The woman in the booth looks up at Lazlo’s wave, checks her computer screen and monitors, and a moment later the door clicks open. We step through into a room the size of a large closet and the door closes behind us. Two steps forward and we face another door. Lazlo nods at the camera above the door, and a moment later it opens and we are in the hall. Five more steps to the elevator—and crossing such vast space is dizzying after the tight confinement of my cell. But somehow I manage, and in only a moment or two we are in the elevator. The door closes and I am back within four snug walls, relaxing in the comfort of a space more like the one I am used to now, something the size of my cell. I take a deep breath, enjoying the security.
The door slides open. Lazlo leads me out—to my surprise, we are on the ground floor. Ahead of me I can see what must be the lobby. Beyond a brace of armed guards there is a crowd of people milling around. They are unchained and wearing normal clothing, clearly waiting for something—to get in? I feel privileged—I didn’t know I lived in such desirable housing. We even have a waiting list.
But I don’t get a chance to tell them all about the wonderful accommodations and gourmet meals. Lazlo takes me away from the lobby and down a corridor, past several guards and a few orange-suited inmates busily sweeping and mopping. They move hurriedly out of our way, as though afraid I might infect them with Felony Fever.
It seems like quite a voyage to Dexter the Dedicated Homebody. Such a long way to travel, and all to see a detective—a detective who must, I am sure, be my sister. My heart flutters with expectation; I can’t help it. I have been waiting far too long for Deborah to arrive and strike the vile fetters from my lily-white limbs. And here she is at last; it can only have taken so long because she has banished the ludicrous charges against me and arranged everything. I will be not merely bailed out, but set free at last.
And so I fight to keep my hopes from rising up and drowning me, but I do not succeed very well. I am very nearly singing when we come at last to our destination, and it is not a place that speaks in any way of freedom. It is a small room deep within the bowels of the building, with windows on three sides. A table and chairs are visible inside; it is clearly an interrogation room, just the place for a detective to meet with a suspect, and not at all the kind of place where an Avenging Fury might stand to strike off my fetters.
Visible through the windows is a more-or-less human form that has no resemblance at all to a Fury, although it does look somewhat grumpy. It has even less resemblance to Deborah, Freedom, and especially Hope. It is, in fact, the very embodiment of the exact opposite of all these things.
In short, it is Detective Anderson. He looks up and sees me through the glass, and he smiles. It is not a smile that encourages in me any of the finer feelings. It is instead a smile that says to me, quite clearly, it is time for all Hope to die.
Hope obliges.
L
azlo holds my arm as he opens the door, perhaps afraid that the sight of Anderson will turn my knees to jelly and render me incapable of maintaining an upright posture. He pauses in the doorway, and of necessity, so do I.
“Wait outside,” Anderson says, still smiling at me.
Lazlo doesn’t move. “You alone?” he asks.
“You see anybody else?” Anderson sneers.
“Supposed to be two of you,” Lazlo says, stubbornly refusing to move.
“I’m not afraid of this fuckhead,” Anderson says.
“It’s regulations,” Lazlo says. “
Two
of you.”
“Listen, chump,” Anderson says. “My regulations say I’m a cop and you’re a fucking corrections clown. Wait outside.”
Lazlo shakes his head, looks at me. “Seventeen months and I retire,” he says. He looks at Anderson and shakes his head again, then turns to go, closing the door behind him.
“Well, fuckhead,” Detective Anderson says in cheerful greeting when we are finally alone. “How d’you like it here?”
“It’s very nice,” I tell him. “You should try it sometime.”
His smile morphs into a sneer, an expression that is much more natural for him. “I don’t think so,” he says.
“Suit yourself,” I say. I move to a chair, and Anderson scowls.
“I didn’t tell you to sit,” he says.
“That’s true,” I say, “which is unusual for you.” I sit. For a moment he thinks he might stand up and smack me out of my chair. I smile patiently at him and glance at the window, where Lazlo stands. He’s watching us and talking into his radio. Anderson decides against smacking me and slumps back into his chair.
“What did your lawyer say?” he asks me.
It’s a surprisingly illegal question, even from a malignant pimple like Anderson. “Why do you want to know?” I say.
“Just answer, fuckhead,” he says with massive authority.
“I don’t think so. That’s privileged information,” I tell him.
“Not to me,” he says.
