by Jeff Lindsay
Kraunauer looked at Anderson. So did I. But Revis and Blanton were far too polished. They looked straight ahead, as if they’d forgotten that Anderson existed. I wished I could forget, too. “Received…information,” Kraunauer drawled, caressing the words and still looking straight at Anderson. “May I ask where you received it from?”
Anderson had begun to squirm just a little in his seat, and as Kraunauer’s accusing stare went on he actually started to blush. It was very gratifying to see, worth the entire field trip to the Field Office.
“Our source is confidential,” Blanton said.
Kraunauer slowly turned his head back to the feds. “Really,” he said. “Confidential.”
Blanton looked uncomfortable, and he and Revis had one of their wordless conferences. “We can’t reveal the source,” Revis said at last. “But I’ll show you the file.”
Kraunauer nodded. “Good enough.”
Blanton pushed the manila folder across the top of the conference table and Kraunauer picked it up. I leaned over and looked, too.
The top page was a copy of the log from the evidence room. Whenever anyone accesses the evidence room, cop or forensics geek, they are required to sign the log. On this page, picked out in bright yellow highlighter, was an entry that said Dexter Morgan had been there, and it was signed with a childish scrawl that looked as much like my signature as Egyptian cuneiform writing does.
Kraunauer flipped the page: The second page was a copy of an interdepartmental memo stating that someone had removed two kilos of confiscated cocaine from the evidence room, at a date and time that was amazingly similar to the time “Dexter Morgan” had been there.
“Well, it does prove one thing,” I said. “I have superpowers.” Kraunauer looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I tapped the line with the date. “I was in a cell at Turner Guilford Knight on this date.”
Kraunauer looked at me blandly for a moment, then turned to Revis. “Easy enough to check,” he said.
“What about the signature?” Blanton asked.
“It’s not even a good forgery,” I said. “It looks like a third grader’s handwriting. Tell me, Detective,” I said, facing Anderson, “as the only third grader here, do you always have trouble making your letters?”
Kraunauer cleared his throat, whether from amusement or postnasal drip I couldn’t tell. “Agent Revis,” he said. “My client seems to think that’s not his signature.”
Revis nodded. “May I see your driver’s license, Mr. Morgan?” she said, holding out a hand.
I looked at Kraunauer, who nodded. “Of course,” I said. I pulled out my wallet and placed the license in Revis’s hand. Kraunauer slid the folder back across the table and Blanton picked it up. He and Revis huddled together for a moment, comparing the signature on my license to the cheesy scrawl on the evidence log.
It didn’t take long. I have always prided myself on my penmanship. I like to make neat, regular letters, and write words that are legible to anyone who can read. The forged signature was so obviously by a different hand that even a total clot like Anderson should have known better. And the two feds were by no means total clots, nor even partial. After just a few seconds Revis flipped my license back to me.
“Not the same signature?” Kraunauer said to her.
“Probably not,” Revis said.
“He changed it!” Anderson said.
“Detective,” Revis said warningly.
“He disguised his signature; it’s obvious!” Anderson went on.
Blanton stood up. He took the two steps along the table to Anderson and stood over him, looking down at him with an expression of ice-cold annoyance. Anderson looked back, and for a moment he thought he might bluster on. But Blanton leaned down, until his face was only an inch from Anderson’s.
“The understanding was,” Blanton said softly, “that you would observe.” He held up a finger, making Anderson flinch. “Not talk. Observe.”
Anderson opened his mouth, but thought better of it, and Blanton nodded and returned to his own chair. He sat, looked briefly at Revis, and then both agents looked at me. “Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Morgan, Mr. Kraunauer,” Revis said. “You can go now.”
Kraunauer stood up and said politely, “Thank you, Agent Revis. Agent Blanton.” He looked at me, said, “Mr. Morgan?” and then turned away and headed out the door.
