Double Dexter (28 page)

It was me. It was a picture of Dexter: shirtless, half turned away from the camera, and stepping away from a body sprawled on the pavement. My first thought was,
But I don’t remember leaving a body there.…
And it doesn’t really say good things about me to admit it, but my second thought, as I looked at my bared torso, was,
I look good!
Muscle tone excellent, abs in good shape—no sign of the very slight spare tire that had been settling around my waist lately. So the picture was probably a year or two old—which did not explain why Doakes was so pleased with it.

I pushed away my narcissistic thoughts and tried to focus on the picture itself, since it apparently represented a very real threat to me. Nothing occurred, no hint of where it had been taken or who had taken it, and I looked up at Hood. “Where did you get this?” I asked.

“Do you recognize the picture?” Hood said.

“I’ve never seen it before,” I said. “But I think that’s me.”

Doakes made a kind of gurgling sound that might have been laughter, and Hood nodded as if a thought was actually forming in his bony head. “You think,” he said.

“Yes, I do,” I said. “And it really doesn’t hurt; you should try it sometime.”

Hood pulled another photo out of the envelope and flipped it onto the desk. “What about this one?” he said. “You think that’s you, too?”

I looked at the picture. This one showed the same setting as the first, but now I was a bit farther away from the body and pulling on a shirt. Something new had come into the field of focus, and after a moment of study I recognized it as the back of Angel Batista’s head. He was bending over the body on the ground, and the little lightbulb over my head finally went on.

“Oh,” I said, and relief flooded in. This was not a picture of Dexter caught in the act of shuffling off somebody’s mortal coil; it was Dexter on Duty, a mere workaday nothing. I could explain it simply, even prove it, and I was off the hook. “Now I remember. This was like two years ago, a crime scene in Liberty City. Drive-by shooting—three victims, very messy. I got blood on my shirt.”

“Uh-huh,” Hood said, and Doakes shook his head, still smiling fondly.

“Well,” I said, “it happens sometimes. I keep a clean shirt in my bag just in case.” Hood kept staring at me; I shrugged. “So I changed into the clean shirt,” I said, hoping he would understand at last.

“Good idea,” he said, nodding as if he approved of my solid common sense, and he threw one more picture onto the desk. “What about this one?”

I picked it up. It was me again, very obviously me. It was a close-up shot of my face, in profile. I was looking off into the distance with an expression of noble longing that probably meant it was time for lunch. There was a slight dusting of beard stubble on my face, which hadn’t been there in the first pictures, so this one had been taken at a different time. But because it was so very tightly focused on my face, I couldn’t make out anything at all that would tell me more about the picture, or when it had been taken. On the plus side, that meant
there was no way it could be used to prove anything against me, either.

So I shook my head and flipped the picture back onto my desk. “Very nice picture,” I said. “Tell me, Detective, do you think a man can be
too
handsome?”

“Yeah,” said Hood. “I think he can be too fucking funny, too.” And he flipped one last photo onto the desk. “Laugh this one off, funny boy.”

I picked up the picture. It showed me again, but this time standing face-to-face with Camilla Figg. There was an expression of startled adoration on her face, a look of such fond longing that even a dolt like Hood could read it without help. I stared, scanning for clues, and finally recognized the background. This had been taken at the Torch, where Officer Gunther had been found. But so what? Why was this large and stupid thug showing me pictures of me, nice as they were?

I flipped the photo back onto the desk with the others. “I had no idea I was so photogenic,” I said. “Do I get to keep them?”

“No,” Hood said. He leaned over me to the desk and the odor of unwashed detective overlaid with cheap cologne almost made me gag. Hood scooped up the photos and straightened as he stuffed them back into the envelope.

With Hood a few feet away from me once more, I managed to breathe again, and since my curiosity was coming to a boil, I used the breath for something practical. “They’re all very nice pictures,” I said. “But so what?”

“So what?” Hood said, and Doakes made another one of his tongueless but joyful sounds; there were no actual words to it, but the garbled syllables had a distinct overtone of
gotcha
that I did not like at all. “Is that all you got to say about your girlfriend’s photo collection?”

