Dexter's Final Cut (39 page)

The door was ajar, and I peeked around it and into Jackie’s dressing room. Anderson was still inside. He was standing at the far end, at the rack that held Jackie’s costumes. He had the sleeve of one of her shirts held up to his nose, and he was apparently sniffing it. I didn’t know why he was doing that, but it made me want to break a chair on his face. Still, a little good humor is almost always a better way, so I stifled the urge and stepped into the room.

“Looking for a clue?” I said cheerfully, and he jerked around, practically flinging the shirtsleeve away from his face. “Because I’ve heard you totally don’t have one.”

“Don’t have— I was just … What do you mean?” he said.

“I said, you don’t have a clue,” I said. “It’s common knowledge.”

His forehead wrinkled, and I could probably have counted to five or six as it dawned on him that I had insulted him.

“Listen, ace,” he said. “I am running a homicide investigation here—”

“By sniffing Jackie’s clothing?” I said. “Is her armpit a suspect?”

Anderson turned bright red and stuttered at me, until it was very clear to both of us that nothing coherent was going to come out of his mouth. He looked around for a way to escape, and saw nothing except the toilet. So he cleared his throat, muttered something I couldn’t hear, and pushed past me, giving me one last glare from the doorway before he disappeared.

I closed the door and went to look at the box of Kathy’s stuff. I took the suitcase out and put it on the floor. I really doubted that there would be anything significant stuck in with her socks and underwear, and even if the urine stains had been washed out, I would rather not have to look at Kathy’s underwear. The purse was a more likely place to find something, so I dumped it out on the makeup table and poked through it. There was the usual clutter of coins, gum wrappers, receipts, coupons, a large clump of keys, a packet of tissues, lipstick, a small mirror, three pens, and a handful of paper clips. A wad of one-dollar bills, wrapped around a valet parking stub. Two tampons in a bright pink plastic case. A large packet of cinnamon-flavored sugarless gum. A wallet with several credit cards, license, a few business cards, forty-three dollars in cash, three paycheck stubs.

I frowned at the heap of useless junk. Something was missing. I am not an expert on what women carry in their purses, but a tiny nagging something tugged at the edge of my brain and whispered that this picture was missing a piece.

I looked in the box, lifting out the black nylon laptop case and unzipping it. There was nothing inside but the computer, with its ubiquitous half-eaten Apple logo on top. I poked through the Velcro-sealed pockets: a power cord, a flash drive in one pocket, and nothing else—and still the whiny little voice niggled and prodded at me that there should be something else. So I opened the suitcase and, as I had feared, found only underwear, socks, clothing, a baggy bathing suit, and a pair of sandals.

I snapped the lid shut and put the suitcase back on the floor, and as I straightened up I knew what was missing: her phone. Kathy’s all-important always-present phone, the one that had all her contacts and appointments. Her signature accessory, the one thing she was never without. The phone should have been here, in her purse or separate, and it was not.

Of course, it was possible that the phone was still in the lab, maybe because it was a blood-soaked mess, unfit to be released into the world. It was also possible that somebody—probably Vince, in my absence—was checking the call log, the calendar, and so on, for any hint of the killer’s identity.

And it was also possible that the killer had taken it. Not for a souvenir, which was easy to understand—for me, at least—but because he was in a rush to escape the scene and wanted to make sure that no memo or note on the phone could implicate him. No time to look, so just grab the thing and dash away into the night. That’s what I would have done: Get safely away, and discard the phone later, throwing it off a bridge, or into a handy canal.

It made sense, and I was sure I was right. If Kathy’s phone was not still in police custody, the killer had it.

Easy enough to check, of course. All I had to do was ask—not the officer in charge of the investigation, of course. That was Anderson, and I was reasonably sure he didn’t want to say anything at all to me, unless it was, “You’re under arrest.” But one quick call to Vince ought to clear it up.

I pulled my own phone from my pocket and sat in the chair in front of the mirror. I heard six rings, and then Vince said, in his Charlie Chan voice, “Hung Fat Noodle Company.”

“I’d like some cat lo mein to go, please?”

“Depends, Grasshopper,” he said. “How far you want it to go?”

“Quick question,” I said. “Podrowski. The victim at the Grove Isle last night. Do you still have her phone?”