I stood up, too. I felt like I should say something polite to the two feds, but nothing came to me that didn’t make me sound like a puerile lick-spittle, so I just nodded and turned for the door.
Anderson was there ahead of me. He stood right in the doorway, filling it with his bulk and making it impossible for me to pass. “This ain’t over yet, fuckwad,” he said softly.
“Not while you’re still at liberty,” I said. “I mean, really, Detective. Drugs? That’s the best you can do?”
He stared at me some more, perhaps hoping I would melt. But I didn’t, and after a long and dull pause, he just nodded. “It ain’t over yet,” he repeated, and stepped aside. I went gratefully through the unblocked door, and closed it behind me.
Kraunauer was waiting for me, standing next to the same young and serious agent who had brought us up. “I’m beginning to believe,” Kraunauer said, “that Detective Anderson may not like you.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?” I said. He just chuckled briefly, and said to the young woman, “Agent?”
She had clearly been waiting with some impatience to take us down to the lobby, and now, given her freedom, she did so very briskly, without wasting any expensive Bureau time on idle chitchat. She set such a vigorous pace, in fact, that it was not until we arrived at the reception area that I remembered I had no way to get back to my hotel. “Oh,” I said to her, “um, Ms. Agent?”
She looked at me without any trace of expression. “Yes?” she said.
“Is it possible to get a cab in this area? I don’t have a car.”
“Oh!” Kraunauer said, before the agent could speak. “My God, of course you don’t! Well, hell, I can certainly run you back to your hotel.”
“That’s very kind,” I said. “If you really don’t mind?”
“Not at all, of course not, come on,” Kraunauer said, sounding oddly eager. He put a hand on my elbow and propelled me toward the front door, leaving in his wake the serious young agent, who looked rather relieved to be rid of both of us.
“My car is right over here,” Kraunauer said, steering me toward a modest-looking gray sedan with a stylized letter “B” on each hubcap. And in spite of that, it wasn’t until I opened the door and saw the walnut-lined instrument panel and soft glove-leather seats that I realized the “B” stood for “Bentley.” I slid onto the sweet-smelling seat and tried not to soil it by sweating or thinking impure thoughts.
Kraunauer jumped in behind the wheel and started the car. It started right up, with a purr like a large cat with a throat full of honey. “All right,” he said. “Where are you staying?”
I gave him the hotel’s name and address, and he took us up onto I-95 and headed south. His car was so quiet I was afraid even to clear my throat, so we rode in silence for a few minutes, and then Kraunauer finally spoke.
“I hope you understand that this is all positive,” he said. “Extremely positive.”
“I know,” I said. “Except for the bomb.”
“Oh, no, that was the best part,” he said quite seriously. “That bomb is buying you a lot of sympathy, Mr. Morgan. The newshounds are already starting to wonder out loud if you might be innocent.”
“I actually am innocent, you know,” I said. He just nodded, poker-faced, and kept his eyes on the road. “I suppose all your clients say that,” I said.
“No, not all of them,” he said, and added a small chuckle. “One or two of them have been quite proud of their accomplishments.”
“That must make it a lot harder for you,” I said.
“Not at all,” Kraunauer said. “It doesn’t matter at all what I know, or what I b
elieve. All that matters is what I make the court believe. And in your case, that just got a lot easier. And anyway, I’d be very surprised if your case even goes to trial,” he said. And then he jerked his head around to give me a quick look, as if I’d startled him somehow. “I mean,” he said, “they might, you know. Drop the charges.”
“Oh. Great,” I said, and he turned his attention back to the road and left me wondering what that strange facial expression had been about. Other than that, it was a quiet and exceptionally smooth trip down to my hotel. The Bentley provided a ride that was supernaturally gentle, and neither one of us had anything else to say, which was a relief, to tell the truth. Most of the time, when you’re cooped up in a car with a relative stranger, they want to talk about football or politics or sex. I can’t muster much interest in any of those things. Of course, as one small part of my Human Disguise I’ve learned enough about all of them to keep a polite conversation going, but it really was a relief not to have to try to compare the Dolphins’ current offensive line to the one they’d fielded in 2008.
