— and it is the wrong face.
And that makes me furious, and I yank her hair even harder, that almost-perfect golden hair, the not-quite-right hair that is so close and looks so very much like hers but it is still not her hair and the face is not her face and it is just not right anymore even though I picture her face instead as I finish but when I look down at what I have done I can feel it all drain away because it is not right, it is not her, and a bright flash of rage runs down from the top of my skull and all the way down my arm and I pick up the knife, the cold impersonal knife, and I slash at that face, that so very wrong face, because it is not-
“Oh,” I said, and my eyes pop open to the fluorescent light of Deborah’s office, and no matter how hard I try to push it away and find a way not to believe it, the things I saw do not change. Even in the harsh and ugly light of the office the picture is the same, and even worse, I now see Deb and Jackie staring at me uncertainly, as if they had been watching me urinate on a busy street. “Oh, um,” I say. “It’s, you know. I just thought of something.”
“What?” Jackie said, sounding very unsure of what she was asking, and as if she was deliberately mocking me and mocking my vision, she flipped her hair around and over her shoulder-her hair, her perfect golden hair.…
“It is you,” I told her. “I mean, it really is about you.”
Jackie blushed and fidgeted with her hair. “That’s not, I mean …”
But Deborah cut right across Jackie’s modest dithering. “What do you mean, it’s about her?” she demanded. “What are you saying?”
“That’s why he did it,” I said, and I realized that I was still feeling the bat-wing rush of my interior flight with the Passenger and I was not actually making real-time sense. I took a deep breath and slapped the photos onto the desk beside Jackie. “The hair is like yours,” I said. “They both have a similar kind of figure. The same locations at the same time as you.” I looked up and locked eyes with Jackie, and she stared unblinking back with a small flicker of fear growing in those violet eyes. “And then the knife slash across the face, the rage-because it’s the wrong face. Because it isn’t you.”
I watched the long and elegant muscles in her throat move as she swallowed and then began to slowly shake her head. But as much as I wanted to be wrong, I knew that I was not.
“It’s you,” I said. “He killed them because they looked like you.”
EIGHT
For a few moments there was utter silence in Deborah’s office. Debs just stared, and Jackie simply sat there clutching white-knuckled at her hair, lips slightly parted, looking very pale, and apparently not even breathing. “I, I, how can, um …” she said.
“Where the fuck does that come from?” Deborah said.
“It, um-it just makes sense,” I said.
“Not to me,” Deborah said.
“I don’t think …” Jackie said faintly. “I … I don’t know if …”
Deborah pushed her chair back against the desk, making a noise that seemed horribly loud all of a sudden.
“It’s bullshit, Dexter,” Deborah said. “Unless you got something concrete to back it up.”
“You’ve got the dates and places,” I said. “And the victims all look like her.”
Deborah shook her head, lips pursed. “Lots of women look like her,” she said.
“Deborah, I’m sure about this-”
“Well, I’m not,” she snapped. “You got nothing to go on but one of your … hunches? And that’s not enough. I can’t go to the captain and say, ‘Look what we found when Dexter closed his eyes.’ Not when it isn’t even my case. I need evidence. Not just more of your psychic detective crap.”
It stung a little more than it should have. After all, she was the one who had forced me to perform, far too publicly for my liking, and now she was scolding me for doing something I hadn’t wanted to do at all. And I had done it just for her, because family is supposed to count for something-and done it quite well, too. And now she spurned me, mocked me, accused me of sophistry. So I reached down deep for a truly hurtful comeback, something that would really smack her down. But before I could even say, “Oh, yeah?” Jackie spoke.
“Oh, shit,” she said, staring at me and shaking her head jerkily from side to side. “Oh, my God, Deborah …” She twitched her head sideways and said, “I mean, Sergeant. I mean- Oh, shit.”
“What?” Deborah said.
Jackie continued her series of quick, jerky shakes of her head. “I think he’s right,” she said in a very small voice.
“Why?” Deborah demanded.
Jackie finally realized that she was still shaking her head and stopped. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, opened them and blinked at me, and then looked at Debs. “I have a stalker,” she said. “He’s been … He sent a bunch of letters.”
“What kind of letters?” Deborah said.
Jackie licked her lips. “They started out, you know. A little creepy, but just regular fan stuff.” She shrugged. “I get lots of those. And, you know, there’s a standard reply my assistant sends out. Sometimes with a picture. And he didn’t like that. He wanted something more … real.” She raised her hands and fluttered them like two small helpless birds. “Something personal,” she said. She dropped her hands into her lap. “Which I don’t do, ever. I mean, if it’s a kid with cancer or something, okay, but just a regular male fan letter? I usually don’t even see ’em, let alone answer ’em. My assistant brushes ’em off, and if they don’t take the hint we just ignore ’em. Send their letters back.”
Jackie bit her lip and looked down at her hands. “Which we did. We sent his letters back, and … he really hated that. And he wrote again, but … the letters turned really … nasty. And he sent my picture back all … shredded. Hacked up, and things drawn on it, and, um …” She actually gulped, took a deep breath, looked right at me, and said, “And one of the eyes poked out.”
“Fuck,” Deborah said softly.
“And the letters said some very bad things. Bad enough so Kathy-” She looked up. “Kathy is my assistant,” she said.
“Okay,” Deborah said.
“The letters were so dark and twisted and threatening that Kathy got worried. She showed them to me. I, uh … I don’t know. I didn’t really believe it was serious, but …” She shrugged and lifted her hands and then dropped them into her lap again. “I told her to show them to the police.”
“Did she?” Deborah asked.
“Yes,” Jackie said. “I mean, I assume so. I didn’t really … I mean, Kathy is very good at her job, so I’m sure she did.”
“Okay,” Deborah said. “And then what?”
Jackie shook her head. “Then nothing,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t think about it anymore; I just figured it was taken care of, and I had work to do. You know.”
“Where are the letters now?” Deborah said.
Jackie blinked. “Um. I don’t have any idea. I mean, I could ask Kathy?”
“Where is she?”
“She’s here, with me,” Jackie said. “I mean, here in Miami.”