Double Dexter (48 page)

When we got to our hotel, we were informed that our suite was still sealed by order of the police. I should have anticipated that. I had sealed enough crime scenes myself. But as I was about to sink wearily onto the cold marble floor and weep away my life of care, the desk clerk reassured me that they had moved us to an even nicer suite, one that had an actual view of the water. And just to confirm that at last everything had turned around and living was once more worth all the trouble and mess, she went on to inform me that the manager was so deeply sorry for all the unpleasantness that he had refunded our entire deposit, thrown away our bill, and hoped we would accept a complimentary dinner in the restaurant, beverages not included, which was not meant to suggest that the hotel or its staff and management were in any way responsible for the unfortunate accident, and the manager was sure we would agree and enjoy the rest of our stay, which was extended an extra night, too, and if I would only sign one small piece of paper acknowledging that the resort had no liability?

Suddenly I was very tired. And yet, with the fatigue came an unreasonable sense of well-being, a vague suggestion burbling up around the edges that the worst really was over and everything was actually going to be all right. I had been through so much, and failed miserably at dealing with most of it, and yet I was still here, all in one piece. In spite of my terrible performance and my unquestionable iniquity, I was being rewarded with dinner and a free vacation in a luxury suite. Life really was a wicked, awful, unjust thing, and that was exactly as it should be.

So I gave the clerk my very best smile and said, “Throw in banana splits for the kids and a bottle of merlot for my wife, and you’ve got a deal.”

Rita was waiting for us in our new improved suite. It really did have a wonderful view of the harbor, and it was much easier for me
to appreciate the postcard prettiness of the water than it had been just a few hours ago, when I stood on the dock and watched the catamaran pull away. Rita had apparently been enjoying the view from the balcony for some time—even more so since she’d opened the minibar and mixed herself a Cuba Libre. She jumped to her feet when we came in and rushed over to us, fluttering like the absolute Avatar of Dither.

“Dexter, my God, where have you been?” she said, and before I could answer she blurted out, “We got the house! Oh, my God, I still can’t— And you weren’t here! But it’s the one, you remember you said? On a Hundred and Forty-second Terrace, just a mile and a half from our old house! With a pool, my God, and it was only— There was one other bidder, but they dropped out right before— It’s ours, Dexter! We have a new house! A big, wonderful house!” And she sniffled and then sobbed, and one more time she said, “Oh, my God.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said, although I was not completely convinced that it was. But I said it with as much reassurance as I could muster, since she was crying.

“I just can’t believe it,” she said, sniffling again. “It’s just exactly perfect, and I got us a mortgage at four and a half— Astor, did you get a sunburn?”

“Only a little,” Astor said, though she’d gotten quite a bit more than a sunburn. The side of her face, where Crowley had hit her, was red, and I was sure it would soon turn purple, but I was also confident we could bluff our way through Rita’s questions.

“Oh, look at your poor face,” Rita said, laying a hand on Astor’s cheek. “It’s swollen, and you can’t even— Dexter, what in the world happened?”

“Oh,” I said, “we went for a little boat ride.”

“But that’s— You said you were going to feed the sharks,” she said.

I looked at Cody and Astor. Astor looked back at me and snickered. “We did that, too,” I said.

Our complimentary dinner that evening was really quite nice. I have always found that free meals taste just a little bit better, and after two days of the rapacious greed of the Key West economy, this was succulent indeed.

And the flavors were just a little bit more delicious when, three minutes into the entrée, my sister, Sergeant Deborah Morgan, blew into the dining room like a category-four hurricane. She came in so fast that she was actually sitting at our table before I knew she was there, and I am quite sure I heard the sonic boom catch up to her a moment later.

“Dexter, what the fu—what the, um, heck have you been doing?” she said, with a guilty glance at Cody and Astor.

“Hi, Aunt Sergeant,” Astor said, with visible hero worship. Debs got to carry a gun and boss large men around, and Astor found that intoxicating.

Debs knew it; she smiled at Astor and said, “Hi, honey. How are you doing?”

“Great!” Astor gushed. “This is the best vacation ever!”

Deborah raised an eyebrow at that, but just said, “Well, good.”

