Jeff Lindsay - Dexter's Final Cut

I finally peeled my eyes away and went to join my sister. Debs was already peering into the Dumpster with a very hard look on her face. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “Jesus Fucking Christ.” She shook her head. “You got anything yet?”

“I just got here,” I said.

“Who’s got the lead?” she said, her eyes flicking over the body.

“Anderson,” I told her,

“Shit,” she said. “He couldn’t find his ass with both hands.”

“What is it?” said a husky voice, and Jackie Forrest joined us.

“You might not want to look,” I said, but she had already pushed past me to stare into the Dumpster. Remembering Chase’s reaction, I braced myself for the inevitable explosion of horror, dismay, and vomit, but Jackie just stared.

“Wow,” she said. “Oh, my God .” She glanced at Debs. “Who could do that?”

“A lot of people,” Deborah snarled. “More every day.”

“Wow,” Jackie said again, still looking at the dead girl, and then she frowned. “So what do you do now?”

“Nothing,” Debs said through her teeth. “It’s not my case.”

“Okay, right,” Jackie said with an impatient wave of her hand. “But if it was your case, what would you do?”

Deborah turned away from the body and stared at Jackie. After a very long moment, Jackie ripped her gaze away from the thing in the Dumpster and faced my sister. “What?” she said.

“That doesn’t bother you?” Debs said, nodding at the corpse.

Jackie made a face. “Of course it bothers me,” she said, her voice rich with irritation. “But I’m just trying to be, you know. Professional. I mean, doesn’t it bother you ?”

“It’s my job,” Deborah said.

Jackie nodded. “Exactly,” she said. “And right now it’s my job, too. I need to learn about this. I mean, what. You want me to go all girly-girl, and squeal and pass out?”

Deborah studied her for another long moment. Jackie studied her right back. “No,” Debs said at last. “I guess not.”

Jackie nodded. “All right then,” she said. “So if it’s your case, what do you do now?”

Deborah looked at her. Then she nodded. She jerked her head toward me. “Usually, I talk to him,” she said, and Jackie turned her violet eyes on me. I will not say that my knees went weak and wobbly, but I definitely felt like I should bow, straighten my tuxedo, and hand her an orchid.

“Why him?” she said.

“Dexter is forensics,” Deborah said, “and sometimes he gets lucky, finds something that can help me. Also”-she shrugged-“he’s my brother.”

“Your brother !” she exclaimed with what looked like real delight. “That’s perfect! So you’re the tough cop and he’s the nerd! Just like the show!”

“The preferred term is geek ,” I said. “Although wonk will do in a pinch. But never nerd .”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, and she put a hand on my shoulder. I could feel the warmth of it right through my shirt. “I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m sorry.”

“Um,” I said, horribly aware of her warm hand on my shoulder. “Perfectly all right.”

She smiled and took her hand away. “Good,” she said. “So, um, have you found anything that’s, you know. Something that might help?”

In fact, the only thing I had found was a fondness for having her hand on my shoulder, and for some reason that was tremendously irritating. After all, I had gone my entire life without feeling even a small zephyr from the hurricane winds of human lust-why should I start now, with an unobtainable golden-haired goddess? And seriously, I had much more important things to do, many of them involving duct tape and fillet knives. But I fought down my rising crankiness and, in the spirit of cooperation mandated by Captain Matthews, I gave her an answer.

“In the first place,” I said, “you’re supposed to say, ‘What have you got?’ Not, ‘Um, have you found anything?’ ”

Jackie smiled again. “Okay,” she said, and added, “What have you got?”

“Don’t look so happy,” I said. “It’s kind of a casual, short-tempered snarl. Like this.” I set my face in my very best imitation of Deborah’s Cop Face and said, “What have you got.”

Jackie laughed. It was such an infectiously cheerful sound that for a moment I forgot we were standing by a mutilated corpse dumped on a heap of garbage. “Okay,” she said. “So you’re not just a forensics geek; you’re an acting coach, too, huh? All right. How’s this?” And she twisted her face into a cranky-fish mask that actually looked a lot like Deborah’s expression. “What have you got,” she deadpanned. Then she chuckled again, and I felt an answering smile creeping onto my face.

Deborah, however, did not seem to share our good spirits. She scowled even more, and said, “If you two Twinkies are done clowning around, we still got a chopped-up body here.”

“Oh,” Jackie said, immediately looking serious again. “I’m sorry, Sergeant. Of course you’re right.”

Although I couldn’t help thinking that Debs was a little bit of a buzz-kill, I also knew she was right. And in any case, I didn’t like the bizarre human feelings that Jackie was causing in me. So I gave them both a short, very professional nod, and went back to work.

I had only been working at it for a very short time when I heard someone gag and say, “Oh, Jesus. Oh, my God,” and since I was fairly certain Robert had not come back for another peek at the party, I turned to look at Vince to see what had caused that kind of reaction in someone who was usually so unflappable, even in the face of the most extreme carnage.

Vince had dragged a box over to the Dumpster. He was standing on it and very carefully examining the body, but something had frozen him in place, absolutely motionless, half bent into the Dumpster, and I felt a new hiss of interest from the Passenger.

“What is it,” I asked him, fighting to keep the eagerness out of my voice.

“Oh, holy fuck,” he said. “I can’t believe this.”

“Believe what?” I said, more than a little irritated at the way he had to emote his way through a long dramatic buildup instead of simply answering my question.

“Semen,” he said, shaking his head and turning to face me with a look of complete disgust. “There’s semen in the eye socket.”

I blinked; I have to admit that seemed extreme, even to me. “The eye socket? Are you sure?” I said, and it is an indication of how shocked I was that I said something that stupid.

“I’m sure,” he said, turning back to look at the body once more. “It’s actually in the fucking eye socket, which means- Oh, Jesus Fucking Christ.”

I stepped over beside him and looked again at the shattered remains of the young woman. She was still dead. Vince had turned her head slightly so the far side of her face was now visible, and although it was just as damaged, her other eye had not been torn out. It was wide-open, staring straight ahead at the improbable death that had come for her. I wondered what she had done to bring this kind of monstrous end to her life. Not that I am parroting the Homicidal Rapist Party Line of, She deserved it; she had it coming for dressing like that , and so on. I was quite sure that whoever this young woman had been, she had done nothing to deliberately provoke anything like this.

But there is always something the victim does unconsciously, some special trigger that brings a Passenger up out of the shadows and into the driver’s seat. Every Monster has his own specific flash point that ignites the Need, and it is almost always different.

And every Monster reacts in his own distinctive way, following a program that provides unique satisfaction, a series of rituals that makes sense only to him and ends in the way it absolutely must , no matter how bewildering it may seem to the casual human witness. And when the press and an outraged public recoil in horror and demand a reason, and wail their baffled chorus of, “Why would someone do that ?” those of us in the know can only smile and say, Because . It will never make sense to you, or to anyone else, and it doesn’t need to. It only has to satisfy Me , fulfill My special fantasy. It is an E ticket to a ride with only one seat, Mine , and no one else will ever get to feel this Me-Only roller-coaster thrill, the one thing that provides just Me with the ultimate in satisfaction, and whether it is slowly and joyously slicing up a carefully selected playmate, or butchering a young woman and filling her empty eye socket with semen, it is always the same solo act with the same conclusion of release, satisfaction, fulfillment.