Dexter's Final Cut

EIGHT

For a few moments there was utter silence in Deborah’s office. Debs just stared, and Jackie simply sat there clutching white-knuckled at her hair, lips slightly parted, looking very pale, and apparently not even breathing. “I, I, how can, um …” she said.

“Where the fuck does that come from?” Deborah said.

“It, um-it just makes sense,” I said.

“Not to me,” Deborah said.

“I don’t think …” Jackie said faintly. “I … I don’t know if …”

Deborah pushed her chair back against the desk, making a noise that seemed horribly loud all of a sudden.

“It’s bullshit, Dexter,” Deborah said. “Unless you got something concrete to back it up.”

“You’ve got the dates and places,” I said. “And the victims all look like her.”

Deborah shook her head, lips pursed. “Lots of women look like her,” she said.

“Deborah, I’m sure about this-”

“Well, I’m not,” she snapped. “You got nothing to go on but one of your … hunches? And that’s not enough. I can’t go to the captain and say, ‘Look what we found when Dexter closed his eyes.’ Not when it isn’t even my case. I need evidence. Not just more of your psychic detective crap.”

It stung a little more than it should have. After all, she was the one who had forced me to perform, far too publicly for my liking, and now she was scolding me for doing something I hadn’t wanted to do at all. And I had done it just for her, because family is supposed to count for something-and done it quite well, too. And now she spurned me, mocked me, accused me of sophistry. So I reached down deep for a truly hurtful comeback, something that would really smack her down. But before I could even say, “Oh, yeah?” Jackie spoke.

“Oh, shit,” she said, staring at me and shaking her head jerkily from side to side. “Oh, my God, Deborah …” She twitched her head sideways and said, “I mean, Sergeant. I mean- Oh, shit.”

“What?” Deborah said.

Jackie continued her series of quick, jerky shakes of her head. “I think he’s right,” she said in a very small voice.

“Why?” Deborah demanded.

Jackie finally realized that she was still shaking her head and stopped. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, opened them and blinked at me, and then looked at Debs. “I have a stalker,” she said. “He’s been … He sent a bunch of letters.”

“What kind of letters?” Deborah said.

Jackie licked her lips. “They started out, you know. A little creepy, but just regular fan stuff.” She shrugged. “I get lots of those. And, you know, there’s a standard reply my assistant sends out. Sometimes with a picture. And he didn’t like that. He wanted something more … real.” She raised her hands and fluttered them like two small helpless birds. “Something personal,” she said. She dropped her hands into her lap. “Which I don’t do, ever. I mean, if it’s a kid with cancer or something, okay, but just a regular male fan letter? I usually don’t even see ’em, let alone answer ’em. My assistant brushes ’em off, and if they don’t take the hint we just ignore ’em. Send their letters back.”

Jackie bit her lip and looked down at her hands. “Which we did. We sent his letters back, and … he really hated that. And he wrote again, but … the letters turned really … nasty. And he sent my picture back all … shredded. Hacked up, and things drawn on it, and, um …” She actually gulped, took a deep breath, looked right at me, and said, “And one of the eyes poked out.”

“Fuck,” Deborah said softly.

“And the letters said some very bad things. Bad enough so Kathy-” She looked up. “Kathy is my assistant,” she said.

“Okay,” Deborah said.

“The letters were so dark and twisted and threatening that Kathy got worried. She showed them to me. I, uh … I don’t know. I didn’t really believe it was serious, but …” She shrugged and lifted her hands and then dropped them into her lap again. “I told her to show them to the police.”

“Did she?” Deborah asked.

“Yes,” Jackie said. “I mean, I assume so. I didn’t really … I mean, Kathy is very good at her job, so I’m sure she did.”

“Okay,” Deborah said. “And then what?”

Jackie shook her head. “Then nothing,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t think about it anymore; I just figured it was taken care of, and I had work to do. You know.”

“Where are the letters now?” Deborah said.

Jackie blinked. “Um. I don’t have any idea. I mean, I could ask Kathy?”

“Where is she?”