“What brings you down to old Key West, sis?” I said.

She looked back to me and frowned. “They’re all saying that Hood followed you down here and turned up dead—in your room, for Christ’s sake,” Debs said. “I mean, Jesus.”

“Quite true,” I said calmly. “Sergeant Doakes is around somewhere, too,” I said.

Deborah’s jaw bulged out; it was quite clear that she was grinding her teeth, and I wondered what had happened to the two of us in our childhood to turn us both into molar manglers. “All right,” she said. “You better tell me what happened.”

I looked around the table at my little family, and although I was very happy to have my sister here to share my tale of woe, I realized that there were quite a few details that might not be appropriate for sensitive ears—I mean Rita’s, of course. “Would you join me in the lobby, sis?” I said.

I followed Debs out to the lobby, where we found a soft leather couch. We sank into the low cushions together, and I told her. It was surprisingly pleasant to be able to tell it all, and it was even more gratifying to hear her reaction when I finished.

“You sure he’s dead?” she said.

“Deborah, for God’s sake,” I said. “I saw him bitten in half by a giant shark. He’s dead and digested.”

She nodded. “Well,” she said. “We just might get away with it.”

It was very nice to hear her say “we,” but there were still some worrisome details that were more “I, Dexter” than plural. “What about Hood?” I said.

“That asshole got what was coming to him,” she said. It was a shock to hear her speak approvingly of a brother officer’s death; perhaps she had noticed his terrible breath, too, and was relieved that it was gone forever. But it also occurred to me that his brief attack on Deborah’s reputation might have done some real professional harm.

“Are you okay with the department again?” I asked.

She shrugged and rubbed her cast with her good hand. “We got my psycho in a cell. Kovasik,” she said. “Once I get back on it, I know I can make it stick. He did it, and Hood can’t change that. Especially now he’s dead.”

“But don’t the Key West cops still think I killed Hood?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I talked to Detective, um, Blanton?” she said, and I nodded. “That bag he dropped on the dock in the Tortugas had a baseball bat in it, among other things,” she said.

“What kind of things?” I said; after all, if he’d come up with something new, I really wanted to know about it.

Deborah made an irritated face and shook her head. “I don’t know, fuck,” she said. “Duct tape. Clothesline. Fishhooks. A carpenter’s saw.
Things,
” she said, clearly cranky now. “What matters is the bat. There’s some blood, tissue, and hair on it that they think will probably match up to Hood’s.” She shrugged and then, oddly, smacked my arm, hard, with her fist.

“Ouch,” I said, thinking about the fishhooks—some very interesting possibilities …

“Which kind of lets you off the hook,” Deborah said.

I rubbed my arm. “So they’re just going to drop it? I mean, as far as I’m concerned?”

Deborah snorted. “Actually, they’re kind of hoping you’ll just go away and not make any fuss about them handing your children to a kidnapper. Right out of their own front door, too. Fucking idiots.”

“Oh,” I said. Oddly enough, I hadn’t even thought of that. It really did seem like the sort of thing they might hope would just disappear. “So they’re happy with Crowley, even though he’s gone?”

“Yeah,” Debs said. “Blanton may not look like much, but she knows her job. She found a hotel maid who saw somebody and got a description. Thirties, stocky, short beard?”

“That’s him,” I said.

“Uh-huh. So this guy was helping his drunk friend out of the service elevator on your floor. Except the maid said he looked a little
too
drunk—like
dead
drunk—and he had one of those pirate hats covering his face, like they found in your room?”

“Suite,” I said reflexively.

She ignored me and shook her head. “The maid didn’t want to say anything; she’s from Venezuela, scared to lose her green card. But she gave a good description. And two of the cooks saw them coming in from the loading dock, too. Also, the waiter at breakfast confirms that you were with your family in the dining room at the time, so …”

I thought about it, nursing a tiny spark of hope as it grew into a glimmer. It was unlike Crowley to be so sloppy, but I suppose he had been surprised by Hood and had to improvise. I had a quick mental picture of the two of them trying to follow me at the same time and tripping over each other; comic hijinks result, leading to the hilarious bludgeoning death of Detective Hood. Maybe Crowley had panicked, maybe he had just been riding his luck and feeling invincible. I would never know, and it didn’t really matter. Somehow, he had gotten away with it. Nobody had seen him kill Hood, and nobody had stopped him when he moved the body into my room. But of course, people see only what they expect to see, and precious little of that, so the only surprise was that anybody had noticed anything at all.

