trying to disguise something very different. Maybe he really did snort cocaine from hookers’ tits, and just didn’t want to share. But of course, my experience with Hollywood Leading Men had been limited to watching them on TV with less than half of my attention, so it was also possible that Robert Chase was making a real point with a monologue from some past role. In any case, he did seem to be going on a bit about having “normal” tastes in women and sports, and I really had to wonder whether it was actually leading to some kind of point. “All right,” I said. “So what’s the rule?”

He twisted his head slightly, as if he hadn’t heard me. “What do you mean?” he said.

“Ground rules,” I said. “You said we were going to get the ground rules straight.”

He stopped walking and turned to look at me with no real expression on his face. I looked back. Finally, he smiled, and then patted me on the shoulder. “All right,” he said. “I guess I got a little … what. Pompous.”

“Not at all,” I said, lying politely.

“The point is,” he said, “I don’t want any kind of, you know. Special treatment, or whatever. Just do what you normally do, and act like I’m not even there. Do what you always do, okay?”

I had to believe he meant what he said, but even one brief moment of actual thought should have shown him how impossible his First Rule really was. In the first place, he was already getting special treatment, because I had been ordered to give it to him. And in the second, if I truly did what I always did, he would almost certainly run screaming from the room. Still, life teaches us that human thought almost never walks hand in hand with Logic, and it is usually counterproductive to raise the point. So I simply nodded as agreeably as possible, as if he was really making sense. “Sure,” I said. “Anything else?”

He glanced around him in the hallway-a little furtively, I thought. “I don’t like … blood,” he said. He swallowed. “I’d kind of like to, um. Not have to see it too much.”

So far, Chase had struck me as somewhat humorless, but this statement was so wildly unlikely that I stared at him to see if he was kidding. He didn’t seem to be; he glanced at me, looked around again, and then down at his shoes. They were worth looking at. They probably cost more than my car.

“Um,” I said at last. “You did know that I do blood spatter, right?”

Chase flinched. “Yeah, I know, but …” He twisted his head like he had a knot in his neck, flexed his hands, and then gave a sort of half chuckle that was not nearly as convincing as it should have been, coming from a Working Actor. “I just, uh,” he said. “I don’t like it. It, uh … it makes me kind of … queasy. Just even thinking about it running around inside you, or even looking at where it’s been, I can’t-and to see it right there, like, on the floor, splattered …” He shivered and then jerked his head around to look at me, and for the first time he seemed like a real, live, less-than-perfect human being. “I just don’t like it,” he said, in a voice that was close to pleading.

“All right,” I said, since there wasn’t much else to say. “But I don’t know if I can show you how blood spatter works without showing you blood.”

He looked at his feet again and sighed. “I know,” he said.

“Oh. My. God!” said an awestruck voice behind me, and I turned to look. Vince Masuoka was standing there, both hands on his face and his mouth wide-open, looking for all the world like a twelve-year-old girl who had just run into the entire cast of Glee.

“Vince. It’s me,” I said. But apparently it wasn’t; Vince ignored me and pointed one trembling hand at Chase.

“Robert Chase, oh my God oh my God!” he said, and he bounced up and down as if he had to go to the bathroom badly. “It’s you; it’s really you!” he added, and even though I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to convince himself or Chase, I found his performance profoundly irritating. But it seemed to be exactly what Chase needed; he straightened up, instantly looking serene, in command, and more perfect than a mere human being should ever be.

“How are you?” he said to Vince, although it must have been obvious that the answer was, “Completely insane.”

“Oh my God,” Vince said again, and I wondered if I could get him to stop saying it if I slapped him a few times. But such logical and rewarding actions are discouraged in the workplace, even when they make perfect sense, so I reached deep inside and found enough iron control to stifle my wholly natural urge.

“I see you know Robert,” I said to Vince. “And, Robert, this is Vince Masuoka. He used to do forensics before he lost his mind.”

“Hey, Vince,” Robert said. He stepped forward with his hand out and a manly smile on his face. “Pleased to meet you.”

Vince stared at the outstretched hand like he’d never seen one before. “Oh. Oh. Oh. Ohmygod,” Vince said. “Ohmygod. I mean …” He grabbed onto Chase’s hand as if he was drowning and it was a life jacket, and clutched it between both his hands while he stared at Chase and burbled madly on. “This is just unbelievable-I am soooo … I mean, forever- Oh, God, I can’t believe it-” And even odder, as he stood there clinging to Chase’s hand, his face began to flush, and he lowered his voice to a weird, husky whisper. “I absolutely loved you in Hard and Fast!” he said.

“Yeah, well-thanks,” Chase said, somehow prying his hand from the moist trap of Vince’s grip, and adding modestly, “That was a while ago.”

“I have the DVD,” Vince gushed. “I’ve watched it, like, a million times!”

