by Jeff Lindsay
Untried no more, for Brian had collected—and clearly used—all of these things, and many more I hadn’t even thought of. There were rows and rows of surgical instruments, of course, scalpels and saws of every possible size and shape. And then there were the kitchen implements—cutters and grinders and mashers and corkscrews and sharp little things for more delicate work. There were rows and rows of bright, gleaming, top-quality knives ranging in size from the tiniest little blade to some the size of machetes. There were straight blades and curved, needle thin, wide, and saw-toothed. It was truly a tool kit for a great artist, and I felt a quiet pride in being related to someone who was so thorough, creative, and well prepared.
“Brian…” I said, when I had finished my first quick inspection. “It’s breathtaking.”
“And finger, toe, and nose taking,” he said happily, his beaming face hanging over Ivan’s terrified and sweaty one like a pale and wicked moon. “Where shall we begin?”
“So hard to choose,” I said thoughtfully. I looked at the toolbox, thinking over all the wonderful choices I had seen, picturing a few of them, how they might unfold with a squirming squealing Ivan so snugly secured and my brother and I so wonderfully together above him—
—and as I paused a rising tide of anticipation rolled through me and seeped into all the nooks and crannies of Castle Dexter, flowing slowly down the dank and windy staircase from the ramparts to the cellars and down still more until it came at last to the very deepest sub-basement of Me, the place where Forbidden Things slumber and dream. And for the first time in far too many months I felt a quick stir of leathery wings and a dark uncoiling joy hissing its glee in the shadowy basement where the real Dexter waits in restless naptime. Yes, I heard it sing, and then it stretched in languorous glee and began to bat-wing its way up the shadowed twisty stairs, and in spite of the bright glare of the fluorescent lights It touched everything with perfect Darkness as it rolled up out of the basement and began at last to stretch its lovely wicked tendrils into every corner of daytime Dexter and out, into the wicked weary world around us until the temperature in the room began to drop just like the colors of the spectrum, and reality slid down into the cool shadows of Nighttime Truth and everything was once again bathed in a cool and dreadful twilight of so-very-soon delight that finally, at last, was about to unfold into utter long-awaited bliss. It would not solve the many problems my mundane self faced, and it would not make anything truly right outside the walls of this small chamber of glee, but that mattered less than the smallest drop of sweat now rolling from Ivan’s pale and trembling face. All that mattered, all that had any weight or reality in this world or any other was that at last, at last, we were free to be what we must and do what we must and we were now going to be it and do it.
“So hard to choose,” we said again, and even to our ears the voice was different: lower, darker, cooler, alive with the reptilian tones of the Passenger when it has taken the wheel, and Ivan’s eyes jerked sideways to see what new and terrible thing was lurking. “But certainly,” we said, “we should start with something small and refined—”
“And yet completely permanent,” Brian added. “If only for the effect.”
“Oh, yes, clearly permanent,” we said with a slow deliberate relish of a word that would come to mean so much to the contemptible wriggling mucus-producing thing in the chair. We opened the third tray down, where there was a delightful array of items for snipping and clipping, everything from manicure scissors to a small bolt cutter. With chilly glee we picked up a garden clipper, the kind used for trimming rosebushes. “Perhaps a finger or two?” we said, holding up the clipper.
“Mm, yeeesss,” Brian said reflectively. “Just the little one, I think. For now,” he added in a soothing tone.
“Of course,” we said. “For now.” And we took the instrument over to him and held it out. He reached to take it and our hands touched and our eyes met.
And for a wonderful long moment we looked at Brian and he looked back and as he did the shadowy something flickered to life in his eyes and uncoiled in its dark and potent glory and it reared up and roared at the Dark Passenger—which roared back a greeting of its own, and although we had many times encountered another Passenger in someone else and heard that challenge and given back one of our own, this was different. This was my brother, my same-self twin in twisty glee, and for the first time ever the two Passengers sent out their black fog of recognition and met in the middle, coming together in greeting and then flowing into a joining of brotherly equals, rearing up as one, with one blended voice, calling out joyfully in a sibilant chord of perfect harmony. Together…
It was Ivan who interrupted us, yanking fruitlessly at the metal bonds securing his hands and making a quick sharp clack that made us turn and look at him. He froze and looked back and he saw the two identical smiles aimed at him and he saw too what those smiles meant and another small and necessarily disposable piece of Ivan the Bomber withered and died.
