He turned and looked at her, and to his credit, if that is the right word, the look he gave her was either genuine abiding affection, or he was a much better actor than I’d thought. Astor looked back at him, but she didn’t look quite as smitten, and I thought I saw one small chance to save poor Dexter’s bacon.
“If you like Astor so much,” I said, “you never should have lied to her.”
Robert jerked his head back around to face me and frowned. “I didn’t lie to her,” he said. “I would never do that; I really love her. She knows that.” And he smiled at her again, putting the knife down on the floor beside him so he could take her hand reassuringly.
“You lied to her,” I said, and it was the only card I had to play, so I pushed it hard. “You told her you could get her in movies, and that’s a lie.”
“No,” he said, “I have a lot of connections and—”
“Your connections will run from you like the plague,” I said. “Just as soon as they find out you’re a lying, murdering pedophile.”
Robert turned bright red. “You don’t understand,” he said. “Nobody understands.”
“That’s right,” I said. “And the cops don’t understand, either, and they will make sure you go to jail for the rest of your life—if you’re lucky. We do have capital punishment in Florida, you know.”
He was shaking his head, faster and faster. “No, no way,” he said. “They’ll never catch me. I can get away.”
“How, Robert?” I said. “They’re already watching the airports, the docks, even the bus depot.”
“I have a car,” he said, almost like he hoped that was worth something.
“And if you use your credit card to buy gas, they’ll know it. They’re going to get you, Robert. You snatched a little girl, and they are coming for you, and they will never, ever stop until they get you.”
Robert bit his lip. A bead of sweat formed on his forehead. “I can … I can bargain,” he said.
“You’ve got nothing to bargain with,” I said.
“I do,” he said. “I have a … a hostage.”
“A what?” I said.
“That’s right,” he said. “I can get a boat and make Cuba—I just need a head start. They’ll give me that if I give them Astor.”
Right beside Robert I saw Astor’s face change. She had been watching us like she was seeing a Ping-Pong match, head swiveling from Robert to me, while a frown slowly bloomed on her face. But when Robert said “give them Astor,” her face hardened into a mask of cold dark rage, and she aimed it right at Robert.
“Give them Astor? I thought you loved her,” I said.
He shook his head. “I can’t go to prison,” he said. “I know what they do to people like me.” His jaw moved from side to side, and he blew out a breath and repeated, “I can’t go to prison. I just can’t. I will do anything to stay out.” He leaned over me, blocking everything out of my sight except his perfectly tanned, far-too-handsome face, and he actually looked a little regretful. “So I’m really sorry,” he said. “But that means I have to, um, you know.” He sighed heavily. “Kill you. I’m really sorry, Dexter. Really. I like you. But I can’t take the chance that— Urkkh,” he said, and his eyes got very big. For a long moment he didn’t move and didn’t breathe, just knelt over me looking faintly surprised. Then he frowned and opened his mouth to say something. But instead of words, a great horrible gout of vile hot awful red blood came out and it splattered onto the floor and onto me, and even though I jerked my head to one side some of it dripped onto my face.…
And then Robert toppled over to one side and did not move, and behind him, snarling triumphantly down at him and holding a very bloody, very sharp knife—behind him in her little white silk negligee with its pale blue bow and a new set of bright red polka dots, was Astor.
“Stupid asshole,” she told him.
THIRTY-SIX
ASTOR USED THE KNIFE TO CUT THE ROPES OFF MY HANDS. IT was just nylon clothesline and it parted easily, and in just a few seconds I was sitting up and rubbing at the nasty wet blood on my face. I felt unclean, soiled, and very close to panic until I untied my feet, too, and stumbled in to the sink to wash the awful stuff off. I looked in the mirror above the sink to make sure I’d gotten it all, and I saw a strange, uncertain face looking back at me.
Who are you now? I wondered. It was a good question, and I could not answer it. I had tried to be a new and different Dexter—tried and failed. I had seen what I thought was a wonderful, shiny new life, a place where luxury was common coin and everyone was beautiful and no possibility was out of reach. I had seen it, and I had wanted it, and I had even been invited in, and I had thought that in a place that shone so brightly, even love was possible—love, for someone like me, who had never felt any emotion stronger than irritation.
And I had looked around at my little perch, a tried-and-true place of proven safety, sanctified by years of experience and the Harry Code, and suddenly it had not been enough. So I had jumped feet-first off my perch, and I had landed in the bright and gleaming New World—only to find that the bright and shining place that looked so warm and solid was no more than thin and brittle ice that could never hold my weight. And it had shattered and dumped me in the frigid salt sea.
