Dexter 4 - Dexter by Design (20 page)

The list of people who could not be considered friendly was certainly growing: Doakes, Coulter, Salguero, and now the FBI.

And of course, Weiss himself. He was still out there, and he still wanted to get at me to get his revenge. Would he come after the children again, limping out of the shadows to grab them, perhaps wearing Kevlar pants and a groin protector this time? If so, I would have to stay with the kids until it was over, which was not the best way to catch him —especially not if he tried something different.

And if he wanted to kill me, staying with Cody and Astor endangered them; judging by his exploding house trick, he clearly didn't worry about collateral damage.

But I did —I had to. I was worried about the children, and protecting them was a top priority. It was a very strange epiphany, to realize that I was concerned with their safety as much as with protecting my secret identity. It did not fit with how I thought of myself, how I had built up my careful self-image. Of course, I had always taken special delight in tracking down predators who preyed on children, but I had never really thought about why that was. And certainly I planned to do my duty to Cody and Astor, both as their stepfather and, far more importantly, as their guide onto the Harry Path. But to see myself spinning in mother-hen circles at the thought of someone trying to hurt them was new and somewhat unsettling.

So, stopping Weiss was important in a brand new way. I was Daddy Dexter now, and I had to do it for the children, as well as for myself, and I was experiencing a surge of something dangerously close to emotion at the thought of any attempt to harm them.

All right; then I clearly had to figure out Weiss's next move and try to stop him before he could pull it off. I picked up his notebook and flipped through the drawings one more time, perhaps unconsciously hoping I had missed something before —an address where I could find Weiss, perhaps, or even a suicide note. But the pages were still the same, and truthfully the novelty had worn off and I took no real joy in looking at the pictures of me. I have never been all that interested in looking at me, and looking at me in a series of pictures intended to depict me as I really am to the world at large took any possible vestigial joy out of it.

On top of all the other unfairness, it did not really seem to add up to very much at all —certainly not enough to justify all the trouble it was causing me. I suppose I would have objected even if it was the Mona Lisa, if it had my face. And this was very far from being the Mona Lisa. It seemed to have been sketched out idly and then, on the last page, thrown together without any real soul searching.

Of course, the point was to expose me, not to create a great work of art —or was it? I paused and studied several of the detail drawings, the ones depicting the other elements of the display. It may sound self-centered for me to say so since they were competing for space with the pictures of me, but they were really not very interesting. You could probably call them clever, but no more.

They lacked any real originality and seemed rather lifeless —even for dead bodies.

And to be brutally honest, even the pictures of me were something any talented high school kid might have done. They might be projected in huge scale on the front of the Breakers Hotel, but they were not in the same class as anything I had seen so recently in Paris —not even the stuff in the small galleries. Of course, there was that last piece, “Jennifer's Leg'. It had used amateurish videos, too but there the whole point had been the audience's reaction and not the ...

For a moment there was absolute silence in Dexter's brain, a silence so thick it obscured everything else. And then it rolled away to reveal a jabbering little monkey of a thought.

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.

“Like this” I said. “If he can't kill me he'll get me arrested for murder.”

Chutsky studied the picture for a long moment, and then whistled quietly. “Boy howdy” he said. “And these things down here around the bottom ...”

“Dead bodies” I said. “Fixed up like the ones that Deborah was investigating when this man stabbed her.”

“Why would he do this?” he said.

“It's a kind of art” I said. I mean, he thinks it is.”

“Yeah, but why would he do this to you, buddy?”

“The guy that was arrested when Deborah was stabbed” I said. I kicked him hard, right in the head. That was his boyfriend.”

“Was?” said Chutsky. “Where is he now?” I have never really seen the point in self-mutilation —after all, life itself is on the job and doing really well at it. But if I could have taken back that word “was” by biting down hard on my own tongue, I would cheerfully have done so. However, it had been said and I was stuck with it, and so floundering about for a small chunk of my formerly sharp wit I found a little piece of it and came out with, “He skipped bail and disappeared'.

“And this guy blames you because his boyfriend took off?” 1 guess so” I said.

Chutsky looked at me and then looked down at the drawing again. “Listen, buddy” he said. “You know this guy, and I know you gotta go with your gut feeling. It's always worked for me, nine times out of ten. But this is, I don't know.” He shrugged. “Kind of, really thin, don't you think?” He flipped a finger at the picture. “But anyway, you were right about one thing. If he's going to do this, you do need my help. A lot more than you thought.”

“What do you mean?” I asked politely.

Chutsky smacked the drawing with the back of his hand. This hotel” he said. “It isn't the Breakers. It's the Hotel Nacional. In Havana.” And seeing that Dexter's mouth was hanging open in a most unbecoming way he added, “You know, Havana. The one in Cuba.”

“But that's not possible” I said. I mean, I've been there. That's the Breakers.”

He smiled at me, the irritating, superior kind of smile that I would love to try sometime when I'm not in disguise. “You didn't read your history, did you?” he said.

I don't think this chapter was assigned. What are you talking about?”

“Hotel Nacional and the Breakers are built from the same blueprint, to save money” he said. “They're virtually identical.”

“Then why are you so sure this isn't the Breakers?”