“She’s here, with me,” Jackie said. “I mean, here in Miami.”

“Call her,” Deborah said. “I need to see those letters. And I want the name of the cop who saw them-in L.A.?”

Jackie nodded, chewing at her lower lip. “Yes,” she said. “I mean, the Valley, but-”

“All right,” Deborah said. “Where’s your assistant now?”

“I, uh … probably at the hotel?” Jackie said.

“Call her,” Deborah said again.

Jackie nodded and turned away to her purse, which was over in the corner beside the desk. She took out a cell phone and tapped a number, turning away from us to talk. She spoke a few soft sentences, then disconnected, slid the phone back into her purse, and faced us again. “I talked to Kathy,” she said, which would have been my first guess. “The cop in L.A. still has the letters? And she’s going to find his business card and call me back.” She shook her head and looked at us, and then, almost as if somebody had pulled the plug and let all the air out of her, she sank into the visitor’s chair beside the desk. “Holy shit,” she said softly. She closed her eyes and blew out a long breath. “Holy shit,” she said again. She opened her eyes and looked from Deborah to me. “Do you think he’s … I mean, do you think I’m in any real danger?”

“Yes,” Deborah and I said in unison.

Jackie blinked several times. Her eyes got moist and the violet color seemed to go a few shades darker. “Oh, boy,” she said. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I’ll ask the captain to assign somebody to stay with you,” Deborah said.

“Somebody-you mean like a bodyguard? Like another cop?” Jackie said anxiously.

Deborah raised her eyebrows. “Is there something wrong with that?” she asked.

Jackie hesitated, pursed her lips, then clasped her hands in front of her mouth. “Just,” she said. “Oh, boy, this is gonna sound really …” She looked at me, then at Deborah. “Can I be totally honest with you?”

“I hope so,” Deborah said, with an expression of mild disbelief on her face.

“This is … How to put this,” Jackie said. She shook her head, stood up, and went to look out the window. There wasn’t a whole lot to see out there, but she kept looking. “My career is kind of … what. Fading? It’s not really … The offers aren’t coming so fast anymore. And they’re not as good.” She bit her lip and gave her head one slow shake. “It happens. For a woman in this business it’s all over at thirty, and I’m thirty-three.”

Jackie looked up and forced a quick smile. “That’s confidential information,” she said, and Deborah and I nodded.

Jackie looked back out the window. “Anyway,” she said, “the reality is, I need this show to go, and I need it to be a hit, or my career is pretty much over, and I’ve got nothing left except maybe marry a Greek arms dealer or something.” She sighed. “And those offers are slowing down, too,” she said.

It was hard enough to feel a great deal of pain and sorrow for Jackie simply because she was not getting enough marriage proposals from billionaires-and it was even harder to see how that affected our current situation. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But, um …?”

Jackie nodded. “I know,” she said. “Poor pitiful me.” She blew out a breath and turned briskly away from the window at last. “The point is,” she said, “if the network finds out that there have been serious threats on my life, they have to tell the insurance, and the insurance premiums for the shoot go way up-I mean, millions-and since we haven’t even started shooting yet, suddenly it’s a whole lot cheaper to get rid of me and recast the part with somebody younger and probably better-looking.”

“Not possible,” I said without thinking, and Jackie gave me a quick bright smile.

“Cheaper,” Deborah said. “You mean, they’d just dump you to save money?”

“That’s a joke, right?” Jackie said. “They’d dump Jesus to save fifty bucks.”

“Shit,” Deborah said.

“We start shooting next week,” she said. “If I can get, say, a week of film in the can before they find out, I should be okay.” She inhaled deeply and looked at Deborah very seriously. “I know it’s a lot to ask. But … can we not tell them for a week?”

Deborah shrugged. “I don’t have to tell the network,” she said. “I don’t owe them shit.”

“What about Robert?” I said. After all, he was my nearly constant companion nowadays.

Jackie actually shuddered. “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “If he finds out he’ll tell everybody. He’d do anything to get me fired from this show.”

