Dexter's Final Cut (27 page)

But he is around that last barrier island now, and he is angling
in toward the park onshore and quite possible escape, and he can almost taste it now, almost feel the thrill of getting away, leaping up onto the seawall and off into freedom, his hard-earned getaway from the strangely sluggish pursuer who still idles along behind him, slow and smiling, and perhaps there is a small space in his panic where he begins to wonder why.

Why do we move so slowly closer? Why don’t we pounce, or shout, or shoot? Why do we simply smile, and smile, and be a villain, and ease so slightly closer a little bit at a time?

Why indeed? He does not yet know, can’t hope to know, but it is really very simple. Too simple for this senseless simpleton.

We are smiling because we are happy.

And we are happy because we have been waiting for him to do just exactly this, and now he has done it for us, just as if he had studied his part in our Dark Script, and he has done all the right things just right and the time is now.

Now, when he has finally fled to the far side of the little island; now, when he is away at last from the boat basin, invisible at last to the rows of yachts, shielded from sight by the island, hidden from the dock with its crowd of cops and gawkers, and still half a mile from shore. Now, when everything is as perfectly Just Right as it can ever be and all our joyful gleaming readiness is poised and polished and ready to spring into this perfect moment—

Now
.

And our hand flexes forward on the throttle, and the growl of our happiness swells up with the growing roar of the engine, and our boat surges forward—not too fast, but fast enough, faster than any kayak, no matter how panicked its paddler.

And he has time for no more than one startled strangled yelp of complaint, an abrupt yodel of protest that this could possibly happen to wonderful
him
, and then it has already happened. Our boat thumps the side of the kayak, thumps it hard, with all the force of our weight and greater speed, and all the wicked need that holds the wheel and still smiles, smiles even wider now, with a true delight at the lovely things that are finally happening to the ignorant and well-deserving clot in the kayak.

But he is not in the kayak, not now, not anymore. Now he is in
the water and flailing away, grabbing for something that floats, or something that makes sense, and there is nothing there of either kind for him to latch onto. The kayak is already scudding away, far out of reach and upside down, and the shore is even farther away, and only one small fishing boat with a cheerfully smiling captain is anywhere in his sight. And so he flounders there in the water, and coughs and splashes, and he yells out, “What the fuck!” and we circle carefully around and slowly crawl between him and the shore.

“Sorry!” we call out, with perfect insincerity. “Didn’t see you!”

And he splashes some more, but then he slows down his epic struggles, because it makes no sense that we really did hit him like that on purpose, and he is in the water right here in the sunlight, and in any case we are smiling and saying sorry and there is truly nowhere to go. So he treads water as we creep up to him, glaring up at us with suspicion and resentment, and he shouts again. “Fucking douche!” he yells, and there is a very broad smear of Tennessee on his words. “You seen me fine!”

“Sorry!” we say again, and we reach down beside us, under the gunwale, to the boat hook where it nestles in its clamps, and we pry it out and hold it up. “Grab onto this!” we call cheerfully. “We’ll pull you out!”

He blinks and stares at the boat hook as it drifts closer to his face. “Who’s
we
?”

It is
Us
, of course, the Dark We, the not-quite-visible but oh so very strong and cunning We of the shadowed inside smile, the happy wicked smile that spreads outward from the cold core and onto the mask of bright dopiness we wear to hide the razor teeth—but we do not tell him this; we do not tell him he is outnumbered by no more than this very real, very happy smile—we say instead no more than, “Grab the hook!” and add a cheerful, “Oops!” as the boat hook purposely-accidentally thumps against his temple. One small and careful thump, beautifully crafted to look like a mishap and perfectly calculated to stun him just enough so that for one weak and gargled moment it all goes ever-so-slightly dim for him and he breathes water.

“Sorry!” we call as he sputters back to dizzy wide-eyed panic. “Grab the boat hook!” we yell, more frightful urgency in our voice
as we drift slowly away from where he flails at the endless deep that will soon be his home.

And he lunges for the boat hook, a wild and gratifying surge of panic that lifts him up and out of the water just enough so he can clamp both frantic hands onto the shaft of the boat hook.

