by Jeff Lindsay
So this was how it ended. Strangled by a Cub Scout leader—and not even the leader, merely an assistant. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of glory in it. I got my hands onto Crowley’s wrists, but things were fading around me and it was getting very hard to stay interested.
And look there—I was already hallucinating houris in Paradise. Or was that really Astor coming up the ladder? It was her, and she was holding a can of soda from the cooler in the cockpit. Very thoughtful—my throat was hurting, and she had brought me a cool drink. It was unlike her to be so considerate—but now she was shaking the can as hard as she could. That was more like it. She was going to prank me with a spray of soda. A last sticky bath before dying.
But Astor stepped quickly around to Crowley’s side and pointed the can at his face. She screeched, “Hey, asshole!” And when Crowley turned to face her she pulled the tab. There was a very satisfying explosion and a great brown gout of soda shot out, right into Crowley’s eyes. Then she threw the can as hard as she could. It hit him squarely in the nose, and without a pause Astor stepped in and kicked him in the crotch.
Crowley staggered sideways under this unexpected onslaught, grunting with pain and taking one hand from my throat to wipe at his eyes, and as the pressure on my throat let up, a small trickle of light seeped back into my brain. I put both hands on the fingers remaining on my throat and I pried up hard. I heard one finger snap, and Crowley made a weird gargling noise and let go of me. Astor kicked his crotch again, and he took a drunken half step away from her and slouched over the railing.
And I, never one to waste an opportunity, hurtled forward and put my shoulder into him. He went right over, and there was an ugly thud-splash as he hit the gunwale below us and then flopped into the water.
I looked over the side. Crowley was bobbing in the water facedown, drifting slowly past us as the boat moved forward at idle speed.
Astor stood beside me, looking at Crowley as he bobbed away into our wake. “Asshole,” she said again. Then she gave me a wonderfully fake smile and said sweetly, “Is it okay to use that word, Dexter?”
I put an arm around her shoulders. “This time,” I said, “I think it’s okay.”
But she stiffened and lifted her arm to point. “He’s moving,” she said, and I turned to look.
Crowley had raised his head up out of the water. He was coughing, and there was a trickle of blood running down his face, but he paddled feebly away across the channel toward a nearby sandbar. He was still alive—after Astor and I beat him, kicked him, broke his hand, flung him from the bridge, drowned him, and even sprayed him with soda, he was still alive. I wondered if he was related to Rasputin.
I took the wheel of the boat and spun us around to point back to where Crowley was dog-paddling steadily toward safety and escape.
“Think you can drive this thing?” I asked Astor.
She gave me a look that very clearly said, Duh. “Totally,” she said.
“Take the wheel,” I told her. “Steer real close to him, slow and steady, and don’t run into the sandbar.”
“Like I would,” she said. She took the wheel from me and I hurried down the ladder.
In the cockpit the old man had straightened up into a sitting position, and his moaning had gotten louder. Clearly he would be no help at all. More interesting, however, was that there was a boat hook beside him in a set of clamps. I pried it out and hefted it: about ten feet long, with a heavy metal tip. Just the thing. I could smack Crowley in the temple with the tip, then hook his shirt with it and hold his head under for a minute or two, and that really should be an end to it.
I stepped over to the railing. He was in the water right ahead of us, thirty feet away, and as I raised the boat hook in preparation, the boat’s motors suddenly roared up the scale and we surged forward. I stumbled back and grabbed at the transom, regaining my balance just in time to hear something thump against the hull. The engines wound back down to idle and I looked up at Astor on the bridge. She was smiling, a real smile this time, and looking back into our wake.
“Got him,” she said.
I went back to the transom and looked. For a moment there was no sign of Crowley, and I could not see under the water in the foam of our wake. Then there was a slow, heavy swirl under the surface.… Was it possible? Was he still alive?