“Shall we begin, brother?” we said, holding out the clippers.
“After you, brother,” Brian said with a tiny polite bow. We felt the joy of need-ending delight about to bloom and we turned to the chair and flexed the clippers once, twice, snick-snick, and Ivan watched and squirmed and made a nasty wet mucusy mewling sound that made us more eager than ever to begin, if only to wipe away the awful damp noise of his disgusting helpless flaccid weakness, and so we did it once more, snick-snick, closer, and watched his eyes bulge and his tendons stand out and his veins vibrate and it was a perfect siren symphony of pain-to-be calling us forward, onward, downward, into the chilly pain-filled promise of our mutual delight.
And so we began.
TWENTY-THREE
I had turned my phone off before our little meet-and-greet with Ivan and his friends in the parking lot. Naturally enough, I didn’t want any unexpected noises giving me away. And I had left it off during the tête-à-tête with Ivan, because quite frankly, an artist needs to focus to perform at his very best, and any sudden chirps or tweets from the infernal omnipresent machine might have broken our very beautiful concentration.
And as I stepped out of the storage unit and into the fresh air of the early hours, I was very glad I had done so. Because when I turned it on again, out of mere reflex, I saw that Deborah had called me seven times—and even as I counted, call number eight began to ring: Deborah again. Really, it seemed a bit much—I mean, persistence can be a good thing, and in her professional life it has always been a positive virtue. But in this case, it seemed very close to presumptuous and perhaps even annoying. After all, we had barely resumed speaking to one another. She had no real right to intrude on my glow.
Still, I had to remember that she had not just enjoyed a long and leisurely session of relaxing, tension-releasing playtime, as I had. And as dreamily drained and delighted as I was, I reminded myself that there had been an actual purpose to what I had done, beyond even the achievement of such a satisfying warm blush of accomplishment. I had been trying to find out where my kidnapped children were being held, and Debs was quite interested in hearing what I had learned. And I understand very well the importance of compassion and thinking of other people’s feelings—after all, I’d been faking these things my whole life, and quite well, too. Deborah was naturally very anxious—eight calls’ worth—for me to share my newfound, delightfully obtained information with her.
So in spite of feeling like I wanted to sit in relaxed contemplation and enjoy my mellow mood, I answered the phone. “Hello, Debs,” I said, and before I could add even a single syllable more, she snapped out, “What the fuck do you know about Kraunauer? It’s all over the fucking news!”
I blinked stupidly for just a second. I should have known that something like this would create a local sensation—perhaps even a national one. “Prominent defense attorney gunned down in plain sight! Film at eleven!” And I should also have anticipated Debs putting two and two together and once again reaching a sum of Dexter. But I had selfi
shly thought of nothing but the pleasant task at hand, and I was momentarily unprepared. There were many things I could have said, most of them falling somewhere between temporizing and tall-tale spinning, and I thought up a couple of quite good whoppers in those few little blinks of hesitation.
But if we were going to save the children from what sounded like a very hairy situation, we would need her help. Additionally, if Debs and I were truly going to reconcile, she should almost certainly hear some version of relative truth. She’d probably figure it out anyway—she was, after all, a detective. So instead of dancing around it, I decided I would very bluntly tell her the truth—or at least a very close first cousin of the truth. “Kraunauer told us where to find the children,” I said.
I heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line, followed by what can only be called a stunned silence. “Jesus fuck,” she said at last.
“Yes, isn’t it?” I said.
“And then you shot him?” she said incredulously.
“He pulled a gun,” I said. “He had a very fast draw.”
