Dexter's Final Cut (11 page)

“Tell them to stay home,” I said. “We have enough of our own shooters in Miami.” I looked around the room, and it felt a little bit empty. “Where’s Jackie?”

Debs waved a hand. “She had an interview,” she said. “Matthews told her she could use the conference room.”

Before I could arrange my face to show that I was impressed by Matthews letting anyone use his conference room, Robert blurted out, “Interview? With who?”

It might have been my imagination, but it seemed to me that his face lost a little bit of color, and he definitely looked unhappy.

“She didn’t say who,” Deborah said. “One of the magazines, I think.”

“Magazine,” Robert said. “Like a local one?” he added hopefully.

“The captain would never let her use the conference room for a local magazine,” Debs told him, and she said it with such a complete lack of expression that I realized she had picked up on Robert’s apprehension and was playing him a little.

“Shit,” he said. “They should have— She really didn’t say which one? I’ll be right back,” he said, heading for the door. “Gotta call my agent.”

Debs and I watched him go, and I said, “You have a very nice wicked streak, sis.”

She nodded, stone-faced. “It passes the time,” she said. She turned
to her computer, and after scrabbling at the keyboard for a moment, she said, “Case files are here.” She frowned and hit a few more keys, mumbling, “Goddamn it” under her breath; my sister had many sterling qualities, but computer competence was not one of them. Even so, after a moment her printer began to whir, and she pushed back from the computer with a look of satisfaction.

“New York got here first,” she said.

“Naturally,” I said, and I leaned forward to look at the pages as the printer spit them out. The first few pages came out quickly; they were standard typed cop report, and Deborah snatched them up and began to read eagerly. Page three took a long time to print—a photograph, probably of the victim as she had been found—and I waited impatiently as it came out one line at a time. It finally sputtered all the way out and I grabbed it eagerly.

Nowadays, digital technology has made police photography much more colorful and detailed than in days of yore. My adoptive father, Harry, had been forced to look at grainy black-and-white pictures of dead bodies. It can’t have been nearly as much fun. Because of the high-resolution color cameras we use now, I could see the wonderful rainbow of pigments left by the various punches, bites, and slashes on the body, ranging from bright pink down through the spectrum to deep purple. In fact, the image was clear enough that I could make out the mark of individual teeth in one of the bites, and I made a mental note to tell Deborah to check dental records for a match.

I studied the picture carefully, looking for any hints that might tell me something new. The similarities were striking. This victim, like ours, was a young woman who had almost certainly been attractive before the series of unfortunate events that had led to this picture. She had a very nice, trim figure, and shoulder-length hair of the same golden color our local victim had. I worked my way down the body, noticing that the knife wounds were in the same places, and I was so engrossed that it was several moments before I became aware of a soft floral aroma nearby, and realized that somebody was standing behind me. I glanced up quickly, startled, to see that Jackie had come silently back into the room and was standing very close to me,
peering around my shoulder at the photograph. Her hair was down now, hanging around her face in a way that was disturbingly like the victim’s. “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t hear you.”

“I was a Girl Scout,” she said. “Merit badge in woodcraft.” She didn’t move away, and for a very long moment I forgot about the photo in my hand and just inhaled the subtle perfume she was wearing. Jackie finally reached a finger around me and tapped the picture. “This is different,” she said. “I mean, it’s not the one we’ve been working on.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“What is it?” she said, sliding her finger down the image of the body.

“We got an answer to the query Deborah sent out,” I said.

“Really,” Jackie said. “I thought it was supposed to take a while?”

“It always does,” I said. “Unless it’s a really high-profile case.”

“What would make it high-profile?” she said.

“A lot of things,” I said. “She might be somebody’s daughter.”

“Almost certainly,” Jackie murmured.

“Or it could just be because she’s young, pretty, not a hooker.”

Jackie looked up and raised one eyebrow at me. “And white?”

I nodded. “Sure. But nobody ever admits that. How did you know?”

She looked back at the picture. “I did an after-school special about that,” she said. “An African American girl goes missing, and the family can’t get the cops to do anything.”

“I’m sure they did something,” I said. “Just not as much.”

“Where did this come from?” she asked.

