Dexter Is Dead (18 page)

“Better than this,” she said. “Meter maids got too much
balls
to whup on a man in cuffs.”

They stood toe-to-toe and glared for a moment, and then, just as Anderson opened his mouth—probably to threaten her some more—one of the other uniforms called out, “Hey, Detective? Bomb guys are here.” Anderson twitched a couple of times, as if he was being tugged in two directions by two equally rotten impulses. But he just told Poux, “Put him in my car,” spun around, and walked off to talk to the bomb guys.

Officer Poux watched him go, and when he was at a safe distance, with his back turned to us, she unlocked the cuffs, took them off my wrists, and said, “Your hands are blue. Shake ’em around; get the circulation going.”

The hands in question were kind of blue, which was no surprise, since they’d already gone numb. I shook them, flexed them, and then raised an eyebrow at Officer Poux.

She shook her head. “Hold ’em out,” she said. I did, and she snapped the cuffs back on again—but in front of me this time, and a great deal looser.

“Thank you,” I said politely.

“Just doing my job,” she said, and since that was quite true I said no more. But just before she put me carefully into the backseat of Anderson’s motor-pool car, she leaned close to my ear. “When it’s a bomb, like this?” she said softly, “it’s also my job to call the feds.”

I looked at her with some surprise. “Did you?” I asked.

She gave me a very brief, nearly invisible smile. “I did,” she whispered. And then resuming her role as a tough-as-nails, hypereffective cop, she returned to her normal voice and said, “Duck your head, sir,” and she pushed me into the car and shut the door.

I watched her go with a certain amount of admiration. In today’s paranoid post-9/11 world, it was indeed part of the job to alert as many federal authorities as possible when something happened that had even the faintest whiff of terrorism—and of course, a bomb always qualifies. But I had seen cases where Homeland Security, the FBI, and ATF were all fighting for jurisdiction with Miami-Dade, FDLE, and representatives of other government organizations so important they didn’t even have a name.

And normally, since the local cops really want to be in charge of something that happens on their turf, the first responders would probably wait for a superior officer to arrive before calling the feds. Of course, this can waste precious time and even allow a suspect to get away, but at least it does preserve our local rights, possibly preventing another civil war.

Officer Poux had not waited. She had taken initiative and done the smart thing. And just incidentally, it was the thing that was going to save me from another stretch of sitting in the pokey with no paperwork and no hope of getting out. When the feds arrived, any suspect taken into custody—in this case, Me—would be turned over to them. And since the feds were generally a little more careful about forging documents merely because they didn’t like somebody, and since they did not, as yet, actually dislike me, I would almost certainly be turned loose, and rather quickly.

And all because Officer Poux did the right thing. It was a wonder, a rare marvel, and I decided on the spot that if I was ever police commissioner I would promote her first thing. She had gone far beyond the call of duty and actually done her job.

I watched Officer Poux as she walked away and went back to work, thinking kindly thoughts about her. As I said, every now and then, you really do have to give the cops credit for a job well done.

I sat there unmolested for quite a while—nearly an hour and a half, according to my watch, which I could now see quite easily, thanks to Officer Poux. The whole time no one beat me, or threatened me, or called me unpleasant names. On the other hand, nobody brought me coffee and a cruller either. I was left entirely alone, free to do absolutely anything I wanted to do, as long as it could be done wearing handcuffs while locked in the backseat of a car. It’s not a long list of activities. Happily for me, though, the list included something I wanted to do very much: sleep.

So I did. I dropped off almost immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep, and didn’t wake up at all until I heard somebody opening the door of the car I was in.

I opened my eyes, expecting to see Officer Poux again, and I was not disappointed. But standing directly behind her were two new faces. I did not know either one of them, but when the door opened and Poux helped me out, turning me to face the strangers, it took only a glance to know exactly who they were.

They were a matched set, one man and one woman, in their thirties, fit-looking, and wearing expressions that were as serious as their nearly matching suits, and so it was kind of anticlimactic when the woman held up a badge and said, “FBI. Special Agent Revis.” She nodded at her male clone. “This is Special Agent Blanton. We’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”

I smiled at them pleasantly. “Pleased to meet you. But I’m afraid I can’t answer any questions while my rights are being violated.” Just to make sure my point got across, I held up my manacled wrists.

The feds glanced at each other, and then the man—Special Agent Blanton—looked quizzically at Poux. “Officer, is this man under arrest?”