“What about the two Mexican tourists who tried to help?” she demanded. “What, you shot them because they saw you?”
I very nearly laughed at that—“tourists” indeed. “Is that what they’re saying? Tourists?” I said. “I think if you pull rap sheets on the ‘tourists,’ you’ll get a more interesting picture.”
“The fuck does that mean?” she snapped.
“It means,” I said, “that they were assassins, drogas, that Kraunauer called in to kill us, but we killed them first.”
“Who’s we?” she snapped at me, and I realized that in my eagerness to be honest I had just made a very grave error. Whoever claimed honesty is the best policy, or even a good one, clearly had very limited experience with the real world.
I had always been very careful to keep all knowledge of Brian from Deborah. Quite natural, since the one time they’d met Brian had abducted her and taped her to a worktable for slow and careful dissection. And my brother, being no fool, had worked even harder to avoid running into Debs, since he reasoned, rather soundly, I think, that the kind of first encounter they’d had is usually quite memorable, and she was, after all, a cop. So Debs did not know Brian was even alive, let alone working with me. I was on the very edge of letting an extremely slippery cat out of the bag, and there was no way to predict which way the thing would run if I let it out the rest of the way. Deborah might fly into a violent and possibly justified rage, and decide to arrest Brian. And that, of course, might nudge Brian in the direction of even more serious action, something a little more permanent than anger. That would be very awkward for everyone involved, and especially me, since I would be jammed squarely in the middle, pushing the two of them apart and chanting, Why can’t we all just get along? I certainly didn’t want to be forced to choose between the two of them. And in all honesty, I had no idea which way that choice would go.
On top of everything else, I needed all the help I could get if I was to have any chance at all of retrieving my kids. The odds were already formidable, and one more steady hand with a motivated gun in it would make a very big difference. Somehow, some way, Debs had to accept Brian, and vice versa. They had to work together, with me, or there was simply no hope for any of us, especially the children.
And it had to be done quickly, too. I looked at my watch: a little after two a.m. If we started right now, we could hit Raul just before dawn, the ideal time for it. If we delayed, arguing about who did what to whom so many years ago, it would be daylight before we got there, and they would see us coming from three miles away.
“There’s no time for this, Debs,” I said firmly. “Stay put. We’re on our way to get you.”
“Goddamn it, who’s we?!” she was yelling when I hung up.
I put my phone away and turned back to the storage unit, and I paused as I realized the job I had in front of me now. It was a daunting task, right enough, and if I had thought Debs was going to be difficult to convince, Brian would be twice as hard. If I had any hope of persuading him to accept her I would need all the tongues of men and angels. At the moment I only had one.
I sighed heavily, and not merely because I realized I was wishing for more tongues. Somehow, a relatively simple and logical proposition—let’s do this together—had begun to seem like it would be harder and more dangerous than the real task at hand, rescuing the kids from a bevy of heavily armed drogas. Still, it is usually best to take care of the hard jobs first. So I strode manfully back into the storage unit to face my brother.
Brian was standing beside his work chair, looking fondly down at the ruin that was Ivan. The bomber was still alive, since we had to be sure he’d told us everything. Alive—but he didn’t look like he was completely sure that this was a good thing at this point. There were so many little parts of him that he would never see again—insignificant parts, perhaps, if taken one at a time. And actually, they had been taken one at a time, and very carefully, too. But there were a great many of them, and they were gone forever, and at some point the dear boy would have to add them up and ask himself if it was really worth going on without them.
It would have been very pleasant just to stand next to my brother and enjoy what we had done together—or perhaps undone is more accurate, considering the state of Ee-bahng as he lay in fragmented repose. But there was too much to do, and most of it was very time-sensitive, as well as unpleasant. So I girded my loins, stepped over to Brian with a firm stride, and said, “Brian. We have to go meet somebody. Now.”
“Really?” he said, in a voice so unhurried and even mellow that it was nearly indecent. “Who, pray tell?”