“It could be kind of hard to keep him from finding out,” I said. “He’s with me all day long.”

“Please,” she said. “It’s just for a couple of days.”

“Well,” I said, “I’ll do my best.”

“Thanks,” Jackie said, and Deborah cleared her throat.

“I don’t have to tell the network,” she said, “and I don’t have to tell Robert.” Her face dropped into the cold-forged cop face, the one that kept her from showing anything, no matter what she felt. “I do have to tell Detective Anderson. It’s his case.”

“What? But that’s- No!” Jackie said.

Deborah clenched her jaw. “I have to,” she said. “I am a sworn officer of the law now in possession of some vital information pertaining to a homicide case, and Anderson is lead on it. If I don’t tell him, I lose my job. I probably do jail time.”

“Oh,” Jackie said, looking very deflated. “But that’s … I mean, do you think Anderson would, um, not tell anybody?”

Deborah looked away. “He’ll tell,” she said.

“He’ll probably call a press conference,” I said.

“Shit,” Jackie said. “Shit, shit, shit.” She sank into a chair, looking for all the world like a forlorn rag doll. “I can’t-I won’t ask you to risk your career,” she said, and she said it with such hopeless, noble resignation that I wanted to kill something for her-like Anderson, for instance. But as that happy thought flashed through my mind, it was instantly replaced by one of those wonderful moments of insight that come only once in a lifetime, and only to the Just. “Oh,” I said, and some of my gleeful surprise clearly showed in my voice, because Jackie looked up, and Deborah frowned at me.

“What?” Jackie said.

“Deborah has to tell Anderson,” I said happily, and I said it again for emphasis. “Anderson.”

“I know his fucking name,” Debs said.

“And you know his fucking character, too,” I said.

“For fuck’s sake, Dex, what the-”

“Deborah, think a minute,” I said. “It might not hurt very much.”

She glared at me for a moment longer, then blew out a vicious breath. “All right, fuck, I’m thinking,” she said, and her face took on the look of a mean-spirited, slightly constipated grouper.

“Wonderful,” I said. “Now, picture this in your thoughts: You, Sergeant Deborah Morgan, Defender of the Faith and Champion of Justice-”

“Cut to the fucking chase, huh?” she said.

“You go to Detective Anderson,” I said patiently. “You, a person he thinks very highly of.”

“He hates my fucking guts,” she snarled. “So what?”

“So that’s just the point,” I said, and I let the glee creep back into my voice. “He really does hate your fucking guts. And you take him your file on this stuff, and you tell him you have a very important lead-you tell him, Deborah. Not me or Jackie or Captain Matthews-you tell him. With witnesses.” I looked at her expectantly and, I have to admit, I smirked, too. “What does he do?”

Deborah opened her mouth to say something that looked like it would be rather venomous-and then her jaw snapped shut audibly, her eyes got very wide, and she took a very deep breath. “Holy shit,” she breathed, and she looked at me with something approaching awe. “He does nothing. He loses the fucking file. Because it’s me.”

“Bingo,” I said, which was something I’d always wanted to say. “He’s afraid you would get the credit, so he does nothing-but you have done everything, by the book, with witnesses. You’re in the clear; Jackie’s secret is safe; all’s right with the world.”

“Would that really work?” Jackie said softly.

Debs squinted, jutted her jaw, and then nodded once. “It might,” she said.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “It’s at least a probably.”

“All right, it will probably work,” she said.

“And if you maybe twist the knife a little?” I said. “You know, like how important this lead is, and he should drop everything he’s doing to work on what you found?”

Debs snorted. “Yeah,” she said. “That would do it.”

“Oh,” Jackie said, “that’s- Dexter, you’re so- Thank you, thank you both so much.”

“But even if it does,” Debs said, turning to a suddenly hopeful Jackie, “that doesn’t keep you safe.”

“Oh,” Jackie said, and she looked deflated again.

“We’ve got to find this guy before he finds you,” Deborah said. “And in the meantime, we have to put you where he can’t get to you.”