But the true marvel was that I could see a real live light at the end of what had been a very long, very dark tunnel. I breathed a tentative sigh of relief and looked at my sister, and she looked back. “So I’m off the hook in Key West?” I said.

She nodded. “It gets better,” she told me. “Fucking Doakes really shit the bed this time.”

“I hope it was his own bed,” I said.

“He’s supposed to be in Admin, not out working a case,” she said. “Plus, here he is in Key West, which is way out of his jurisdiction. And,” she added, raising her good hand, the one with no cast, in the air and making a very sour face, “the Key West cops have made a
formal complaint. Doakes tried to bully them into holding on to you, and he intimidated witnesses, and …” She paused and looked off into the distance for a moment. “Fuck,” she said at last. “He used to be a pretty good cop.” She actually sighed, and it pained me to see her feeling sorry for someone who had spent so much time and effort making me miserable.

But there were, after all, more important matters at hand. “Deborah,” I said. “What about Doakes?”

She looked up at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. “Suspended, without pay, pending investigation by Professional Compliance,” she said.

I really couldn’t help myself, and I blurted out, “That’s wonderful!”

“Sure,” Deborah said, a little sour. She continued her silent funk for a few more seconds and then shook herself out of it. “What the hell,” she said.

“What happens back home?” I said. “Am I still a person of interest to the investigation?”

Deborah shrugged. “Officially you are,” she said. “But Laredo has taken over the case, and he’s not a dope. You’ll probably be back at work in a few days.” She looked at me. It was a hard look, and there was clearly something on her mind, but whatever it was she didn’t say it. She just looked, and then finally turned away to stare at the front door. “If only,” she said, “there was …” She hesitated, cleared her throat, and went on slowly. “… just a little bit of evidence, so … Then you’d be home free.” A fat man in plaid shorts came in the front door, followed by two small blond girls. Deborah seemed to find them interesting.

“What kind of evidence, Debs?” I said.

She shrugged and watched the fat man. “Ah, I dunno,” she said. “Maybe something that showed that Hood was bent. You know. So we can see he was not clean, not really a good cop. And maybe why he tried to put it on you.”

The fat man and his entourage disappeared down the hall, and Deborah looked at the cast on her broken arm where it lay in her lap. “If we could find something like that,” she said, “and keep your name out of the thing in the Tortugas, who knows.” She looked up at me at last, with a small, very strange smile. “We just might get away with it.”

Perhaps there really is some kindly, doting Demigod of Darkness that watches over the truly wicked, because we actually did get away with it—at least the first part. The Thing in the Tortugas caused a little fuss in the press, and there was some mention of the anonymous hero who had saved the old man’s life. But nobody actually knew the hero’s name, and witnesses’ descriptions of him were so vague they could have been six different randomly selected strangers. It was too bad, because it turned out that the old man really was important, and he owned several TV stations and quite a few state legislators.

There was some confusion about what had happened to the very bad man who had attacked the old guy. The woman who lost her bikini gave a good description of Crowley, and it matched up with what the Key West cops had, so it was clear that this terrible felon had killed a Miami cop and then tried to steal a boat and flee, probably to Cuba. Whether he had ended up in Havana or someplace else was not clear, but he was gone. He was listed as officially missing, wanted, and he went onto a few assorted lists. But no one really missed the missing person, and these are hard times, with dwindling budgets, so there was not a great deal of money and effort spent trying to find him. He was gone, nobody cared, and The Thing in the Tortugas was soon pushed out of the news by a triple nude decapitation involving a middle-aged man who had once been a child star on TV.

We really were getting away with it. If only one last small miracle could somehow discredit Hood, my coworkers would welcome me back to work with open arms and joyous smiles, and life would return to its wondrous banal predictable everyday boring bliss. And the day after I returned from Key West, Deborah called to inform me that a forensics team would be going to Hood’s house the next morning. We just had to hope that something helpful might turn up.