by Jeff Lindsay
Cody tried to push past and get a closer look, and I pushed him firmly back toward the door. “Stay back,” I said, and I reached for my phone. If I couldn’t figure out how Crowley had stayed ahead of me the whole time, at least I could find out if he was really dead. I dialed. There were three short rings and then a dreadfully cheerful, “Hello!”
“Brian,” I said. “Sorry if this is an odd question, but, um … did you take care of that thing you were going to do the other night?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, and even through the phone I could hear the very real happiness in his voice. “And a good time was had by nearly all.”
“You’re sure?” I said, staring at the lump that had been Hood.
“You’re right; that really is an odd question,” Brian said. “Of course I’m sure, brother; I was there.”
“And there was no mistake?”
There was a pause on the line, and I wondered whether the connection had dropped. “Brian?” I said.
“Well,” he said after a moment, “it’s just funny that you should ask that. The, um … the gentleman in question? He used that word a lot. He kept saying I was making a terrible mistake. Something about identity theft, I think? I wasn’t really listening.”
Something nudged me from behind. “Dexter,” Astor said, pushing harder. “We can’t see.”
“Just a minute,” I snapped at her, pushing them back again. “Brian,” I said into the phone. “Can you describe the, um, gentleman in question?”
“Before or after?” he said.
“Before.”
“We-e-ellllll,” he said. “I would say about forty-five, maybe five-foot-ten and a hundred and sixty pounds? Blond hair, clean shaven, with little gold-rimmed glasses.”
“Oh,” I said. Crowley was probably thirty pounds heavier than that, younger, and he had a beard.
“Is everything okay, brother? You sound a little out of sorts.”
“I’m afraid that everything is not quite okay,” I said. “I think the gentleman in question was right.”
“Oh, dear,” Brian said. “There was a mistake?”
“It sure looks like it from here,” I said.
“Oh, well,” Brian said. “Qué será.”
Astor nudged me again. “Dex-ter, come on,” she said.
“I have to go,” I told Brian.
“I’d love to know what I did,” he said. “Call me later?”
“If I can,” I told him. I put away the phone and turned to face Cody and Astor. “Now,” I said, “you two go wait in the hall.”
“But, Dexter,” Astor said, “we didn’t get to see anything, not really.”
“Too bad,” I said firmly. “You can’t go any closer until the police are done.”
“Not fair,” Cody said, with a major-league pout.
“Tough. This is what I do for a living,” I told him—meaning crime scene work, of course, and not the actual crime. “We have to leave the room without touching anything and go call the police.”
“We just wanna look; we won’t touch anything,” Astor said.
“No,” I said, pushing them toward the door. “Wait in the hall. I’ll just be a minute.”
They didn’t like it, not at all, but they went, trying all the way to get one more look at the thing on the foldout sofa. But I hustled them into the hall and shut the door and went to take a closer look of my own.
No one would ever have called Hood a handsome man, but as he was now he was positively repulsive. His tongue stuck out between the broken teeth, and the eye that wasn’t hanging out of the socket had gone red. This had clearly been the result of one tremendously powerful blow, and I didn’t think Hood had suffered for very long, which didn’t seem fair.
I knelt down beside the bed and looked underneath. There were no hastily dropped keys or monogrammed handkerchiefs to tell me who had done this, but they weren’t needed. I knew who had done it. But I still needed to know how. On the far side of the bed I saw something, and I went around to the other side and poked it out just far enough so I could see it. It was a large souvenir pirate hat, the kind with the black rubber eye patch molded onto it so it hangs down the front. Stuffed inside was a red bandanna. Even without touching it, I could see blood on the bandanna. A disguise for Hood? Probably to cover the wounds long enough to get him into the hotel.
I stood up and, just to be thorough, I went into the bedroom to see if anything was amiss. But everything looked fine—no one was lurking in the closet, Rita’s suitcase seemed undisturbed, and even my laptop was still sitting on the desk, apparently untouched. When I thought about it, that seemed a little odd. After all, Crowley boasted about his mastery of computer lore; why hadn’t he taken two minutes to look at my computer and learn my secrets?
And from somewhere deep inside Dexter’s Dungeon there came a soft flex of wings and a gently whispered answer:
Because he didn’t need to.
I blinked. It was a painfully simple answer, and it made me feel stupider than I could ever remember feeling.
He didn’t need to learn my secrets.
He already knew them.
He had stayed a step ahead of me because he had already hacked into my hard drive, and every time I powered on to find his address or read my e-mail or make a hotel reservation, he was there with me. There were plenty of programs that could do that. The only question was how he had put it on my hard drive. I tried to remember if I had left my computer alone anyplace but home or work—I hadn’t. I never would. But, of course, you didn’t need to touch a computer to hack into it. With the right worm, wi-fi would work fine. And with that thought I remembered sitting in front of my computer and opening an e-mail pitching the new Web site “Tropical Blood.” There had been a burst of fancy flash graphics and then a slow crawl of blood—perfect for distracting me for just a moment while the program wormed onto my hard drive and started telling Crowley everything about me.