“I, um … I can just stay with you, here at headquarters, during the day?” Jackie said. “And then the hotel at night, with the door chained and bolted.”

It’s always nice to encounter innocence, but in this case I thought I should say something. “Hotels are not safe,” I said. “It’s much too easy to get into the room and grab somebody.” I tried to say it as if I was very sure, which I was, but without sounding too much like I knew it was true from personal experience, which I did. It must have worked, because Jackie looked like she believed me.

“Well, then, um,” she said. She looked imploringly at Debs. “Where do I go?”

“You can’t stay with me,” Deborah said. She shrugged. “Sorry. I won’t put Nicholas at risk.” Nicholas was her son, born a few months after the father had disappeared in a fit of noble sacrifice. He was a very nice baby, only a few months younger than my daughter, Lily Anne, and Deborah doted on him.

“I could hire a bodyguard, but they’re always so …” She sighed again. “Some muscle-bound retired SEAL with a pistol and an attitude. And if the Taliban are after me, I’d be safe. But this? I mean, a homicidal psychopath? I need somebody who really understands that.” She looked directly at me as she said it, which I suppose was only fair, but it was still a bit unsettling. “Not just somebody who can shoot.” She looked back at Debs. “Of course, it’s nice if they can shoot, too, but …” She looked back at me and blinked, her eyes huge and moist. “I need somebody I can really trust,” she said. “Like I trust you guys.” She shook her head.

She kept looking at me, and if I was really as smart as I like to think I am, I would have known where this was going-but for some reason, I didn’t. “Dexter,” she said. “I know this is a huge thing, but … is there any way that, you know.”

I must have looked like I didn’t know, because she stepped toward me and put a hand on my arm. “It’s just for a few days,” she said. “And I’ll pay you whatever you ask, but … could you?”

I was certainly ready to agree in theory, but I still didn’t know what she was asking me. I understood that she wanted me to help, but I didn’t really see how I could help her find a safe place to stay. All I got was a mental picture of Jackie sleeping on my couch, with Cody and Astor tiptoeing around her to get to school, and the image was so unlikely I couldn’t even respond, except to say, “Uh-”

“Please …?” she said, in a voice that was suddenly soft and a little hoarse and a lot more intimate than a kiss. And even though I still didn’t know what she was asking me to do, I wanted very badly to do it.

“Well, um,” I said, trying to sound very willing, which can be difficult when you don’t know what you’re agreeing to.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Deborah said helpfully. “I can help you square it with Rita.” She nodded at Jackie. “He can actually shoot, too,” she said. She reached into her bottom desk drawer and brought out a Glock 9mm pistol in a clip-on belt holster. “You can use my backup piece.”

I looked at the Glock, and I looked at Jackie’s pleading face, and the light began to dawn at last. “You mean …” I said. “I mean, you … That’s, that’s …” And although in normal times Eloquence is Dexter’s middle name, nothing would come out that was even intelligible.

“Please?” Jackie said again, and the look she gave me would have melted a marble statue.

Dexter, of course, is made of sterner stuff than any mere mortal, and imploring looks from a beautiful woman have never had any power over Our Wicked Warrior. And it was an absurd idea, something far too strange even to contemplate-me, a bodyguard? It was out of the question.

And yet somehow, when the workday ended that evening and all good wage slaves trotted dutifully away to hearth and home, I found myself on the balcony of a suite at the Grove Isle Hotel, sipping a mojito and watching as a spectacular sunset blew up the sky behind us, reflecting orange and red and pink onto the water of Biscayne Bay. There was a tray of cheese and fresh fruit on the table beside me, and the Glock was an uncomfortable lump in my side, and I was filled with wonder at the unavoidable notion that Life makes no sense at all, especially when things have taken a sudden and extravagant turn into surreal and unearned luxury. Terror, pain, and nausea I can understand, but this? I could only assume I was being set up for something even worse. Still, the mojito was very good, and one of the cheeses had a very nice bite to it.