“New York,” I told her, and I realized that this was a wonderful opportunity to further her forensic education. And to be truthful, I didn’t want her to move away, either. So I added, “How many things do you see that are different?”

She glanced up at me and gave me a quizzical half smile. “What, like one of those puzzles for kids? How many things are not the same?”

“This is the homicide version,” I said. “For grown-ups.”

“All right,” she said, and she began to study the picture in earnest. She bent her head forward so that her hair brushed against my bare
arm. She pulled it back and tucked it behind her ear, revealing her neck, and I could see the pulse fluttering in her carotid artery.

“Vegas,” Deborah said. She said it softly, under her breath, but I still jumped; I’d forgotten there was someone else in the room. Debs gave the keyboard a few more irritated pokes and the second file began to print. Once again the first few pages were the report, and they whirred out quickly. When the photograph finally slid out I stepped around Jackie and grabbed it, and it was just like the other two: a young woman with a good, athletic figure and shoulder-length golden hair. There could no longer be any question about the pattern; now it was a matter of trying to figure out
why
this specific type was necessary.

“I found something,” Jackie said, pointing at the picture. I looked at where her finger rested on the victim’s face. There was nothing there but smooth skin.

“What?” I said.

“Well,” Jackie said, “the Miami victim has a slash mark here. Lemme see Vegas.” She held out her hand, and I gave her the second picture, leaning in to look with her. “Yeah, see? This one has it, too. Just one quick slash, right across the face.” She looked up at me, her violet eyes bright. “What does that mean?”

“Anger,” I said.

“About what?” she said. “Because right there on the face is like—”

But before she could say anything more, Robert came bustling back into the room.

“I’m going to have to wrap up here early,” he said happily. “I got
Screen Time
magazine in ninety minutes.” He waited for somebody to congratulate him, but nobody did, so he nodded at the papers Deborah held, frowned, and said, “Is there anything in the report? You think it’s our guy?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Deborah said. “It’s pretty much the same handwriting.” And maybe because I had already complimented her on her wicked streak, she added, “Take a look at the pictures; see for yourself.”

Jackie looked up at him expectantly and held out the pictures. Robert stared at her, and then his jaw muscles tightened and he leaned forward and took them. He swallowed, visibly steeled himself,
and began to look them over. “Jesus,” he said. “Oh, my God.” He handed the pictures back to Jackie. “Sure looks like the same guy. I mean, there couldn’t be two guys doing like that, right?”

“Probably not,” Deborah said.

“So, what do we do with this stuff?” Robert said.

“We compare all three,” I said.

“Right,” Robert said, nodding. “What are we looking for?”

“We don’t know until we see it,” I said. “But he’s done this three times, and every time the odds increase that he made a mistake, left some kind of clue.”

“Okay,” Robert said. He raised his eyebrows and added, “Hey, I did this feature a few years back? I played an alcoholic detective, and there’s a serial killer killing young girls. And this guy, my character, he’s divorced? But he has a daughter, and it turns out the killer is stalking
her
, so I have to go sober and catch the killer before my daughter is killed.” He shrugged. “Low-budget thing, Israeli money. But very authentic, and it got great reviews.” Deborah cleared her throat and Robert flashed her a quick smile. “Right. Sorry. Anyway,” he said, “he looks at
when
the serial killer strikes, you know. He sets up a time line, and it turns out he kills somebody every six weeks? So I set up a trap for the guy at the right time, and that’s how I catch him.” He looked at Deborah, and when she didn’t say anything, he looked at me. “So I thought, maybe it turns out to be nothing, but should we do that with this one?”

“Why?” Jackie said. “We don’t even know what city he’ll do it in next time. So how does it help to know when?”

“We could just look,” Robert said stubbornly. He raised an eyebrow at me and said, with a kind of boyish eagerness, “Whaddaya say, Dexter?”

I couldn’t think of any way that knowing the interval between kills could possibly tell Robert anything useful. On the other hand, Robert happy and busy was a lot easier to take than Robert sulking. “All right,” I said. “It can’t actually hurt anything.”

Deborah shrugged and held out the two reports. “Knock yourself out,” she told me.