“I’m married,” I said. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Not anymore you don’t,” Hood said. “She’s dead.” And as if they were wired together and controlled from offstage, Hood and Doakes showed all their teeth in unison in a blinding display of enamel and carnivorous happiness. “These were in Camilla Figg’s apartment,” Hood said. “And there’s hundreds more of ’em.”

He pointed a finger the size of a banana right between my eyes. “All of you,” he said.

S
OMEWHERE IN THIS WORLD IT IS QUITE POSSIBLE THAT
children laughed without a care and played with unworried joy. Somewhere, gentle breezes probably blew across a field of grass as innocent young lovers held hands and strolled through the sunlight. And somewhere on this grubby little globe it is even remotely possible that peace, love, and happiness were abounding in the hearts and minds of the righteous. But right now, in the present location, Dexter was Deep in the Doo-doo, and happiness of any kind was a bitter, mocking fable—unless your name was Hood or Doakes, in which case you were in the best of all possible worlds. See the funny Dexter? See him squirm? See the sweat pop out on his forehead? Ha, ha, ha. What a funny, funny guy. Oh, look—his mouth is moving, but nothing is coming out except meaningless vowels. Sweat, Dexter. Stutter and sweat. Ha, ha, ha. Dexter is funny.

I was still struggling to find a consonant when my sister spoke up. “What the fuck are you trying to pull here, shithead?” she said, and I realized that those were the exact words I had been searching for, so I closed my mouth and nodded.

Hood raised his eyebrows, and his forehead was so low they
almost merged with his hair. “Pull?” he said with exaggerated innocence. “I’m not pulling nothing. I’m investigating a murder.”

“With a couple of bullshit pictures?” Deborah said with heartwarming scorn.

Hood leaned toward her and said, “Couple?” He snorted. “Like I said, there’s
hundreds
of ’em.” He shoved his gigantic finger toward my head again. “Every one of ’em a picture of laughing boy here,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean
shit,
” Deborah said.

“Framed and hanging on the walls,” Hood said relentlessly. “Taped to the refrigerator. Stacked on the bedside table. In boxes in the closet. In a binder on the back of the
toilet,
” he said with a leer. “Hundreds of pictures of your brother, sweetheart.” He took a half step toward Debs and winked. “And I may not get to go on the
Today
show to talk about it, like some losers who arrest the wrong guy?” he said. “But I am in charge of this investigation now, and I think all those pictures
do
mean shit, and maybe a lot more than shit. I think they mean he was banging Camilla, and I think she was going to tell his pretty little wifey, and he didn’t want her to. So lemme ask this one more time real polite and official,” he said, stepping back from Debs. He leaned over me now, and as he spoke the smell of his unwashed armpits mingled with his rotten breath and made my eyes water. “You got anything you want to tell me about these pictures, Dexter?” he said. “And maybe about your relationship with Camilla Figg?”

“I don’t know anything about the pictures,” I said. “And I didn’t have any relationship with Camilla except that I worked with her. I barely knew her.”

“Uh-huh,” Hood said, still bent over and in my face. “That all you got to say?”

“Well,” I said, “I’d also like to say that you really need to brush your teeth.”

He didn’t move at all for a few long seconds, made even longer by the fact that he exhaled again. But finally he nodded, straightened up slowly, and said, “This is going to be fun.” He nodded at me, and his nasty smile got bigger. “As of five o’clock today, you are suspended, pending the results of this investigation. If you wish to appeal this
decision, you may contact the administrative coordinator for personnel.” He turned to Sergeant Doakes and nodded cheerfully, and I felt a cold knot form in my stomach even before he added the inevitable clincher. “That would be Sergeant Doakes,” he said.

“Of course it would,” I said. Nothing could be more perfect. The two of them smiled at me with genuine, heartfelt happiness, and when Hood had done all the smiling his system could stand without melting, he turned away and stepped to the door. He spun around there, and pointed his finger at Deborah, making a clicking sound as he dropped his thumb like he was shooting her. “See you later, loser,” he told her, and he sauntered out, smiling like he was going to his own birthday party.

Sergeant Doakes hadn’t taken his eyes off me the whole time, and he didn’t now. He just smiled at me, clearly having more fun than he’d had in a very long while, and then finally, just as I was thinking about throwing a chair at his head, he made his horrible, gargling, tongueless-laughing sound, and followed Hood out into the hall.