“Quick answer,” he said. “Nope.”

“Was it found at the scene?”

“That’s two questions,” Vince said. “But the same answer: nope.”

“Aha,” I said. “If you don’t think that’s too corny.”

“Why aha?” he said.

“Because Kathy—the victim—was never ever without her phone. So if you don’t know where it is—”

“Egads,” he said. “The killer took it.”

“Egads?” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “Because you got to say aha. I assume you told this to Anderson?”

“I assume that’s a joke?”

“Ha!” Vince said, with his terrible fake laugh—much worse than mine.

“Did it look like the same killer?”

“Well,” Vince said carefully, “of course, I am no Detective Anderson.…”

“Thank God for that.”

“But it didn’t look like it. The eye was gone, and naturally Anderson jumped on that and said
quod erat demonstrandum
.”

“He said
that
?”

“Words to that effect. Fewer syllables,” Vince said. “Anyway, he was sure it was the same. But the thing is, the body was a mess. Eleven stab wounds, including a couple that chopped open the carotid artery.”

“Oh, my,” I said, thinking of the great awful gouts of sticky wet blood.

“Yeah, really,” he said. “And even worse? There was vomit all over. Like he took a look at what he’d done and then blew lunch. I really hate working with vomit.”

“Cheer up,” I said. “In a few hours you’ll be right back with severed heads and fecal matter.”

“Fascinating stuff, fecal matter,” Vince said thoughtfully. “It’s in all of us.”

“Some more than others,” I said. “Thanks, Vince.”

“Hey!” he said, before I could disconnect. “Are you hanging out at the movie? With Robert?”

“He’s around somewhere,” I said. “I’m supposed to give technical advice—and also,” I said, trying to sound very casual, “I have a small speaking part.”

“Oh, my God,” he said. “You’re gonna be
in
this?”

I covered the phone with one hand and changed my voice. “Five
minutes, Mr. Morgan!” I said, and then, back into the phone, “My call. Gotta go, Vince. Say hi for me to all the little people.”

“Dexter, wait!” he said. “Is Robert—”

I broke the connection and stood up.

I wandered down the hall to Wardrobe. Jackie was still in conference with Sylvia, standing with her arms held straight out while Sylvia made marks on her shirt with a piece of chalk and her two assistants ran by; one carried an iron, the other an armful of rubber boots.

I closed the door and looked around. I had nothing to do for at least another fifteen or twenty minutes, so I indulged my curiosity and went to take a look at the soundstage. I had never seen one before, and if this was going to be part of my new life as Dexter Demosthenes, I thought I should see what it looked like.

I went through the heavy metal door and into the room. It was about the size and shape of an airplane hangar, with a high ceiling and a cement floor. Except for isolated patches of illumination from electric lights, the room was dark. There were no windows, or anything else that might let in light, and thick black curtains hung down from the walls.

The crew swarmed in and out of the pools of light like ants skittering around on a hive that someone had smacked with a stick. In twos and threes they hurried by, performing their mystical tasks, slapping tape onto the floor in precise and nonsensical patterns, moving metal light stands from place to place, rolling out thick cables, two and three bundled together, and carrying odd bits of scenery: a window, a bright red fire door, a swivel chair.

I took a few steps into the darkness and was nearly beheaded by three people carrying what looked like the back wall of Captain Matthews’s office. “Hey, watch out,” one of them called cheerily, a wiry young woman with short blond hair and a hammer hanging from her hip. She hustled on by with the other two, rapidly easing the wall around lights, more scenery, and other workers.

I stood and let my eyes adjust to the darkness before I began once more to edge carefully through the room, alert for any more lethal scenery. In the center of the room, rimmed by a cluster of lights, cameras, and some intense technical action, stood a scenic wall, edge facing
me, and I moved toward it to see what it was. I scooted around two men fluttering large squares of colored, transparent plastic in front of a standing light, and I peered around to see what the wall might be. As the far side of the wall came into view, I stopped and stared.

I was looking at what seemed to be the inside of an apartment on Miami Beach. A sliding glass door led out onto a balcony, where the top of a palm tree waved in front of a gleaming greenish-blue expanse of Biscayne Bay. For a moment, it was very disorienting, and I actually stepped back and looked at the other side of the wall, just to be sure it was really only two-dimensional. Happily for me, it was.