I wondered if anyone ever really got used to living like this. It didn’t seem possible; weren’t we all made to sweat and suffer and endure painful hardship as we toiled endlessly in the vile cesspit of life on earth? How did sharp cheese, fresh strawberries, and utter luxury fit in with that?

I looked at Jackie. She didn’t look like she had ever set foot in the vile cesspit. She still looked fresh, composed, and perfectly at home in this opulent setting, like a demigoddess lounging around Olympus. It was a very sharp contrast to the scene that had greeted me at my house a little earlier.

I had left Jackie at headquarters with Deborah and gone home to get a toothbrush and a change of clothes. After all, even bodyguards should practice good hygiene. I went to my bedroom and pulled out a blue nylon gym bag. I put some socks and underwear in; funny-the last time I had used the bag, I had filled it with duct tape and a few casual blades and gone for an evening of light merriment with a brand-new friend, a charming man who lured young women out on his boat and somehow always came back alone. I had helped him learn that it wasn’t nice to treat others as disposable toys-learn it by helping him become disposable himself. It had been a real pleasure to work with him, a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Had that really been three whole months ago?

My fond reverie was shattered by a great crashing sound from the front door, followed immediately by a shrill nasal howling, an inhuman sound that could only be Astor in full preteen snit. Rita’s voice rose up to meet it, the door slammed even louder, and then there was a flurry of foot stomping, shouting, and another, closer door slam.

Rita came into the bedroom with Lily Anne under her arm, the baby’s day-care bag over one shoulder and her own purse on the other. Her face was red, shiny with sweat, and the frown lines around her mouth looked like they had suddenly become permanent. And it hit me that she no longer looked like the picture of her I had been carrying around in my head. She had aged, and for some reason I was seeing it for the first time.

“Oh, Dexter, you’re home early,” she said, thrusting Lily Anne at me. “Can you change her, please? Astor is absolutely- I don’t know what to do.”

Lily Anne burbled at me happily and called out, “Dadoo!” and I carried her over to the changing table as Rita threw the bags on the bed.

“Oh,” Rita said. I glanced over at her; she was holding up my gym bag. “But this is- I mean, you can’t-”

“Wonderful news,” I said, taking a very wet diaper off Lily Anne. “I have a chance to make a lot of money-enough to pay for a new pool cage at the new house.”

“But that’s- Do you know how much they cost?” She shook her head, and a drop of sweat flew off her face and hit my gym bag.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. I threw the wet diaper away and reached for the baby wipes. “I will make that much and more.”

“Doing what?”

I hesitated-not just because Jackie’s need for a bodyguard was confidential, but also because it suddenly seemed like a good idea not to tell Rita I would be cooped up with a beautiful movie star for several nights. “It’s confidential,” I said. I wiped Lily Anne thoroughly and reached for a fresh diaper.

Rita was silent. I looked up at her. She was frowning, and the lines in her forehead looked very deep. A limp, damp strand of hair fell down across the lines. She pushed it back. “Well, but …” she said. “I mean, is it legal? Because …” She shook her head again.

“Perfectly legal,” I said. “And very well paid.” I fastened the new diaper and picked up the baby. “Deborah said she would call and talk to you about it.”

“Oh, well,” she said. “If Deborah is- But can’t you tell me what it is?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s just, there’s so much right now,” Rita said. “Moving day is coming-and Astor is being completely …” She dropped my gym bag and crossed her arms over her chest. “I mean, Dexter …” she said.

“I know,” I said, which was a lie, since I didn’t know, because she hadn’t finished a sentence yet. “But it’s just for a few days, and we can really use the extra money.”

For a long moment Rita just looked at me. Her face was like a mask of uncertain misery, and she seemed to sag all over. I wondered what she was thinking that could make her look so much like a damp and tattered dish rag. She gave me no clues, but she finally said, “Well … We really could use some extra money.…”

“Exactly,” I said. I handed Lily Anne back to her and picked up my gym bag. “So I will see you in just a few days?”

“You’ll call me?” she said.

“Of course,” I told her, and she leaned forward and gave me a sweaty kiss on the cheek.

“All right,” she said.