Dexter Is Dead (Dexter 8)

“Okay, Captain,” Lazlo says. She nods and stalks out the door, which Lazlo holds even more politely for her.

When she has vanished around a turn in the corridor, Lazlo looks at me and says, “Let’s go, Dex.”

I stand up. “I think I should say thank-you…?” I say, rather tentatively.

Lazlo shakes his head. “Forget it,” he says. “I didn’t do it for you. Can’t fucking stand an asshole cop. Come on,” he finishes seamlessly, and with his hand on my elbow, I totter along: down the hall, into the elevator, up to nine, through the airlock, and back once more to the tiny world of my cell. The door closes behind me with absolute certainty and I am Dexter the Chrononaut again, spinning silently through endless empty time in my little steel-and-concrete capsule.

I stretch out on my bunk, but this time I do not nap. This time I have Things to ponder. And ponder I do.

First and most interesting: Thanks to the captain, I now knew that Anderson was “up to something.” This was highly significant. I had known, of course, that he was cutting corners—many of them quite savagely. And I had been sure he was shading the truth, shaping the evidence, coloring events. All these things are Standard Issue, part and parcel of regular Shoddy Police Work, which was, after all, the only kind Anderson could do.

But if he was “up to something” in any official way—and the captain had hinted that he was—then perhaps there was some small and exploitable opening for Dexter to wiggle at, expand, turn into a doorway to freedom.

I added that to what dear Bernie, my lawyer, had said: The paperwork wasn’t right. Instead of viewing that with alarm, as evidence that they could keep me here forever, I began to look at it as more ammunition in my anti-Anderson salvo. He had committed hanky-panky with paperwork, and if something in the System is committed to paper, it becomes transubstantiated into a Sacred Relic. To violate any official and therefore consecrated paperwork was a Cardinal Sin, and it could well result in Anderson’s utter ruin. If I could prove it—and get the right person to see it. A big “if,” but a vital one. Because Anderson wasn’t keeping me here: paperwork was. And if that paperwork was desecrated…?

We read every day of some vile perpetrator of dark deeds, turned loose on an undeserving world because Proper Procedure had been neglected. Just this once, why couldn’t the vile perpetrator be me?

And if Procedure was not merely neglected but willfully falsified, and if I could prove it…It was at least possible that the consequences for Anderson might go far beyond administrative scolding, suspension, even loss of pay. He might actually be sent here, perhaps even to the very cell I walked out of. The sheer poetic, balanced beauty of that possibility was dizzying, and I contemplated it for a long time. Switch places with Anderson. Why not?

Of course, first I had to find out a few relevant details. And then find a way to bring them to the attention of a proper authority of some kind—a judge? Perhaps the judge at my arraignment, when it someday came along—if ever? If Anderson kept me here permanently without arraignment, as it seemed he was doing so far, I couldn’t wait. Forever was much too long. I had to find someone on the outside to get the information to a judge, or even to Captain Matthews. Someone, yes—and who? It could only be Deborah, of course. No one else had the skill, the cojones, and the sheer force of will to pursue this to its happiest conclusion. Deborah it was, and at last I had something helpful to give her when she came.

…which she would. Soon. I mean, eventually she had to.

Didn’t she?

—

Yes. She did.

Eventually.

It was a full two days after my lighthearted chat with Anderson when once again I heard the massive metallic sounds that meant my door was opening. Again it was an inappropriate time for door opening, eleven-oh-seven, and it was close enough to the time Bernie had previously visited me that I assumed it was he, returning with satisfactorily ordered papers and maybe even a date in court. I refused to think it might be something more than that, like a pardon from the governor, or the pope coming to wash my feet. I had allowed that little Pigeon of Hope far too much leeway, and each time I let it soar it had circled the room and come back to poop on my head. I was not going to let it fly again.

So with a face set in Prisoner’s Ennui, an expression I was getting quite good at, I allowed Lazlo to lead me over to the thick bulletproof window, with its phone receiver on each side, its chairs facing each other through the glass, and Deborah sitting in the seat on the far side.

Deborah. At last.

I fell into the chair and lurched for the phone with pathetic eagerness, and on her side of the glass, Deborah watched my pitiful performance with a face that might have been carved from stone, and then, with slow and deliberate calmness, she picked up the phone.

“Deborah!” I said with a bright and hopeful smile on my face—a smile that I actually felt for once.

Deborah simply nodded at me. Her expression did not change, not even a twitch.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” I said, still all puppy-dog happy and overflowing with good cheer.

“So did I,” she said, and although I would not have thought it was possible for her stone face to harden, it did.

I began to feel some small dark thoughts clouding over my sunny-day happiness. “But,” I said, hoping to put things back on an optimistic footing, “you’re here. You came.”

Deborah didn’t say anything. She sat and looked at me, and her face did not soften noticeably.

“I mean, you are here, aren’t you?” I said, not at all sure what I was saying, nor what I meant.

Deborah moved at last. She nodded her head, one small nod of no more than half an inch up, and then down again. “I’m here,” she said. She didn’t make it sound like she was thrilled at being in her present location.

But she was, in fact, here, and that was really all that mattered. I launched right into telling her about my discoveries, suppositions, and conjectures regarding the All-Important Case of Dexter Detained. “I think I have a major lead,” I said. “Anyway, it’s at least something to investigate. Anderson was here—and from what he said, and then what my lawyer said, too, it seems like a good bet that…”

I trickled to a stop. Deborah was not merely paying no attention to my excited rambling. With her face still set in its mask of granite indifference, she had actually put the phone down and turned sideways, away from the window, away from any possible glimpse of offensive little old me.