by Jeff Lindsay
But the end of the row was as far as he’d made it to date. I trudged along the line of sleek aluminum trailers: one for Renny, one for women and one for men, one for Victor, the director. A trailer for makeup and one for wardrobe. A thick white-noise murmur of air conditioners muffled any sounds that might have come from inside. The door of the women’s trailer opened just after I passed it, and I heard laughter over the thump of hip-hop coming from inside. Then the door closed again and all was quiet.
Three steps led up to the door of Robert’s trailer. I climbed them and knocked on the door. There was no response. There was no sound anywhere except the blanket of air-conditioner noise. I waited, then knocked again; still nothing.
I tried the handle, and to my surprise it turned easily and the door swung open. I paused for just a moment; a long and wicked life has taught me that, far too often, an unpleasant surprise lurks just inside the door. Of course, that surprise had usually been Me, but caution is never out of place.
I looked around the inside; nothing lurked. The trailer was dim, all the blinds pulled shut and the lights turned off, and nothing moved or made any sound. I stepped inside and looked around. It was very similar to Jackie’s trailer: the same arrangement of living area with couch and kitchenette, and through a door to a bedroom with adjoining bath. I poked through the rooms, looked in all the closets and drawers, found no sign that Astor had ever been there.
For that matter, there were very few signs that Robert had ever been there, either. A couple of wardrobe items hung in the closet, and a pair of shoes sat on the floor underneath, but there were no personal touches at all: no iPod, briefcase, or book, no comfy shoes, baseball cap, or sunglasses. No vitamins, or tooth whitener, or deodorant—none of the things a Working Actor should have in his trailer on location.
It was puzzling, but not really worth any brain sweat. The important question was this: If he had gone somewhere with Astor, where? A quick jaunt off-site for ice cream? Or were they still here on the set somewhere? He might be leading Astor around to see all the really cool stuff—Dickie and his squibs, makeup, even another visit to Sylvia in Wardrobe. There was a lot to see, and if Astor wanted to see all of it—and she would—she would not give Robert a great deal of wiggle room.
So they might be anywhere in this vast forest of trailers and vans and generators, and finding them could take more time than I really wanted to spend. But it was also possible that Robert was shooting a scene, with Astor looking on raptly from the sidelines. That would be quick and easy—and it would even be quick and easy to find out. There was a fifteen-page-long shooting schedule on the table in Jackie’s trailer that would tell me who, when, and where. I took a last look around, just to be sure, and then went out, closing the door behind me.
Jackie’s trailer was at the other end of the row. I hurried down the line and up the steps to her door. It was not locked; I felt a silly little surge of hope that Jackie would be inside, and I stepped quickly through the doorway—
—and I froze, one foot in midair, as all the hackles went up on my neck.
There was neither sight nor sound of anything out of place, but I stood there frozen into unmoving wide-awake readiness. Deep down, but moving rapidly up the basement steps and onto the ramparts of Castle Dexter, Something had hissed and uncoiled and begun to whisper its soft and sibilant warnings that all was not what it should be, and so I did not move. I listened. I looked and I waited, and there was nothing at all but the rising rustle of that leathery whisper.
I took half a step into the trailer. A waft of frigid air from inside blew into my face, air cold enough to chill beer, and with it came a faint tang of something that sent my brain crashing back through time, far away, back to that small, awful, cold room so long ago where the Real Dexter had been born in a gelatinous lake of blood.…
And I sit there unmoving in the awful sticky thickening red wetness and that smell is all there is, the smell of rotting copper, and Mommy is not moving, and I am lost and helpless and floundering in a dark world of blood and there is no way out and no help—
And I blink and I am back here, back now, right here in Jackie’s trailer, and not in that horrible wet nasty hell, not at all; I am here, and that was long ago and far away and there is no reason to remember that dreadful three-day birth, no reason at all—
Except that smell is here now, too. The chilled and cloying smell of rotting copper—the smell of blood.
I shake myself. I tell me that it is not so. It is not possible. It is no more than the smell of the roast beef from lunch and the freezing wind from the air conditioner and bad memories lurching up, because of tension and personal upheaval, and it will all go away and everything will be fine if I just remember to breathe normally and remind Dexter that he is all grown-up and will never again be trapped in the horrible cold room with its thick and sticky red floor.
I tell myself that all is just exactly what it should be and nothing could possibly be quite That Wrong and I take another step in—and the smell is still there, even stronger now, and the memories wail and moan and flail at the walls of my crumbling self and howl at me to fly, run away, sprint from the room for my life and sanity. But I push these goblins away, and I step in one more step, and another, until I can see that there is nothing to see by the couch, by the fridge, and I can see into the bedroom now, and—
She lay there at the foot of the bed with one arm flung up above her head and the other bent unnaturally under her body. Her golden hair was scattered around her as if it had been flung from a great height, and half of that hair, the half closest to me, was pasted down onto the floor by a thick dark red pool that was already congealing, and in spite of my need to fly away from that awful red copper-smelling mess I stepped toward it instead and looked down with no hope in me at all.