“Deborah,” I said.
Brian snapped to attention as if he was dangling from puppet strings and somebody had yanked them tight. All traces of mellow afterglow were gone as if they’d never been. “What? No, of course not,” he said, shaking his head vigorously. “Completely out of the question.”
“We need her help,” I said.
He hadn’t stopped shaking his head. “No, ridiculous, she’d arrest me or something,” he said. “And we didn’t need her help with Ivan.”
“This is very different.”
“What is? What is different? I mean, different how?” he said, piling word on word with a brittle and worried energy I’d never seen from him before. “There is no reason to…to—She’s a cop, Dexter, and she has no reason to like me, you know. And she would completely…I mean, why on earth do we need her? She’s not actually one of us, you know.”
“Brian,” I said, cutting off his manic monologue. “You do remember why we’re here? With Ivan?”
“But that has nothing to—Oh, yes, I know, but…really, brother,” he said. “Even so, what can she possibly do? That you and I can’t do better without her?”
“We will need every gun we can get,” I said. “And we are not likely to pick up any other volunteers.”
“But she’s a cop,” he repeated, and in the interest of full disclosure I have to say he sounded just a little whiny. “And if we do this, we are breaking all kinds of laws.”
“She’s also a very good shot,” I said. “And these are her kids, too. She’ll do whatever it takes to get them back. Including shooting a couple of illegal immigrants who grabbed them.”
“But…but, Dexter,” he said, completely whiny now. “She’ll remember me.”
“Almost certainly,” I said.
“And when she finds out that this whole thing was because of me, I mean—”
“She doesn’t have to know that,” I said. And then I waved a fond farewell to my recent resolution to stick close to the truth with Debs. “We’ll tell her it was all Kraunauer.”
“She’ll believe that?” he asked dubiously.
“If I know Debs, she’ll be so anxious to get going and rescue the kids, she won’t question it until much later.” I shrugged reassuringly. “And by then you can be long gone, if you want.”
“Or dead,”
he muttered.
“I will prepare her first,” I said. “You can wait in the car, and if it goes against me, you don’t even have to come in.”
He shook his head again, but slower this time. “It can’t possibly work, Dexter,” he said.
“It can,” I said. “It has to.”
Twenty minutes later Brian parked his Jeep facing out on the street in front of Deborah’s house. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and made no move to turn off the engine. I reached for the door handle, and he said, “Dexter,” and looked at me quite nervously.
“Please, Brian,” I said. “This gives us our best chance.”
He licked his lips. “I suppose so,” he said, very unconvincingly. “If she doesn’t just shoot me.”
“She carries an old Thirty-eight Special,” I said. “You won’t even notice it.”
He didn’t appear to appreciate my light wit. He just looked straight ahead through the windshield and shook his head. “I’ll wait here,” he said. “But I don’t see how—”
“I’ll call you either way,” I said, and I got out of the car and walked to Deborah’s front door.
Once again Deborah opened the door when I was only halfway up the walkway. But this time she just flung it open and spun away, and I closed it behind me as I came in and followed her back to the kitchen.
She had apparently been there for several hours, because she had shredded the old wicker place mat in front of her and started on the one to her right. Three cups stood beside her on the table, one of them still half-full of coffee, one of them empty, with the handle snapped off, and one of them lying on its side, half-shattered.
“Where are they,” she snapped at me before I could even settle into the chair opposite. “Goddamn it, what the fuck is Kraunauer—and who is we, for fuck’s sake?!”
“Please, Deborah,” I said, as soothing as I could be. “One question at a time.”
Deborah lifted her hands off the table and flexed them as if she was thinking she might strangle me. She bared her teeth and locked them together, hissing out a long breath between them. “Dexter, so fucking help me—” she said. Then she dropped her hands to the tabletop and made a visibly huge effort to control what seemed like an urgent need to kill. “All right,” she said. She picked up the battered stainless-steel spoon beside her tattered place mat and began to tap it rapidly on the table. “Where are the kids?”
