Jeff Lindsay - Double Dexter

It s pretty big news, I said. The guy was making everybody very jumpy. Are you sure you got the right psycho?

Yeah, it s him, she said happily.

Richard Kovasik. No question about it. She nuzzled Nicholas again.

How did you find him? I said.

Oh, she said without looking up. I got a match back from IAFIS. You know, on the fingerprint.

I blinked, and for a moment I couldn t think of a single thing to say. In fact, what she d said was so unlikely that I found it very hard to remember how to speak at all. That s not possible, I blurted out at last. You can t get a match on a partial in six hours.

Oh, well, she said. I pulled a few strings.

Deborah, it s a national database. There aren t any strings to pull.

She shrugged, still smiling at Nicholas. Yeah, well, I had one, she said. I called a friend of Chutsky s, inside the Beltway. He got them to hustle it through for me.

Oh, I said, which I admit was not terribly witty, but it was just about all I could come up with under the circumstances. And it added up; Chutsky, her departed boyfriend, had many connections in all the Washington organizations with three letters for their names. And, um, you re absolutely positive it s the right guy?

Oh, yeah, no question, she said. There were a couple of possible matches, you know it was just a partial print but Kovasik was the only one with a history of psychotic violence, so it was kind of a no-brainer. And he even works for a building demolition company up in Opa-locka, so the hammer s a match, too.

You took him down at his job? I said.

She smiled, half at the memory of the arrest and half at Nicholas, who was doing nothing more interesting than staring at her with adoration. Yeah, she said, touching the baby s nose with her finger. Right across the street from Benny s.

What were you doing at Benny s? I said.

Oh, she said without looking up. It s almost five o clock, and we got the match on the print, but he s listed as transient, and we got no place to look for the guy. Kovasik, she added, in case I had already forgotten the name.

Okay, I said, brilliantly concealing my impatience.

So Duarte is like, Five o clock, let s stop for a beer. She made a face. Which is a little hard-core for me, but he s the first partner I ve had that I can stand.

I noticed, I said. He seems very nice.

She snorted; Nicholas flinched a little at the sound, and she cooed at him for a second. He s not nice, she said. But I can work with him. So I say fine, and we stop for a beer at Benny s.

That explains it, I said. And it did; Benny s was one of those bars that was unofficially For Cops Only, the kind of place that would make you very uncomfortable if you wandered in without a badge. A lot of cops stopped there on their way home from work, and some of them had even been known to pop in for a quick unauthorized snort during working hours a stop that would never be logged in. If Klein and Gunther had gone to Benny s right before they were killed, it would explain why there was no record of where they had been when they were killed.

So we pull up in front, she said, and there s this taco wagon parked across the street. And I don t even think about it until I hear this kind of boom from the old office building over there. And then I look again and I see the sign, Tacos, and I think, No fucking way.

I was a little bit irritated. It was very late, and either I was too tired to follow her story, or it really wasn t making sense. Debs, is this going somewhere? I said, trying not to sound as peevish as I felt.

A boom, Dexter, she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Like from a hammer. Hitting a wall? She raised her eyebrows at me. Because they are tearing out the insides of the building across the street from Benny s, she said. With hammers and a taco wagon out front. And at last I began to understand.

No way, I said.

She nodded her head firmly. Way, she said.

Totally way. They got a couple of guys working in there, ripping out the walls, and they are using these big hammers.

Club hammers, I said, remembering what Vince had called them.

Whatever, Deborah said. So Duarte and I go over there, just thinking it s totally impossible but we gotta check it out? And I barely get my badge out when this guy just goes nuts and comes at me with his hammer. I shoot him twice and the son of a bitch still swings the goddamned thing and gets me on the arm. She closed her eyes and leaned against the doorframe.

Two slugs in him and he would have swung it again and crushed my head if Duarte hadn t Tasered him.

Nicholas said something that sounded like, Blub-blub, and Deborah straightened and shifted her baby s weight awkwardly in her arm.

I looked at my sister, so tired and yet so happy, and I admit I felt a little envious. And the whole thing still seemed unreal and incomplete to me, and I couldn t really believe it had happened without me. It was as if I had put only one word in a crossword puzzle and someone else finished it when I turned my back. Even more embarrassing, I actually felt a little bit guilty that I hadn t been there, even though I wasn t invited. Debs had been in danger without me, and that felt wrong. Completely stupid and irrational, not at all like me, but there it was.

So is the guy going to live? I said, thinking it would be a shame if he did.

Shit, yes, they even had to sedate him, Deborah said. Unbelievably strong, doesn t feel pain if Alex hadn t gotten the cuffs on him right away he would have hit me again. And he shook off the Taser in, like, three seconds. A total psycho. And with a smile of tired fulfillment, she hugged Nicholas tighter, pushing his little face into her neck.

But he s locked up safe and sound, and it s over. It s him. I got him, she said, and she rocked the baby back and forth gently. Mommy got the bad guy, she said again, more musically this time, like it was part of a lullaby for Nicholas.

Well, I said, and I realized that it was at least the third time I d said well since Deborah arrived. Was I really so flustered that I couldn t even manage basic conversation? You caught the Hammer Killer. Congratulations, sis.

Yeah, thanks, she said, and then she frowned and shook her head. Now if I can only make it through the next couple of days.

It might have been that the painkillers were making her incoherent, but I didn t know what she meant. Is your arm painful? I said.

This? she said, holding up the cast. I ve had worse. She shrugged and then made a terrible face. No. It s Matthews, she said. Fucking reporters are making a big deal of it, and Matthews is ordering me to play along because it s fucking great PR. She sighed heavily, and Nicholas said, Blat! quite distinctly and hit his mother s nose. She nuzzled him again and said, I fucking hate that shit.

Oh. Of course, I said, and now it made sense. Deborah was totally inept with public relations, departmental politics, routine ass kissing, and any aspect of police work that didn t involve finding or shooting bad guys. If she d been even half-good at dealing with people, she d probably already be Division Chief at the least. But she wasn t, and here she was again in the middle of a situation that called for fake smiles and bullshitting, two talents that were as alien to her as a Klingon mating dance. Clearly she needed a warning from someone who knew the steps. Since Nicholas couldn t even say his own name, that left me.

Well, I said cautiously, you re probably going to be in the spotlight for a couple of days.

Yeah, I know, she said. Lucky me.

It wouldn t hurt to play the game a little, Debs, I said, and I admit that I was getting a little cranky now, too. You know the right words: The entire Miami-Dade team did outstanding work in their tireless effort to apprehend this suspect