And with breathtaking speed and violence, Crowley’s head and shoulders broke the surface. His mouth was stretched into an enormous expression of unbelievable pain and surprise as he rocketed upward until the top half of his body was all the way out of the water. But there was an alien shape clamped around his middle and thrusting him upward, a colossal gray thing that seemed to be all teeth and malice, and it shook him with incredible force: once, twice, and then Crowley simply fell over from the waist, sliced neatly in two, and the top half of his body sank from sight and the gigantic gray thing swirled after him into the deep, leaving nothing but a small red whirlpool and the memory of unbelievably savage power.
It had all happened so fast that I couldn’t be sure I had really seen it. But the image of that great gray monster was burned into my brain as if it had been etched there with acid, and the foam in our wake had a faint pink tint to it now. It had happened, and Crowley was gone.
“What was that?” Astor said.
“That,” I said, “was the Channel Hog.”
“Sweeeet,” she said, drawing out the word. “Totally. Flippin’. Sweeeeeeet.”
THIRTY-FIVE
AS IT HAPPENED, THE OLD MAN IN THE COCKPIT HELPED out a great deal after all. He had apparently broken his collarbone when Crowley rolled him off the bridge, and even better, he was an extremely rich and important old man, who did not mind making himself the center of attention and letting everyone know that he was a very influential person, and demanding that everyone in the immediate vicinity drop whatever they were doing and focus on giving him their absolute and devoted care.
He yelled in pain, and raved about the madman who had savagely attacked him and stolen his boat, threatening to sue the parks department, pausing only to point at me and say, “If not for that brave, wonderful man!” which I thought hit just the right note and made the whole crowd look at me with admiration. But they didn’t look long, because the important old man was far from done. He hollered for morphine and an airlift and ordered the rangers to secure his boat at once and call his attorney, and he made vague threats involving the legislature or even the governor, who was a personal friend, and he made himself completely, rivetingly annoying. Altogether he turned himself into such a perfect spectacle that nobody even noticed his female companion, who was standing there wrapped in a towel to hide the fact that she was naked except for her bikini top.
And nobody noticed when that brave wonderful man, Darling Dashing Dexter, took his two wayward imps by the hand and led them away from the hurly-burly and back to the relative calm and sanity of Key West.
When we got to our hotel, we were informed that our suite was still sealed by order of the police. I should have anticipated that. I had sealed enough crime scenes myself. But as I was about to sink wearily onto the cold marble floor and weep away my life of care, the desk clerk reassured me that they had moved us to an even nicer suite, one that had an actual view of the water. And just to confirm that at last everything had turned around and living was once more worth all the trouble and mess, she went on to inform me that the manager was so deeply sorry for all the unpleasantness that he had refunded our entire deposit, thrown away our bill, and hoped we would accept a complimentary dinner in the restaurant, beverages not included, which was not meant to suggest that the hotel or its staff and management were in any way responsible for the unfortunate accident, and the manager was sure we would agree and enjoy the rest of our stay, which was extended an extra night, too, and if I would only sign one small piece of paper acknowledging that the resort had no liability?
Suddenly I was very tired. And yet, with the fatigue came an unreasonable sense of well-being, a vague
suggestion burbling up around the edges that the worst really was over and everything was actually going to be all right. I had been through so much, and failed miserably at dealing with most of it, and yet I was still here, all in one piece. In spite of my terrible performance and my unquestionable iniquity, I was being rewarded with dinner and a free vacation in a luxury suite. Life really was a wicked, awful, unjust thing, and that was exactly as it should be.
So I gave the clerk my very best smile and said, “Throw in banana splits for the kids and a bottle of merlot for my wife, and you’ve got a deal.”
Rita was waiting for us in our new improved suite. It really did have a wonderful view of the harbor, and it was much easier for me to appreciate the postcard prettiness of the water than it had been just a few hours ago, when I stood on the dock and watched the catamaran pull away. Rita had apparently been enjoying the view from the balcony for some time—even more so since she’d opened the minibar and mixed herself a Cuba Libre. She jumped to her feet when we came in and rushed over to us, fluttering like the absolute Avatar of Dither.