I moved a few steps closer and looked again. The scene still looked very real to me, except that as I watched, a stout, red-haired man slid open the glass door and stepped off the fake balcony to stand in apparent midair in front of the palm tree, and began to fuss with the fronds. It was an eerie illusion; if the palm tree was real, then it had a red-haired giant floating in the air beside its fronds.

I admired the surreal view until someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to see a bearded man, about forty-five, with three rolls of duct tape hanging from his belt.

“We gotta focus the lights,” he said. “Can you stay back over there?” He waved a hand at the far wall of the room and pushed past me, pulling a long strip of tape from one of his rolls.

“Of course,” I told his back, and I made a mental note to try his tape dispenser arrangement sometime soon.

I walked carefully to the area Mr. Tape had indicated, and it turned out to be a wise move. Nestled into the corner, tucked away in the sheltering half darkness, I found a long table absolutely groaning under the weight of a remarkable array of food. There were bagels, cream cheese, thin-sliced tomato and onion—and real nova lox! And there was even a large bowl filled with M&M’s, and a platter with three kinds of cheese, a huge tray of yogurt, bananas, apples, oranges, and trail mix. And on the far end of the table, right next to a large coffee urn, was a pile of pastry boxes, eight high, from Muñequita Bakery, my very favorite pastry shop.

I had just grabbed a guava
pastelita
and a jelly doughnut and settled into the shadows on the edge of the set when I felt some hostile
presence steaming up behind me, and I turned around, prepared to slay it with the
pastelita
. But I held my fire when I saw that it was only dear demoted Deborah, face clenched tightly enough to crack walnuts.

“Good morning, sister dearest,” I said. “Isn’t it wonderful to be here at the heart of Hollywood?”

“Go fuck yourself,” she said.

“Perhaps a little later,” I promised. “After I finish my
pastelita
.” She said nothing, just stood there glaring at the set and grinding her teeth loud enough that I thought I could hear molars shattering. “Would you like a doughnut?” I asked, hoping to soothe her just a bit.

It didn’t work. Before I could even blink she whipped a fist at me, landing it solidly on my upper arm hard enough that I almost dropped my jelly doughnut. “Ow,” I said. “Would you prefer a bagel?”

“I would prefer to kick Anderson in the balls and get back to doing real police work,” she said through her tightly clenched teeth.

“Oh,” I said. “So it didn’t go well when you told the captain about Patrick?”

“He ripped me a new asshole,” she said, and she ground her teeth even harder. “With Anderson watching. Smirking at me the whole fucking time, while the captain told me what a fucking idiot I am.”

“Ouch,” I said. “But he didn’t suspend you?”

“He near as fuck did,” she said. “But he figured if I was suspended I’d go after the killer on my own time.”

I nodded and took a bite of guava. From what I knew of Deborah, that’s exactly what she would have done. It was a very shrewd guess, and my opinion of Captain Matthews’s savvy went up.

“So he ordered me to stay on the set,” Debs said. “So I can’t do a single fucking thing except stand around and babysit. While Anderson fucks up the case and fucking laughs at me.”

“Oh, he’s not just fucking up the case,” I said. “He told Jackie he wants to be her security blanket, twenty-four/seven.”

She snorted. “He
said
that? To
Jackie
?!”

“Yup,” I said.

“What did she say?”

I smiled at the memory, as close to a genuine smile as I have ever managed. “She told him she already had one,” I said. And I took a very satisfied bite, getting the last third of
pastelita
into my mouth.

Deborah looked at me, a hard and searching look, and I wondered if I was unconsciously chewing with my mouth open. I put a hand up to check; I wasn’t. I swallowed the pastry and looked back at her. “What?” I said.

“You son of a
bitch
,” Deborah said, and somehow her anger was now focused on me and I had no idea why.

“What did I do?” I asked.

“You
fucked
her!” she hissed at me. “You fucked Jackie fucking Forrest!”

I looked at Deborah in astonishment, trying to remember whether I had said anything at all that might have tipped her off; there was nothing, but clearly she knew. Maybe there really is something to the whole Women’s Intuition business we’re always hearing about. Because Deborah knew, and she was obviously very upset about it.