“No, sir, not to my knowledge,” Poux said.

“Is he a danger to himself or others?” Revis asked.

“I don’t believe he is,” Poux said very carefully. “He has shown no sign of it.”

The two feds glanced at each other again, and Blanton frowned and looked back at Poux. “Then why is he cuffed?”

With one of the straightest faces I have ever seen, Poux said, “Sir. The detective in charge ordered me to cuff this man. I asked him the charge, and he told me it was a charge of”—she cleared her throat, and made a very clear effort to keep her face blank—“a charge of ‘Because I Said So.’ ”

“He said that?” Blanton said mildly.

“And then you cuffed him?” Revis said.

“No, ma’am,” Poux said. “Then the detective in charge grabbed my handcuffs and did it himself.” She hesitated, and then added, “I recuffed him later.”

“Why?” Revis said.

“The detective in charge had done it in a manner I deemed to be injurious, with this man’s hands behind his back, and much too tight, with a resulting loss of circulation.”

They all turned and looked at me, and Blanton frowned. He stepped forward and looked hard at my face where Anderson had slapped me. “Did the loss of circulation result in a contusion to this man’s face?” he said.

Poux went absolutely rigid in face and body and looked straight ahead. “No, sir,” she said.

“Do you have certain knowledge of what
did
cause this contusion?” Revis demanded.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Blanton sighed and faced Poux. “Are you inclined to share that information, Officer—” He frowned and looked at Poux’s name tag. “Officer…Powks?”

“Pronounced ‘Pooh,’ sir,” she said, unmoving.

“Your first name isn’t Winnie, is it?” Revis said wryly.

“Melanie,” she said.

“Too bad,” Revis muttered.

“Officer
Pooh,
” Blanton said sharply. “How did this man get this mark on his face?”

“The detective in charge struck him, sir,” Poux said. “After he put on the cuffs.” She looked so absolutely upright and military I had to stop myself from whistling “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Blanton closed his eyes and sighed. Revis merely said, “I think you can take the cuffs off him, Poux.”

Poux stepped smartly over to me and I held up my wrists. She unlocked them and, just before she turned away, I winked at her. She didn’t wink back.

“Thank you, Officer Poux,” Revis said. “You can return to your duties.”

Poux marched off, and I stepped forward into the space she’d been in. “Pleased to meet you,” I said to Revis as she turned to look at me. “My name is Dexter Morgan.”

“Would you be willing to answer a few questions, Mr. Morgan?” she said.

“Of course,” I said.

They led me into the hotel’s dingy little lobby. It was far enough from the blast that it hadn’t been damaged. Considering the state of the rotting old furniture, that was neither believable nor fortunate. The old couple who ran the place had turned off the television. He sat in a moldering overstuffed chair with an expression on his face he must have learned from Edvard Munch, while she bustled back and forth with a pot of coffee and a stack of Styrofoam cups.

There was a small couch that wasn’t totally repugnant, and Revis motioned me to sit. She sat facing me in a straight-backed wooden chair. Her partner, Blanton, stood behind her, to her left, clearly giving her the lead. “That was your car that blew up, Mr. Morgan?” she said.

“Rented,” I told her with a charming, self-effacing smile.

As good as it was, the smile may not have worked, judging by her next question. “Did you blow up the rental car, Mr. Morgan?”

“No,” I said.

She just nodded. “The detective thinks you did it.”

“Yes, he would,” I said.

“That was a pretty big bomb, Mr. Morgan,” she said. “Who put it there?”

“I don’t know,” I said. And in all honesty I didn’t really
know
. I had a couple of very good guesses, but that was really none of the FBI’s business. Of course, they thought it was.

“If you had to guess, who do you
think
did it?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, “it is a rented car. It could be aimed at the last person who drove it. Or even, you know. Some kind of mistake.”

“A mistake,” Blanton said, with sharp skepticism. “Somebody put a bomb like that in the wrong car?”

I shrugged. “It could happen. This is Miami.”

“Mr. Morgan,” Revis said, “that’s a little hard to believe, isn’t it?” She raised one eyebrow. “Even in Miami?”

“A couple of years ago, only a few miles from here,” I said, “a man was killed when a chunk of frozen sewage fell from a passing airplane and crashed through his roof.”

“Why did the detective hit you?” Blanton said abruptly.

“He doesn’t like me,” I said.

