Dexter's Final Cut d-7

by Jeff Lindsay

  Jackie shook her head. “Fucking weirdo,” she muttered, and then we were at last standing in front of the door labeled JACKIE FOREST. She paused for a minute, looking at her name, and then shook her head. “At least they almost spelled it right,” she said. She looked back along the hallway. “But they always put me last, farthest away.” She made a face. “And right next to Bob, too.”

  “Robert,” I said automatically, and Jackie snorted.

  “Come on in,” she said, and opened the door.

  In most ways, Jackie’s dressing room was a smaller copy of the men’s and women’s. But there was only one chair, in front of a smaller mirror. A table stood next to it, laden with a huge bouquet of fresh-cut flowers, a fruit basket, and a large and gaudy box of very expensive chocolates. Under the table was a small refrigerator, and along the wall opposite there was a soft-looking sofa. A door at the far end of the room stood half open to reveal a bathroom, complete with shower.

  “Well,” I said. “So this is how the one percent lives.”

  “Squalid,” she said. “But you get used to it.”

  Before I could settle onto the sofa with the box of chocolates, a knock sounded on the door and, a moment later, it swung open and Detective Anderson sidled in. He was carrying a large cardboard box and wearing a truly annoying smirk. “Hey, Miss Forrest,” he said.

  Jackie raised an eyebrow and put on her smallest smile. “Yes?” she said.

  Anderson put the box down on Jackie’s dressing table and stuck out his hand. “Detective Anderson,” he said, smiling at Jackie as if she was a jar of honey and he was a starving bear.

  Jackie hesitated, and then shook his hand. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I think I’ve heard your name.”

  “Yeah, listen,” Anderson said, still clutching Jackie’s hand. “I brought some stuff-um, your assistant? Miss Podrowski …”

  The tiny smile left Jackie’s face, and she yanked her hand away from Anderson’s grip. “Yes,” she said.

  Anderson shifted his weight uncertainly, and then nodded at the cardboard box. “I, uh … I brought you her effects. From her room.” He flicked the box with a finger. “Suitcase, purse, laptop. We been through it, and, uh, I was hoping you might take a look. See if you notice anything that we might miss?”

  I said nothing, but I could not help thinking that what Anderson might miss would be a very long list. Jackie frowned and flicked her eyes toward me. “It might help,” I said.

  She looked back to Anderson. “All right,” she said. “I’ll take a look.”

  “Thank you, Miss Forrest,” Anderson said. “I know how busy you are, but I’d appreciate it if you could, you know. As soon as possible.”

  “I’ll take a look,” Jackie repeated.

  Anderson licked his lips and shifted his weight again. “And, uh,” he said. A funny little smile flicked on and off his face. “I wanted to give you my personal assurance. I’m gonna get this guy, and you got nothin’ to worry about.”

  “Thank you, Officer,” Jackie said. She started to turn away from him, a clear dismissal, but Anderson touched her shoulder; she looked back at him, and he went on relentlessly.

  “And, uh, you know,” he said. “If you’re feeling at all, you know. Like you’re worried? I want you to think of me like I’m a security blanket. Totally available, twenty-four/seven.” He held out a business card, nodded at her, and smiled as if he had just said something wonderful.

  Jackie looked at him with a very serious and thoughtful expression on her face, and gave him a head-to-toe scan before looking him in the eye. For a few long seconds she said nothing, and Anderson got very uncomfortable, shifted his weight from foot to foot, and actually began to blush. “A blanket,” Jackie said at last, deadpan. “Thank you.” She smiled wickedly. “But I already have a nice warm blanket,” she said, and she leaned over toward me and put a hand on the back of my neck, rubbing it lightly.

  “I have to get to wardrobe,” she said. “Can you walk me over, Dexter?” And she gave me a smile warm enough to singe Anderson’s eyebrows.

  “I’d be delighted,” I said. Jackie touched my cheek, then turned away. I glanced at Anderson. His face was mottled and his mouth hung open, and he watched Jackie saunter away until I moved to follow, forcing him to step back. “Excuse me,” I said. “I have to stay with Miss Forrest.” He looked at me and I smiled. “I’m her blanket.”

