Jeff Lindsay - Dexter's Final Cut

A tiny little video clip popped onto the screen in Dexter’s personal viewing room: a few days ago at wardrobe, and Kathy slapping Renny, storming away from him, yelling something like, “Next time I’ll tell everybody!”

Another little clip: Renny staring at me as a dark and leathery shadow of a Something flaps its wings behind his eyes.

And another: Renny looking out at the audience at his special with that same look, a look I knew so well because it was a killer’s look, and I practiced every day to hide mine with convincingly meek fake smiles.

And Renny going after the heckler with an aggressive attack that could only be called lethal, flashing his true killer colors for all to see.

Renny.

It all added up: He had a motive, whatever the details were, and I knew he had that special thing inside that would make killing a simple and viable option. And so to hide this something, it didn’t matter what, he had killed Kathy-and then thrown up, according to Vince, when he saw the mess he’d made? But still killed Jackie, too, in spite of this revulsion, which he should not feel if he actually had a Dark Passenger?

The roaring freight train of Dexter’s Deduction slammed to a halt. It didn’t make sense. Nobody capable of routine murder could possibly throw up at the sight of what he’d done. And anyway, how did that connect to the most important fact, Jackie’s death?

All right, maybe it wasn’t Renny. But I still had two bodies, and I was sure they were connected. So I put Renny aside for a moment and tried to get the train back on the tracks.

Somebody, possibly not Renny, killed Kathy and took her phone to keep something from getting out. And then in spite of not enjoying it, which seemed a waste, they had killed Jackie. For the same reason? But they already had the phone, so why bother?

Anderson stomped by me and out the door of the trailer, and I looked over to where Angel was calmly, methodically combing through the area around Jackie’s body, directly in front of the big box of Kathy’s stuff. Somewhere a small brass coin dropped into a slot with a soft chiming sound, and I blinked.

I went over to Angel. He looked up briefly, then back to a chunk of carpet he was putting into an evidence bag. “Go away,” he said. “You are bad juju.”

“I need to see something,” I said.

“No,” he said. “Anderson might shoot me.”

“It will only take a second,” I said. “It’s very important.”

Angel rocked back onto his heels and looked up at me, clearly deciding whether I was worth the risk. “What?” he said at last.

I nodded at the big cardboard box behind him. “The computer,” I said. “Is it still in the case?”

He looked at me a moment longer, and then sighed heavily. He leaned over to the box, where the black nylon computer case perched on the top of the pile. With one rubber-gloved finger he flipped the case open. “No,” he said. “No computer.” He took away his finger and the case flopped shut. “Should it be there?”

“It was there this morning,” I said.

“Shit,” he said. “Well, I didn’t take it.”

“No,” I said. “But somebody did.”

Angel sighed heavily, clearly unhappy that a computer might be missing when he had forensic lead. “Is it important?” he said.

“I think so,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because it’s an Apple,” I said.

Angel shook his head. “Dexter, coño , come on.”

“Thanks, Angel.”

He sighed again and returned to his hands and knees. “I don’t think I like you anymore,” he said.

I went back to my post by the refrigerator, rather pleased with myself. Now I knew why Jackie had been killed. Because if you have an Apple smartphone and an Apple computer, you synch them, so all the data on the phone goes onto the computer. And Jackie had turned on the computer, seen the appointment, and been killed for it.

But if Kathy had kept up with her updates, all that data would have been copied into the cloud, too, which meant that it should still be up there, incriminating appointment and all. But Kathy’s cloud account couldn’t be accessed by anybody else, not without her password. And by taking away the laptop, the killer had made sure that the information was out of reach.

I did not quite pat myself on the back, but I was very pleased. I had figured out almost everything-except, of course, the one tiny, unimportant detail of who the killer was.

I tried to make Renny fit again, and he really did, almost. But finally, I could not believe that anybody with a Passenger could throw up after the simple, relaxing, and often pleasant act of killing somebody.

On the other hand, if I eliminated Renny, who did that leave? Maybe Renny had thrown up because he’d eaten some bad oysters. It had to be Renny-there was nobody else who fit at all. In any case, I certainly had to poke around into his immediate past and see whether he fit. Maybe get Deborah to check into it, and …

Deborah. Apparently she was still not speaking to me, for the most part, and she would not be any easier to approach now, with Anderson leading his clown parade all over everything and flinging her out the door. It seemed unlikely that her ejection from the scene had softened her up so she was ready to forgive and forget.

Still, I had a lead she could use, and she was a cop down to the very marrow of her bones. She wanted to solve this thing-even more since it was Anderson’s case. And it was at least possible that she would want to shove Anderson’s face in the mud more than she wanted to avoid me. It was worth a try.

Of course, I could not try as long as I was standing here beside the refrigerator waiting for Anderson to come back and intimidate me. I needed to be out and about, and so I thought about my curious new position as a Person of Interest. Nobody had actually told me to stay put, don’t leave town, retain an attorney. I had simply stayed around out of the reflexive urge to be useful somehow. Clearly, that was not going to happen-unless giving Anderson something to glare at is considered useful. So I looked around to see if anybody was watching me; nobody was, and I slipped nonchalantly out the door of the trailer.

Deborah was pacing back and forth outside, and she paused to watch me come down the three steps. For a moment I thought she was going to say something, and maybe she did, too. But she didn’t speak. She just shook her head and turned away to resume her pacing.

“Deborah,” I said to her back.

She stopped walking and her shoulders hunched up toward her ears. Then she turned and looked at me with a much more convincing version of the hostile look Anderson had attempted. “What,” she said.

“I think I know who killed Jackie,” I said.

She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she shook her head. “Go tell Anderson,” she said.

“I’d rather tell you,” I said. “So maybe some good will come of it.”

She looked at me with her head tilted to one side. “You’re not going to bribe me into some goddamn forgive-and-forget Kodak moment, Dexter. You fucked up big-time, and now because of you Jackie is dead and Rita is-what?” she said, and her words got hotter as she spoke. “Did you kill her yet, Dexter? Because that would make sense to you, wouldn’t it?”

“Deborah, for Christ’s sake-”

“It makes more sense than walking away and leaving her alive to fuck things up later, doesn’t it?”

“I didn’t kill-”

“And if you didn’t, now what? You still leave Rita and your three kids, now that you shit all over your brand-new bed? Or do you crawl back and try to pretend it never happened? Because she may take you back-but I don’t know if I will.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll go tell Anderson.” And because I can play the game, too, I added, “And he will fuck it up, and a killer will get away because you’re too busy having a hissy fit to do anything about it.”