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“None at all,” I said. “Should there be?”
“One never knows,” he said happily.
I held up the little envelope that held the plastic key. “I’m in three twenty-four,” I said, and he nodded.
“All righty then,” he said.
For a moment we just looked at each other, and once more the wicked, unworthy thought occurred to me that eventually he would expect something in return, and payback was always a bitch in my family. But I pushed the spiteful notion away. “Thank you, Brian,” I said. “I really do appreciate all your help.”
He flashed that awful smile. “Don’t mention it,” he said. “Always glad to help.” I stood up and he called after me, “I’ll be in touch!” And then he rolled up the window and drove away.
Room 324 was, as you might expect, on the third floor of the hotel. It was nestled snugly in between the ice machine on one side and the elevator on the other, and had a breathtaking view of the building next door. But it was neat, comfortable, and completely anonymous, which suited me just fine for now.
I plugged in my phone to charge, and then unpacked my meager but functional wardrobe. And then I was done, out of important tasks, and surprisingly out of steam, too. I sank down on the bed and stared around at my new domain. It was a very small room, but it seemed huge after my super-snug cell at TGK, and all the extra space made me nervous. I would get used to it, of course—and probably just in time to be hauled back to TGK again when they decided to rearrest me.
Which they almost certainly would, and sooner rather than later. So what I really needed to do right now was explode into vigorous and positive action. That was my only hope—find a way to derail their train before it even left the station. Yup, that was the ticket. Charge. Get going. Do something.
And yet somehow I just couldn’t. It suddenly seemed futile, hopeless, a complete waste of time and energy. I was just one small bug on the windshield, and there were so many large and mighty wiper blades eager and ready to smear me off the glass. No matter what I tried to do, they were just too big, too powerful. And I was much too all alone, even with my fancy lawyer. I was David, but this time Goliath had a bazooka.
I felt the vitality drain right out of me as quickly and completely as if somebody had pulled a plug, and a dark bleak mist seemed to roll in and cover me. I’d let myself have hope, and I knew better than that. The only thing hope ever does is make the eventual inevitable disappointment hurt even more. I should have learned that by now—learned it for all time when Deborah showed up at last, and slapped me down because I had hoped. I was well and truly alone in a world that wanted nothing from me except to take away my life, and they would win. They had all the guns, they made the rules, and they always won. I was going down, and expecting any other outcome was sheer delusional fantasy. I should just get used to the thought that if I was very lucky, I would spend the rest of my life in a cell. It was going to happen, no matter what. There was no point in pretending, no point in trying to avoid it, no point in anything. Everyone who cared about me was either dead or had changed their minds—and the worst of it was, I couldn’t really blame them. I deserved to be shunned and locked up with all the other monsters. I was no different; I’d just been luckier. I’d had a wonderful run, longer tha
n most, and now it was over. Accept it, get used to it, give up, and get it over.
I flopped back onto the bed. At least this mattress was thicker than the one in my cell. I lay back, determined to enjoy one last binge of comfort before they took me away forever, trying hard to enjoy the luxury of this huge, soft bed. Unfortunately, this particular mattress favored some new kind of ergonomic design; it was shaped like a soup bowl, with a large depression in the middle, and I rolled right into it as soon as I stretched out. Even so, it was a few notches above the pallet in my cell, so I wiggled around a bit until I got comfy. I did; it was very nice, even though it rolled me into the shape of a hula hoop. What a shame to leave all this behind forever.
I tried very hard to conjure some enthusiasm for fighting back and staying out of jail, where I could enjoy this kind of luxurious freedom whenever I wanted. Isn’t liberty worth a little effort? And, of course, there is more to freedom than soft, concave mattresses. There are other things in the world that are far more dear to Dexter’s heart—like food! Surely that was worth fighting for. Really good food, and a wonderful variety, anytime I wanted it, day or night!
But that unfortunately gave me an image of Dashing Dexter with cape and sword, valiantly fighting for the honor of a pizza, and that was a little too hard to take seriously as a motive for getting up off the bed. Besides, the food would never again be as good as it had been every night with Rita—and Rita was dead, killed by my very own personal brand of idiotic ineptitude.