  Anderson stared back at me with such pure hate that I wanted to stand there for a while and admire it, but after all, the work of a blanket is never done. “Bye now,” I said, and I followed Jackie out of the room.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I caught up with Jackie halfway down the hall, not as easily as I should have, since she was practically sprinting away from Anderson. “Shit,” she said when I finally stepped up beside her, “I can’t deal with Kathy’s stuff, not so soon.” She shook her head. “And that odious dumbfuck Anderson,” she said.

  “Odious dumbfuck,” I said, and I really was impressed with her colorful but accurate description. “You talk pretty.”

  But for some reason, my sincere praise did not lighten her mood. She bit her lip, and then shook her head again. “I can’t-If I look at Kathy’s things right now, I’ll fall apart, and I can’t go in front of the cameras looking like I’ve been crying,” she said. She hesitated, then glanced at me. “Is it … Could there really be something important in her stuff?”

  “With Anderson in charge?” I said. “The killer could be hiding in Kathy’s suitcase and he wouldn’t notice.”

  Jackie stopped walking. We were at the junction of the hallway, where the main fork led back to the set. “Could I ask … Would you mind looking at her things, Dexter?”

  “I didn’t know her at all,” I said.

  Jackie sighed. “I know,” she said. “I just … it’s hard enough not to burst into tears every time I think of Kathy, and I …” She put a hand on my arm, and blinked back a few tears. “Please? Would you?”

  The way Jackie looked at me with those wonderful violet eyes starting to fill up, I would have juggled flaming chain saws if it would make her happy. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll take a look.”

  Jackie smiled. “Thank you,” she said. She took a deep breath, sniffled, and straightened up. “Right now I really do have to find Sylvia.” She leaned close to me and bumped her forehead against mine gently. “Thank you,” she said. “See you later.” And she strode away down the hall.

  I watched her go for a moment. I had never before realized how much fun it can be just to watch somebody walk. Jackie was very good at it-not just because she didn’t fall down or walk into a wall, although that was true, too. There was just something about the way she put one foot in front of the other that made me think of how I felt waking up next to her naked body. It didn’t make any sense, but it was true. So I watched Jackie until she vanished through a doorway opposite the set.

  I turned around and headed back toward Jackie’s dressing room. I didn’t see Anderson, which seemed odd. He certainly hadn’t gone past us. He might have gone out the door at the far end of this hall, but a sign on it clearly said that an alarm would sound if the door was opened, and I hadn’t heard any alarm. That seemed to mean that he was still in the dressing room, and that was very odd.

  The door was ajar, and I peeked around it and into Jackie’s dressing room. Anderson was still inside. He was standing at the far end, at the rack that held Jackie’s costumes. He had the sleeve of one of her shirts held up to his nose, and he was apparently sniffing it. I didn’t know why he was doing that, but it made me want to break a chair on his face. Still, a little good humor is almost always a better way, so I stifled the urge and stepped into the room.

  “Looking for a clue?” I said cheerfully, and he jerked around, practically flinging the shirtsleeve away from his face. “Because I’ve heard you totally don’t have one.”

  “Don’t have-I was just … What do you mean?” he said.

  “I said, you don’t have a clu
e,” I said. “It’s common knowledge.”

  His forehead wrinkled, and I could probably have counted to five or six as it dawned on him that I had insulted him.

  “Listen, ace,” he said. “I am running a homicide investigation here-”

  “By sniffing Jackie’s clothing?” I said. “Is her armpit a suspect?”

  Anderson turned bright red and stuttered at me, until it was very clear to both of us that nothing coherent was going to come out of his mouth. He looked around for a way to escape, and saw nothing except the toilet. So he cleared his throat, muttered something I couldn’t hear, and pushed past me, giving me one last glare from the doorway before he disappeared.