Blanton just looked at me, but Revis snorted and said, “That was
my
first guess.”

“Do you know
why
he doesn’t like you?” Blanton said. “Or is that more frozen sewage?”

I hesitated. I suppose a real human being would have plunged right into the long and twisty tale, full of confidence in the forthright integrity of two upstanding federal agents and the noble system they represented. Unfortunately, I knew better. Everyone has a hidden agenda, and it is never, never,
never
what it looks like on the surface—which is, of course, why it is a
hidden
agenda. Revis and Blanton might decide to help Anderson in order to secure better local cooperation, which would show up on the monthly report and cause a budget increase, resulting in longer coffee breaks for the entire Bureau. There was no way to know. And so there was also no way to know whether telling them all was a good thing.

“Mr. Morgan?” Revis prompted.

I looked at her, and then at Blanton, her partner. They certainly
looked
forthright and upstanding. Of course, so did I, and we all know how much that means. But every now and then, you run out of logical and reasonable options, and you just have to swallow hard, cross your fingers, and tell the truth.

So I did. I told the whole sad story of deceit, treachery, malice, and heinous ineptitude. Believe it or not, I actually told it pretty much as it happened, with only one or two minor changes in emphasis, and a couple of well-timed pauses, mostly when I was talking about Rita’s death, in which I cleared my throat. I had learned from watching daytime TV that throat clearing is something Manly Guys do to show that they are fighting back emotions. I thought it was a wonderful shortcut, since clearing my throat was a great deal easier than making all those tragic faces.

Revis and Blanton just watched me, apparently listening intently. When I finished, they looked at each other, and held the stare for an embarrassingly long time. Neither of them said a word, but they apparently had a whole conversation, because eventually she turned back to me and said, “We will probably want to ask you a few more questions later on. Where will you be staying?”

Believe it or not, this was the first time it had occurred to me that I had no place to go. That wasn’t entirely a bad thing, since I also had no way to get there. “Um,” I said. “I don’t know. Can I call you when I find another hotel?”

Revis handed me her business card. It was very nice, embossed with an FBI logo and everything. She wrote down my cell phone number, had one more quick silent chat with Blanton, and then nodded at me. “You’re free to go.”

F
or several minutes after the two FBI agents left, I just sat on the moldering old sofa in the hotel’s lobby, too bone-weary to do anything more demanding than blink my eyes. Only a few hours ago I had felt battered and exhausted because so much had happened—and since that time, I had found out what “so much happening”
really
meant. But with the bomb blast and the consequent utter destruction of my transportation, and then the savage slapping and cuffing from Anderson, I thought I could safely say,
Now “so much” has
really
happened.

And all of it aimed at my nearly innocent head. It was almost enough to make me believe in a god—since it would have to be a petty, vengeful, mean-spirited god who spent so much time and effort picking on someone who really didn’t deserve it. That kind of god I could believe in. At least it would explain the recent history of Dexter, which was starting to seem supernaturally unpleasant.

I thought about this latest blatantly unfair incident. A bomb. In spite of what I had told the feds about coincidence, of course I was sure it wasn’t. I had too many real enemies to give coincidence a chance to break into the lineup. Which one was it this time? It was not terribly mysterious. I ruled out Debs right away; she was much too fussy about the little things, like legality and collateral damage. Anderson would certainly have done it if he could figure out which end of the bomb to hold, but I didn’t believe for a second that he had. He was having too much fun whipping me with his custom-modified legal system. And after eliminating him, there really wasn’t any doubt that it was Brian’s former playmates, Raul and associates, who had put the bomb in my car. The only question was how they’d found me.

The more I thought about that, the more important it seemed. I really and truly didn’t want them to find me again. They would almost certainly do a more thorough job next time.

More immediately, though, I had to let Brian know what had happened. It was quite possible that they would find him, too, and I thought it would be best if he knew about the possibility. After all, he was the last person who still seemed to be on my side—unless I counted Officer Poux, which was probably a little bit of a stretch.

So I reached into my pocket for my phone—and of course I didn’t have it. Somehow it had been magically replaced by a small piece of cardboard with vermilion ink on it—Kraunauer’s card, and his personal cell number, of which I could avail myself twenty-four/seven. A bomb in my car and subsequent police brutality certainly seemed like something he would want to know about, and I knew I should call him—except that I didn’t have a phone.

