Well, I couldn’t cure the dull and empty, and I couldn’t cure Deborah, but at least I could do something about the tired part.
I went home.
I woke up early, with a bad taste in my mouth. Rita was already in the kitchen and she had a cup of coffee in front of me before I could even settle into a chair. “How is she?” she said.
“It’s too soon to tell,” I said, and she nodded.
“They always say that,” she said.
I took a large slug of the coffee and stood back up. “I’d better check and see how she is this morning,” I said. I grabbed my cell phone from the table by the front door and called Chutsky.
“No change,” he said, in a voice that was rough with fatigue. “I’ll call you if anything happens.”
I went back to the kitchen table and sat, feeling like I might fall into a coma myself at any minute. “What did they say?” Rita asked.
“No change,” I told her, and I slouched forward into the coffee cup.
Several cups of coffee and six blueberry pancakes later I was somewhat restored and ready to go to work. So I pushed back from the table, said good-bye to Rita and the kids, and headed out the door. I would go through the motions like always, and let the ordinary rhythm of my artificial life lull me into synthetic serenity.
But work was not the sanctuary I had expected. I was greeted everywhere with sympathetic frowns and hushed voices asking, “How is she?” The entire building seemed to be throbbing with concern and echoing with the battle cry of “It’s too soon to tell.” Even Vince Masuoka had gotten into the spirit. He had brought in doughnuts—the second time this week!—and in a spirit of pure sympathetic kindness he had saved me the Bavarian cream.
“How is she?” he asked, handing me the doughnut.
“She lost a lot of blood,” I told him, mostly for the sake of some variety before I wore out my tongue from saying the same thing so many times. “She’s still in ICU.”
“They’re pretty good at this stuff at Jackson,” he said. “Lots of practice.”
“I’d rather have them practice on someone else,” I said, and ate the doughnut.
I had been in my chair for less than ten minutes when I got a call from Captain Matthews’s executive assistant, Gwen. “The captain wants to see you right away,” she said.
“Such a beautiful voice … It can only be that radiant angel Gwen,” I said.
“He means right now,” she said, and hung up. And so did I.
I was in the captain’s outer office in just under four minutes, looking at Gwen in person. She had been Matthews’s assistant forever, all the way back to when she was called a secretary, and for two reasons. The first was that she was incredibly efficient. The second was that she was incredibly plain, and none of the captain’s three wives had ever been able to find the slightest objection to her.
The combination of these two things made her irresistible to me, as well, and I was unable to see her without letting some light-hearted jest fly out from my frothy wit. “Ah, Gwendolyn,” I said. “Sweet siren of South Miami.”
“He’s waiting for you,” she said.
“Never mind him,” I said. “Fly away with me to a life of beautiful debauchery.”
“Go on in,” she said, nodding at the door. “In the conference room.”
I had assumed that the captain would want to express official sympathy, and the conference room seemed like a strange place to do that. But he was the captain and Dexter is a mere underling, so I went on in.
Captain Matthews was, indeed, waiting for me. He stood just inside the door to the conference room, and as I stepped inside he pounced on me. “Morgan,” he said. “Just, um—this is entirely unofficial, so …” He waved a hand, then placed it on my shoulder. “Help us out here, son,” he said. “Just—you know,” and with no further surreal stage direction he led me to a seat at the table.
There were several people already seated, most of whom I recognized, and none of whom was particularly good news. There was Israel Salguero, who was head of Internal Affairs; he was bad news all by himself. But he was also joined by Irene Cappuccio, who I knew only by sight and reputation. She was the senior lawyer for the department, and rarely called in unless somebody had filed a credible and substantial lawsuit against us. Sitting beside her was another department lawyer, Ed Beasley.
Across the table was Lieutenant Stein, information officer, who specialized in spinning things to keep the whole force from looking like a rampaging gang of Visigoths. Altogether, this was not a group calculated to make Dexter sink into a chair wrapped in a soft cloud of tranquillity.
There was a stranger sitting in one of the chairs by Matthews, and it was clear from the cut of his apparently expensive suit that he was not a cop. He was black, with a look of important condescension on his face and a shaved head that gleamed so brightly I was sure he used furniture polish, and as I watched he twitched his arm so that the sleeve rolled up to reveal a large diamond cuff link and a beautiful Rolex watch.
“So,” Matthews said as I hovered above a chair fighting down a sense of panic. “How is she?”
“Too soon to tell,” I said.
He nodded. “Well, I’m sure we all, ah, hope for the best here,” he said. “She’s a fine officer, and her dad was, uh—your dad, too, of course.” He cleared his throat and went on. “The, uh, doctors at Jackson are the best, and I want you to know that if there’s anything the department can do, um …” The man beside him glanced up at Matthews, and then at me, and Matthews nodded. “Sit down,” he said.
I hooked a chair back away from the table and sat, with no idea what was going on, but an absolute certainty that I wouldn’t like it.
Captain Matthews confirmed my opinion right away. “This is an informal conversation,” he said. “Just to, ah, ahem …”
The stranger turned his large and brittle eyes on the captain with a somewhat withering expression, and then looked back at me. “I represent Alex Doncevic,” he said.