  I closed the door and went to look at the box of Kathy’s stuff. I took the suitcase out and put it on the floor. I really doubted that there would be anything significant stuck in with her socks and underwear, and even if the urine stains had been washed out, I would rather not have to look at Kathy’s underwear. The purse was a more likely place to find something, so I dumped it out on the makeup table and poked through it. There was the usual clutter of coins, gum wrappers, receipts, coupons, a large clump of keys, a packet of tissues, lipstick, a small mirror, three pens, and a handful of paper clips. A wad of one-dollar bills, wrapped around a valet parking stub. Two tampons in a bright pink plastic case. A large packet of cinnamon-flavored sugarless gum. A wallet with several credit cards, license, a few business cards, forty-three dollars in cash, three paycheck stubs.

  I frowned at the heap of useless junk. Something was missing. I am not an expert on what women carry in their purses, but a tiny nagging something tugged at the edge of my brain and whispered that this picture was missing a piece.

  I looked in the box, lifting out the black nylon laptop case and unzipping it. There was nothing inside but the computer, with its ubiquitous half-eaten Apple logo on top. I poked through the Velcro-sealed pockets: a power cord, a flash drive in one pocket, and nothing else-and still the whiny little voice niggled and prodded at me that there should be something else. So I opened the suitcase and, as I had feared, found only underwear, socks, clothing, a baggy bathing suit, and a pair of sandals.

  I snapped the lid shut and put the suitcase back on the floor, and as I straightened up I knew what was missing: her phone. Kathy’s all-important always-present phone, the one that had all her contacts and appointments. Her signature accessory, the one thing she was never without. The phone should have been here, in her purse or separate, and it was not.

  Of course, it was possible that the phone was still in the lab, maybe because it was a blood-soaked mess, unfit to be released into the world. It was also possible that somebody-probably Vince, in my absence-was checking the call log, the calendar, and so on, for any hint of the killer’s identity.

  And it was also possible that the killer had taken it. Not for a souvenir, which was easy to understand-for me, at least-but because he was in a rush to escape the scene and wanted to make sure that no memo or note on the phone could implicate him. No time to look, so just grab the thing and dash away into the night. That’s what I would have done: Get safely away, and discard the phone later, throwing it off a bridge, or into a handy canal.

  It made sense, and I was sure I was right. If Kathy’s phone was not still in police custody, the killer had it.

  Easy enough to check, of course. All I had to do was ask-not the officer in charge of the investigation, of course. That was Anderson, and I was reasonably sure he didn’t want to say anything at all to me, unless it was, “You’re under arrest.” But one quick call to Vince ought to clear it up.

  I pulled my own phone from my pocket and sat in the chair in front of the mirror. I heard six rings, and then Vince said, in his Charlie Chan voice, “Hung Fat Noodle Company.”

  “I’d like some cat lo mein to go, please?”

  “Depends, Grasshopper,” he said. “How far you want it to go?”

  “Quick question,” I said. “Podrowski. The victim at the Grove Isle last night. Do you still have her phone?”

  “Quick answer,” he said. “Nope.”

  “Was it found at the scene?”

  “That’s two questions,” Vince said. “But the same answer: nope.”

  “Aha,” I said. “If you don’t think that’s too corny.”

  “Why aha?” he said.

  “Because Kathy-the victim-was never ever without her phone. So if you don’t know where it is-”

  “Egads,” he said. “The killer took it.”

  “Egads?” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “Because you got to say aha. I assume you told this to Anderson?”

  “I assume that’s a joke?”

  “Ha!” Vince said, with his terrible fake laugh-much worse than mine.

  “Did it look like the same killer?”

  “Well,” Vince said carefully, “of course, I am no Detective Anderson.…”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “But it didn’t look like it. The eye was gone, and naturally Anderson jumped on that and said quod erat demonstrandum.”

  “He said that?”

  “Words to that effect. Fewer syllables,” Vince said. “Anyway, he was sure it was the same. But the thing is, the body was a mess. Eleven stab wounds, including a couple that chopped open the carotid artery.”

