Dexter's Final Cut

by Jeff Lindsay

  “I found something,” Jackie said, pointing at the picture. I looked at where her finger rested on the victim’s face. There was nothing there but smooth skin.

  “What?” I said.

  “Well,” Jackie said, “the Miami victim has a slash mark here. Lemme see Vegas.” She held out her hand, and I gave her the second picture, leaning in to look with her. “Yeah, see? This one has it, too. Just one quick slash, right across the face.” She looked up at me, her violet eyes bright. “What does that mean?”

  “Anger,” I said.

  “About what?” she said. “Because right there on the face is like—”

  But before she could say anything more, Robert came bustling back into the room.

  “I’m going to have to wrap up here early,” he said happily. “I got Screen Time magazine in ninety minutes.” He waited for somebody to congratulate him, but nobody did, so he nodded at the papers Deborah held, frowned, and said, “Is there anything in the report? You think it’s our guy?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Deborah said. “It’s pretty much the same handwriting.” And maybe because I had already complimented her on her wicked streak, she added, “Take a look at the pictures; see for yourself.”

  Jackie looked up at him expectantly and held out the pictures. Robert stared at her, and then his jaw muscles tightened and he leaned forward and took them. He swallowed, visibly steeled himself, and began to look them over. “Jesus,” he said. “Oh, my God.” He handed the pictures back to Jackie. “Sure looks like the same guy. I mean, there couldn’t be two guys doing like that, right?”

  “Probably not,” Deborah said.

  “So, what do we do with this stuff?” Robert said.

  “We compare all three,” I said.

  “Right,” Robert said, nodding. “What are we looking for?”

  “We don’t know until we see it,” I said. “But he’s done this three times, and every time the odds increase that he made a mistake, left some kind of clue.”

  “Okay,” Robert said. He raised his eyebrows and added, “Hey, I did this feature a few years back? I played an alcoholic detective, and there’s a serial killer killing young girls. And this guy, my character, he’s divorced? But he has a daughter, and it turns out the killer is stalking her, so I have to go sober and catch the killer before my daughter is killed.” He shrugged. “Low-budget thing, Israeli money. But very authentic, and it got great reviews.” Deborah cleared her throat and Robert flashed her a quick smile. “Right. Sorry. Anyway,” he said, “he looks at when the serial killer strikes, you know. He sets up a time line, and it turns out he kills somebody every six weeks? So I set up a trap for the guy at the right time, and that’s how I catch him.” He looked at Deborah, and when she didn’t say anything, he looked at me. “So I thought, maybe it turns out to be nothing, but should we do that with this one?”

  “Why?” Jackie said. “We don’t even know what city he’ll do it in next time. So how does it help to know when?”

  “We could just look,” Robert said stubbornly. He raised an eyebrow at me and said, with a kind of boyish eagerness, “Whaddaya say, Dexter?”

  I couldn’t think of any way that knowing the interval between kills could possibly tell Robert anything useful. On the other hand, Robert happy and busy was a lot easier to take than Robert sulking. “All right,” I said. “It can’t actually hurt anything.”

  Deborah shrugged and held out the two reports. “Knock yourself out,” she told me.

  I took the reports from Debs, and Robert came over and stood beside me, forcing Jackie to step away. She moved to Deborah’s desk and leaned one haunch on the corner, while Robert bent over the pages I was holding. He didn’t smell nearly as good as Jackie.

  “All right,” he mumbled, and he scrabbled at the pages, trying to see all of them at the same time.

  I pushed the papers at him. “Here,” I said. “Vegas is on top, New York under that.” He grabbed the papers and leaned on the windowsill again, studying them.

  “Right, right,” he said softly, and then he frowned and shook his head. “No, that doesn’t make sense. September 2012 in New York, then Las Vegas in June 2013, and now October in Miami.” He looked up, disappointment visible on his face. “It doesn’t work out,” he said. “The interval is different.”

  “Oh, well,” I said.

  He stared at the papers some more, trying to make them behave, but it didn’t seem to work. “Well, shit,” he said at last. “I guess it was a long shot.”

