Between Jennifer and her leg, and Rita’s eccentric performance, and whatever it was that Weiss was doing, life was just full of surprises lately, and they all boiled down to one thing: People really deserve whatever happens to them, don’t they?
It may not do me very much credit, but I found this thought very comforting, and I drifted back to sleep soon after.
The next morning my head had cleared a great deal; whether it was from Rita’s attentions or just my naturally chipper metabolism, I couldn’t say, In any case, I jumped out of bed with a fully functioning and powerfully effective brain at my service once again, which was all to the good.
The downside to that, however, was that any effective brain, realizing it was in the situation in which I found myself, would also find itself fighting down a very strong urge to panic, pack a bag, and run for the border. But even with my mental powers in high gear, I could not think of a border that would protect me from the mess I was in.
Still, life gives us very few real choices, and most of them are awful, so I headed for work, determined to track down Weiss and not to rest until I had him. I still did not understand him, or what he was doing, but that did not mean I couldn’t find him. No, indeed; Dexter was part bloodhound and part bulldog, and when he is on your trail, you might as well give up and save yourself the needless bother. I wondered if there was a way to get that message to Weiss.
I got to work a little bit early and so managed to grab a cup of coffee that almost tasted like coffee. I took it to my desk, sat at the computer, and got down to work. Or to be perfectly accurate, I got down to staring at my computer screen and trying to think of the right way to go to work. I had used up most of my clues already and felt like I was at something of a dead end. Weiss had stayed one step ahead of me, and I had to admit that he could be anywhere now; holed up somewhere nearby or even back in Canada, there was no way to know. And although I had thought my brain was fully functional once again, it was offering me no way to find out.
And then, far away, on top of an ice-covered peak in the distant skyline of Dexter’s mind, a signal flag rose up the pole and fluttered in the wind. I stared across the distance, trying to read the signal, and finally I got it: Five! it said. I blinked against the glare and read it again. Five.
A lovely number, five. I tried to remember if it was a prime number, and discovered I could not recall what that meant. But it was a very welcome number right now, because I had remembered why it was important, prime or not.
There were five videos on Weiss’s YouTube page. One each for the sites where Weiss had left his modified bodies, one of Dexter at play … and one more that I had not seen yet when Vince clattered in and called me away to work. It could not be another “New Miami” commercial featuring Deutsch’s body, because Weiss had still been filming that when I arrived at the crime scene. So it showed something else. And although I did not really expect it to tell me how to get to Weiss, it would almost certainly tell me something I did not know.
I grabbed my mouse and eagerly drove to YouTube, undeterred by the fact that I had watched myself on YouTube more often than modesty would really permit. I clicked through to the “New Miami” page. It was unchanged, the orange background still lighting up the screen behind the blazing letters. And on the right side were the five videos, neatly lined up in a thumbnail gallery, just as I remembered them.
Number five, the last one down, showed no picture in its box, just an area of blurry darkness. I moved the cursor over it and clicked. For a moment nothing happened; then a thick white line pulsed across the screen from left to right, and there was a blare of trumpets that was oddly familiar. And then a face appeared on the screen—Doncevic, smiling, his hair puffed out—and a voice began to sing, “Here’s the story—” and I realized why it had sounded familiar.
It was the opening to The Brady Bunch.
The horribly cheerful music bumped out at me and I watched as the voice warbled, “Here’s the story, of a guy named Alex, who was lonely, bored, and looking—for a change.” Then the first three arranged corpses appeared to the left of Doncevic’s happy face. He looked up at them and smiled as the song went on. They even smiled back, thanks to the plastic masks glued onto their faces.
The white line slid across the screen again, and the voice went on. “It’s the story, of a guy named Brandon, who had time of his own on his hands.” A picture of a man’s face appeared in the middle—Weiss? He was thirty or so, about the same age as Doncevic, but he was not smiling as the song continued. “They were two guys—living all together, until suddenly Brandon was alone.” Three boxes appeared on the right side of the screen, and in each one a dark and blurry frame appeared that was just as familiar as the song, but in a very slightly different way: these were three action shots lifted from the video of Dexter at play.
The first showed Doncevic’s body dumped in the tub. The second showed Dexter’s arm raising the saw, and the third was the saw slashing down on Doncevic. All three were short, two-second loops that repeated, over and over, as the song lurched on.
From the middle box Weiss looked on as the voice sang, “Until one day Brandon Weiss will get this fellow, and I promise he will not be saved by luck. There is nothing you can do to escape me. Because you have made me a crazy fuck.”
The cheerful tune crashed on as Weiss sang, “A crazy fuck. A crazy fuck. When you killed Alex—I became—a crazy fuck.”
But then, instead of a happy smile and dissolve to the first commercial, Weiss’s face swelled up to fill the whole screen and he said, “I loved Alex, and you took him away from me, just when we were getting started. In a way it’s very funny, because he was the one who said we shouldn’t kill anybody. I thought it would have been … truer …” He made a face and said, “Is that a word?” He gave a short and bitter laugh and went on. “Alex came up with the idea of taking bodies from the morgue so we didn’t have to kill anybody. And when you took him, you took away the only thing that stopped me from killing.”
