Jeff Lindsay - Dexter's Final Cut

“Oh, okay,” Robert said. “Well, so how do we find that out? I mean, if we can’t use fingerprints, and the lab work is bullshit-what do we do?”

“Yeah,” Debs said. “Good question.” And even before she turned to look at me, I knew what was coming, because although she would never admit it, whenever my sister was stuck, it somehow became my problem. I sometimes thought she must have a secret tattoo somewhere on her body: “WWDD?” What Would Dexter Do? And sure enough, as Robert’s question was still echoing in the air, her head swiveled my way.

“Dex?” she said expectantly.

Oddly enough, it was Robert who managed to say what I was thinking. “Why Dexter?” he said, and I felt like applauding. “I mean, he does the lab stuff, and you said it was useless, so-you know,” he said, looking at me. “Not that I think you’re useless, or anything, buddy. But what is he supposed to do?”

Deborah stared at Robert, just long enough to make him uncomfortable, before she answered. “Sometimes Dexter gets these … insights,” she said. “About the killer.”

It is a scientific fact that most situations in life go from bad to worse-I believe it’s called entropy. Any scientists who happened to be observing us at this moment would have been quietly satisfied to see that this natural law held true. As Deborah had said, I really did get insights into the sick and twisted creatures of the night. But that was because I was one of them. Deborah was the only living person I had ever talked to on the subject. After all, I didn’t want people walking around and saying things like, “Gee, Dexter thinks just like a killer. Wonder why?” Additionally, since these thoughts came from a private place, deep inside Dexter’s Dungeon, discussing it always made me feel slightly naked. I thought my sister understood that, but every now and then, like now, she dragged me stripped and flinching into the spotlight.

Robert and Jackie both looked at me, and I began to feel even more uncomfortable. “What,” Robert said. “Like he, uh, profiles ?” I’d never heard it used as a verb before. It didn’t make me feel any more at ease.

“Kind of,” Deborah said.

“Wow,” Jackie said, and she looked at me with new respect. “How did you learn to do that?”

Of course, that was exactly the question I did not want to answer. The only honest reply was not something I felt I could profitably discuss with Jackie. So I did my best to steer the conversation onto something a little less personal. “Oh,” I said modestly, “I took a psychology course in college. I assume you ran a missing-persons check, sis?”

Deborah flipped her hand dismissively at that. “First thing we did,” she said. “Come on, Dex; let’s get serious.” She put her arms on her thighs and leaned toward me. “I really want to collar this bastard, and I want him before Anderson fucks up the trail. And before this guy does it again. Because you know he’s going to do it again.”

“Probably,” I said, overriding the mean little voice inside me that was chortling, Almost Certainly .

“So come on,” she said. “Give me something to go on.” She stared at me intently, without blinking, and even more unsettling, Jackie leaned toward me and did exactly the same thing. I was surrounded by Deborahs, all of them impatiently waiting for me to perform a miracle. It was an awful lot of expectation for one lonely Dark Dabbler, no matter how righteously wicked. Luckily for me, Robert provided a perfect counterbalance by recrossing his arms and leaning back again with a skeptical expression on his face.

“Hey, come on,” he said. “Profiling is serious shit. I mean, these FBI guys who do it, it takes years , and they’re still only right, like, fifty percent of the time.” Everybody looked at him, which was a great relief to me. He shrugged. “Well, so, I’m just saying,” he said.

“Dexter does a little better than that,” Deborah said.

“Very cool,” Jackie said. She gave me an encouraging smile, and I couldn’t decide whether to crouch at her feet and let her scratch behind my ear, or slap my sister for bringing it up in the first place.

“All right, well, so,” Robert said. He sounded a little defiant, as if he’d decided that we were all against him, so he might as well push back. He jutted his chin at me. “Let’s see something.”

It was really very thoughtful of him to provide me with a motivation to do something besides wishing I was somewhere else. His Show Me attitude was so annoying it made me forget that I was hesitant to talk about something this intimate, because I wanted so much to say something wonderful that would push his face in the dirt.

“Well,” I said. I thought about the body as I’d seen it: the degree of damage, the strange variety of slash, bite, smash-and, of course, that final optical assault. Everyone was still looking at me, and I realized I had to say something.

“It, um …” I said. “It starts with the eyes.…”

“All right,” Deborah said expectantly. “What about ’em?”

“That’s the most important thing,” I said. “What he’s trying to say about her seeing . And, um, not seeing.”

Deborah snorted. “I didn’t know that?” she said. “I mean, he rips out her eye and shoots his wad into her eye socket, and I’m supposed to think that’s an accident? I know he blinded her, so he had a thing about the eyes. So what?”

“But that’s exactly it, Debs,” I said.

“What is?” Jackie demanded, sounding very much like Deborah.

“He didn’t blind her,” I said. “He left her one good eye. He wanted her to see what he was doing.”

“Jesus Christ,” Robert muttered.

“And I still don’t know why, or what it means,” Deborah snarled, her normal cranky self once more.

“The whole thing for him is centered around it,” I said, and I felt a soft rustle of encouragement from the Passenger, almost as if it was whispering, Good, go on .… “Vision, watching, seeing … It’s all about that. It’s not just part of it; it’s the whole point.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Deborah snapped.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said, and Robert cleared his throat to show he wasn’t going to say what he was thinking.

“I don’t understand,” Jackie said. “I mean, okay, the thing with the eye socket. But how does that say anything except he’s a sick bastard?”

“You have to try to go inside his mind,” I said, and I took a deep breath. “Try to picture what he was thinking.”

“I’d rather not,” Jackie said softly, but I was already hearing the far-off whisper of wings and the slow rising of shadows and I closed my eyes and tried to see it, reaching down into the Dark Basement and stroking the thing that uncurled there, petting it until it purred, stretched, and sprang up into the black interior sky and showed me all the pictures of Eternal Nighttime pleasure.…

And I see her, see the way she thrashes, moans, twists wildly against the ropes, fighting to get a scream past the gag, seeing nothing but her approaching death and not even seeing the all-important Why of it, the reason it must be, the Me who is doing this to her because she has refused to notice-and even now her eyes are on the knife and not the hand holding it and I need to make her see ME, need to make her pay attention to ME, and I drop the knife and I move closer, more direct, more intimate, and I begin to use hands, feet, fingernails, teeth-and still she will not see ME and so I grab her by the hair, that perfect golden hair, and I haul her face around to look and she has to see ME at last .

And she does .

She sees me. For the first time, she looks at ME and she sees ME and she knows me for who I really am and at last at last I can show her how I can care for her like no one else ever could, show her that this was meant to be, this was how it was always supposed to be, and at last at last I can show her my Truth, my Self, my Reason for Being .