  Nobody argued with that. Robert leaned over and tossed the papers on Deb’s desk, shuffled his feet, crossed his arms, uncrossed them, and then stood up straight. “Well,” he said. “I, uh, I should go get ready. For my interview.” He smiled. “Put on a clean shirt, do the hair, you know. For the photographer. So …” He looked at Deborah and then at me, possibly waiting for us to object. When we didn’t, he shrugged and said to me, “So all right. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Bright and early,” I said.

  He pointed a finger-gun at me and dropped his thumb. Pow. “Bright and early,” he said. He nodded at Deborah, gave Jackie a half glance, and then sauntered out the door.

  Nobody said anything for a few moments. Jackie picked up the papers Robert had thrown down and studied them. She frowned. “Funny,” she said.

  “What?” I said.

  She shook her head. “Oh, nothing,” she said. “It’s just … I mean, it sounds like I’m doing a diva: ‘It’s all about me!’ And I’m not, so … forget it.”

  “I can’t forget it if you don’t tell me,” I said.

  Jackie crossed her arms across her chest and gave me a kind of rueful smile. “Dexter, it’s nothing,” she said, and while I was still pondering the realization that this was the first time she’d called me by my name, she went on. “I mean, it’s just a stupid coincidence. When Robert said the dates, it’s just … I was there, on those dates. Working on a couple of films. New York in September, Vegas in June.” She shook her head and waved the papers dismissively. “Like I said, just forget I said it.” She uncrossed her arms and slapped her thighs. “So,” she said, looking at Deborah. “What’s our next move?”

  Deborah might very well have answered her, but if she did I didn’t hear it. Because as I watched Jackie swing her head toward Deborah, golden hair flipping with the movement, something clicked in the Deep Shadows of Dexter’s Dark Closet, and I looked down at the pictures in my hand, both of them so very similar, and then—

  All light is gone and I am answering the urgent rattle of black wings and I climb on and lean into it and let them lift me up on a dark wind and we soar up and up and up into a black night sky, up far above, up to where we can see, and we rise and circle faster and faster until we are there in the cold and starless sky and we look and then it is there, a single bright scarlet patch of the landscape below that is as clear and sharp and unavoidable as if it was illuminated by a dozen noonday suns—and I see them. And we swoop down into the red-tinged light and I am with them again, with the women in the pictures, standing above them and watching them twist and bulge out against their bonds, and every one of their muscles locks and every inch of skin, every nerve, every bone, screams in pain and it does not even slow me; it drives me instead to new and more exciting things, and I begin to do them to her and she turns away so she will not see what I am going to do and she must see it, she must see me, she must watch, because that is why I am doing this, that is what this is all about, it is about her seeing me, and so I grab her by her hair, that perfect golden hair, and I pull her head around and see her face—

  —and it is the wrong face.

  And that makes me furious, and I yank her hair even harder, that almost-perfect golden hair, the not-quite-right hair that is so close and looks so very much like hers but it is still not her hair and the face is not her face and it is just not right anymore even though I picture her face instead as I finish but when I look down at what I have done I can feel it all drain away be
cause it is not right, it is not her, and a bright flash of rage runs down from the top of my skull and all the way down my arm and I pick up the knife, the cold impersonal knife, and I slash at that face, that so very wrong face, because it is not—

  “Oh,” I said, and my eyes pop open to the fluorescent light of Deborah’s office, and no matter how hard I try to push it away and find a way not to believe it, the things I saw do not change. Even in the harsh and ugly light of the office the picture is the same, and even worse, I now see Deb and Jackie staring at me uncertainly, as if they had been watching me urinate on a busy street. “Oh, um,” I say. “It’s, you know. I just thought of something.”

  “What?” Jackie said, sounding very unsure of what she was asking, and as if she was deliberately mocking me and mocking my vision, she flipped her hair around and over her shoulder—her hair, her perfect golden hair.…

  “It is you,” I told her. “I mean, it really is about you.”

  Jackie blushed and fidgeted with her hair. “That’s not, I mean …”

  But Deborah cut right across Jackie’s modest dithering. “What do you mean, it’s about her?” she demanded. “What are you saying?”