For a moment he just stared at the camera. Then, very softly, he said, “Thank you. You’re right. It’s fun. I’m going to do it some more.” He gave a kind of twisted smile, as if he found something funny but didn’t feel like laughing. “You know, I kind of admire you.”
Then the screen went black.
When I was much younger, I used to feel cheated by my lack of human feelings. I could see the huge barrier between me and humanity, a wall built of feelings I would never feel, and I resented it very much. But one of those feelings was guilt—one of the most common and powerful, in fact—and as I realized that Weiss was telling me I had turned him loose as a killer, I also realized that I really ought to feel a little guilt, and I was very grateful that I did not.
Instead of guilt, what I felt was relief. Chilled waves of it, pulsing through me and snapping the tension that had been winding itself tighter and tighter inside me. I was well and truly relieved—because now I knew what he wanted. He wanted me. It had not been said out loud, but it was there: the next time it will be you and yours. And following the relief came a sense of cold urgency, a slow spreading and flexing of dark interior talons as the Dark Passenger caught the challenge in Weiss’s voice and responded in kind.
This was a great relief, too. Up until now the Passenger had been silent, having nothing at all to say about borrowed bodies, even when they were converted into patio furniture or gift baskets. But now there was menace, another predator sniffing down our back trail and threatening a territory we had already marked. And this was a challenge we could not allow, not for a moment. Weiss had served notice that he was coming—and finally, at last, the Passenger was rising from its nap and polishing its teeth. We would be ready.
But ready for what? I did not believe for a moment that Weiss would run away; that was not even a question. So what would he do?
The Passenger hissed an answer, an obvious one, but I felt its rightness because it was what we would have done. And Weiss had as much as told me himsel
f: “I loved Alex and you took him away …” So he would go after someone close to me. And by leaving the photo on Deutsch’s body, he had even told me who. It would be Cody and Astor, because that would hit me the same way I had hit him—and it would also bring me to him, and on his terms.
But how would he do it? That was the big question—and it seemed to me that the answer was fairly obvious. So far Weiss had been very straightforward—there is nothing terribly subtle about blowing up a house. I had to believe that he would move quickly, when he felt the odds favored him most. And since I knew he had been watching me, I had to assume he knew my daily routine—and the routine the children followed. They would be most vulnerable when Rita picked them up from school, coming out of a secure environment and into anything-goes Miami: I would be far away at work, and he could certainly overcome one relatively frail and unsuspecting woman to grab at least one of the kids.
So what I had to do was get into position first, before Weiss, and watch for him to arrive. It was a simple plan, and not without risk—I might well be wrong. But the Passenger was hissing agreement, and it is rarely wrong, so I resolved to leave work early, right after lunch, and get into position at the elementary school to intercept Weiss.
And once again, as I gathered myself for a great leap at the jugular vein of the impending foe—my telephone rang.
“Hey, buddy,” Kyle Chutsky said. “She’s awake, and she’s asking for you.”
TWENTY-FIVE
THEY HAD MOVED DEBORAH OUT OF THE INTENSIVE care unit. I had one moment of disjointed confusion when I stared into the empty ICU. I had seen this in a half-dozen movies, where the hero looks at the empty hospital bed and knows that it means whoever had been there is now dead, but I was quite sure Chutsky would have mentioned it if Debs had died, so I just went back down the hall to the reception area.
The woman at the desk made me wait while she did mysterious and very slow things with a computer, answered the phone, and talked with two of the nurses who were leaning nearby. The air of barely controlled panic that everyone had shown in the ICU was completely gone now, replaced by an apparently obsessive interest in phone calls and fingernails. But finally the woman admitted that there was a slim possibility of finding Deborah in room 235, which was on the second floor. That made so much sense I actually thanked her, and trudged off to find the room.
It was indeed on the second floor, and right next to room 233, so with a feeling that all was right with the world, I stepped in to see Deborah propped up in bed, with Chutsky on the far side of the bed in virtually the same position he had held in the ICU. There was still an impressive array of machinery surrounding Deborah, and the tubes still went in and out, but as I entered the room she opened one eye and looked at me, managing a modest half smile for my benefit.
“Alive, alive, oh,” I said, thinking that quaint good cheer was called for. I pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat.
“Dex,” she said in a soft and hoarse voice. She tried to smile again, but it was even worse than the first attempt, and she gave up and closed her eyes, seeming somehow to be receding into the snowy distance of the pillows.
“She’s not too strong here yet,” Chutsky said.
“I guessed that,” I said.
“So, uh, don’t get her tired, or anything. The doctor said.”
I don’t know if Chutsky thought I was going to suggest a game of volleyball, but I nodded and just patted Deborah’s hand. “It’s nice to have you back, sis,” I said. “You had us worried.”
“I feel,” she said in a feeble husky voice. But she did not tell us what she felt; instead, she closed her eyes again and parted her lips for a ragged breath, and Chutsky leaned forward and put a small chip of ice between her lips.