“Lookit” Chutsky said. “Look at the old cars. Pure Cuba. And see the little golf cart thing, with the bubble top? That's a Coco Loco, and you only find “em there, not Fort Lauderdale. And the vegetation. That stuff on the left? You don't see that at the Breakers.

Definitely only in Havana.” He dropped the notebook and leaned back. “So actually, I'd say problem solved, buddy.”

“Why would you say that?” I said, irritated both at his attitude and at the lack of any sense in what he said.

Chutsky smiled. “It's just too hard for an American to get over there” he said. I don't think he could pull it off.” A small nickle dropped through the slot and a light went on in Dexter's brain. “He's Canadian” I said.

“All right” he said stubbornly. “So he could go down there.” He shrugged. “But hey —you maybe don't remember that things are sort of tight down there? I mean —there's no way he gets away with anything like this.” He smacked the notebook with the back of his hand again. “Not in Cuba. The cops would be all over him like ...” Chutsky frowned and thoughtfully raised his bright silver hook toward his face. He caught himself just before he put the hook into his eye. “Unless ...” he said.

“What?” I said.

He shook his head slightly. “This guy's pretty smart, right?”

“Well” I said grudgingly, I know he thinks so.”

“So he's gotta know. Which maybe means” Chutsky said, politely refusing to finish a sentence with anything resembling a noun. He fumbled out his phone, one of those larger ones with the bigger screen. Holding it in place on the table with his hook, he began to poke rapidly at the keyboard with a finger, muttering, “Damn ...

okay ... Uh-huh” and other bright observations under his breath.

I could see that he had Google on the screen, but nothing else was legible from across the table. “Bingo” he said at last.

“What?”

He smiled, clearly pleased with how smart he was. “They do all these festivals down there” he said. “To prove how sophisticated and free they are.” He pushed the phone across the table at me. “Like this one” he said.

I pulled the phone to me and read the screen. “Festival Internacional de Artes Multimedia” I said, scrolling down.

“It starts in three days” Chutsky said. “And whatever this guy does —projectors or film clips or whatever —the cops will have orders to back off and let him do his thing. For the festival.”

“And the press will be there” I said. “From all over the world.

Perfect.” And it was —it would provide Weiss with a free pass to set up his awful project, and then deliver all the attention he so desperately craved, all in one gift-wrapped holiday package. Which did not seem like it could possibly be a good thing for me. Especially since he knew that I could not get to Cuba to stop him.

“All right” Chutsky said. “It might make sense. But why are you so sure he will go there?” It was, unfortunately, a fair question. I thought about it. First of all, was I really sure? Casually, not wanting to startle Chutsky in any way, I sent a careful, silent question mark to the Dark Passenger. Are we sure about this? I asked.

Oh, yes, it said with a sharp-toothed smirk. Quite sure.

All right, then. That was settled. Weiss would go to Cuba to expose Dexter. But I needed something a little more convincing than silent certainty; what proof did I really have, aside from the drawings, which were probably not admissible in a court of law? It was true that some of them were very interesting —the image of the woman with the six breasts, for example, was the kind of thing that really stuck in your head.

I remembered that drawing, and this time there was a nearly audible CLANG as a very, very big nickel dropped.

There had been a piece of paper wedged into the binding at the page in question.

It had listed airline flights from Havana to Mexico.

Just exactly the kind of thing you might like to know about if, for example, you thought you would need to leave Havana in a hurry. If, just hypothetically, you had just scattered some unusual dead bodies around in front of the city's flagship five star hotel.

I reached for the notebook, fished out the flight schedule, and flipped the paper onto the table. “He'll be there” I said.

Chutsky picked up the paper and unfolded it. “Cubana Aviacion” he read.

“From Havana to Mexico” I said. “So he can do it and then get out in a hurry.”

“Maybe” he said. “Uh-huh, could be.” He looked up at me and cocked his head to one side. “What's your gut telling you?” Truthfully, the only thing my gut ever told me was that it was dinner time. But it was obviously very important to Chutsky, and if I stretched the definition of “gut” to include the Passenger, my gut was telling me that there was absolutely no doubt about it. “He'll be there,” I said again.

Chutsky frowned and looked down at the drawing again. Then he started nodding his head, slowly at first and then with increasing energy. “Uh-huh,” he said, and then he looked up, flipped the flight schedule to me, and stood up. “Let's go talk to Deborah,” he said.

Deborah was lying in her bed, which should not really have been a surprise. She was staring at the window, even though she couldn't see out from her bed, and in spite of the fact that the television was on and broadcasting scenes of unearthly merriment and happiness. Debs didn't seem interested in the cheerful music and cries of bliss coming from the speaker, however. In fact, if you were to judge strictly from the look on her face, you would have to say she had never felt happiness in her life, and never intended to if she could help it. She glanced at us without interest as we came in, just long enough to identify us, and then looked back in the direction of the window.

“She's feeling kind of low,” Chutsky muttered to me. “Happens sometimes after you get chopped up.” From the number of scars all over Chutsky's face and body I had to assume he knew what he was talking about, so I just nodded and approached Deborah.

“Hey sis” I said, in the kind of artificially cheerful voice I had always understood you were supposed to use at an invalid's bedside.