  “That’s why he did it,” I said, and I realized that I was still feeling the bat-wing rush of my interior flight with the Passenger and I was not actually making real-time sense. I took a deep breath and slapped the photos onto the desk beside Jackie. “The hair is like yours,” I said. “They both have a similar kind of figure. The same locations at the same time as you.” I looked up and locked eyes with Jackie, and she stared unblinking back with a small flicker of fear growing in those violet eyes. “And then the knife slash across the face, the rage—because it’s the wrong face. Because it isn’t you.”

  I watched the long and elegant muscles in her throat move as she swallowed and then began to slowly shake her head. But as much as I wanted to be wrong, I knew that I was not.

  “It’s you,” I said. “He killed them because they looked like you.”

  EIGHT

  FOR A FEW MOMENTS THERE WAS UTTER SILENCE IN Deborah’s office. Debs just stared, and Jackie simply sat there clutching white-knuckled at her hair, lips slightly parted, looking very pale, and apparently not even breathing. “I, I, how can, um …” she said.

  “Where the fuck does that come from?” Deborah said.

  “It, um—it just makes sense,” I said.

  “Not to me,” Deborah said.

  “I don’t think …” Jackie said faintly. “I … I don’t know if …”

  Deborah pushed her chair back against the desk, making a noise that seemed horribly loud all of a sudden.

  “It’s bullshit, Dexter,” Deborah said. “Unless you got something concrete to back it up.”

  “You’ve got the dates and places,” I said. “And the victims all look like her.”

  Deborah shook her head, lips pursed. “Lots of women look like her,” she said.

  “Deborah, I’m sure about this—”

  “Well, I’m not,” she snapped. “You got nothing to go on but one of your … hunches? And that’s not enough. I can’t go to the captain and say, ‘Look what we found when Dexter closed his eyes.’ Not when it isn’t even my case. I need evidence. Not just more of your psychic detective crap.”

  It stung a little more than it should have. After all, she was the one who had forced me to perform, far too publicly for my liking, and now she was scolding me for doing something I hadn’t wanted to do at all. And I had done it just for her, because family is supposed to count for something—and done it quite well, too. And now she spurned me, mocked me, accused me of sophistry. So I reached down deep for a truly hurtful comeback, something that would really smack her down. But before I could even say, “Oh, yeah?” Jackie spoke.

  “Oh, shit,” she said, staring at me and shaking her head jerkily from side to side. “Oh, my God, Deborah …” She twitched her head sideways and said, “I mean, Sergeant. I mean— Oh, shit.”

  “What?” Deborah said.

  Jackie continued her series of quick, jerky shakes of her head. “I think he’s right,” she said in a very small voice.

  “Why?” Deborah demanded.

  Jackie finally realized that she was still shaking her head and stopped. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, opened them and blinked at me, and then looked at Debs. “I have a stalker,” she said. “He’s been … He sent a bunch of letters.”

  “What kind of letters?” Deborah said.

  Jackie licked her lips. “They started out, you know. A little creepy, but just regular fan stuff.” She shrugged. “I get lots of those. And, you know, there’s a standard reply my assistant sends out. Sometimes with a picture. And he didn’t like that. He wanted something more … real.” She raised her hands and fluttered them like two small helpless birds. “Something personal,” she said. She dropped her hands into her lap. “Which I don’t do, ever. I mean, if it’s a kid with cancer or something, okay, but just a regular male fan letter? I usually don’t even see ’em, let alone answer ’em. My assistant brushes ’em off, and if they don’t take the hint we just ignore ’em. Send their letters back.”

  Jackie bit her lip and looked down at her hands. “Which we did. We sent his letters back, and … he really hated that. And he wrote again, but … the letters turned really … nasty. And he sent my picture back all … shredded. Hacked up, and things drawn on it, and, um …” She actually gulped, took a deep breath, looked right at me, and said, “And one of the eyes poked out.”

  “Fuck,” Deborah said softly.