She did not move. She would never move again. Her face was pale and set in an expression of weary terror, and she looked up at me with clouded eyes that did not blink and did not see and would never blink or weep or see anything ever again.
Beautiful violet eyes.
THIRTY-TWO
I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I STOOD THERE LOOKING DOWN AT Jackie’s lifeless body. It seemed like forever. I had no reason for it; staring down at the mess she had turned into wouldn’t bring her back, wouldn’t even roll the awful sticky red blood back inside her. And it didn’t help me like her being dead any better, either.
I am no stranger to death. It has been my whole life for many years, and I know what it looks like, smells like, and sounds like—but for the very first time I thought I knew what it felt like, too, because it was her, Jackie. And suddenly Death was something new, wrong, evil and intractable. It had no right to roll over Jackie and suck her dry and leave me here without her. It did not belong on her; Death did not fit Jackie, not someone so very much alive and beautiful and full of wonderful plans for me. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It shouldn’t be.
But it was. She was dead and there was no going back from it. Death had breathed its ugly gray film over those violet eyes and it seemed like a very final and painful thing all of a sudden, in a way it never had before.
I am not sentimental, not at all—I believe sentiment requires some trace of humanity—but Feelings surged through me that had no place inside a Thing like me. I watched them go by in their lunatic haste: regret, anger, even guilt, a bitter sense of lost opportunity, and anger again. Feelings rippled out of the Dark Basement and up the cold stone stairs of Castle Dexter, squealing with contempt and sliding up the banister, screeching through the halls and ripping down the tapestries.
And then the feelings were gone, and they had left behind the final, most lasting feeling of all:
Emptiness.
It was done. It was over. The dream was dead, cold and bloodless as the pitiful lump of meat at my feet. Jackie was gone—but Dexter must move on somehow, move away from the magical future that had been dangling there in front of him and back into the painful squalor that had been his life
before all this had swept him away into a world of bright and glittering hope—a hope that had turned out to be as solid and real as a piece of TV scenery.
I turned away from Jackie’s body and went back to stand by the front door. I knew what I had to do now. It would not be much fun, but I would get used to that again. Fun was gone forever from Dexter’s world.
I took out my phone and called Deborah. She didn’t answer, letting the call go right to voice mail. I disconnected and called again. Still nothing. I tried a third time, and finally, she answered.
“What,” she said, in a voice so flat and dead it might have been Jackie’s.
“Can you find Jackie’s trailer?” I said.
Silence; then finally, she said, “Yes.”
“Find it now,” I said. “Quickly.” And I hung up.
I was certain that whatever it was that lay there between us, it would not stop Deborah from coming. She is not stupid, and she would know that I would not call her lightly at this point.
And sure enough, inside of four minutes I heard her feet on the steps outside, and then the trailer’s door swung open and she was standing there, frowning into the relative darkness of the interior. “What is it,” she said in that same expressionless voice.
I stepped back from the door and pointed toward the bedroom. “In there,” I said. She shook her head once, still frowning, and then came inside and looked past me to where Jackie lay sprawled in her untidy heap.
Deborah froze for a second; then she hissed, “Fuck,” and strode quickly in to the body. She squatted down beside it and reached her hand halfway toward Jackie’s neck, and then pulled it back again as she realized there was no need to feel for a pulse. She sat there on her heels for several long seconds before she finally stood up, looked down at the body again, and then came back to me.
“What happened,” she said, and there was cold rage in her voice. “Did she try to break up with you?”
For a moment I just blinked at her stupidly, with no idea what she meant, and then I understood. “I didn’t do it, Debs,” I said.
“I’m not going to cover this up, Dexter,” she went on, as if she hadn’t heard me. “I can’t help you, and I wouldn’t even if I could.”
“Deborah, it wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.”
I guess she heard me this time, but she still didn’t believe me. She cocked her head to one side and glared at me with cold unblinking eyes, like a bird of prey deciding whether to strike. “Who did?” she said.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Uh-huh. Where were you?”
“I wasn’t here,” I said. “Rita called me—Astor ran away, and I went home to look for her.”
Deborah curled her lip. “Home,” she said, with heavy irony.
I ignored it. “Astor came here, to be on location, and I came to ask if Jackie had seen her, and …” For no good reason, I looked back to where Jackie’s body lay. “And there she was,” I finished, rather lamely.
Deborah was silent, and I watched her. She was still staring at me with unblinking frostiness, but at least she hadn’t reached for her cuffs yet. “Where is she now?” she said at last.
I looked at her, wondering whether she had lost her mind. “Deborah, she’s right there,” I said, nodding toward the body. “She’s not going anywhere.”
“Astor,” she said through her teeth. “Where is Astor?”
“Oh,” I said, oddly relieved. “I don’t know. With Robert somewhere.”
Deborah looked at Jackie’s body again, then shook her head. “You left her here alone,” she said. “And he got her.”
“What?” I said, filled with righteous indignation and certainty. “It wasn’t Patrick. The stalker—it couldn’t be!”