There was silence in my office for what seemed like a very long time. It was not by any means a peaceful, contemplative silence. It was, instead, the kind of quiet that comes right after an explosion, when the survivors are looking around at all the dead bodies and wondering if another bomb is going to go off, and the eerie silence did not end until Deborah finally shook her head and said, “Jesus Christ.” That seemed to sum things up pretty well, so I didn’t say anything, and Deborah said it again and then added, “Dexter—I have to know.”

I looked at her with surprise. She seemed to be very serious, but I couldn’t imagine what she was thinking. “Know what, Debs?” I said.

“Did you sleep with Camilla?” she said.

And now it was my turn to say it. “Jesus Christ, Debs,” I said, and I was genuinely shocked. “Do you think I killed her, too?”

She hesitated half a second too long. “No-o,” she said, and it was not very convincing. “But you gotta see how it looks.”

“To me it looks like you’re playing Pile On Dexter,” I said. “This is crazy—I barely spoke twenty words to Camilla in my entire life.”

“Yeah, but come on,” Deborah said. “All those fucking pictures.”

“What about them?” I said. “I didn’t take them, and I don’t see what you think they mean.”

“I’m just saying they mean a lot to a brainless shit-bag like Hood—and he’s going to run with it, and he might even make it stick,” she went on, recklessly mixing her metaphors. “It’s perfect for him—married guy bangs chick at work, then kills her to keep his wife from finding out.”

“
That’s
what you think?” I said.

“I’m just saying,” she said. “I mean, you gotta see how it would look like that. It’s totally believable.”

“It’s totally unbelievable to anybody who knows me,” I said. “That’s just completely … How can you even think that for a second?” And I was actually feeling authentic human emotions of hurt, betrayal, and outrage. Because for once, I was totally innocent—but even my very own sister didn’t seem to believe that I was.

“All right, Jesus,” she said. “I’m just saying, you know.”

“You’re just saying I’m up Shit Creek and you won’t hand me a paddle?” I said.

“Come on,” she said, and to her great credit she squirmed uncomfortably.

“You’re saying you want to know if it’s all right if they arrest your brother,” I said, because I can be relentless, too. “Because you know he’s secretly the kind of guy who smashes his coworkers with a hammer?”

“Dexter, for fuck’s sake!” she said. “I’m sorry, okay?”

I looked at her another second, but she actually did seem sorry, and she wasn’t reaching for her cuffs, so I just said, “Okay.”

Deborah cleared her throat, looked away for a moment, then looked back at me. “So you never banged Camilla,” she said, and with a little more conviction she added, “And you totally never beat anybody to death with a hammer.”

“Not yet,” I said, with just a touch of warning.

“Fine,” she said, holding up her good hand, as if she wanted to make sure she was ready if I really did try to smack her with a hammer.

“And seriously,” I said. “Why would anybody want even
one
picture of me?”

Deborah opened her mouth, closed it again, and then looked like
she’d thought of something funny, although I certainly didn’t see anything to laugh about. “You really don’t know?” she said.

“Know
what
, Debs?” I said. “Come on.”

She still seemed to think something was comical. But she shook her head and said, “All right. You don’t know. Shit.” She smiled and said, “I shouldn’t be the one to tell you, your sister, but hey.” She shrugged. “You’re a good-looking guy, Dexter.”

“Thank you, you’re not so bad yourself,” I said. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Dexter, for Christ’s sake, don’t be dense,” she said. “Camilla had a
crush
on you, asshole.”

“On
me
?” I said. “A
crush
? Like, a romantic infatuation crush?”

“Shit, yeah, for
years
. Everybody knew about it,” Deborah said.

“Everybody but me.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, shrugging. “But all those pictures, it looks more like a total obsession.”

I shook my head, as if I could make the idea go away. I mean, I don’t pretend to understand the clinically insane human race, but this was a bit much. “That’s crazy,” I said. “I’m married.”

Apparently that was a funny thing to say. In any case, it was funny to Deborah; she snorted with amusement. “Yeah, well, getting married didn’t make you ugly,” she said. “Not yet, anyway.”