  “And the letters said some very bad things. Bad enough so Kathy—” She looked up. “Kathy is my assistant,” she said.

  “Okay,” Deborah said.

  “The letters were so dark and twisted and threatening that Kathy got worried. She showed them to me. I, uh … I don’t know. I didn’t really believe it was serious, but …” She shrugged and lifted her hands and then dropped them into her lap again. “I told her to show them to the police.”

  “Did she?” Deborah asked.

  “Yes,” Jackie said. “I mean, I assume so. I didn’t really … I mean, Kathy is very good at her job, so I’m sure she did.”

  “Okay,” Deborah said. “And then what?”

  Jackie shook her head. “Then nothing,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t think about it anymore; I just figured it was taken care of, and I had work to do. You know.”

  “Where are the letters now?” Deborah said.

  Jackie blinked. “Um. I don’t have any idea. I mean, I could ask Kathy?”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s here, with me,” Jackie said. “I mean, here in Miami.”

  “Call her,” Deborah said. “I need to see those letters. And I want the name of the cop who saw them—in L.A.?”

  Jackie nodded, chewing at her lower lip. “Yes,” she said. “I mean, the Valley, but—”

  “All right,” Deborah said. “Where’s your assistant now?”

  “I, uh … probably at the hotel?” Jackie said.

  “Call her,” Deborah said again.

  Jackie nodded and turned away to her purse, which was over in the corner beside the desk. She took out a cell phone and tapped a number, turning away from us to talk. She spoke a few soft sentences, then disconnected, slid the phone back into her purse, and faced us again. “I talked to Kathy,” she said, which would have been my first guess. “The cop in L.A. still has the letters? And she’s going to find his business card and call me back.” She shook her head and looked at us, and then, almost as if somebody had pulled the plug and let all the air out of her, she sank into the visitor’s chair beside the desk. “Holy shit,” she said softly. She closed her eyes and blew out a long breath. “Holy shit,” she said again. She opened her eyes and looked from Deborah to me. “Do you think he’s … I mean, do you think I’m in any real danger?”

  “Yes,” Deborah and I said in unison.

  Jackie blinked several times. He
r eyes got moist and the violet color seemed to go a few shades darker. “Oh, boy,” she said. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “I’ll ask the captain to assign somebody to stay with you,” Deborah said.

  “Somebody—you mean like a bodyguard? Like another cop?” Jackie said anxiously.

  Deborah raised her eyebrows. “Is there something wrong with that?” she asked.

  Jackie hesitated, pursed her lips, then clasped her hands in front of her mouth. “Just,” she said. “Oh, boy, this is gonna sound really …” She looked at me, then at Deborah. “Can I be totally honest with you?”

  “I hope so,” Deborah said, with an expression of mild disbelief on her face.

  “This is … How to put this,” Jackie said. She shook her head, stood up, and went to look out the window. There wasn’t a whole lot to see out there, but she kept looking. “My career is kind of … what. Fading? It’s not really … The offers aren’t coming so fast anymore. And they’re not as good.” She bit her lip and gave her head one slow shake. “It happens. For a woman in this business it’s all over at thirty, and I’m thirty-three.”

  Jackie looked up and forced a quick smile. “That’s confidential information,” she said, and Deborah and I nodded.

  Jackie looked back out the window. “Anyway,” she said, “the reality is, I need this show to go, and I need it to be a hit, or my career is pretty much over, and I’ve got nothing left except maybe marry a Greek arms dealer or something.” She sighed. “And those offers are slowing down, too,” she said.

  It was hard enough to feel a great deal of pain and sorrow for Jackie simply because she was not getting enough marriage proposals from billionaires—and it was even harder to see how that affected our current situation. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But, um …?”

  Jackie nodded. “I know,” she said. “Poor pitiful me.” She blew out a breath and turned briskly away from the window at last. “The point is,” she said, “if the network finds out that there have been serious threats on my life, they have to tell the insurance, and the insurance premiums for the shoot go way up—I mean, millions—and since we haven’t even started shooting yet, suddenly it’s a whole lot cheaper to get rid of me and recast the part with somebody younger and probably better-looking.”