And when I had needed most of all to be the real me, Saint Dexter of the Knife, I had taken one standard, well-practiced step into the Dark Dance, and fallen off my plié. I had been tricked and trapped by a man so dull and hollow he was practically a hologram, and he would have finished me off if I had not been saved by an eleven-year-old girl.
It was perfect; only the truly delusional can fall so far. I had tumbled out of all my illusions, new and old. And now I would fall the rest of the way, back into the stifling dullness of the plain woodframe world behind the beautiful fake scenery.
There he is in the mirror; ladies and gentlemen, the Heavyweight Chump of the world—Dexter Delusional!
And my reflection nodded, wisely and mockingly. This is what comes of trying to be something you are not, it said, and I nodded back. Because no matter how far you may travel, you are what you are, and even when you are flying at thrilling new heights, circling the sun and thinking you belong in the halo of that perfect golden light, you do not. The wings always melt, and you always crash-land in your same old self.
A small and pretty face appeared in the mirror behind me. “Dexter?” Astor said. “What should we do?”
I blinked, and my narcotic self-involvement vanished. I turned to look at Astor, and beyond her, turning the cream-colored carpet into a soggy red mess, I saw a dead TV star. Directly in front of me stood an eleven-year-old girl wearing a negligee, and somewhere in the house my wife was bound and unconscious.
With a rush of paranoid insight, I realized that this was not the best possible situation to find yourself in, especially when you are so very far from top form. The whole thing suddenly seemed designed to point right at me, starting with Jackie’s death, to Robert’s—and even Astor in her unlikely sex suit, since I was, after all, only her stepfather, and in cop circles “stepfather” is a code word for Sexual Abuser.
I could put together this scenario in my sleep, and it very definitely had a starring role for Dexter.
Ten minutes of basic cop questions with anyone involved in the pilot would reveal that I had been Jackie’s new boyfriend. This automatically made me the prime suspect in her death—after all, choosing between me and World-Famous Robert Chase as a possible killer was such a simple choice that even a dolt like Anderson would pick me.
And of course, it would be Anderson, who had fresh and compelling reasons to hate me. And Vincent, the director, would tell him I had gone looking for Robert—and now, here I stood over Robert’s body, speckled with Robert’s blood. My usual trump card, Sergeant Sister, was no longer in the deck. From my last attempt to speak with her, I was quite sure she would be absolutely thrilled to watch me twist in the wind. She might not tie the noose, but she certainly wouldn’t lift a finger to
untie it, either. She would step back and watch as Anderson tucked Dexter neatly into this perfectly tailored scenario. And tuck he would: He had made a career out of accidentally trampling evidence and arresting the wrong person. How much better at it would he be now, when he would do it purposely, gleefully with real evidence?
There was Astor, of course—but anything she said would be largely discounted. She was a minor, and besides, everyone knows that stepfathers use intimidation and fear to keep the secret of their wicked pleasures, and a poor young thing would say whatever he told her to say.
It was a perfect blend of clichéd situations—and cops love clichés because they are true most of the time. That’s how they get to be clichés.
The more I thought about it, the more I thought I might be in a great deal of trouble.
It was not mere paranoia; Jackie had been very famous. The pressure to arrest somebody for her death would be enormous. Adding Robert into the mix increased the pressure tenfold. And just to seal the deal, Jackie had been killed while under the publicly proclaimed protection of Miami’s Finest. If a killer had slipped through that protection, the cops looked even worse. But if the killer was somebody on the inside, somebody who could easily pass through the Blue Wall, but not a rogue cop, it would take off a little heat. They would lunge at it with both hands.
Do cops arrest and frame someone they know is innocent? Not very often. But would the department at large refuse to look too closely when a brother officer arrested somebody plausible and said he was guilty? Would Captain Matthews keep his blinders on, merely to protect the department’s image?
Is water really wet?
And Deborah—whatever she’d said earlier, she would still be half unconvinced of my innocence. But which half would win? In the past, she would have gone after the truth relentlessly, no matter what, bucking flak from above and ignoring whatever the slings and arrows might be. Old Debs would have braved anything to free an innocent man—and if that innocent was her brother, nothing would hold her back. She would willingly take on the whole department.
But now?
Now, on a case that Debs had been booted off with both of the captain’s feet? Now that she was already in the Official Doghouse, her precious career hanging by a thread? She had been spanked very publicly and told to stay away. Any small rocking of the boat could tip her into the water and end something that meant more to her than anything else—would she risk that for me now? Now that she had said quite clearly that she thought I was such an utter scum-lump that I would even kill Rita, and that she was pretty much done with me forever?