  “Oh, my,” I said, thinking of the great awful gouts of sticky wet blood.

  “Yeah, really,” he said. “And even worse? There was vomit all over. Like he took a look at what he’d done and then blew lunch. I really hate working with vomit.”

  “Cheer up,” I said. “In a few hours you’ll be right back with severed heads and fecal matter.”

  “Fascinating stuff, fecal matter,” Vince said thoughtfully. “It’s in all of us.”

  “Some more than others,” I said. “Thanks, Vince.”

  “Hey!” he said, before I could disconnect. “Are you hanging out at the movie? With Robert?”

  “He’s around somewhere,” I said. “I’m supposed to give technical advice-and also,” I said, trying to sound very casual, “I have a small speaking part.”

  “Oh, my God,” he said. “You’re gonna be in this?”

  I covered the phone with one hand and changed my voice. “Five minutes, Mr. Morgan!” I said, and then, back into the phone, “My call. Gotta go, Vince. Say hi for me to all the little people.”

  “Dexter, wait!” he said. “Is Robert-”

  I broke the connection and stood up.

  I wandered down the hall to Wardrobe. Jackie was still in conference with Sylvia, standing with her arms held straight out while Sylvia made marks on her shirt with a piece of chalk and her two assistants ran by; one carried an iron, the other an armful of rubber boots.

  I closed the door and looked around. I had nothing to do for at least another fifteen or twenty minutes, so I indulged my curiosity and went to take a look at the soundstage. I had never seen one before, and if this was going to be part of my new life as Dexter Demosthenes, I thought I should see what it looked like.

  I went through the heavy metal door and into the room. It was about the size and shape of an airplane hangar, with a high ceiling and a cement floor. Except for isolated patches of illumination from electric lights, the room was dark. There were no windows, or anything else that might let in light, and thick black curtains hung down from the walls.

  The crew swarmed in and out of the pools of light like ants skittering around on a hive that someone had smacked with a stick. In twos and threes they hurried by, performing their mystical tasks, slapping tape onto the floor in precise and nonsensical patterns, moving metal light stands from place to place, rolling out thick cables, two and three bundled together, and carrying odd bits of scenery: a window, a bright red fire door, a swivel chair.

  I took a few steps into the darkness and was nearly beheaded by three people carrying what looked like the back wall of Captain Matthews’s office. “Hey, watch out,” one of them called cheerily, a
wiry young woman with short blond hair and a hammer hanging from her hip. She hustled on by with the other two, rapidly easing the wall around lights, more scenery, and other workers.

  I stood and let my eyes adjust to the darkness before I began once more to edge carefully through the room, alert for any more lethal scenery. In the center of the room, rimmed by a cluster of lights, cameras, and some intense technical action, stood a scenic wall, edge facing me, and I moved toward it to see what it was. I scooted around two men fluttering large squares of colored, transparent plastic in front of a standing light, and I peered around to see what the wall might be. As the far side of the wall came into view, I stopped and stared.

  I was looking at what seemed to be the inside of an apartment on Miami Beach. A sliding glass door led out onto a balcony, where the top of a palm tree waved in front of a gleaming greenish-blue expanse of Biscayne Bay. For a moment, it was very disorienting, and I actually stepped back and looked at the other side of the wall, just to be sure it was really only two-dimensional. Happily for me, it was.

  I moved a few steps closer and looked again. The scene still looked very real to me, except that as I watched, a stout, red-haired man slid open the glass door and stepped off the fake balcony to stand in apparent midair in front of the palm tree, and began to fuss with the fronds. It was an eerie illusion; if the palm tree was real, then it had a red-haired giant floating in the air beside its fronds.

  I admired the surreal view until someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to see a bearded man, about forty-five, with three rolls of duct tape hanging from his belt.

  “We gotta focus the lights,” he said. “Can you stay back over there?” He waved a hand at the far wall of the room and pushed past me, pulling a long strip of tape from one of his rolls.

  “Of course,” I told his back, and I made a mental note to try his tape dispenser arrangement sometime soon.