I took the reports from Debs, and Robert came over and stood beside me, forcing Jackie to step away. She moved to Deborah’s desk
and leaned one haunch on the corner, while Robert bent over the pages I was holding. He didn’t smell nearly as good as Jackie.

“All right,” he mumbled, and he scrabbled at the pages, trying to see all of them at the same time.

I pushed the papers at him. “Here,” I said. “Vegas is on top, New York under that.” He grabbed the papers and leaned on the windowsill again, studying them.

“Right, right,” he said softly, and then he frowned and shook his head. “No, that doesn’t make sense. September 2012 in New York, then Las Vegas in June 2013, and now October in Miami.” He looked up, disappointment visible on his face. “It doesn’t work out,” he said. “The interval is different.”

“Oh, well,” I said.

He stared at the papers some more, trying to make them behave, but it didn’t seem to work. “Well, shit,” he said at last. “I guess it was a long shot.”

Nobody argued with that. Robert leaned over and tossed the papers on Deb’s desk, shuffled his feet, crossed his arms, uncrossed them, and then stood up straight. “Well,” he said. “I, uh, I should go get ready. For my interview.” He smiled. “Put on a clean shirt, do the hair, you know. For the photographer. So …” He looked at Deborah and then at me, possibly waiting for us to object. When we didn’t, he shrugged and said to me, “So all right. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Bright and early,” I said.

He pointed a finger-gun at me and dropped his thumb.
Pow
. “Bright and early,” he said. He nodded at Deborah, gave Jackie a half glance, and then sauntered out the door.

Nobody said anything for a few moments. Jackie picked up the papers Robert had thrown down and studied them. She frowned. “Funny,” she said.

“What?” I said.

She shook her head. “Oh, nothing,” she said. “It’s just … I mean, it sounds like I’m doing a diva: ‘It’s all about me!’ And I’m not, so … forget it.”

“I can’t forget it if you don’t tell me,” I said.

Jackie crossed her arms across her chest and gave me a kind of rueful smile. “Dexter, it’s nothing,” she said, and while I was still
pondering the realization that this was the first time she’d called me by my name, she went on. “I mean, it’s just a stupid coincidence. When Robert said the dates, it’s just … I was there, on those dates. Working on a couple of films. New York in September, Vegas in June.” She shook her head and waved the papers dismissively. “Like I said, just forget I said it.” She uncrossed her arms and slapped her thighs. “So,” she said, looking at Deborah. “What’s our next move?”

Deborah might very well have answered her, but if she did I didn’t hear it. Because as I watched Jackie swing her head toward Deborah, golden hair flipping with the movement, something clicked in the Deep Shadows of Dexter’s Dark Closet, and I looked down at the pictures in my hand, both of them so very similar, and then—

All light is gone and I am answering the urgent rattle of black wings and I climb on and lean into it and let them lift me up on a dark wind and we soar up and up and up into a black night sky, up far above, up to where we can see, and we rise and circle faster and faster until we are there in the cold and starless sky and we look and then it is there, a single bright scarlet patch of the landscape below that is as clear and sharp and unavoidable as if it was illuminated by a dozen noonday suns—and I see them. And we swoop down into the red-tinged light and I am with them again, with the women in the pictures, standing above them and watching them twist and bulge out against their bonds, and every one of their muscles locks and every inch of skin, every nerve, every bone, screams in pain and it does not even slow me; it drives me instead to new and more exciting things, and I begin to do them to her and she turns away so she will not see what I am going to do and she
must
see it, she must see
me,
she
must
watch, because that is why I am doing this, that is what this is all about, it is about her
seeing
me, and so I grab her by her hair, that perfect golden hair, and I pull her head around and see her face—

—and it is the
wrong
face
.

And that makes me furious, and I yank her hair even harder, that almost-perfect golden hair, the not-quite-right hair that is so close and looks so very much like
hers
but it is still not
her
hair and the face is not
her
face and it is just not right anymore even though I picture
her
face instead as I finish but when I look down at what I have done I can feel it all drain away because it is not right, it is not her, and a bright flash of rage runs down from the top of my skull and all the way down my arm and I pick up the knife, the cold
impersonal knife, and I slash at that face, that so very wrong face, because it is not—