Dexter's Final Cut (15 page)

Even the excellent dessert didn’t improve her mood. I had something called Decadent Lava Cake, which was very good, although the decadence escaped me. Jackie had ordered a kind of crème brûlée, but once again she didn’t really eat it. She picked a small piece of caramelized crust off the top and crunched on it, but that was all. I began to wonder whether perhaps she took vitamin shots in secret; she certainly didn’t eat enough to sustain human life.

The waiters came and cleared away the wretched refuse of our meal, and I bolted the door behind them. Jackie still sat at the table in a kind of introspective slouch. I wondered how long it would last. I wondered if I should do something to help her snap out of it. If so, my study of daytime TV drama gave me two clear choices: either therapeutic release by getting her to talk about it, or cheerful chatter to change the subject. But it was impossible to say which one was right, and in any case, I couldn’t be sure it was actually in my job description.

And seriously: What was my real role here? Earlier this evening we had been chatting away like true pals, but I was not really a friend—she had probably just been putting me at ease. After all, she was a rich and famous person—a star, in fact—and I was no more than a modest and unassuming forensics geek with an interesting hobby. As far as I knew, this was a situation Emily Post had never covered, and I did not know how to proceed. Should I keep things formal and businesslike, because I was a technical consultant turned bodyguard? Or was I now an employee—and if so, should I follow Kathy’s lead and pee on the floor? After a mojito and most of a bottle
of wine, that option was starting to look appealing, but it would almost certainly nudge the tone of the evening in an unclear direction, so I decided against it.

So I stood there uncertainly, watching Jackie stare into blank, bleak space for what seemed like a very long time. But finally her head snapped up and her eyes met mine. “What,” she said.

“Nothing,” I said. “I just wasn’t sure, um …” And I realized I wasn’t even sure what I wasn’t sure of, so I stumbled back into awkward silence.

Jackie smiled with just the right side of her mouth, a kind of rueful acknowledgment. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “Sorry.” She shook her head. “I guess I wasn’t very good company for dinner.”

“Oh, well,” I said. “That’s all right. I mean, it was a very good dinner.”

She smiled again, using both sides of her mouth this time, although she still didn’t look entirely happy. “Right,” she said. “Glad you liked it.” She got up and wandered over to the sliding glass door that led out onto the balcony, and for a moment she just stood there looking out. I was afraid we were going right back into moody silence again, and I began to wish I’d brought a good book. But apparently she saw something out on the Bay that snapped her out of it; she suddenly turned around and, with a cheerful energy that was clearly forced, she said, “Well, then! It’s too early for bed. So what should we do?”

It took me by surprise, and I blinked stupidly. “Um,” I said. “I don’t know.” I looked around the room for a clue that wasn’t there. “I don’t see any board games,” I said.

“Damn,” Jackie said. “I could really go for a good round of Monopoly.” She crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head to one side. “So, what would you do if you were at home? With your wife and kids?”

“Oh, probably watch TV,” I said.

Jackie made a face. “Yuck,” she said, and I must have looked surprised, because she laughed. “I know,” she said. “But just because I make TV shows doesn’t mean I have to like them.”

“It doesn’t?” I said, and it was really sort of hard to imagine. I mean, I enjoy my job—both of them, in fact. Why else would I do them?

“No,” Jackie said. “I mean, there’s some good stuff now and then. But mostly, I’d rather stare at the wall. In fact, I usually can’t tell the difference.” She shrugged. “It’s the business. You do an awful lot of crap, just to get into a position where you get a chance at something worth doing. But then you get a reputation as somebody who’s really good at doing crap, and the good stuff never comes along, and the money is too good to turn down.… Eh,” she said, spreading her hands in a what-the-hell gesture. “It’s a good life. No complaints.” She frowned and was silent for a moment, and then she shook herself and said, “Hey, look at me. Sliding back into the dumps again.” She clapped her hands together. “Fuck it. How about a nightcap?” And without waiting for an answer she disappeared into her bedroom.

I stood uncertainly for a moment, wondering whether I was supposed to follow her. Before I could decide, she came back out, holding a bottle in her hands. “Get a couple of glasses,” she said, nodding at the sideboard. “You know, tumblers.”

