Jeff Lindsay - Dexter's Final Cut

Not for our motorboat.

To us, with our hand on the throttle, it is an amusement, a toying with the mouse before our claws come out, and we stay with him, ever so slightly easing up closer and closer-

He is really moving very well now, digging the paddle blades into the water with a good and rapid rhythm, and glancing back to see us smiling calmly, happily slipping only a tiny bit closer, and closer, and he tries, he really does try hard, to make his little yellow boat into a wonder of speed; jaw clamped tight, veins bulging in his face and arms, he tries so hard, so valiantly, as if mere sincere effort can outrun the laws of nature, and we are so very impressed at his labors that we nearly pause and applaud.

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.…