In a little more than twenty minutes Kraunauer was pulling into the driveway of my new hotel. I looked at it out the window as we ghosted up to the door, wondering how long I would be able stay at this place before something forced me to move again. I hoped I could get a couple of nights out of it; it had the best bed yet, and I was looking forward to spending a little more quality time on it.
“Well,” Kraunauer said as he came to a halt at the front door, “this place looks adequate, at least.” He smiled at me, a small and polite smile, not really one of his world-beaters. “I hope the room’s okay—they didn’t put you on the ground floor, I hope?”
“No, the third floor, with a lovely view of the Dumpster,” I said.
“Excellent,” he said. “Now, uh—I may have to send you some papers for signature. So what’s your room number?”
“Three seventeen,” I said.
“Good. All right,” he said. “Now, I know it’s got to be frustrating, but I want you to stay put up there as much as possible. We can’t have you showing your face, giving the reporters a chance to find you.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. It was not technically a promise to stay put, which of course I had no intention of doing.
“Don’t talk to anybody in the media; that’s vital,” he said.
“I won’t,” I said, and I actually did intend to avoid that.
“All right, then,” he said. He pushed a small button and my door unlocked. It was a clear signal for me to go, and I opened the door.
“Thanks, Mr. Kraunauer,” I said. “For everything.”
“Oh, don’t thank me yet,” he said with an airy wave. I got out of his luxurious rolling pleasure palace, and he vanished, silently, before I was even in the hotel’s door.
NINETEEN
The clock in my hotel room said it was only four-thirty-eight, which didn’t seem possible. I certainly seemed to be packing an awful lot of excitement into a very little time. It had made me hungry, too, but there was nothing close to the hotel except a franchise fast-food place, and it was even lower on the evolutionary scale than the one that had given me agita the day before.
So I gave a heavy sigh, pushed away hunger and fatigue, and sat instead at the horribly uncomfortable desk chair, and I pondered. The day had not been a total loss so far; it was at least possible that Anderson might be held in check for a while. It was far too much to hope that the feds would investigate or prosecute him, of course, but they were aware that something was not quite right in Smallville—“Small” referring, of course, to Anderson’s IQ. That knowledge should restrain him, at least temporarily. Of course, it was almost as likely to prompt him to try something even more outrageous.
His last words to me, It ain’t over, certainly made preemptive action seem more likely. And the fact that the FBI now had good reason to believe he’d been playing hokeypokey with evidence and forged signatures would probably make him even more desperate to prove I was a True Naughty Boy of epic proportions. It seemed logical to assume that his best stratagem was framing me for drug possession. He already had that on the record, and if he could “prove” he’d been right, that would not only take Me off to jail, but it would also restore his reputation.
The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that this would be Anderson’s plan. He would take some of the “missing” drugs and slip them into my meager possessions. It was simple, which was de rigueur for him, and it would probably work. Even if everybody was certain he’d planted the drugs himself, they’d go along with it. I nodded; that’s what he would do—if he found out where I was. He hadn’t so far, and as long as I made sure he never did, his plot couldn’t get off the ground.
I slid that worry onto the back burner. Anderson was not on the same level of threat as the bombers. There was no wiggle room with someone who wants to kill you badly enough that they are willing to take out half your hotel as long as they might get you, too. They’d missed once, but there was no doubt that they’d make another try as soon as they could. How? I didn’t have enough raw data even to guess their next move. I had no clue at all what they might do, or how many of them there might be—I knew nothing about them except that the size of their bomb revealed a reckless joie de vivre that I might have admired, except that it also indicated an unsettling seriousness about getting rid of me.
Brian, on the other hand, did know them. And as a special bonus, he had a car, a vehicle well known for its ability to take people to places where food was available. That sealed it; I called Brian, and he agreed to come get me.