“Great!” we call with gleeful relief—because we have him now. We have hooked our fish, set the barb unshakably into the soft flesh of his drooling gape, and so we reel him in, pulling him close and up to the side of the boat. And we haul our catch upward to where he can slap both hands onto the gunwale and let go of the pole, and we drop the boat hook to kneel on the deck and apparently offer him our left hand to help him onward, upward, into the boat.

Our left hand only, but he takes it and we pull him slightly higher. And still all unaware and dizzy and dripping wet, he dangles there half in the water and half out, just as he is now, in this perfect, wonderful, hurried, unplanned moment, already dangling half out of life.

He holds our left hand, balanced there between everything and nothing, and we hold him right there, our faces close together. Our left hand only, and he looks for our right hand to lift him out completely and he does not see it, and he looks back at us with a confusion that is tinged with anger, alarm, and desperation.

“What the fuck?” he says.

And the moment is here—the moment we have waited for, and planned for far too briefly, and we hesitate because it is not right. We have not proved his guilt, not Harry-sure, and we have not truly planned, and for just a moment we pause, bobbing in an uncertain boat on a sea of doubt.

And Patrick sees this, too, and sees that whatever might be happening, it is not what he thinks should be happening, and with his face so close to ours we can see that he is gathering himself for some purposeful thing, some sudden lunge or leap, and as ever-grateful always, just in the nick, we know exactly what to do.

“Jackie Forrest,” we say.

And it works, as it always does. Patrick freezes. For a moment he forgets to breathe, and that is a shame, because his breaths are numbered now and it is a very small number. And he stares back at us, so
very near, and we watch his eyes—watch and truly feel a fond and warm regard for this savage bumbler. Because we always need the Harry Proof to earn these moments of wonder and bliss, and we have nothing like that proof this time—and Patrick has come to our rescue.

We watch him, and the look that climbs up into his bright and stupid eyes is everything we need. Just from the four syllables of that name, Jackie Forrest, everything he has done and planned to do is there in his eyes, a parade of pictures as full of guilt as a twenty-page confession. He did it, beyond question; this look could not lie. It is certainly and doubtlessly him, and without waiting for any kind of no-I-didn’t we bring up our right hand, the hand that has waited so patiently just out of sight, and we slide in the knife that has hovered there hoping for just this moment, slip in the blade once and carefully into just the right spot, and Patrick stiffens, gasps, and stares at us as he feels the knife go in and suddenly, terribly knows what is happening. And we watch the slow and fragile beauty of that moment as it flickers across the tiny twin screens of his pale blue eyes: the moment of indignant denial that this could ever happen to special precious me, then the bright bloom of world-ending agony as he knows that
yes, it can
and then
yes, it has
as the careful beat of the bioclock ticks one more time and then suddenly, unthinkably, stops.…

And then the most beautiful moment of all, as that thought swims away forever, that thought and all others, paddling off with every single trace of all that is Me; they swim away in a whirl of dark water, away from the small and pointless lump of meat and purpose that was Patrick and into the surging tide of blank and thoughtless night that has no end, away from everything he ever thought or ever was or ever wanted to be, away from the tiny bright shore that was life and into the rapid endless whirlpool of Nevermore.

And we watch and marvel as even that final flicker fades into the dim distance and the ever-same film of emptiness slides over the now-empty eyes. And the thing we are holding, the thing that was Patrick, lady-killer, alive with bright and boundless energy—that thing is now no more than an empty box, an unlovely container that will rot and fall apart faster than cheap cardboard in the rain, and as we see those eyes go dull we are truly moved, as we always are: moved, transported, lifted up for such a bright and rapid moment—
and then dropped down again, drained, emptied of everything that matters, and as close to happy as we can ever be.

It is done. We have done it and it is over.

And now the colors of the day wash upward, into the brighter end of the spectrum where they belong, and the hard dark blade of doing it melts back once more into snug and tired satisfaction of a job well done, and I pull the clumsy, empty thing the rest of the way up, over the gunwale, and onto the deck. I leave it lying there and take the boat’s controls, motoring slowly away from the shore in the suddenly too-bright, too-empty afternoon.