“Hey, great,” Chase said. “Glad you like it.”

“I can’t believe this,” Vince said, and he hopped up and down again. “Oh my God!”

Chase just smiled. He had apparently seen this kind of behavior before, but even so, Vince’s seizure had to be getting a little bit uncomfortable. Still, he took it manfully in stride, and patted Vince on the shoulder. “Hey, well,” he said. “Derrick and me have to get going.” And he turned toward me, nudged me, and said, “But I am really looking forward to working with you. See you around!”

Chase clamped one hand on my elbow and urged me along the hall. I needed very little urging, since Vince had lapsed back into moaning “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod,” and it is never pleasant to linger in the presence of someone who has once been a friend and is now a poster boy for the tragedy of mental illness. So we left Vince in the hall and dodged into the shelter of my little office, where Chase leaned one haunch on the edge of my desk, crossed his arms, and shook his head.

“Well,” he said. “Wasn’t expecting that here. I mean, I thought cops were a little more, I dunno.” He shrugged. “Um, tougher? More macho? You know.”

“Vince isn’t actually a cop,” I said.

“Yeah, but still,” he said. “Is he gay? I mean, that’s fine and all; I was just wondering.”

I looked at Chase, startled, and to be truthful, a large part of my surprise was at myself. I had worked with Vince for years, and I had never actually asked myself that question. Of course, it was completely irrelevant, and none of my business. After all, I wouldn’t want him prying into my private life. “I don’t know,” I said. “But last year for Halloween he was Carmen Miranda. Again.”

Chase nodded. “One of the warning signs,” he said. “Well, shit, I don’t care. I mean, there’s, uh, fags everywhere these days.”

I wondered at his use of that word, “fags.” It seemed to me to be a word that was not actually au courant in more liberal circles, as I had thought the Hollywood community to be. But it may be that Robert just wanted to fit in, and he had assumed that I routinely said things that were not Politically Correct because I was a rough and macho member of the Miami Law Enforcement Community, and everyone knows we all talk that way.

In any case, I was more interested in his reaction to Vince’s attack of Teen Girl Syndrome. “Does that kind of thing happen to you a lot?” I asked Chase.

“What, the whole freaking-out-and-hopping-on-one-foot thing?” he said matter-of-factly. “Yeah,” he said. “Everywhere I go.” He poked at a file folder on my desk and flipped it open.

“That must make grocery shopping a little difficult,” I said.

He didn’t look up. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Somebody does that for me. Anyway”-he shrugged-“it’s different in L.A. Out there, everybody thinks they’re in the business with you, and nobody wants to look like a geek.” He began to flip through the pages of the report, which I found a little irritating.

“I have some lab work to do,” I said, and he looked up anxiously, which made me feel a little better.

“Is it, I mean,” he said, “um, a murder? Blood work?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said. “I need to work with some samples from a crime scene.” And because Dexter is actually not very nice sometimes, I added, “The killer slashed through the femoral artery, so there was blood everywhere.”

Chase took a long breath in through his teeth. He let the air back out again, took off his sunglasses and looked at them, then put them back on. I watched him for a moment, and it may not say good things about me, but I was enjoying the way he had gone slightly pale under his tan. Finally he swallowed and took in another long breath. “Well,” he said. “I guess I’d better tag along and watch.”

“I guess so,” I said.

Chase swallowed, took another breath, and stood up, trying very hard to look resolute.

“Okay,” he said. “I, uh. I’ll just look over your shoulder …?”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll try not to splatter too much.”

He closed his eyes, but he followed.

It was a small triumph, but it was just about the only one I got for the rest of the week. As I trudged through my daily routine, Robert trudged along with me. He did not really get directly in my way too often, but every time I turned around he was there, a frown of concentration on his face, and usually some kind of inane question: Why did I do that? Why was it important to do that? Did I do that often? How many killers had I caught by doing that? Were they serial killers? Were there a lot of serial killers in Miami? A lot of the time the questions were completely unrelated to whatever I was doing, which made the whole thing seem even more pointlessly annoying. I could understand that it was a little hard for someone like him to frame intelligent questions about gas chromatography, but then, why watch me do it in the first place? Why couldn’t he just go sit in a sports bar and text me his questions while he sipped a beer and watched a ball game?

The stupid questions were bad enough. But Wednesday, he took things to a new level of persecution.

We were in the lab once more, and I was looking into the microscope, where I had just found some very interesting similarities between tissue samples from two different crime scenes. I straightened up, turned around, and there was Chase, frowning thoughtfully, with one hand massaging the top of his head and the other covering his mouth. And before I could ask him why on earth he was making such a ridiculous gesture, I realized that I was doing exactly the same thing.

I dropped my hands. “Why are you doing that?” I said, keeping most of the irritation out of my voice.