“Here,” he said. “Don’t try to talk yet.”
Debs swallowed the ice, but frowned at Chutsky anyway. “I’m okay,” she said, which was certainly a bit of an exaggeration. The ice seemed to help a little, and when she spoke again, her voice did not sound quite so much like a rat-tail file on an old doorknob. “Dexter,” she said, and the sound of it was unnaturally loud, as if she was shouting in church. She shook her head slightly and, to my great amazement, I saw a tear roll out of the corner of her eye—something I had not seen from her since she was twelve. It slid across her cheek and down onto the pillow, where it disappeared.
“Shit,” she said. “I feel so totally…” Her hand fluttered feebly, the one that Chutsky was not holding.
“You should,” I said. “You were practically dead.”
She lay there for a long moment, unspeaking, eyes closed, and then finally said, very softly, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
I looked at Chutsky across Deborah; he shrugged. “Do what, Debs?” I said.
“Cops,” she said, and when I finally understood what she was saying, that she didn’t want to be a cop anymore, I was as shocked as if the moon had tried to resign.
“Deborah,” I said.
“Doesn’t make sense,” she said. “End up here … For what?” She opened her eyes and looked at me, and shook her head very slightly. “For what?” she said.
“It’s your job,” I said, and I admit it wasn’t terribly moving, but it was all I could think of under the circumstances, and I didn’t really think she wanted to hear about Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
She apparently didn’t want to hear that it was her job, either, because she just looked at me and then turned her head and closed her eyes again. “Shit,” she said.
“All right now,” said a loud and cheerful voice from the door, in a thick Bahamian accent. “Gentlemen must go.” I looked; a large and very happy nurse had come into the room and was advancing on us rapidly. “The lady must rest, which she cannot do when you are bothering her,” the nurse said. She said “boddering,” and for a second I found it so charming that I did not realize she was shooing me out.
“I just got here,” I said.
She planted herself right in front of me and crossed her arms. “Then you will save big money on parking, because you got to go now,” she said. “Come on, gentlemen,” she said, turning to face Chutsky. “Boat of you.”
“Me?” he said with a look of great surprise.
“You,” she said, leveling a massive finger at him. “You been here too long already.”
“But I have to stay here,” he said.
“No, you have to go,” the nurse said. “Doctor wants her to rest awhile. Alone.”
“Go ahead,” Debs said softly, and Chutsky looked at her with an expression of hurt. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Go on.”
Chutsky looked from her to the nurse, and then back at Deborah again. “All right,” he said at last. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, and she did not object. He stood up and raised an eyebrow at me. “Okay, buddy,” he said. “Guess we’re evicted.”
As we left, the nurse was battering at the pillows as if they had misbehaved.
Chutsky led me down the hall to the elevator, and as we waited for it he said, “I’m a little bit worried.” He frowned and poked at the down button several more times.
“What,” I said. “You mean about, um, brain damage?” Deborah’s statement that she wanted to quit was still ringing in my ears, and it was so completely unlike her that I was a little worried, too. The image of vegetable Debbie drooling in a chair while Dexter spoon-fed her oatmeal still seemed hauntingly awful to me.
Chutsky shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said. “More like psychological damage.”
“How do you mean?”
He made a face. “I dunno,” he said. “Maybe it’s just the trauma. But she seems … very weepy. Anxious. Not like, you know. Herself.”
I have never been stabbed and then lost most of my blood, and in any case I could not remember reading anything that explained how you are supposed to feel under the circumstances. But it seemed to me that being weepy and anxious when these things happened to you was a relatively reasonable reaction. And
before I could think of a tactful way to say so, the elevator doors slid open and Chutsky charged in. I followed.
As the doors slid shut, he went on. “She didn’t really know me at first,” he said. “Right when she opened her eyes.”
“I’m sure that’s normal,” I said, although I was not really sure at all. “I mean, she’s been in a coma.”
“She looked right at me,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken at all, “and she was like, I dunno. Scared of me. Like, who am I and what am I doing there.”
To be perfectly honest, I had wondered the same thing over the last year or so, but it hardly seemed proper to say so. Instead, I just said, “I’m sure it takes time to—”
“Who am I,” he said, again apparently without noticing that I had spoken. “I sat there the whole time, never left her side longer than five minutes at a time.” He stared at the elevator’s control panel as it chimed to let us know we had arrived. “And she doesn’t know who I am.”
The doors slid open, but Chutsky did not notice at first.
“Well,” I said, hoping to break him out of his freeze.
He looked up at me. “Let’s get a cup of coffee,” he said, and headed out the elevator door, pushing past three people in light green scrubs, and I trudged along behind.
Chutsky led me out the door and over to the small restaurant on the ground floor of the parking garage, where somehow he managed to get two cups of coffee rather quickly, without anyone shoving in front of him or elbowing him in the ribs. It made me feel slightly superior: obviously, he was not a Miami native. Still, there was something to be said for results, and I took the coffee and sat at a small table wedged into the corner.