“Dexter, my God, where have you been?” she said, and before I could answer she blurted out, “We got the house! Oh, my God, I still can’t— And you weren’t here! But it’s the one, you remember you said? On a Hundred and Forty-second Terrace, just a mile and a half from our old house! With a pool, my God, and it was only— There was one other bidder, but they dropped out right before— It’s ours, Dexter! We have a new house! A big, wonderful house!” And she sniffled and then sobbed, and one more time she said, “Oh, my God.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said, although I was not completely convinced that it was. But I said it with as much reassurance as I could muster, since she was crying.
“I just can’t believe it,” she said, sniffling again. “It’s just exactly perfect, and I got us a mortgage at four and a half— Astor, did you get a sunburn?”
“Only a little,” Astor said, though she’d gotten quite a bit more than a sunburn. The side of her face, where Crowley had hit her, was red, and I was sure it would soon turn purple, but I was also confident we could bluff our way through Rita’s questions.
“Oh, look at your poor face,” Rita said, laying a hand on Astor’s cheek. “It’s swollen, and you can’t even— Dexter, what in the world happened?”
“Oh,” I said, “we went for a little boat ride.”
“But that’s— You said you were going to feed the sharks,” she said.
I looked at Cody and Astor. Astor looked back at me and snickered. “We did that, too,” I said.
Our complimentary dinner that evening was really quite nice. I have always found that free meals taste just a little bit better, and after two days of the rapacious greed of the Key West economy, this was succulent indeed.
And the flavors were just a little bit more delicious when, three minutes into the entrée, my sister, Sergeant Deborah Morgan, blew into the dining room like a category-four hurricane. She came in so fast that she was actually sitting at our table before I knew she was there, and I am quite sure I heard the sonic boom catch up to her a moment later.
“Dexter, what the fu—what the, um, heck have you been doing?” she said, with a guilty glance at Cody and Astor.
“Hi, Aunt Sergeant,” Astor said, with visible hero worship. Debs got to carry a gun and boss large men around, and Astor found that intoxicating.
Debs knew it; she smiled at Astor and said, “Hi, honey. How are you doing?”
“Great!” Astor gushed. “This is the best vacation ever!”
Deborah raised an eyebrow at that, but just said, “Well, good.”
“What brings you down to old Key West, sis?” I said.
She looked back to me and frowned. “They’re all saying that Hood followed you down here and turned up dead—in your room, for Christ’s sake,” Debs said. “I mean, Jesus.”
“Quite true,” I said calmly. “Sergeant Doakes is around somewhere, too,” I said.
Deborah’s jaw bulged out; it was quite clear that she was grinding her teeth, and I wondered what had happened to the two of us in our childhood to turn us both into molar manglers. “All right,” she said. “You better tell me what happened.”
I looked around the table at my little family, and although I was very happy to have my sister here to share my tale of woe, I realized that there were quite a few details that might not be appropriate for sensitive ears—I mean Rita’s, of course. “Would you join me in the lobby, sis?” I said.
I followed Debs out to the lobby, where we found a soft leather couch. We sank into the low cushions together, and I told her. It was surprisingly pleasant to be able to tell it all, and it was even more gratifying to hear her reaction when I finished.
“You sure he’s dead?” she said.
“Deborah, for God’s sake,” I said. “I saw him bitten in half by a giant shark. He’s dead and digested.”
She nodded. “Well,” she said. “We just might get away with it.”
It was very nice to hear her say “we,” but there were still some worrisome details that were more “I, Dexter” than plural. “What about Hood?” I said.
“That asshole got what was coming to him,” she said. It was a shock to hear her speak approvingly of a brother officer’s death; perhaps she had noticed his terrible breath, too, and was relieved that it was gone forever. But it also occurred to me that his brief attack on Deborah’s reputation might have done some real professional harm.