The name meant absolutely nothing to me, but he said it with such smooth conviction I was sure it ought to, so I just nodded and said, “Oh, all right.”
“In the first place,” he said, “I am demanding his immediate release. And in the second …” He paused here, apparently for dramatic effect and to let his righteous anger build up and spill out into the room. “In the second place,” he said, as if he was addressing a crowd in a large hall, “we are considering a lawsuit for punitive damages.”
I blinked. They were all looking at me, and I was clearly an important part of something a little bit dire, but I really had no idea what it might be. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
“Look,” Matthews said. “We’re just having an informal, preliminary conversation here. Because Mr. Simeon here, ah—has a very respectable position in the community. Our community,” he said.
“And because his client is under arrest for several major felonies,” Irene Cappuccio said.
“Illegally under arrest,” Simeon said.
“That remains to be seen,” Cappuccio told him. She nodded at me. “Mr. Morgan can possibly shed some light on that.”
“All right,” said Matthews. “Let’s not, uh.” He put both hands on the conference table, facedown. “The important thing is, just—uh, Irene?”
Cappuccio nodded and looked at me. “Can you tell us exactly what happened yesterday, leading up to the assault on Detective Morgan?”
“You know you would never get away with that in court, Irene,” Simeon said. “Assault? Come on.”
Cappuccio looked at him with a cold, unblinking stare for what seemed like a very long time, but was probably only about ten seconds. “All right,” she said, turning back to me. “Leading up to the time his client stuck a knife in Deborah Morgan? You’re not denying he stabbed her, are you?” she said to Simeon.
“Let’s hear what happened,” Simeon said with a tight smile.
Cappuccio nodded to me. “Go on,” she said. “Start at
the beginning.”
“Well,” I said, and that was all I could really say for the moment. I could feel the eyes on me and the clock ticking, but I couldn’t think of anything more cogent to say. It was nice finally to know who Alex Doncevic was; it’s always good to know the names of people who stab your family members.
But whoever else he might be, Alex Doncevic was not the name on the list Deborah and I had been investigating. She had knocked on that door to find someone named Brandon Weiss—
—and been stabbed by someone else altogether, who had panicked into attempted murder and flight at the mere sight of her badge?
Dexter does not demand that life must always unfold in a reasonable manner. After all, I live here, and I know that logic does not. But this made no sense at all, unless I accepted the idea that if you knock on doors at random in Miami, one out of three people who answer is prepared to kill you. While this idea had its own very great charm, it did not really seem terribly likely.
And on top of that, at the moment why he did it was not as important as the fact that Doncevic had stabbed Deborah. But why that should cause a gathering of this magnitude, I had no idea. Matthews, Cappuccio, Salguero—these people did not get together for coffee every day.
So I knew that something unpleasant was happening, and that whatever I said was going to affect it, but since I didn’t know what “it” was, I didn’t know what to say to make things better. There was just too much information that did not add up to anything, and even my giant brain could not quite cope. I cleared my throat, hoping it would give me a little time, but it was over in just a few seconds and they were all still looking at me.
“Well,” I said again. “Um, the beginning? You mean, um …”
“You went to interview Mr. Doncevic,” Cappuccio said.
“No, um—not really.”
“Not really,” said Simeon, as if one of us must not know what the words meant. “What does that mean, ‘not really’?”
“We went to interview someone named Brandon Weiss,” I said. “Doncevic answered the door.”
Cappuccio nodded. “What did he say when Sergeant Morgan identified herself?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Simeon glanced at Cappuccio and said, “Stonewalling,” in a very loud whisper. She waved it off.
“Mr. Morgan,” she said, and glanced down at the file in front of her. “Dexter.” She gave me a very small facial twitch that she probably thought was a warm smile. “You’re not under oath here, and you’re not in any kind of trouble. We just need to know what happened, leading up to the stabbing.”
“I understand,” I said. “But I was in the car.”
Simeon sat up almost at attention. “In the car,” he said. “Not at the door with Sergeant Morgan.”
“That’s right.”
“So you didn’t hear what was said—or not said,” he said, raising one eyebrow high enough that it might almost pass for a tiny toupee on that shiny bald head.
“That’s right.”
Cappuccio leaned in and said. “But you said in your statement that Sergeant Morgan showed her badge.”
“Yes,” I said. “I saw her.”
“And he was sitting in the car, HOW far away?” Simeon said. “Do you know what I could do with that in court?”
Matthews cleared his throat. “Let’s not, um—court is not, uh, we don’t have to assume this will end in court,” he said.
“I was a lot closer when he tried to stab me,” I said, hoping to be a little helpful.
But Simeon waved that off. “Self-defense,” he said. “If she failed to properly identify herself as an officer of the law, he had every right to defend himself!”
“She showed her badge, I’m sure of it,” I said.
“You CAN’T be sure—not from fifty feet away!” Simeon said.
“I saw it,” I said, and I hoped I didn’t sound petulant. “Besides, Deborah would never forget that—she’s known the correct procedure since she could walk.”
Simeon waved a very large index finger at me. “And that’s another thing I really don’t like here—exactly what is your relationship to Sergeant Morgan?”