I followed her nod to the large silver tray that stood on the table beneath a mirror. It held a silver ice bucket with silver tongs, four wineglasses, and four tumblers. I took two tumblers and joined Jackie on the couch. She set the bottle reverently on the coffee table and I looked at it as I sat. It was a very nice bottle, with a large wooden stopper on top and a palm tree etched onto the front, and it was filled with a brown liquid.

“What is it?” I asked politely.

Jackie smiled. “Panamonte,” she said. “The best dark rum I ever tasted.”

“Oh,” I said. “Should I get some ice?”

Jackie gave me a look of mock horror. “Oh, my God, no,” she said. “Putting ice in this stuff is a capital crime.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t know much about rum. Except the kind you mix with Coke.”

Jackie shook her head vigorously. “This ain’t it,” she said. “Mixing this with anything is like drawing a mustache on the
Mona Lisa
.” She pulled the cork out of the bottle and poured a little rum into each tumbler. “Try it,” she said. She picked up both glasses, passing me one and raising the other in front of her face.
“Sláinte,”
she said.

“Salud,”
I told her.

I sipped. It was not at all what I’d expected. I have never been a real Drinker, but there are times when Social Custom demands that you drink, and so I have from time to time, and I usually don’t like it. And I have found that most brown liquors that are served after dinner are smoky, with a sharp taste that I don’t like, no matter how much someone insists that it is very rare and the best ever, and I have never been a real fan of such things. But this was like nothing I’d ever tried before. It was sweet but not cloying, dark and rich and crisp, and probably the smoothest thing I’d ever tasted. “Wow,” I said. It seemed like the only appropriate thing to say.

Jackie sipped from her glass and nodded. “Yup,” she said, and for several minutes we just sat and sipped.

The rum seemed to take the dark edge off things for Jackie. She visibly relaxed as the level in her glass went down. To my surprise, I did, too. I suppose it was only natural; as I said, I am not a drinker, and I’d already had a mojito and several glasses of wine this evening. I probably should have been worried that all the alcohol would make me too dopey to be really effective as a bodyguard. But I didn’t feel drunk, and it would have been a shame to spoil the experience of sitting on a couch and drinking rare dark rum with a celebrity. So I didn’t: I sat; I enjoyed; I drank the rum slowly, savoring each sip.

Jackie finished hers first and reached for the bottle. “More?” she said, holding it toward me.

“I probably shouldn’t,” I said. She shrugged and poured a splash into her glass. “But it’s very good,” I said. “I’ll have to get a bottle.”

She laughed. “Good luck,” she said. “You won’t find it at the corner store.”

“Oh,” I said. “Where do you get it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “This was a gift.” She lifted her glass in a half toast and sipped. She rolled it around in her mouth for a moment and then put the glass back down. “Those letters,” she blurted. “They scare the shit out of me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I mean, why?” she said, hunched over and staring down into the glass. “What did I do to make him hate me?”

“He doesn’t hate you,” I said.

Jackie looked up. “He’s trying to kill me,” she said.

“That’s not hate,” I said. “In his own way, he actually loves you.”

“Jesus fuck,” she said. She looked back down at the glass. “I think I’d rather have hate next time.” She picked up the glass and sipped, and then swung her eyes to me. “How come you understand this rotten psycho bastard so good?” she said.

I suppose it was a fair question, but it was an awkward one, too. If I told her the truth—I understood him because I was a rotten psycho bastard, too—it would seriously undermine our relationship, which would have been a shame. So I shrugged and said, “Oh, you know.” I took a small sip from my glass. “It’s like you were saying before. It’s kind of like acting.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. She didn’t sound convinced, and she didn’t look away from me. “Thing is, in acting, you find a piece of the character inside your own self. You expand it, you shape it a little, but it has to be
in
there or you don’t get the job done.” She took a small sip, still looking at me over the rim of the tumbler. “So what you’re really saying is, there’s something inside
you
”—she tipped the glass at me—“that is like this crazy asshole.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “So? Is there?” She sipped. “You got a killer in there, Dexter?”

I looked at her with astonishment, and deep in Dexter’s Dungeon I could feel the Passenger squirming with discomfort. I have lived my life among cops, people who spend every waking hour hunting down predators like me. I have worked among them for years, for my entire professional life, and not a single one of them had ever had the faintest misgiving about Dexter’s snow-white character. Only one of them, in fact—Dear Sergeant Doakes—had ever suspected that I am what I am. And yet, here was Jackie—a
TV actress
, of all things!—asking me point-blank if there was a Wicked Other inside me, behind Dexter’s carefully crafted smile.