“Are you okay with the department again?” I asked.
She shrugged and rubbed her cast with her good hand. “We got my psycho in a cell. Kovasik,” she said. “Once I get back on it, I know I can make it stick. He did it, and Hood can’t change that. Especially now he’s dead.”
“But don’t the Key West cops still think I killed Hood?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I talked to Detective, um, Blanton?” she said, and I nodded. “That bag he dropped on the dock in the Tortugas had a baseball bat in it, among other things,” she said.
“What kind of things?” I said; after all, if he’d come up with something new, I really wanted to know about it.
Deborah made an irritated face and shook her head. “I don’t know, fuck,” she said. “Duct tape. Clothesline. Fishhooks. A carpenter’s saw. Things,” she said, clearly cranky now. “What matters is the bat. There’s some blood, tissue, and hair on it that they think will probably match up to Hood’s.” She shrugged and then, oddly, smacked my arm, hard, with her fist.
“Ouch,” I said, thinking about the fishhooks—some very interesting possibilities …
“Which kind of lets you off the hook,” Deborah said.
I rubbed my arm. “So they’re just going to drop it? I mean, as far as I’m concerned?”
Deborah snorted. “Actually, they’re kind of hoping you’ll just go away and not make any fuss about them handing your children to a kidnapper. Right out of their own front door, too. Fucking idiots.”
“Oh,” I said. Oddly enough, I hadn’t even thought of that. It really did seem like the sort of thing they might hope would just disappear. “So they’re happy with Crowley, even though he’s gone?”
“Yeah,” Debs said. “Blanton may not look like much, but she knows her job. She found a hotel maid who saw somebody and got a description. Thirties, stocky, short beard?”
“That’s him,” I said.
“Uh-huh. So this guy was helping his drunk friend out of the service elevator on your floor. Except the maid said he looked a little too drunk—like dead drunk—and he had one of those pirate hats covering his face, like they found in your room?”
“Suite,” I said reflexively.
She ignored me and shook her head. “The maid didn’t want to say anything; she’s from Venezuela, scared to lose her green card. But she gave a good description. And two of the cooks saw them coming in from the loading dock, too. Also, the waiter at breakfast confirms that you were with your family in the dining
room at the time, so …”
I thought about it, nursing a tiny spark of hope as it grew into a glimmer. It was unlike Crowley to be so sloppy, but I suppose he had been surprised by Hood and had to improvise. I had a quick mental picture of the two of them trying to follow me at the same time and tripping over each other; comic hijinks result, leading to the hilarious bludgeoning death of Detective Hood. Maybe Crowley had panicked, maybe he had just been riding his luck and feeling invincible. I would never know, and it didn’t really matter. Somehow, he had gotten away with it. Nobody had seen him kill Hood, and nobody had stopped him when he moved the body into my room. But of course, people see only what they expect to see, and precious little of that, so the only surprise was that anybody had noticed anything at all.
But the true marvel was that I could see a real live light at the end of what had been a very long, very dark tunnel. I breathed a tentative sigh of relief and looked at my sister, and she looked back. “So I’m off the hook in Key West?” I said.
She nodded. “It gets better,” she told me. “Fucking Doakes really shit the bed this time.”
“I hope it was his own bed,” I said.
“He’s supposed to be in Admin, not out working a case,” she said. “Plus, here he is in Key West, which is way out of his jurisdiction. And,” she added, raising her good hand, the one with no cast, in the air and making a very sour face, “the Key West cops have made a formal complaint. Doakes tried to bully them into holding on to you, and he intimidated witnesses, and …” She paused and looked off into the distance for a moment. “Fuck,” she said at last. “He used to be a pretty good cop.” She actually sighed, and it pained me to see her feeling sorry for someone who had spent so much time and effort making me miserable.
But there were, after all, more important matters at hand. “Deborah,” I said. “What about Doakes?”
She looked up at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. “Suspended, without pay, pending investigation by Professional Compliance,” she said.