“She’s my sister,” I said.
“Your sister,” he said, making it sound somehow like he was saying, “Your evil henchman.” He shook his head theatrically and looked around the room. He definitely had everyone’s attention, and he was clearly enjoying it. “This just gets better and better,” he said, with a much nicer smile than Cappuccio’s.
Salguero spoke up for the first time. “Deborah Morgan has a clean record. She comes from a police family, and she is clean in every way, and always has been.”
“A police family does not mean clean,” Simeon said. “What it means is the Blue Wall, and you know it. This is a clear case of self-defense, abuse of authority, and cover-up.” He threw his hands up and went on. “Obviously, we are never going to find out what really happened, not with all these byzantine family and police-department connections. I think we will just have to let the courts figure this out.”
Ed Beasley spoke up for the first time, in a gruff and non-hysterical way that made me want to give him a hearty handshake.
“We have an officer in intensive care,” he said. “Because your client stuck a knife in her. And we don’t need a court to figure that out, Kwami.”
Simeon turned a row of bright teeth on Beasley. “Maybe not, Ed,” he said. “But until you guys succeed in throwing out the Bill of Rights, my client has that option.”
He stood up. “In any case,” he said, “I think I have enough to get my client out on bail.” He nodded at Cappuccio and left the room.
There was a moment of silence, and then Matthews cleared his throat. “Does he have enough, Irene?”
Cappuccio snapped the pencil she was holding. “With the right judge? Yeah,” she said. “Probably.”
“The political climate is not good right now,” Beasley said. “Simeon can stir things up and make this stink. And we can’t afford another stink right now.”
“All right then, people,” Matthews said. “Let’s batten down the hatches for the coming shit-storm. Lieutenant Stein, you’ve got your work cut out for you. Get something on my desk for the press ASAP—before noon.”
Stein nodded. “Right,” he said.
Israel Salguero stood up and said, “I have my work, too, Captain. Internal Affairs will have to start a review of Sergeant Morgan’s behavior right away.”
“All right, good,” Matthews said, and then he looked at me. “Morgan,” he said, shaking his head, “I wish you could have been a little more helpful.”
FOURTEEN
SO ALEX DONCEVIC WAS OUT ON THE STREET LONG BEFORE Deborah was even awake. In fact, Doncevic was out of the detention center at 5:17 that afternoon, which was only an hour and twenty-four minutes after Deborah opened her eyes for the first time.
I knew about Deborah because Chutsky called me right away, as excited as if she had just swum the English Channel towing a piano. “She’s gonna be okay, Dex,” he said. “She opened her eyes and looked right at me.”
“Did she say anything?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “But she squeezed my hand. She’s gonna make it.”
I was still not convinced that a wink and a squeeze were accurate signs that a complete recovery was at hand, but it was nice to know that she had made some progress. Especially since she would need to be fully conscious to face Israel Salguero and Internal Affairs.
And I knew when Doncevic was released from the detention center because in the time between the meeting in the conference room and Chutsky’s call, I had made a decision.
Dexter is not delusional; he knows better than most that life is not fair. Humans invented the idea of fairness to try to level the playing field and make things a little more challenging for the predators. And that’s fine. Personally, I welcome the challenge.
But although Life is not fair, Law and Order was supposed to be. And the i
dea that Doncevic might go free while Deborah wasted away in a hospital with so many tubes going in and out of her just seemed so very, kind of … All right, I will say it: it wasn’t fair. I mean, I am sure there are other available words here, but Dexter will not dodge merely because this truth, like most others, is a relatively ugly one. I felt a sharp sense of not-fairness to the whole thing, and it made me ponder what I might do to set things back in their proper order.
I pondered through several hours of routine paperwork and three cups of somewhat horrible coffee. And I pondered through a below-average lunch at a small place claiming to be Mediterranean, which was only true if we accept that stale bread, clotted mayonnaise, and greasy cold cuts are Mediterranean. And then I pondered through another few minutes of pushing things around on the desk in my little cubby.
And finally, somewhere in the distant fog of Dexter’s diminished brainscape, a small and faint gong sounded a tiny tinny note. Bong, it said softly, and murky light slowly flooded into Dexter’s Dim Noggin.
I had been scolded for being not very helpful, and I believe that I had been feeling the truth of that accusation. Dexter had not, in fact, been helpful; he had been sulking in the car when Debs was hurt, and he had failed to protect her once again from the attack of the shiny-headed lawyer.
But there was a way I could be very very helpful, and it was something that I was particularly good at. I could make a whole handful of problems go away: Deborah’s, the department’s, and my own very special ones, all at the same time, with one smooth stroke—or several choppy ones, if I was feeling particularly playful. All I had to do was relax and be wonderful special Me, while helping poor deserving Doncevic to see the error of his ways.
I knew Doncevic was guilty—I had seen him stab Deborah with my own eyes. And there was a very good chance he had killed and arranged the bodies that were causing such an uproar and harming our vital tourist economy. Disposing of Doncevic was practically my civic duty. Since he was out on bail, if he turned up missing, everyone would assume he had run. The bounty hunters would make a stab at finding him, but no one would care when they failed.