It made sense; I was sure I was right, and with two minutes on the computer I could know for sure—but a rapid pounding came on the door, followed by Astor’s muffled, anxious voice calling my name. I turned away from my computer. It didn’t matter. Even without finding Crowley’s worm, I knew it was there. Nothing else was possible.
The knocking came again, and I opened the door and went out into the hall. The two of them tried to peer around me and see Hood’s body, but I pulled the door closed.
“We just wanted one last look,” Astor said.
“No,” I said. “And that’s another thing. You have to pretend to be grossed out and scared. So people think you’re just ordinary kids.”
“Scared?” Astor demanded. “Scared of what?”
“Scared of a dead body, and thinking that a killer was right here in your hotel room.”
“It’s a suite,” she said.
“So put on your frightened faces for the cops,” I said, and I got us all into the elevator. Luckily, there was a mirror in the elevator, and all the way down to the lobby they practiced looking scared. Neither one of them was completely convincing—it really does take years of practice—but I hoped nobody would notice.
I have been at hundreds of crime scenes in my career, and many of them were in hotels, so I was quite well aware that the management, generally speaking, does not consider dead bodies in the rooms a major selling point. They prefer to keep such things quiet, and in the spirit of polite cooperation, I went to the front desk and asked to see the manager.
The desk clerk was a nice-looking African-American woman. She smiled with genuine sympathy and said, “Of course, sir. Is there a problem?”
“There’s a dead body in our suite,” Astor said.
“Hush,” I told her.
The desk clerk’s smile twitched and then faded as she looked from me to Astor. “Are you sure about that, young lady?” she asked Astor.
I put a restraining hand on Astor. “I’m afraid so,” I told the clerk.
She just gaped for several seconds. “Oh, my God,” sh
e said at last. “I mean …” She cleared her throat and then made a very visible effort to pull her official clerk face back together. “Wait right here,” she said formally, and then she thought again and added, “I mean … please come with me?”
We followed her through the doorway behind the desk and waited while she called the manager. The manager arrived, and we waited some more while he called the police. And then we waited even longer while the police and local forensics team went up to our suite. A woman arrived and stared at us while she talked to the clerk. She seemed to be about forty-five, with graying hair, and loose skin hanging from her neck like crepe paper. She looked like she had been one of the party girls who came to Key West and hung out in the bars, until one day she woke up and realized the party was over and she had to get a real job. It didn’t seem to agree with her; she had a look of permanent disappointment etched onto her face, like there was a bad taste on her tongue and she couldn’t get rid of it.
After a quick and quiet conversation with the desk clerk she came over and spoke to me. “Mr. Morgan?” she said formally, and I recognized the tone right away. Her next words proved that I was right. “I’m Detective Blanton,” she said. “I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Of course,” I said.
“First I’d like to make sure your children are okay?” she said, and without waiting for an answer from me she crouched down beside Cody and Astor. “Hi,” she said to them, in a tone of voice usually reserved for clever puppies or human idiots. “My name is Detective Shari. Can you talk about what you saw upstairs in your room?”
“It’s a suite,” Astor said. “And anyway, we didn’t get to see hardly anything because Dexter made us leave the room before we could really look at it.”
Blanton blinked with her mouth hanging open. This was clearly not quite the reaction she’d been expecting. “I see,” she said, and she looked up at me.
“They’re very frightened,” I said, putting a little emphasis on the word so they would remember that they were scared.
“Of course they are,” Blanton said. She looked at Cody. “You gonna be okay, buddy?”
“Fine,” he said softly, and then he glanced at me and added, “Really scared.”
“That’s totally normal,” Blanton said, and Cody looked very pleased. “How about you, sweetheart?” she continued, turning back to Astor. “You doing all right?”
Astor made a visible effort not to snarl at being called “sweetheart” and instead managed to say, “Yes, I’m fine, thank you, just scared.”
“Uh-huh,” Blanton said. She looked back and forth between the two of them, apparently searching for some clue that they might be slipping into shock.
My phone rang—it was Rita. “Hello, dear,” I said, turning half away from Blanton and the children.
“Dexter, I just went past the aquarium? It doesn’t open until almost— And so, where are you? Because it’s a couple of hours.”
“Well,” I said. “We got a little sidetracked. There’s been a little incident here at the hotel—”
“Oh, my God, I knew it,” she said.
“Nothing at all to worry about,” I said, raising my voice over hers. “We’re all fine; it’s just something that happened and we were witnesses, so we have to make a statement, that’s all.”
“But they’re just children,” Rita said. “It isn’t even legal, and they have to— Are they all right?”
“They’re both fine; they’re talking to a very nice policewoman,” I said, and thinking it was best to cut things short, I said, “Rita, please, you go right ahead with the auction. We’ll be fine.”
“I can’t possibly— Because, I mean, the police are there?”
“You have to do the auction; it’s what we came for,” I said. “Get us the place on a Hundred and Forty-second Street.”
“It’s terrace,” she said. “A Hundred and Forty-second Terrace.”
