Dexter's Final Cut (12 page)

“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.”

F
OR 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. Her 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.”

“Not possible,” I said without thinking, and Jackie gave me a quick bright smile.

“Cheaper,” Deborah said. “You mean, they’d just dump you to save money?”

“That’s a joke, right?” Jackie said. “They’d dump Jesus to save fifty bucks.”

“Shit,” Deborah said.

“We start shooting next week,” she said. “If I can get, say, a week of film in the can before they find out, I should be okay.” She inhaled deeply and looked at Deborah very seriously. “I know it’s a lot to ask. But … can we not tell them for a week?”

Deborah shrugged. “I don’t have to tell the network,” she said. “I don’t owe them shit.”

“What about Robert?” I said. After all, he was my nearly constant companion nowadays.

Jackie actually shuddered. “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “If he finds out he’ll tell
everybody
. He’d do anything to get me fired from this show.”

“It could be kind of hard to keep him from finding out,” I said. “He’s with me all day long.”

“Please,” she said. “It’s just for a couple of days.”

“Well,” I said, “I’ll do my best.”

“Thanks,” Jackie said, and Deborah cleared her throat.

“I don’t have to tell the network,” she said, “and I don’t have to tell Robert.” Her face dropped into the cold-forged cop face, the one that kept her from showing anything, no matter what she felt. “I
do
have to tell Detective Anderson. It’s his case.”

“What? But that’s— No!” Jackie said.

Deborah clenched her jaw. “I
have
to,” she said. “I am a sworn officer of the law now in possession of some vital information pertaining to a homicide case, and Anderson is lead on it. If I don’t tell him, I lose my job. I probably do jail time.”

“Oh,” Jackie said, looking very deflated. “But that’s … I mean, do you think Anderson would, um, not tell anybody?”

Deborah looked away. “He’ll tell,” she said.

“He’ll probably call a press conference,” I said.

“Shit,” Jackie said. “Shit, shit,
shit
.” She sank into a chair, looking for all the world like a forlorn rag doll. “I can’t—I won’t ask you to risk your career,” she said, and she said it with such hopeless, noble resignation that I wanted to kill something for her—like Anderson, for instance. But as that happy thought flashed through my mind, it was instantly replaced by one of those wonderful moments of insight that come only once in a lifetime, and only to the Just. “Oh,” I said, and some of my gleeful surprise clearly showed in my voice, because Jackie looked up, and Deborah frowned at me.

“What?” Jackie said.

“Deborah has to tell Anderson,” I said happily, and I said it again for emphasis.
“Anderson.”

“I know his fucking name,” Debs said.

“And you know his fucking character, too,” I said.

“For fuck’s sake, Dex, what the—”

“Deborah, think a minute,” I said. “It might not hurt very much.”

She glared at me for a moment longer, then blew out a vicious breath. “All right, fuck, I’m thinking,” she said, and her face took on the look of a mean-spirited, slightly constipated grouper.

“Wonderful,” I said. “Now, picture this in your thoughts: You, Sergeant Deborah Morgan, Defender of the Faith and Champion of Justice—”

“Cut to the fucking chase, huh?” she said.

“You go to Detective Anderson,” I said patiently. “You, a person he thinks very highly of.”

“He hates my fucking guts,” she snarled. “So what?”

“So that’s just the point,” I said, and I let the glee creep back into my voice. “He really does hate your fucking guts. And you take him
your file on this stuff, and you tell him you have a very important lead
—you
tell him, Deborah. Not me or Jackie or Captain Matthews—
you
tell him. With witnesses.” I looked at her expectantly and, I have to admit, I smirked, too. “What does he do?”

Deborah opened her mouth to say something that looked like it would be rather venomous—and then her jaw snapped shut audibly, her eyes got very wide, and she took a very deep breath. “Holy shit,” she breathed, and she looked at me with something approaching awe. “He does
nothing
. He loses the fucking file. Because it’s
me
.”

“Bingo,” I said, which was something I’d always wanted to say. “He’s afraid you would get the credit, so he does nothing—but
you
have done
everything
, by the book, with witnesses. You’re in the clear; Jackie’s secret is safe; all’s right with the world.”