Jeff Lindsay - Dexter by Design

Audience reaction.

If you were interested in the reaction then the quality of the work is not so important, as long as it provokes shock. You would arrange to capture that reaction —for example, on videotape. And perhaps you would use the services of a video professional —someone like, just for example, Kenneth Wimble, whose house Weiss had blown up. It made much more sense to think of Wimble as one of them, rather than a random victim.

And when Weiss had made the jump to full-scale murder, instead of stealing bodies to play with, Wimble had probably gotten squeamish, and Weiss had blown him up in his own house at the same time that he tried to take out irreplaceable me.

But Weiss was still videoing, even without his expert. Because that was what this was about for him. He wanted pictures of people seeing what he had done. More and more he wanted to do it, too with the Scout leader and with Wimble and the attempt on me. But the video, that was what mattered. And he would happily kill to get it.

No wonder the Dark Passenger had been bemused. Ours was very much a hands-on kind of art, and the results were extremely private. Weiss was different. He might want his revenge on me, but he would happily take it indirectly, something the Passenger and I would never consider. To Weiss, the art still mattered. He needed his pictures.

I looked at the last large, full-color rendering of me projected onto the Breakers Hotel. The picture was clearly drawn and you could easily see the basic architecture of the place. The front was U-shaped, with the front door in the center and a wing sticking forward on each side. There was a long mall leading up to the front door, with its rows of royal palm trees, a perfect place for a crowd to gather and gape in horror. Weiss would be there somewhere in the crowd with his camera, getting pictures of the faces.

But as I looked at the picture I realized that even before that, he would want to get a room in one of the wings overlooking the front where the projection was displayed, and he would set up a camera there, something like one of the remote cameras he had used already but this time with a really good lens, to capture the faces of the people watching.

The whole trick would be to stop him before he set things up stop him when he arrived at the hotel. And to do that all I had to do was find out when he checked in. That would be very simple if only I had access to the hotel's records —which I didn't —or knew a way to force my way into them —which I didn't. But as I thought about it, I realized something.

I knew somebody who did.

Kyle Chutsky sat across from me at the same small corner table in the hospital cafe. In spite of the fact that I didn't think he'd left the grounds in several days, he was clean-shaven and wore what seemed to be a clean shirt, and he looked across the table at me with a look of amusement that moved the corners of his mouth up and crinkled the skin around his eyes but did not touch the eyes themselves, which stayed cold and watchful.

“That's funny” he said. “You want me to help you hack in to registration at this hotel, the Breakers? Ha.” He gave a short laugh that was not very convincing. “Why do you think I can help you do that?”

Unfortunately, it was a fair question. I did not, in fact, know that he could help me, not based on anything he had said or done. But the little I did know about Chutsky indicated that he was a member in good standing of the shadow government, the deliberately non monitored and unconnected clan of people who worked for various alphabet agencies that were more or less affiliated with the federal government, and sometimes even with each other. As such, I was quite confident that he would know any number of ways to find out when Weiss registered at the hotel.

But there was the small problem of protocol: that I was not supposed to know and he was not supposed to admit it. To get past that I had to impress him with something that was urgent enough to overcome his instinctive reluctance. I can think of almost nothing more important than the pending demise of Dashing Dexter, but I did not think somehow that Chutsky would share my high self evaluation. He would probably put higher ratings on foolish trifles like national security, world peace, and his own relatively worthless life and limb.

But it occurred to me that he also put a very high rating on my sister, and this provided at least a potential opening. So, with my best artificial manly directness I said, “Kyle —this is the guy that stabbed Deborah.” And in any scene of any macho TV show I have ever seen that would be more than enough; but apparently Chutsky did not watch a great deal of TV. He just raised one eyebrow and said, “So?”

“So” I said, somewhat taken aback, and trying to remember a few more specifics from those scenes on TV, “he's out there, and, um, getting away with it. Uh —and he might do it again.” This time he raised both eyebrows. “You think he might stab Deborah again?” he said.

This was really not going well, not at all the way I'd thought it would. I had assumed that there was some kind of Man-of-Action Code in place, and all I had to do was bring up the subject of direct action and express my eagerness to be up and at “em, and Chutsky would leap to his feet equally eager and we would charge up Pork Chop Hill together. But instead, Chutsky was looking at me as if I had suggested an enema.

“How can you not want to catch this guy?” I said, and I made a little bit of awkward desperation slide into my voice.

“It's not my job” he said. “And it's not your job, either, Dexter. If you think this guy is going to check into this hotel, tell the cops.

They got plenty of guys they can use to stake it out and grab him.

You just got you, buddy —and don't take this wrong, but this could be a little rougher than you are used to.”

“The cops will want to know how I know” I said, and I regretted it instantly.

Chutsky picked it up just as quickly. “Okay. So how do you know?” he said.

There comes a time when even Disingenuous Dexter has to place at least one or two cards face up on the table, and clearly it had arrived. And so, throwing my inborn inhibitions out the window, I said, “He's stalking me.” Chutsky blinked. “What does that mean?” he said.

“It means he wants me dead” I said. “He's made two tries already.”

“And you think he's about to try again? At this hotel, the Breakers?”

“Yes.”

“So why don't you just stay home?” he said.

I am not really being conceited when I say that I am not used to having all the cleverness on the other side of a conversation. But Chutsky was clearly leading in this dance, and Dexter was several laps behind, limping along on two left feet with blisters blossoming on heel and toe. I had walked into this with a very clear picture of Chutsky as a real two-fisted man, even though one of the fists was now a steel hook —but nevertheless the kind of gung-ho, over-the top, damn the torpedoes guy who would leap into battle at the merest suggestion, especially when it concerned getting his hook on the man who had stabbed his true love, my sister Deborah. Clearly, I had miscalculated.

But this left a very large question mark: who was Chutsky, in fact, and how did I get his help? Did I need some cunning stratagem to bend him to my will, or would I have to resort to some form of the unprecedented uncomfortable unspeakable truth? The very thought of committing honesty made me tremble in every leaf and branch —it went against everything I had ever stood for. But there seemed no way out; I would have to be at least marginally truthful.

“If I stay home” I said, “he is going to do something terrible. To me, and maybe the kids.” Chutsky stared at me, then shook his head. “You were making more sense when I thought you wanted revenge” he said. “How can he do anything to you if you're at home and he's in the hotel?” At a certain point you really have to accept the fact that there are days when you have not brought your A game, and this was one of them. I told myself that I was most likely still suffering from my concussion, but my self answered back that this was a pitiful and now overused excuse at best, and with much more self-annoyance than I could remember experiencing for quite some time, I pulled out the notebook I had taken from Weiss's car and flipped it open to the full-color drawing of Dexter the Dominator on the front of the Breakers Hotel.