I was too amazed to speak, and no amount of sipping could cover the growing, horribly awkward silence as I groped for something to say. Short of admitting she was right, or denying everything and calling for a lawyer, nothing occurred to me.

“Cat got your tongue?” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “Just … just … more like rum got my tongue.” I lifted the glass. “I’m not used to this stuff,” I said, sounding rather lame even to myself.

“Uh-huh,” Jackie said. “But you’re not answering my question, either.”

She was very insistent for someone who should have been a mental lightweight, and I began to wonder whether I had been too quick to decide I liked her. She was clearly not going to accept any cautiously phrased evasions, and that left Dexter somewhat on the ropes. But I am renowned for my conversational quick feet, and seldom at a loss. In this case, I decided that the best defense really was an all-out cavalry charge, so I put down my glass and turned fully toward her.

“Close your eyes,” I ordered.

Jackie blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Acting exercise. Close your eyes.”

“Uh—okay …” She put her glass down, settled back into the couch, and closed her eyes. “All right.”

“Now,” I said. “It’s night. You’re all alone, in a dark alley.”

She took a deep, controlled breath. “Okay …”

“There’s someone behind you,” I said. “He’s getting closer, closer.…”

“Oh,” she said softly, and several emotions flicked rapidly across her face.

“You turn around,” I said. “And it’s
him
.”

Jackie breathed out sharply.

“He’s holding a knife and smiling at you. It’s a terrible smile. And he speaks.” I leaned close and whispered, “ ‘Hello, bitch.’ ”

Jackie flinched.

“But you have a gun,” I said.

Her hand went up and she pulled an imaginary trigger. “Pow,” she said, and her eyes fluttered open.

“Just like that?” I said.

“Damn straight.”

“Did you kill him?” I said.

“Shit, yeah. I hope so.”

“How do you feel?”

She took another deep breath and then let it out. “Relieved,” she said.

I nodded. “QED,” I said. She blinked at me. “I think it’s Latin,” I explained. “It means, ‘I have proved it.’ ”

“Proved what?”

“There’s a killer in everybody,” I said.

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she picked up her glass and took a sip. “Maybe,” she said. “But you seem pretty comfy with the one in you.”

And I was, of course. But I was not at all comfy with having her guess it, so I was relieved that the subject seemed to be closed for now when Jackie put her empty glass on the table and stood up.

“Bedtime,” she said. She stretched and yawned, looking like some kind of golden cat. She looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Where do guard dogs sleep?” she said. “At the foot of the bed?”

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” I said. “That way I can watch the door and the balcony.”

She blinked. “The balcony?”

“Anyone can get in from the roof,” I said. “All you need is twenty feet of nylon rope and a screwdriver.”

Jackie looked a little bit stunned. “You mean he might— What’s the screwdriver for?”

“I don’t know if he might,” I said. “I know he could. Anybody could: just drop down from the roof, with the rope. The screwdriver is to jimmy open the sliding glass door. A ten-year-old could do it.”

“Jesus,” she said. She stared at me, but she wasn’t actually seeing me. “I really fucking hate this,” she said. And then she shook herself slightly, focused on me for a moment, and said again, “
Hate
it …” She stood very still, looking at me, breathing in, then out, watching me for some sign that I didn’t know how to give her, and then she shook her head, turned away, and went slowly off to bed.

I
FELL ASLEEP QUICKLY AND COMPLETELY
,
AND WHEN
I
OPENED
my eyes it seemed like no time had passed, but the first orange gleam of light was hammering its way in through the balcony door, so either it was morning or a UFO was landing on the chaise longue.

I blinked and decided it was probably morning. UFOs wouldn’t dare land in Miami—somebody would chop them up and haul them off to sell for scrap metal. I started to stretch and sit up, but froze midway as I realized there was a strange whirring sound coming from Jackie’s bedroom. It did not seem particularly sinister, but I had no idea what it was. As the bodyguard, it seemed incumbent upon me to investigate, so I stood up quietly, took the Glock from the coffee table beside me, and tiptoed to Jackie’s door. I turned the handle silently, pushed the door open, and peeked in.