Dexter's Final Cut (20 page)

I shook my head and tuned them out; so much for the Act of Creation.

After lunch we went back to the lab and I gave Renny his quickie forensics course, while Robert hopped around behind me and interrupted constantly to show how much he already knew. In all fairness, Renny seemed much brighter than Robert; he concentrated, asked very intelligent questions, and quickly picked up enough of the basics to fool the finest TV camera. Even so, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling of unease I got from wondering if I really had seen That Something behind Renny’s eyes, and if so, what he might do with it.

By quitting time, I was more than ready to escape into luxurious vigilance once more, and it was with a ludicrous sense of anticipation that I skipped away to Deborah’s lair to collect Jackie. I heard their voices before I saw them, but when I popped in with a cheery hello, they both fell abruptly silent and looked at me very seriously.

“I didn’t mean to be quite such a buzz-kill,” I said.

“No buzz here,” Deborah said, and Jackie shook her head.

“Well, then, what,” I said. “Did you give Anderson Patrick Bergmann’s name and photo?”

“Nope!” Jackie said happily.

“What? Why not?”

“Captain Matthews’s orders,” Debs said solemnly.

I blinked, and I admit that was the only thing I could think of, except to say “but,” so I did that, too. “But,” I said.

“I know, right?” Jackie said, still with what seemed to be far too much lighthearted levity.

“Um, okay,” I said. “Any particular reason?”

“Anderson totally blew off Detective Echeverria,” Debs said. “So his captain called Matthews and demanded an explanation, and now I am in the shit house.”

“You?” I said. “For what?”

“For interfering with Anderson’s investigation,” Debs said. “Which he doesn’t actually have.”

“And for luring Echeverria down here from New York,” Jackie said. “Apparently, it breaks the unwritten code.”

“Somebody should write that down,” I said.

“And so now,” Deborah said, with an ironic wave of her hands,
“we have a free hand and we will catch this sick cocksucker and fuck ’em all.” She shrugged. “While I am being punished.”

“Bread and water in the stockade?” I said.

“Worse,” she said. “I have been officially notified to stay away from Anderson’s investigation—”

“Which includes,” Jackie butted in, very bubbly, “
not
giving him any more leads, tips, or conjectures that might interfere with his casework.”

“Well, then,” I said. “That’s a perfect punishment.”

“And,” Deborah said, making a face, “I have to stay on as technical adviser to Jackie’s show during the whole shoot.” She gave me an ironic smile. “So do you.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering how I could possibly survive being around Robert for so long. I guess my face showed what I was thinking, because Jackie made a snorting noise.

“Guys,” Jackie said. “It’s not
that
bad. I mean, there’s really great food on the set, and it’s all free.”

“Great,” Deborah said. “I can eat doughnuts while the bodies pile up around Anderson.”

“Well, if there’s doughnuts,” I said.

Deborah shook her head. “And that’s all it takes to make you happy?”

“That—and the party going on down in the lab. It’s really very festive.”

“A festive forensics lab?” Jackie said, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. “That’s quite a trick.”

“One of the other actors arrived,” I said. “Renny Boudreaux?”

“Oh, God, he’s a scream,” Jackie said, shaking her head. She looked at Debs, who raised one eyebrow. “A terrific comedian. I mean, he’s a total dick, but a really funny one.”

Deborah snorted. “A funny dick,” she said. “Great concept,” and the two of them snickered like sorority sisters.

The Town Car was waiting for us at the front door. It was the same driver again, and I waved Jackie into the backseat, sliding in next to her on the other side. We rode in silence most of the way. Jackie looked out the window at the traffic, every now and then glancing at me. I glanced back, wondering what she was thinking, but she gave me no
clue, except for an occasional small and weary smile. She was clearly far too busy thinking deep thoughts to make light conversation, so I let her think, and I drifted away into a mellow reverie of my own.

Just before we went up the on-ramp onto the expressway, a loud
bang!
sounded behind our car, and we both jumped several inches off the seat. I looked out the back window; a motorcycle had backfired as it wove its way along the white line between the far more ponderous cars. I gave Jackie a reassuring smile, and she sank back into her thoughtful silence.

