Jeff Lindsay - Dexter's Final Cut

“I haven’t decided yet,” I said, and I looked at him. He flinched away, and I realized from the sound of my voice and the chilled feeling of my face that Victor was seeing the Real Dexter, seeing him the way very few have seen him and lived. “Where did they go?” I said.

He quivered at the sound of my voice, but he just shook his head. “Don’t know,” he said. “Chase was here this morning and then- Shit, I really don’t know; please, you’re hurting me.”

I looked at him just a moment longer. He was much too scared, drunk, and deflated to lie, so I let go of him and stood up.

“Fuck,” Victor said, rubbing his shoulders, “scared the shit outta me.”

I glanced back at him from the door of the trailer. “Fuck,” he said again, and as I turned away he was picking up his glass.

I went out of Victor’s trailer and left the magical world of show business behind me forever. No more lights, cameras, and squibs, and finding my mark. No more adoring crowds and sunset mojitos and chauffeured Town Cars. Farewell to the grips and gaffers and extras. And adios to hiring pedophiles because they’re popular, and pretending that anything is okay if it helps the ratings and you don’t actually see anything wrong.

And good-bye forever to the new me in a flimsy gaudy setting that was all bright colors and happy lies on the surface, and nothing but sickness and death underneath where it counts, just like everything else in this vile rotten world. There would be no escape for me, no hope of happiness, no new career.

Dexter’s Debut had been derailed.

I headed for my car. I wasn’t sure yet where I was going, but at least it would be away from this.

When I got to my car I still didn’t know where to go. It seemed fairly appropriate for the total moron I had turned out to be: clueless, aimless, hopeless. The Avatar of Idiocy. No idea where to go, but an urgent need to go there fast. So naturally I just sat in my car and rested my forehead on the wheel. It wasn’t much, but at least it wasn’t destroying anybody close to me.

How could this be me? How could so much cool and clever confidence turn into this sorry heap of used and brainless body parts? Dexter the Doofus, who had blithely introduced Astor to a pedophile and encouraged them to play together; Dexter the Dim, who set up Jackie to be killed, and then left her alone with the killer-a killer who had been right under my nose for more than a week, and I’d never had a clue. Dexter the Destroyer, who left suffering and misery and death in his wake and moved happily on, unaware of everything behind-and apparently everything ahead, too. It was just plain luck that I hadn’t strangled myself trying to tie my shoes.

And I couldn’t even believe it was an aberration, a hasty left turn off a well-traveled path of cunning. I had screwed up everything in sight so effortlessly, naturally, and thoroughly that I had to believe this was the real Me emerging at last. I’d been lucky for a long stretch, never really noticing what a dolt I truly was, but my luck had finally run out, and here I was, stuck being the worst possible Me at a time when I needed most to be the smooth and clever engine of destruction I had always been before, if only in my imagination.

And so, with the world crashing around me in flames, here was me, sitting motionless in my car, massaging my temples and wondering where all the thoughts had gone. Astor could be anywhere. Robert might have taken her to his special resort in Mexico, or out to L.A., or anyplace in between. He could be doing terrible things to her right now, while she pleaded and squirmed and wondered why help didn’t come. But Help, in the form of Dexter, was not going to come, because it didn’t know where to go-and that might be a real stroke of luck for her, considering how I’d done so far. And of course, how I was doing now, too, because sitting here telling myself I was a dolt was no help to anyone, even if it was true.

So think, Dexter: Try really hard to make something new and wonderful happen in that dull unmoving sandbox in your skull. Try for an actual thought, a genuine idea, before it’s too late for Astor, too-if it isn’t already .

Nothing came. That was not a surprise to me, in my current state of overwhelming idiocy. I should just accept the fact that I was mentally deficient and learn to be happy. Maybe buy a banjo. Because I had no clue at all where they might be, and not even the glimmer of a hint of how to find out. I could only hope that somewhere along the way, somehow, somebody would stumble over the two of them and get Astor away from Robert. Clearly it wouldn’t be me. I couldn’t find them if they fell out of a tree and landed on my head. Even Rita had a better chance. At least she’d had a whatchacallit, one of them idea things.…

And maybe that idea had panned out. Maybe her luck was running better than mine. It couldn’t be a lot worse, not unless she’d accidentally set herself on fire. So I pulled out my phone and called Rita, mostly because I was such an unvarnished blockhead that I couldn’t think of anything else.

But Rita’s phone rang and rang and went right to voice mail. Wherever she’d gone, she was still there. Did that mean she’d found them? Or was she just stuck in traffic? And where had she gone, anyway?

I tapped on the message she’d left earlier, and listened to it again. It hadn’t changed at all. The only part of it that gave even a faint whiff of a hint was when she said, “… you said she might come home, and I thought, that’s right, she might, but maybe not-and so anyway, I’ll just be gone for twenty minutes.…”

“Come home but not” was typical Rita-ese, so convoluted and incomplete that it might mean almost anything. But I had been struggling to understand her for many years now, and I thought I could interpret. Of course, thought was proving to be a dangerous and alien activity for me, but I tried it anyway, and I took “home but not” and added it to “gone for twenty minutes,” and there was only one thing it could mean. It was probably the wrong thing, but what I came up with was our new house. Home but not home, a ten-minute drive away, and definitely a place that Astor would want to go.

Of course, I had to assume that Astor had some say in where they went, but I knew how persuasive she was, or, failing that, how very stubborn. And Robert would be desperate to find a place where he could lie low. He was new at all this-except, apparently, for the pedophilia-and he would assume that the whole world was on his trail. So he’d want to find someplace quiet and unexpected, a place nobody would think to look. And ever-helpful Astor could very well suggest a place where she felt secure: the unoccupied, surrounded-by-hedges, complete-with-Her-Own-Room, very quiet New House.

And one last little shard of something that might have been thought clattered onto the floor of the dusty unused Ballroom of Dexter’s Brain: If Robert and Astor had gone there to hide out, and if Rita went there and found them, Robert would not smile, autograph a picture, and send her on her way. He would, in fact, do all he could to keep her from leaving again and giving up his location. He would, very probably, tie or tape her securely. And if he had any sense at all he would gag her, too. Then he would put her in a closet, or in a bathroom, and leave her while he watched his back trail and waited to see who or what might be coming after him.

And taking everything into consideration, there was only one person left who could come after him: Me. This was not good news for the good guys, considering my recent track record, but there was no one else. And if there had been someone else, I wouldn’t want them anyway.