Come to think of it, I still didn’t even have a shirt. Both items could be had in abundant quantity if I could somehow manage to travel all those weary feet from the lobby to my room. It seemed like much farther away than it had been before, but there really wasn’t much choice.

So I dragged my exhausted, battered, punctured, and slapped self up off the ancient couch and staggered manfully out the lobby door and down the walk toward what had recently been my room. Alas, it was mine no longer. A different uniformed officer informed me politely but firmly that I could not enter until after forensics had finished, not even to retrieve my phone. I was too tired to do more than blink at him resentfully a few times, and that seemed to have no effect. You just can’t put good, hard-edged resentment into a blink.

And now what? I could think of nowhere else to go, unless I returned to the backseat of Anderson’s car, or to the dreadful little sofa in the lobby. Believe it or not, the sofa was so uncomfortable, old and repellent, that I had to think about it for a minute. But no matter how far beyond the established norms of civilized furniture it might be, at least the couch was not in any way connected to Anderson. I trudged back to it.

As I trudged, I tried to think of a way to call Brian without my phone. It seems stupid in retrospect, but it must be admitted that the cell phone, that personal ubiquitous all-encompassing nearly everything device, has become so important to every one of us that we cannot imagine life without it, and most of us cannot complete the simplest tasks unless we are holding our techno BFF in our hand. Without it we can’t write anyone, check the weather or stocks, find out where we are and how not to be there, pay bills, keep an appointment, make a flight—nothing at all. It has taken over nearly every aspect of our lives. And every now and then, when we actually want to make a phone call, our phones can even do that. They have replaced an entire suitcase full of other devices, and it is no longer possible even to think of life without one.

And so it was not until I walked all the way into the lobby and sat, allowing the ancient couch cushions to suck me down into their vile grasp, that I thought of a novel and ingenious way to get in touch with Brian. In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I did not actually
think
of it; the truth is, the ancient, battered landline telephone on the hotel’s front desk rang. I turned to follow the sound, saw the archaic device, and thought,
Aha. I remember what those things are for.

The ancient phone rang for nearly a minute and no one answered it. The old man had disappeared, and the old woman was just visible in the back room moving back and forth much too energetically in a rocking chair. She made no move to get the phone, and so when the thing had stopped ringing, I got up and went to it.

My memory is a wonderful thing, and I was quite sure that I knew Brian’s number, so I dialed with calm confidence. It rang several times, and then a soft and husky voice I did not recognize said, “Yes?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, thinking as quickly as I could in my current state of collapse. “Is this Atwater Brothers Carpet?”

After only a slight hesitation, the answer came—but in a completely different voice. “Brother,” Brian said. “I didn’t recognize the number. Where are you calling from?”

“Hotel lobby,” I said. “My phone is being examined by forensics at the moment.”

“Really,” he said. “May one ask why?”

I told him in short and simple terms. He hissed out a long breath. “I was afraid of this,” he said.

For a moment I was speechless.
Afraid
of it? Meaning he thought it might happen and had decided not to warn me? “Were you?” I said at last.

“Remember I called?” he said, and of course there was not even a tiny trace of guilt in his voice. “I meant to tell you, but you pleaded fatigue.”

It was just barely true, but even so I was so upset that I didn’t even correct him for saying
pleaded
instead of
pled
. “All right,” I said wearily. “What did you mean to tell me?”

“I received a warning,” he said, “that a certain associate of Raul’s had arrived in town.”

“An associate,” I said. I thought back on what Brian had told me of the epic struggle between Raul and his rival, Santo. “Would this perhaps be the associate who blew up the Red Saint?”

“The very same,” he said, sounding quite happy that I had remembered.

“And when were you going to tell me this exciting news?”

“In truth, I thought it would keep until breakfast,” Brian said. “I assumed that I was the target.”

“Apparently you were wrong,” I said.

“So it seems,” he said with great and completely unwarranted good cheer.

For just a moment I stood with my eyes closed, letting the waves of fatigue wash over me. “I need to get out of here,” I said. “And my car is not going anywhere. Can you come get me?”

“Weeeeeell,” he said. “That might not be the wisest course right now. I have to believe they’re watching you and hoping I do just that.”

It was true; no matter how selfish I thought it was, and how very contrary to all that was Decent for Dexter, I could not deny that it would be just a tiny bit stupid for him to come get me. Raul’s men were almost certainly watching. “I suppose you’re right,” I said.