At the intersection with the Dolphin Expressway traffic slowed to a crawl as everyone paused to look at an ivory-colored Jaguar pulled halfway onto the shoulder. A thick stream of smoke came out one window, and a very large man stood beside it, yelling at a thin, elegantly dressed woman. She puffed on a huge cigar and looked bored as the man shouted at her, the veins in his neck visibly bulging.

“I think I’m starting to like Miami,” Jackie said as we crept past the Jaguar and its little piece of theater.

“More than L.A.?” I said.

She made a face. “Nobody really likes L.A.,” she said. “We just have to live there. Part of our deal with the devil.” And then she went quiet again, just looking out the window of the Town Car and thinking her thoughts, until we pulled up in front of the hotel at last.

The doorman with the talented nephew held the front door for us, and Jackie rewarded him with a smile. “Thank you, Benny,” she said. “Are you working late tonight?”

Benny beamed at her. “I took a double shift, Miss Forrest,” he said. “I can use the dough, and anyway, I gotta be honest, while you’re here? I don’t wanna go home.”

Jackie widened her smile and patted him on the arm. “Well, I wouldn’t want anybody else on the door, either,” she said, and Benny smiled so widely that I thought his face might split. But there were no screams of pain from bursting cheeks behind us as I escorted Jackie to the elevator, and when the doors slid shut Jackie closed her eyes and shook her head.

“Jesus,” she said. “Did that sound really stupid?”

“Him or you?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.

She leaned back against the wall of the elevator car, eyes still
closed. “It’s a kind of—what do they call it? Noblesse oblige.” She opened one eye and pointed it at me. “Which sounds pretty pompous, I know.”

“Only a little,” I said encouragingly.

“Yeah, thanks,” she said. She closed the eye again. “What the hell. You have to say something, and it doesn’t have to be Shakespeare to make somebody’s day.” She sighed heavily. “It goes with the job. And Benny seems like a nice guy. So … 
normal
 …”

I said nothing. After all, you really should understand a remark before you respond to it, and I didn’t. Clearly Jackie was in a philosophical mood—but whether the evening would turn toward Aristotle or existentialism, I couldn’t tell from her comment on Benny’s Normalness. And as the best philosophers will tell you, the rest is silence anyway, so I kept quiet.

I got Jackie into the suite without any outbursts of Kantian Dialectic, and as we settled into our chairs on the balcony and waited for mojitos, Kathy knocked on the door, bustling past me with a haughty glare when I let her in, and heading straight out to Jackie, her hands full of papers and her eternal phone and Starbucks cup.

The mojitos came. Kathy waved papers and yammered for another ten minutes, while Jackie nodded, interrupting a few times with blunt questions, signing a couple of papers and nodding wearily at the nearly endless flow of details. When Kathy finally gathered up the papers, and her coffee cup, Jackie looked tired and a little bit bleak. I wondered why. She had endured Kathy’s fusillade, which had been an exhausting tirade from a rather unpleasant person, but even so, I was surprised at how
mortal
Jackie looked all of a sudden. She picked up her mojito and sipped as I led Kathy out and chained the door behind her, pondering the heavy price of fame. It had all seemed so attractive, but now I found myself wondering.

Jackie had said she gave up
everything
for this; was it worth it? I mean, not just having to endure an annoying lump like Kathy a few times a day, although that certainly looked like a very great burden. But to trade away all the other stuff that
normal
people lived for, the things they claimed made them happy: home, marriage, kids—all the stuff I had gathered as props for my disguise. They didn’t make
me
happy, of course, but I am probably not actually capable of happiness.
Moments of very rewarding satisfaction, yes—but were they the result of my Happy Normal Life? I could not offhand think of any such moments. I had never glanced at a pile of dirty laundry and felt ecstasy, never smiled blissfully as Astor bellowed at her mother and threw shoes across the room. To be honest, I had never even held my own child, Lily Anne, and thought,
This is Paradise
.…

I had my moments, of course. But most of them seemed to come while I stood above a securely taped, carefully chosen playmate as he squirmed away from the silver music of the knife—not quite the same thing as enjoying a quiet night at home with the wife and kids. Maybe not even happiness at all, but it worked for me.

On the more legal side of things, I had certainly been enjoying my time as Jackie’s entourage. Living in the lap of luxury, admired everywhere I went—it was living high on the hog, life without a care. Except, of course, for the very small care of knowing that a wild psychotic killer might be knocking on the door momentarily. Other than that, I couldn’t think of anything else I could reasonably want in a lifestyle.