I
T WAS ANOTHER HALF AN HOUR BEFORE
I
GOT
P
ATRICK TUCKED
snugly away in the nearest deep hole, with a large anchor securely wired to his legs. I always have an extra anchor; they come in so handy, in so many common boating situations. I like to pick them up at garage sales whenever I can, because you never know when you might need to set out an extra anchor, or give aid to a distressed fellow mariner, or hide a freshly killed body. It was a good heavy Danforth storm anchor, and I was confident it would hold him down there until the crabs had eaten him away to the bare bones. And if he did somehow bob up to the surface, it would be at some time in the future when Dexter was far away and completely innocent, and they could never trace the anchor, nor connect me to the unrecognizable fish-nibbled body, to whom I had never, after all, been formally introduced.

And it may well be that I should not have felt so very good about my strange sunlit interlude. It had been done much too quickly, and it had been done with a terribly clumsy tool, and worse, it had been done without any of my So Very Important rituals—but it had been done, and Jackie was safe, and I was now free to reap the bounty of my diligent labors. I could relax in luxury without a care, enjoying
mojitos, tournedos, and sunsets over the bay, with never a care. Patrick was gone for good.

And I did not worry about anyone finding his body. It was well hidden, I could never be connected to it, and all was roses and rainbows in Dexterville. I was so wrapped up in my afterglow of complete contentment that I did not worry about anything at all, in fact, until I had cruised back up the canal to the dock—very slowly this time, earning me a grumpy nod from the shirtless old man. It was not until I had tied off the boat and started to trudge across the lawn toward my car that I glanced at my watch—and then, at last, I began to worry.

The short hand was pointing to the three and the long one to eleven, and it took only a moment of brilliant detective work to realize that it meant the time was five minutes of three, and I was going to be late to my alibi.

I hurried to my car and drove away down the little street in a way that no self-respecting shirtless old man could ever approve. Happily, no one was out on the street to see me, and in only a few minutes I was out onto Main Highway, over to Douglas, and then turning left on Dixie Highway.

Traffic was not heavy, but it was still another twenty minutes before I pulled into a space in the school parking lot. I went as quickly as I could without running, up the sidewalk and into the main office, where I signed the guest register, slapped a
VISITOR
sticker on my shirt, and hurried away down the hall to Cody’s classroom.

Cody’s teacher this year was a relentlessly cheerful middle-aged woman named Mrs. Hornberger. She was sitting at her desk when I came in, with Cody and Rita sitting in front of her, like two bad children called up before the class. The three of them looked up at me when I walked in; Cody very nearly smiled, Mrs. Hornberger raised an inquiring eyebrow, and Rita, without even taking a breath, immediately opened fire.

“Oh, Dexter, for the love of— It’s twenty minutes past, and you didn’t even call—really, this is just—”

“Sorry I’m late,” I said. No one offered me a chair, so I dragged one of the student desks over next to Cody and squeezed into it. “How bad is it?” I whispered to Cody, and he shrugged at me.

“Okay,” he said softly. Of course, he would have said exactly the same thing if the teacher had set them both on fire. I had to admit, Cody did have a slight problem in the area of communication. The trauma caused by his biological father, a mean crackhead who used to beat him and Astor until he was finally tucked away in prison, had made Cody exceptionally silent. What his father’s savagery had done to Astor was not quite as clear, unless severe crabbiness is trauma-induced.

But Bio Dad’s beatings had also slammed Cody out of the world of sunshine forever, into the cool dusk where the predators live. It had made him into my true heir, the Crown Prince of the Dexter Dark, eagerly awaiting my training so he could take his rightful place on the Shadow Throne. I was fairly sure the meeting today would not touch on that part of Cody’s education.

“Mr. Morgan,” Mrs. Hornberger said sternly. All eyes automatically swiveled to her, and even Rita stopped talking. Mrs. Hornberger looked at us each individually, to make sure we were all paying attention. Then the smile came back to her face, and everyone breathed again. “We were discussing Cody’s … 
conceptual
difficulties … with socialization.”