I didn’t know. But it didn’t seem like a very good idea to bet my life on it.
But of course, I did have a very good way out, a simple but effective Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card: Rita. I had not, in fact, killed her. She would confirm that Robert had taken Astor, and dressed the girl in the incriminating negligee, and then attacked Rita. And that would lead back to why he killed Jackie, and even Kathy—it would all fit together, and Robert’s death was suddenly well earned, a clear case of self-defense. Anderson would probably still try to stick it on me, and he might make things very unpleasant for a while, but eventually even a dolt of his very high caliber would be forced to see the truth.
Rita was the key. She would keep me safe from Justice, and that seemed like the final irony. As hard and willingly as I’d tried to escape her and the dreadful gray subsistence-level life she stood for, she was the only one who could save me now—perfect. Welcome home, Dexter.
“Dexter?” Astor said. “Hey, Dexter?”
She startled me, even though I knew she was there, and I looked at her and blinked. I saw uncertainty on her face, and something that might even be guilt. “What should we do?” she said again. For the first time in several weeks, she looked like an eleven-year-old girl: scared, unsure of herself, lost in a sudden attack of reality.
“First,” I said, “we get your mom.”
We found Rita on the far side of the house, near the washer and dryer. She was tied up as I had been, and she was not moving, and when I knelt down beside her I felt only a very faint, very fluttery pulse. I turned her over carefully and began to work at the knots that held her wrists, and at some point while I tugged at the ropes, her pulse stopped.
I tried my basic CPR. I gave her mouth-to-mouth. I did everything that training and desperate imagination could come up with, but after five minutes of trying she was still not breathing and her flesh had already begun to turn chill and clammy.
Rita was dead.
And so, quite possibly, was Dexter.
I looked at her body. I thought of the many years we had been together, and all the excellent meals she had cooked, and all the many things she had done for me even beyond her cooking, and I shook my head. I know I should have felt something—anger, sorrow, regret, almost anything at all. But my only thought was that death had smoothed out most of the wrinkles that had lately been growing on her face.
And I thought about Jackie; death had looked much worse on her. Not that it mattered, not really. They were both equally dead. I shook my head slowly, and finally I did feel something—I felt a keen appreciation of the irony Life had inflicted on Deeply Deserving Dexter. I, who never cared for women, had felt peacock-proud because I had two.
And now I had none.
I turned away from Rita’s body. Astor stood behind me, chewing her lower lip. “Is she … is Mom … dead?” she asked me.
I nodded.
“But isn’t there … Can’t you … do something?”
“I did,” I said. “It didn’t work.” And I might have added, like everything else I’ve tried lately.
Astor looked down at her mother’s body and shook her head. For a moment I thought she might actually cry—but of course, that was not in her, any more than it was in me. Instead, she knelt beside Rita and touched her cheek. For a long moment she stared down at Rita, her face showing no more than her mother’s did. Then she turned and looked up at me. “What do we do now?” she said.
I sighed. There were many things I might do—but all of them led, eventually, to the same cell in the detention center downtown. And even I had to admit that I deserved it. My entire career had never been any more than a prelude to prison. I’d kept ahead of Just Deserts for a very long time by using my wits—but recent events proved those were gone, dried up and blown away like last autumn’s leaves. It was all over: inarguably, inescapably over, and as I admitted that to myself, I even felt a little bit of relief.
There was no point in prolonging this any more than I had to.
I pulled Astor to her feet. “We call the police,” I said. “And then we face the music.” She looked puzzled, but that didn’t matter.
I took out my phone and called it in. Then I sat with Astor and waited for the music to start.
ALSO BY JEFF LINDSAY
Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Dearly Devoted Dexter
Dexter in the Dark
Dexter by Design
Dexter Is Delicious
Double Dexter
A Note About the Author
Jeff Lindsay is the New York Times bestselling author and creator of the Dexter novels, most recently Double Dexter. He lives in South Florida with his wife and three daughters. His novels are the inspiration for the hit Showtime and CBS series Dexter.
Other titles by Jeff Lindsay available in eBook format
Darkly Dreaming Dexter • 9780307275103
Dearly Devoted Dexter • 9780385515801
Dexter in the Dark • 9780385523035
Dexter by Design • 9780385530149
Dexter Is Delicious • 9780385532365
Double Dexter • 9780385532389
Visit: www.Dexter-Books.com
Like: www.facebook.com/jefflindsayauthor
Jeff Lindsay, Dexter's Final Cut
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