Half an hour later we were sitting together in a nice, quiet diner over in Homestead. “I believe the meat loaf is quite good here,” Brian told me. “If you like that sort of thing.”
“I do,” I said, and in truth, the mere mention of it had made my stomach groan audibly.
A brisk and efficient waitress took our order: two meat loafs, garlic mashed, green beans. Coffee, sweet tea (for Brian). She swished away, and I leaned back in the red plastic booth. “The thing is,” I said to Brian, “it all comes down to what we were talking about this morning.”
“Early afternoon, actually,” Brian said politely.
I waved it off. “The point is,” I said, “Raul’s little buddies found me. There are two things wrong with that.”
My brother was already nodding, proving once again that he was no slouch. “First, it’s you,” he said. “Instead of me.”
“And second,” I went on, “it happened much too quickly to be coincidence or luck. So the question is—”
“How,” Brian said. “And without knowing that, it’s really much harder to put an end to it, isn’t it?”
“ ‘The most difficult part to invent is the end,’ ” I said. He blinked at me inquiringly, and I tried to look modest. “De Tocqueville,” I said.
Brian just nodded, and looked down at the table. He frowned very thoughtfully, and I realized my face was wearing an exact duplicate of his expression. How odd it was, after all my years of thinking I was alone and unique, finally to find somebody who was so very similar, even down to appearance. Of course, my handwriting was much better. And Shakespeare or not, I was positive Brian couldn’t quote de Tocqueville like I could. Even so, it was rather strange—but nice, in truth. Brian was real family—not a fair-weather sibling who turned her back at the merest hint of trouble. Brian had instead arrived, unasked, when my problems began, and he was helping me solve them. Except, of course, for the small detail of dropping me into the middle of a lethally violent drug war. But I could forgive that; I had to, because he was family. Permanent, undeniable family, and as much like me as he could be. Not like some I could think of.
And that thought might as well have been a cue in a well-rehearsed theatrical performance, because as the words formed in my brain, my phone rang. I glanced at the screen and saw, to my irritated astonishment, that the call came, by all that is unholy, from a certain fair-weather sib
ling: It was Deborah, and that made absolutely no sense. Did she need instructions on how to change Lily Anne’s diaper? Or perhaps permission for Cody to play with sharp objects? Well, too bad—she was on her own, and it was all her doing. As far as I could tell from our last two conversations, we had nothing at all to say to one another. Not now, not ever again. She’d made it quite clear that our family ties were untied, and she preferred it that way.
I felt a small surge of annoyance bordering on resentment, and decided that Mr. Dexter Morgan was not available. I pushed decline and put the phone back in my pocket.
I turned my powerful brain right back to the problem at hand with not even a small thought of my ex-sister. How had they found me so quickly? Because there was really no reason for Deborah to call.
My phone chirruped again. Either I had suddenly become Mr. Popular, or some other unthinkable event had just occurred. I looked at the screen, and unthinkable won. It was Deborah again.
Once more I pushed decline and my irritation ratcheted up a few notches. Would she never give me any peace? Was the woman going to hound me to my grave? Assuming no one else got me there first by more conventional means?
Again: How had Raul’s men found me so quickly and easily? They had to have picked me up after I’d already left the first hotel, the one where I found Octavio dead on my bed. Otherwise, they would have been onto Brian first, not me. But they could easily have gotten my name from that hotel room. So they knew that something called a “Dexter Morgan” was somehow connected to Brian. Had I used my credit card since my precipitous departure from that hotel? I didn’t think so.
So how had they found me? I couldn’t believe that they had simply roamed around the city looking for a Dexter until they found the right one. If nothing else, you didn’t waste a lovely big bomb like that one on an uncertain target. They had known it was me when they planted the bomb. But how? Where had I been that they could latch onto me like that? It could not have been at any time or place when Brian and I were together, either, for the same reason—that they would have hit Brian first.