“Yes,” Brian said. “But this is troubling. Somehow they found you first. Any idea how?”

“Brian,” I said. “I have just been bombed, perforated with glass slivers, slapped—and I was already exhausted. I’m not having ideas right now.”

“Of course not, you poor thing,” he said, oozing fake sympathy that still sounded much too happy. “Get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.” And he disconnected without waiting for me to say good-bye. Possibly he thought I would want to say a few other things first, of a more personal and antagonistic nature. After all, any reasonable person would have to say that this was all his fault. And possibly I would have said more—but he hung up, and even that small comfort was denied me.

I replaced the old phone in its antiquated cradle, marveling at how well it fit. Say what you will about modern technology; people back then knew how to build things that
worked
. And then, still looking at the phone, I thought,
Kraunauer
. I pulled his card from my pocket, carefully smoothing a small wrinkle. I picked up the phone again and dialed.

Kraunauer answered on the second ring, which was nice. But the way he answered took me by surprise.
“¿Se hace?”
he said in his wonderful Mexican-Spanish accent.

For just a second I wondered if this old telephone had made some kind of mistake and given him the wrong caller ID. But then I remembered that it was, after all, an antique—and Brian, too, had not known who was calling. “It’s Dexter Morgan,” I said. “I’m calling from a hotel lobby.”

For a moment he was speechless, which was a first in my dealings with him. “Oh, that’s…ah,” he said at last. “Well, then, I—And are you all right?”

“I’m a little rumpled,” I said. “Someone put a very large bomb in my car.”

“What?!” he said. “I take it you were not actually in the car when it went off?”

“I was not,” I said. “Or I would be considerably
more
rumpled.”

“Of course you would,” he said. For some reason he did not seem to be showing his usual eloquence. Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour. “Well, then, um, the police are there?”

“They are,” I told him. “And the FBI. Um—the police are represented by Detective Anderson?”

“Ah,” he said. “That’s the same officer who has been troubling you?”

“It is,” I said. “He accused me of bombing my own car, and he slapped me. Kind of hard, too.”

“Was there a witness?” he said, and his voice seemed suddenly sharper, more alert.

“Another cop,” I said. “A uniform. Officer Poux—Melanie Poux.”

“Well, crap,” he said. “We’ll never get her to testify against another cop.”

“She might,” I said. “She let the feds drag it out of her.”

“Did she!” he exclaimed. He sounded delighted. “Well, then. We may have something here. An FBI agent’s testimony is as good as it gets. We just might have something. Oh—they don’t think you blew up your own rental car, do they?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

Kraunauer chuckled. “Good, good,” he said. “Well, believe it or not, this is actually a real break.”

“It doesn’t seem like it at the moment,” I said.

“No, but it will,” he said. “The bomb story will be all over the news tomorrow, and when they find out that
you
are the intended victim—no, no, this is excellent. We can use it to get some sympathy going—it could be a real turning point.”

“Really,” I said.

“Absolutely. Don’t kid yourself, Mr. Morgan. Nine out of ten cases are won in the media before you even meet the judge. And if we roll into it with something like this—I hate to repeat myself, but this really is a big break.”

“Oh, well, good,” I said. And in spite of being well aware that I needed to maintain my sense of awe when speaking with Kraunauer, I was suddenly overcome with fatigue—and I yawned. “Excuse me,” I said.

“Perfectly all right, you must be exhausted,” he said briskly. “You go get some sleep, and we’ll talk in the morning. Ah…” His voice slowed down and he sounded suddenly very casual. “Where are you staying?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I’ll find another hotel somewhere.”

“Of course. All right,” he said, all business again. “Get some sleep, and call me tomorrow.”

“All right,” I said.

“Good night,” he said cheerfully, and broke the connection.

I thought about his excellent advice: sleep. The whole concept was starting to take on mythical proportions. It had begun to seem like something only epic heroes could do; I certainly couldn’t manage it. I wasn’t yet so tired that I would take the risk of sleeping here, in the lobby, surrounded by Anderson and mad bombers and horrible tattered curtains.

Mere rest was no longer enough, and I didn’t think I could face the couch again anyway. So I did the only thing I could, the last pitiful choice left to me in this world of pain and dwindling options. I left the lobby and stood outside beside what had once been my room, standing in a miserable bovine stupor until forensics finally finished. Then I went in and put on a shirt, grabbed my few sad belongings, and used my phone to call a cab.