Dexter Is Dead (Dexter 8)

I drove south to my little torture chamber of a motel, through traffic that was a great deal lighter than rush hour had been. Of course, as a native Miami driver I knew very well that this only meant there were new dangers to watch for. Because there was more room to maneuver, there were more drivers weaving in and out of the lanes at two or three times the speed limit. The motorcycles were bad enough, but they were far from the most numerous. Sports cars, of course, and sedans, SUVs, delivery vans, and even a mammoth flatbed tow truck with a minivan on its bed.

Escalades seemed popular tonight. At least three of them roared by me in the first five miles. Maybe there is some special psychotic wrinkle in everyone who decides to buy a Cadillac. It was an intriguing thought; perhaps I should shop for an Escalade. I didn’t really mind the reckless speed seekers. I was used to it. And it’s no real burden at all; all you have to do is maintain a steady speed and keep to your lane and let them move around you freely. And if they get a little overeager and actually crash into someone, move carefully around the wreckage with a wave and a smile and a feeling of satisfaction that it wasn’t you this time.

So I drove south, and as I did my Mexican banquet began to catch up to me—not in any unspeakably rude digestive way. I just began to get sleepy, as I always did after a large dinner. In fact, I started to feel so entirely drowsy that I was actually looking forward to my horribly misshapen, agony-inducing “bed.” I sped up a little—not enough to make the Escalades think I was competing, of course. That would probably have made them kick it up to warp speed and drive the interloper off the road.

But I did go just fast enough to cut a few minutes from the journey, and just when my drowsy eyes beheld the ancient, half-dead neon sign that marked my hotel, my phone began to chirp. I glanced at the screen—not that I needed to. Only one person would be calling me, and that’s who it was.

“Hello, Brian,” I said into the phone.

“Hello, brother,” he said in his favorite fraudulently happy greeting. “Where are you now?”

“I am just pulling into the parking lot of my hotel,” I said. And as I did so, I noticed that the lot was nearly full, which seemed absurd enough to be nearly surreal.

“Can you manage a little face time?” he said. “I have one or two nuggets of importance for you.”

I sighed, looking around for a place to park. Every slot close to my room had a car in it. “I can barely keep my eyes open,” I said. “Can it wait until morning?”

Brian paused, long enough to make me wonder why. “I suppose so,” he said at last, a little bit hesitantly. “But…Do be a little extra watchful till then?”

“If I was any more watchful I would need at least four eyes,” I said. I saw an open parking spot at last, all the way down at the far end of the lot, easily forty feet from my room.

“All righty then,” Brian said, back to his synthetic good cheer. “Shall we say eight o’clock tomorrow morning, same place?”

“Fine,” I said, pulling into the very last slot in the parking lot. “See you then.”

“?’Tis devoutly to be wished,” Brian said, and hung up.

I sat there in astonishment for a moment; had my brother really just quoted Hamlet? Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me, but he’d never done anything of the kind before—nothing at all, in fact, that gave even the tiniest hint that he was familiar with Shakespeare, or any other classic work. But Brian was always full of surprises, and this one, at least, was not overtly unpleasant.

I turned the key and shut down my rental car, taking one last moment to reflect with weariness on my long and busy day. But before I got much further than, You done good, kid, I felt my eyes begin to flutter shut. I snapped them open; this was no place to fall asleep, even though it was probably more comfy than my bed. I took a deep breath and climbed out of the car, fumbling the keys and my phone until I got both safely into pockets, closing the car door with a hip, and stumbling wearily down the cracked sidewalk toward my room.

Music was blasting out of two adjacent rooms a few doors from mine. They probably had the door between them open to give the party more space. It was loud enough to rattle the windows, and not loud enough to mask the gleeful and drunken shouting, singing, and cries of Whoo! coming from within. Probably a bachelor party or some such thing. On the one hand, it was nice to have the crowded parking lot mystery explained. On the other hand, it was going to make sleeping a slightly more difficult problem.

I sighed. Where did it stop? When did all the petty persecutions of Poor Deserving Dexter finally trickle to a halt? Impending death or imprisonment wasn’t bad enough. Now I would be hearing a sound track of drunken revelry all night long, too. I was doing fine with protecting Life and Liberty, but apparently someone else’s Pursuit of Happiness would finally do me in. It’s the little things, after all, that finally break us.

Blow, wind, crack your cheeks, I thought. Brian wasn’t the only one who could quote Shakespeare.

I made it to my room without thinking of any other suitably apocalyptic line from Lear, and I was too tired to start in on Othello. I flopped onto the bed facedown—and immediately I was bent into a bow shape, with the soles of my feet facing the back of my head.

I struggled up to my feet and sat on the edge of the bed to remove my shoes. The car keys fell out of my pocket and onto the floor. And as they did, I remembered getting out of the car and fumbling with my phone and the keys, and I couldn’t remember whether I’d locked the car. It didn’t matter; it was easy enough to step to the window, point the car’s clicker down the line, and push the lock button.

I sighed again, more heavily this time. It really is always the little things. Sooner or later, there would be one last

niggling little torture flung at my head, something so insignificant that it couldn’t possibly matter to anyone, and it would be the one tiny saddle sore too many that finally sent me screaming and drooling over the edge into red-eyed raving insanity.

But this wasn’t it, not quite. I fought my way up to my feet and trudged over to a spot two feet from the window. I was tired and cranky and didn’t really feel like spending all my precious remaining energy opening the door, stepping outside, and leaning out to watch. And the ancient curtains looked so vile and crusty that I really didn’t want to touch them. But they were also worn thin enough that I could probably see the reflection of the blinking brake lights to show me it had worked. I pointed the clicker and pushed the lock button, watching for the flash of lights.

The flash came right away, but it was far too bright for brake lights, and it was followed by a blast so loud and strong that even as it nearly deafened me, it hurled me back from the window, splinters of glass showering all around me, flinging Dexter together with all that was left of the window into a tattered heap on the floor behind the door.

For a moment I just blinked around me, listening to the sudden cacophony of car alarms from outside. I could feel little spots of sharp pain starting to bloom on my face, and a few more on my chest. I blinked some more; at least my eyes were okay. I looked at my right hand; it had fallen into my lap, bleeding from a couple of cuts. I was still holding the car keys. What I could see of the rest of me seemed fine, but my shirt was torn and spotted with a dozen small blotches of blood. On top of everything else, a brand-new shirt ruined.

I closed my eyes in weary resignation and slid to the floor, completely indifferent to anything that might possibly happen now. Let them take me. And when they did, it would be in a terribly torn shirt, which was the final, crushing indignity.

It really is always the little things.

FIFTEEN

Every now and then you have to give the cops credit. Even if you don’t like them, and they don’t like you—even if your relationship with them has become strained to a point that approaches open warfare—even so, they sometimes earn a small nod. Every now and then a cop does something that, in all fairness, requires you to pause, incline your head, and say, “Well done.” Certainly not all cops—maybe not even most of them. But one or two of them, every now and then, come through in a way that really makes you want to give them a hearty handshake and a free doughnut.