She looked back at me. “Why not?”
And she had me there, of course. If we were still enjoying our old bonhomie, I might have told her why not, explained that Patrick the stalker was no more. But as things stood between us now, I did not think I could explain away one death by confessing to another. So I did what Dexter does and temporized. “It doesn’t look like the way he works,” I said carefully. “And, you know. Both eyes are still there.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, just the way I’d heard her say it many times before when she was trying to get a suspect to keep talking. And for some reason, it worked on me.
“And anyway,” I babbled, “how could he get in here? There’s cops all around the perimeter, all over the place. Nobody could get past them.”
“Nobody who didn’t belong here,” she amended.
“Yes, of course.”
“Like, for instance, an extra? Maybe an extra who was also her boyfriend?” And she put an awful lot of venom into that word.
“All right, Deborah,” I said, and if my tone of voice revealed that I was peeved past caring, fine. “If you’re so mad at me that you’d rather lock me up than get whoever really did this, fine. Get the cuffs. Take me away and be a hero, the hard-ass who locked up her brother for a murder he didn’t commit.” I held out my hands, wrists together for the cuffs. “Go ahead,” I said.
Deborah looked at me a little longer, as if she might really do it. Then she shook her head and hissed out a long breath between her teeth. “All right,” she said. “One way or the other, it’s not my problem.”
“Deborah—”
“Don’t even bother,” she said. “I don’t give a shit.” And she turned away from me and took out her phone to call it in.
I have been on the scene of a great many homicides, professionally as well as personally, but I had never before been there as the person who found the body. And I had never been there as a suspect, either, even when I was guilty. I found it to be a vastly different experience, and I didn’t like it—especially when Detective Anderson arrived to take charge.
The first thing Anderson did was to usher Deborah out the door, and then he stumped around the trailer and grumbled and hissed and bullied Angel-No-Relation, who had arrived to handle the forensic side of things. And when he finally got around to taking me aside for questioning, he did not behave like a man talking to a professional colleague caught in unfortunate circumstances. Instead, he took me by the elbow and pulled me off to stand by the refrigerator. We stood there and he gave me a long and hooded stare. I waited politely, but he just stared, obviously convinced he could soften me up before dragging an incriminating statement out of me.
My phone chirped. I reached for it, but he shot out his hand and clamped it on my wrist. I looked at him with raised eyebrows; he shook his head. It didn’t seem worth fighting about, so I let go of the phone and looked at him, waiting for him to do something that might hint at an intelligence higher than the refrigerator’s. I waited in vain, but he finally shook his head and favored me with a slight frown.
“Some blanket,” he said.
It took me a moment to understand what he meant. It must have shown on my face, because he went on. “You said you were protecting her.” He sneered. “Like a blanket.”
It is usually best to stay polite and meek when being questioned by a detective, but the meekness had drained out of me with Jackie’s death, and I was irritated enough by his cheap shot to give it right back. “Some detective,” I said. “You said you’d find the killer.”
He blushed very slightly, and then shook his head. “Maybe I have,” he said, and there was no way to misunderstand him this time.
“You haven’t,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Except it’s always the boyfriend, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” I said. “Even when the victim is being stalked by a homicidal psychopath who has killed before and has sworn to kill her. It makes perfect sense to suspect the boyfriend, and not the psycho stalker. At least,” I said, “it makes sense to you.”
He stared at me, and he thought he was going to say something else, some truly witty and withering put-down. But as we have all noted previously, Wit blossoms on a branch that is forever out of reach to D
etective Anderson, and so he just stared, and then shook his head again as he finally realized no bon mot was on the way. “You’re not out of this,” he said, and he moved away to bully Angel some more.
And I wasn’t out of it. Not by a long shot. I stood there for most of an hour and watched. Whenever he thought of it, Anderson would give me an intimidating stare, but other than that nothing happened.
I didn’t mind. In fact, I was glad that Anderson was in charge, instead of someone like Deborah, who might actually solve this murder, because I didn’t want it solved just yet. Whoever did this had done it to me as much as to Jackie. They had killed my whole beautiful future along with her, and thrown me back on the dung heap of cloying mundane hand-to-mouth existence in the slough of the petty, pointless life I had outgrown, and whoever did that to me, I would find them and make them pay. No, I didn’t want anybody finding this killer. Nobody except Me.
So I stood there beside the refrigerator and watched Anderson stump around, the very Classical Ideal of sound and fury signifying nothing, and I looked at the two or three small factoids I had about this killer.
First, I knew it wasn’t Patrick. But I was the only one who knew that, and somebody else could well have hoped to use the whole Psycho Stalker thing as a shield. They already had, in fact, if I assumed that the same person had killed Kathy. I thought only a moment, and then I went ahead and assumed it; Kathy’s eye had been taken, and there was no reason to do that except as a red herring. The same killer had killed them both.
So I had two events to provide me with clues. If I had been feeling optimistic, this would have cheered me up, because two murders provide twice as many clues. But I added up what I knew without any optimism; it was gone from me forever, leaving behind only a bitter residue.