“Even better,” I said. “And don’t worry; we’ll be there in plenty of time.”
“Well, but,” she said, “I just think I should be there—”
“You need to get ready for the auction,” I said. “And don’t worry about us. We’ll finish up here and then go see the sharks. This is just a minor inconvenience.”
“Mr. Morgan?” Blanton said behind me. “There’s somebody here who wants to talk to you.”
“Get that house,” I said to Rita. “I have to go now.” And I turned to face Blanton, and saw that my minor inconvenience had just grown a few sizes.
Gliding into the room, teeth first, was Sergeant Doakes.
I have been in many police interrogation rooms, and truthfully, the one in the Key West police station was fairly standard. But it did look a little different this time, since I was on the wrong side of the table. They hadn’t handcuffed me, which I thought was very nice of them, but they also didn’t seem to want me to go anywhere. So I sat there at the table while first Blanton and then several other detectives came and went, snarling the same questions, and then disappearing again. And each time the door swung open, I could see Sergeant Doakes standing in the hall outside the room. He was not smiling now, although I’m sure he was very happy, since I was right where he wanted me, and I knew he’d think it was worth losing Hood to put me here.
I tried very hard to be patient and answer the four standard questions the Key West cops kept asking, no matter how many times they asked, and I tried just as hard to remember that this one time I really was completely innocent and I had nothing to worry about. Sooner or later they would have to let me go, no matter how many ways Doakes managed to invoke professional cooperation.
But they seemed in no hurry, and after an hour or so in which they didn’t even offer me coffee, I thought perhaps I should encourage them. So when the fourth detective came in and sat down opposite me, and informed me for the third time that this was a very serious matter, I stood up and said, “Yes, it is. You are holding me here for no reason, without filing a charge, when I have done absolutely nothing wrong.”
“Sit down, Dexter,” the detective said. He was probably about fifty and looked like he’d been beaten up a few times, and I felt very strongly that one more time would be a good idea, because he said my name like he thought it was funny, and although I am normally very patient with stupidity—after all, there’s so much of it—this was the last straw.
So I put my knuckles on the table and leaned toward him, and I let fly with all the righteous indignation that I actually felt. “No,” I said. “I will not sit down. And I will not answer the same questions over and over anymore. If you aren’t going to file a charge and aren’t going to let me go, I want an attorney.”
“Look,” the guy said, with world-weary chumminess. “We know you’re with the Miami-Dade department. A little professional cooperation wouldn’t hurt you, would it?”
“It would not hurt me at all,” I said. “And unless you release me immediately, I plan to cooperate as much as possible with your Internal Affairs department.”
The detective drummed his fingers on the table for a few seconds and looked like he thought he might tough it out. But instead he slapped the table softly, stood up, and walked out without another word.
It was only another five minutes before Blanton came back in. She didn’t look happy, but maybe she didn’t know how. She was holding a manila folder in one hand and smacking it against the other one, and she looked at me like she wanted to blame me for the federal budget deficit. But she didn’t say anything; she just looked, smacked the folder a few times, and then shook her head. “You can go,” she said.
I waited to see if there was anything else. There wasn’t, so I walked through the door and into the hall. Naturally enough, Sergeant Doakes was standing there waiting for me. “Better luck next time,” I told him.
He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t even show me his teeth. He just stared at me with that hungry-jackal look of his that I knew so well, and since I have never been the sort who enjoys
uncomfortable silence, I turned away from him and stuck my head back into the interrogation room that had been my home for the last ninety minutes.
“Blanton,” I said, rather proud of myself for remembering her name. “Where are my children?”
She put the folder down, sighed, and came over to the doorway. “They’ve gone to be with their mother,” she said.
“Oh, all right,” I said. “Did they get to ride over in a patrol car?”
“No, we could get in trouble for that,” she said. “We got budget problems, you know.”
“Well, you didn’t just stick them in a taxicab all alone, did you?” I said, and I admit I was getting irritated with her, and the entire Key West Police Department.
“No, of course not,” she said, with a little more spirit than she’d shown so far. “They left with an authorized adult.”
I could think of only one or two people who might be considered authorized, and for a moment I felt a brief glimmer of hope; perhaps Deborah had arrived and things were looking up at last. “Oh, good,” I said. “Was it their aunt, Sergeant Deborah Morgan?”
Blanton blinked at me and shook her head. “No,” she said. “But it’s okay; your son knew him. It was his Cub Scout leader.”
THIRTY-TWO
I HAD SPENT FAR TOO MUCH TIME LATELY BEMOANING THE decline of my once-stunning mental powers, and so it was a great relief to realize that the gray cells were coming back online, because I did not think, even for a second, that “Cub Scout leader” meant Frank, the big-bellied, ghost story–telling real leader of the pack. I knew instantly who had taken Cody and Astor.
It was Crowley.
He had come right into the station, a building filled with policemen who were looking for him, even though they didn’t know it, and he had bluffed his way into possession of my children and walked out with them, and while a very small part of me admired the absolute brazen nerve of it, the rest of me was in no mood to hand out compliments.