I shake myself. I tell me that it is not so. It is not possible. It is no more than the smell of the roast beef from lunch and the freezing wind from the air conditioner and bad memories lurching up, because of tension and personal upheaval, and it will all go away and everything will be fine if I just remember to breathe normally and remind Dexter that he is all grown-up and will never again be trapped in the horrible cold room with its thick and sticky red floor.
I tell myself that all is just exactly what it should be and nothing could possibly be quite That Wrong and I take another step in—and the smell is still there, even stronger now, and the memories wail and moan and flail at the walls of my crumbling self and howl at me to fly, run away, sprint from the room for my life and sanity. But I push these goblins away, and I step in one more step, and another, until I can see that there is nothing to see by the couch, by the fridge, and I can see into the bedroom now, and—
She lay there at the foot of the bed with one arm flung up above her head and the other bent unnaturally under her body. Her golden hair was scattered around her as if it had been flung from a great height, and half of that hair, the half closest to me, was pasted down onto the floor by a thick dark red pool that was already congealing, and in spite of my need to fly away from that awful red copper-smelling mess I stepped toward it instead and looked down with no hope in me at all.
She did not move. She would never move again. Her face was pale and set in an expression of weary terror, and she looked up at me with clouded eyes that did not blink and did not see and would never blink or weep or see anything ever again.
Beautiful violet eyes.
THIRTY-TWO
I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I STOOD THERE LOOKING DOWN AT Jackie’s lifeless body. It seemed like forever. I had no reason for it; staring down at the mess she had turned into wouldn’t bring her back, wouldn’t even roll the awful sticky red blood back inside her. And it didn’t help me like her being dead any better, either.
I am no stranger to death. It has been my whole life for many years, and I know what it looks like, smells like, and sounds like—but for the very first time I thought I knew what it felt like, too, because it was her, Jackie. And suddenly Death was something new, wrong, evil and intractable. It had no right to roll over Jackie and suck her dry and leave me here without her. It did not belong on her; Death did not fit Jackie, not someone so very much alive and beautiful and full of wonderful plans for me. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It shouldn’t be.
But it was. She was dead and there was no going back from it. Death had breathed its ugly gray film over those violet eyes and it seemed like a very final and painful thing all of a sudden, in a way it never had before.
I am not sentimental, not at all—I believe sentiment requires some trace of humanity—but Feelings surged through me that had no place inside a Thing like me. I watched them go by in their lunatic haste: regret, anger, even guilt, a bitter sense of lost opportunity, and anger again. Feelings rippled out of the Dark Basement and up the cold stone stairs of Castle Dexter, squealing with contempt and sliding up the banister, screeching through the halls and ripping down the tapestries.
And then the feelings were gone, and they had left behind the final, most lasting feeling of all:
Emptiness.
It was done. It was over. The dream was dead, cold and bloodless as the pitiful lump of meat at my feet. Jackie was gone—but Dexter must move on somehow, move away from the magical future that had been dangling there in front of him and back into the painful squalor that had been his life
before all this had swept him away into a world of bright and glittering hope—a hope that had turned out to be as solid and real as a piece of TV scenery.
I turned away from Jackie’s body and went back to stand by the front door. I knew what I had to do now. It would not be much fun, but I would get used to that again. Fun was gone forever from Dexter’s world.
I took out my phone and called Deborah. She didn’t answer, letting the call go right to voice mail. I disconnected and called again. Still nothing. I tried a third time, and finally, she answered.
“What,” she said, in a voice so flat and dead it might have been Jackie’s.
“Can you find Jackie’s trailer?” I said.
Silence; then finally, she said, “Yes.”
“Find it now,” I said. “Quickly.” And I hung up.
I was certain that whatever it was that lay there between us, it would not stop Deborah from coming. She is not stupid, and she would know that I would not call her lightly at this point.
And sure enough, inside of four minutes I heard her feet on the steps outside, and then the trailer’s door swung open and she was standing there, frowning into the relative darkness of the interior. “What is it,” she said in that same expressionless voice.
I stepped back from the door and pointed toward the bedroom. “In there,” I said. She shook her head once, still frowning, and then came inside and looked past me to where Jackie lay sprawled in her untidy heap.
Deborah froze for a second; then she hissed, “Fuck,” and strode quickly in to the body. She squatted down beside it and reached her hand halfway toward Jackie’s neck, and then pulled it back again as she realized there was no need to feel for a pulse. She sat there on her heels for several long seconds before she finally stood up, looked down at the body again, and then came back to me.
“What happened,” she said, and there was cold rage in her voice. “Did she try to break up with you?”
For a moment I just blinked at her stupidly, with no idea what she meant, and then I understood. “I didn’t do it, Debs,” I said.
“I’m not going to cover this up, Dexter,” she went on, as if she hadn’t heard me. “I can’t help you, and I wouldn’t even if I could.”
“Deborah, it wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.”
I guess she heard me this time, but she still didn’t believe me. She cocked her head to one side and glared at me with cold unblinking eyes, like a bird of prey deciding whether to strike. “Who did?” she said.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”