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“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.
