“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.