But was this real Happiness? Probably not, or I wouldn’t be feeling it.

Did Jackie feel it? Was she happy with her life of limitless luxury, admired and even feted everywhere she went? Was it really as wonderful as it looked? Did it fulfill her? None of my business, of course—but it suddenly seemed like a question I wanted to hear her answer.

I came back out onto the balcony to find Jackie staring out over the water, still looking moody.

“Everything okay?” I said.

She nodded. “Never better,” she said, and I had to hope that she would be more convincing when the cameras began to roll.

I sat down in my chair and took a sip of my mojito. Perhaps the rum loosened my tongue, but as my drink shrank, the silence grew, and I finally just blurted it out.

“Are you happy?” I said.

“Me?” Jackie said, looking at me as if I had suggested something improper. She shook her head and looked out over the water of Biscayne
Bay, and then picked up her mojito and gulped down the rest of it, and, still looking out at the Bay, she said, “Of course I’m happy. I have everything that anybody could ever want.” She looked down at her empty glass. “Except more mojitos. Call down for a pitcher, okay?” She put her glass on the table and stood up. “I have to use the bathroom,” she said, and in a faint swirl of perfume she was gone.

I sniffed at her vapor trail and settled back into my chair, feeling like a total ninny. Why was I thinking such things, asking such stupid questions? I tried to remember the warning signs of the apocalypse; I was pretty sure they didn’t include talking philosophy with a TV star, but maybe the Council of Nicea had cut that one from the list.

I called room service for more mojitos. They arrived just as Jackie returned, and the waiter nearly fell over the railing as he tried to hold the tray and pull out the chair for Jackie at the same time. Jackie settled into her chair and gave him a tired smile, and he bounced back out the door, beaming as if he had just been elected fifth-grade class president.

I put the chain on the door behind him and came back out onto the balcony. Jackie was slumped down in her chair, looking out over the water with the rim of her glass resting on her lower lip. I sat down, wondering what had turned her mood so sour. I supposed it was just the strain of being stalked. But what if it was me? What if something I had said or done—or
not
said or done—was making her upset? That would be disastrous; it would totally demolish my new fantasy life as Captain Entourage. I tried to think of how I might have offended, and came up empty. My behavior had been exemplary.

Yet something was clearly bothering her. Perhaps it was her blood sugar—she didn’t eat enough to keep a hamster alive, and the unerring bioclock inside Dexter was saying it was definitely time for dinner.

But before I could frame a polite suggestion that food might be just the thing to restore her physical and mental health, my cell phone began to chirp. I took it out and looked at the screen; it was Rita. “Oh,” I said to Jackie. “Excuse me.” She just nodded without looking up, and I answered the phone.

“Hi,” I said, with as much good cheer as I could manufacture.

“You said you would call,” Rita said. “And that was Monday—and Deborah says it’s something risky? But I can’t really tell what she means, and— Do you have clean socks?”

“Yes, I have socks,” I said, glancing at Jackie and hoping she was too busy musing to hear me.

“You always lose your socks,” Rita said. “And you hate when they’re dirty—remember that time in Key West? And they cost twice as much down there.”

“Well, I’m not in Key West,” I said. “And I have some clean socks.”

The corner of Jackie’s mouth began to twitch, and although I hoped she was only remembering a really good knock-knock joke, I had the distinct and unpleasant feeling that she was trying very hard not to laugh at me.

“Do you have any idea how long?” Rita said. “And there are some heavy boxes here, stuff from the garage; I can’t carry them. But they have to go to— Oh. The power is on now? And the insurance company said the new house has a market value much higher than— Astor, I’m talking on the phone. Astor, please! Are you still there, Dexter?”

“I’m here,” I said. “How are the kids?”

“Lily Anne has a tooth coming in,” she said. “She’s very cranky, and I can’t even— What? No, you have to do your homework first. No. Because you
have
to,” she said. To Astor again? Or was it Cody this time? There was really no way to know, and I discovered that I didn’t care. I was beginning to find the whole conversation annoying, and the way Jackie was so clearly fighting off an attack of derisive laughter didn’t help at all. I turned away from her and lowered my voice.