The food had been even better with Jackie Forrest, my silver-screen sweetheart, the ticket to a new and shinier life—and the same sheer blind staggering stupidity had welled up out of me and killed her, too. Both of them dead, their bodies laid at my feet, because my monstrous ignorant prideful brainless incompetence had killed them just as surely as if I’d shot them dead. It was all on me and my stupid useless three-thumbed idiocy.
And this was the same great set of skills and smarts that I wanted to raise up against the entire justice system? How do those odds look, Dexter? One hapless, hopeless clown who has proven that he can’t find the floor even by falling face-first onto it? Lined up against him we have the cops, the courts, the penal system, the U.S. marshals, the Marines, and possibly the Taliban….Did you really think you’d do any better this time, Dexter Doofus? Why not face the fact that all you ever were was lucky? And when you let Jackie Forrest die your luck ran out, all of it, for all time. The only good news is that there was nobody left to kill with your incompetence.
I closed my eyes and let the misery wash over me. I was very glad that I can’t feel human emotions. If I could, I would probably start to cry.
But once again, that little spark of self-awareness, that tiny demon that watches Me, started to giggle, and it tweeted me a picture: Dexter in the Dumps, sprawled on a saggy mattress in a cheap hotel and prepared to weep away this life of care that I have lived. I fall upon the thorns of life! Woe is me! And so forth!
And once again the picture was idiotic enough to stir me up from my torpid stew. All right, everything was bleak, black, hopeless, pointless, meaningless, empty of purpose. What had changed? Nothing at all—I had just forgotten, somehow, that life was struggle, and the only reward was to be allowed to live a little longer and struggle harder. Family life had set me up, and then the dazzling illusion of the life I might have had with Jackie had knocked me down. But all that was over, and we were back to basics. And when you came right down to it, the only purpose to life that I have ever been able to find is not to die. You couldn’t let them push you out the door to go gentle into that good night. You had to rage, rage, and slam that door on the bastards’ fingers. That was the contest—to delay the end of your personal match as long as you could. The point was not to win; you never did. Nobody can win in a game that ends with everybody dying—always, without exception. No, the only real point was to fight back and enjoy the combat. And by gum, I would.
I opened my eyes. “Rah-rah,” I said softly. “Yay, Dexter.”
All right, I accepted the challenge. Dexter would duel.
I might not win—I almost certainly would not win. But they would know they’d been in a fight.
With that decided, I felt better right away. Well done, Dexter. Show that good old team spirit. Wave the flag, give ’em hell, and all that.
Just one small question—how?
It was wonderful to resolve to Do Something, of course, but that meant I had to define “Something,” fill in the blanks, dig out a few specific worms and decide where the fish might bite them. And that meant I had some powerful Thinking to do, which, on sober reflection, was not a terribly encouraging prospect.
My once-mighty brain had not really distinguished itself lately, and I was no longer filled with cocky can-do confidence at the prospect of hurling it into the fray. But it was all I had—and really, didn’t it deserve one last chance to redeem its honor? Especially since this really was likely to be the last chance.
Of course it did; it was doing the best it could do, poor thing. So I turned it loose on the problem with an encouraging pat on the back. Go on, Brain. I know you can do it….
Shyly at first, and then with increasing confidence, my thoughts began to form. First, there were two immediately obvious points of attack. The first was to find proof that somebody else did it. That should have been simple—even elementary, a word my brain suggested to show that it was getting back just a little panache. But after all, somebody else actually did do it—Robert Chase. But he was universally beloved, particularly by the cops, who he’d buddied up with. I would have to find very solid proof of his guilt, and that would be tough. Anderson would control all the forensic evidence, and he’d choke off anything that pointed to someone who was not named Dexter.
And that led to the second point, which was Anderson himself. If I could discredit him, the rest would be much easier. And if not discredit, then perhaps something a little more, um…permanent? As well as entertaining? Brian was quite correct when he suggested that one small accident would go far toward setting everything right. And Anderson had earned it several times over. It would even be fun. But it wouldn’t go quite far enough; someone else would almost certainly pick up the torch and continue the race toward Dexter’s Destruction. And sadly enough, it would probably be Deborah. Even sadder, she was almost certainly far too eager to take on the job. She was a lot smarter than Anderson, and she would not make the same stupid mistakes. She would plod grimly ahead until she had enough rope to hang me, and then, if our recent tête-à-tête was any sign, she would even offer to tie the noose herself.