Chase dropped his hands, too, and smiled, a cocky little smile of triumph. “That’s what you do,” he said. “When you find something significant. You do that with your hands.” He did it again briefly, one hand on his head and the other over his mouth. “You do that,” he said, letting his hands fall away, “and then you stand there and look really thoughtful.” And he made a half-frowning face that said quite clearly, I am being really thoughtful. “Like that,” he said.

I suppose I might well have been doing that and many other things my entire professional life without knowing it. There are very few mirrors in a forensics lab to show me what I looked like as I worked, and frankly I preferred it that way. We all have unconscious patterns of behavior, and I have always thought mine were just a little bit more restrained and logical than those exhibited by the mere mortals surrounding me.

But here was Chase, showing me quite clearly that my mannerisms were just as ridiculous as anyone else’s. It was unbelievably infuriating to have him copy me right back at me, and it still didn’t explain the most important part of the question. “Why do you have to do it, too?” I said.

He shook his head, one quick jerk to the side, as if I was the one asking stupid questions. “I’m learning you,” he said. “For my character.”

“Couldn’t you learn Vince instead?” I said, and even to me I sounded peevish.

Chase shook his head. “My character isn’t gay,” he said quite seriously.

By the end of work on Thursday, I was very willing to become gay myself if it meant that Chase would stop copying me. I watched him as he aped everything I did, each small unconscious tic, and I learned that I slurped my coffee, washed my hands too long, and stared at the ceiling pursing my lips when I was talking on the phone. I have never had any problems with my self-esteem; I like Dexter very much, just the way he is. But as Chase’s performing-monkey act went on and on, I discovered that even the healthiest self-image can erode under a barrage of constant, solemn mockery.

I did my best to soldier on. I told myself that I was following orders, and this was all part of the job and I really had no choice in the matter, but it didn’t help. Every time I turned around, there was a mirror image of whatever I was doing, but with a neat mustache and a perfect haircut. Worse than that, every now and then I would turn and see him simply staring at me, with an otherworldly expression of abstract longing on his face that I could not decipher.

The days wore on and his presence became more and more exasperating. It was bad enough to have him following, watching, copying me-but even setting all that aside, I found it impossible to like Robert Chase. I admit that I rarely manage to achieve the kind of warm personal bond that humans routinely forge, mostly because I do not actually have human feelings. Even so, I fake it very well; I have survived among people my whole life and I know all of the rituals and tricks of social bonding. None of them worked with Chase, and for some reason I found myself reluctant to keep trying. Something about him was wrong, slightly off, unattractive, and although I could not have said why, I just didn’t like him.

But I had been commanded to tow him through the stormy waters of my life in forensics, and so tow I must. And I have to admit that at least Chase was diligent. He showed up every morning, almost exactly at the same time I did. Friday morning he even brought in a box of doughnuts. I must have looked surprised, because he smiled at me and said, “That’s what you do, right?”

“Sometimes I do,” I admitted.

He nodded. “I asked around about you,” he said. “They all told me, ‘Dexter does doughnuts.’ ” And he grinned at me as if alliteration was some kind of wonderfully clever form of wit.

If I had been irritated by him before, now I was positively seething. He had gone beyond mere mockery; now he was “asking around” about me, prying into my character, encouraging everyone around me to unload about all of Dexter’s quirks and peccadilloes. It made me so angry that I could calm myself only by picturing Robert duct-taped to a table, with me standing happily above him clutching a fillet knife. Still, I ate his doughnuts.

That afternoon provided the only relief I’d had all week. And it seemed only fitting that it came in the form of a homicide.

Robert and I had just returned from lunch. I had allowed him to persuade me to take him for some Real Cuban Food, and so we’d gone to my favorite place, Café Relampago. The Morgans had been going there for two generations-three now, if you counted the fact that I had taken my baby, Lily Anne. She loved the maduros.

In any case, Robert and I had dined lavishly on ropa vieja, yuca, maduros, and, of course, arroz con frijoles negros. We had washed it all down with Ironbeer, the Cuban version of Coke, and finished with flan and a barrage of cafecitas. Robert had insisted on paying, perhaps trying to buy his way into my affections, so I was in a slightly mellower mood when we returned to our job. But we didn’t get a chance to settle into our chairs to reflect and digest, because as we strolled in, Vince came rushing out clutching the canvas bag that held his kit.

“Get your stuff,” he said, hurrying past. “We got a wild one.”

Robert turned to watch him go, and his air of relaxed confidence seemed to drain out and puddle at his feet. “Is that … Does he mean, um-”

“It’s probably nothing,” I said. “Just a routine machete beheading or something.”

Chase goggled at me for a moment. Then he turned pale, gulped, and finally nodded. “Okay,” he said.

I went to fetch my gear, feeling a warm glow of satisfaction at Chase’s obvious distress. As I said, sometimes I am not a very nice person.