“Especially to you,” I say. “But maybe you were absent the day they went over that in middle school.” I smile. “Or more likely you never got as far as middle school. That would explain a lot.”
“Wiseass,” he says.
“Is dumb ass better? I mean, in your experience?”
He has at least lost his annoying smirk, but it has been replaced by a rather alarming flush of color and an angry frown. This is clearly not going the way he had fantasized. As someone with recent professional acting experience, I wonder briefly whether I should grovel and plead, just to play out his script, but I decide against it; my character just wouldn’t
do
that. “You’re in a lot of fucking trouble,” he snarls. “If you’re so fucking smart, you’ll cooperate a little.”
“Detective, I
am
cooperating,” I say. “But you have to give me something to cooperate
with
. Hopefully something legal, and not too stupid. Unlikely as that might be, coming from you.”
Anderson takes a deep breath and shakes his head. “Fucking wiseass,” he says. “You know why I’m here?”
I did know; he was here to gloat. But since he probably didn’t know that word, I decided to avoid it. “You’re here because you know I’m innocent,” I say instead. “And you’re hoping I have found the
real
killer, because you know that even locked up in here, I have a better chance of solving a crime than you do.”
“I solved it,” he says. He lifts a huge, meaty finger and jabs it at me. “You’re it.”
I looked at Anderson. His face was full of anger, venom, dislike for me, and above all, impenetrable stupidity. It was possible that he actually thought I was guilty, or had talked himself into believing it. I didn’t think so. “If you say it enough times, you might actually believe it,” I say.
“I don’t have to believe it,” he snarls. “I just have to make a judge believe it.”
“Good luck with that,” I say, even though he is apparently having quite good luck so far even without my wishes.
Anderson takes another deep breath, letting his face relax into its more natural uncomprehending scowl. “I need to know what your lawyer said,” he says again.
“Better ask him,” I say, helpfully adding, “his name is Bernie.”
Before Anderson can do any more than drum his fingers on the tabletop, the door opens. “Time’s up,” Lazlo says. “Prisoner has to go.”
“I’m not done with him,” Anderson says without looking up.
“Yes, you are,” Lazlo says firmly.
“Who says?”
“I do,” says a new voice, and now Anderson looks up.
A woman steps out from behind Lazlo. She is tall, African American, and good-looking in a severe way. She is also wearing a uniform, and her uniform spells trouble for Anderson, because it quite clearly says she is a captain, and she is looking directly at Detective Anderson with an expression that falls far short of friendly cooperation. “I don’t know what you think you’re pulling here, Detective,” she says, “but you’re done. Get out.” Anderson opens his mouth to say something, and the captain steps closer. “Now,” she says quietly, and Anderson closes his mouth so fast I can hear his teeth click. He stands up, looks at me, and I smile. Anderson very obligingly turns red again, and then turns away and stalks out through the door that Lazlo is holding so politely open for him.
I am on the verge of thanking the captain, perhaps offering her a hearty handshake—even a hug—when she turns steely brown eyes on me, her expression leaving no doubt at all that no profession of gratitude on my part, however sincere, would be welcome, and a hug is quite clearly out of the picture.
The captain turns away, facing Lazlo. “I don’t need any paperwork this time,” she says, and Lazlo heaves a sigh of relief. “But if that dickhead comes back, I want to know about it.”
“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.
“Deborah…?” I said, quite stupidly, since I could see the phone lying there, several feet away from her ear.
She turned back to face me, almost as if she’d heard, and waited a moment—an interval filled with no more than an unblinking stare from that hard face that had become so monotonously unfriendly. Then she picked up the phone again.
“I’m not here to listen to your bullshit,” she said.
“But that’s…But then…But why?” I said, and in my defense I have to say that her comment had rendered me even stupider than I sounded. It was a true miracle of wit, in fact, that I could speak at all.
“I need you to sign some papers,” she said. She held up a sheaf of official-looking documents, and in spite of all the massive evidence to the contrary, I actually felt a small surge of relief. After all, what official documents could she possibly bother to bring down here, other than something dealing with my case? And since the true and hidden meaning of “my case” actually meant “my release,” a little ray of sunshine peeped out from behind the newly formed dark clouds.
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll be happy to…You know that I…What are they?” I said, all pathetic eagerness to please once again.
“Custody,” she said, grinding the word out as if one more syllable would have broken her jaw.
I could only blink in surprise. Custody? Was she really going to take me into her house, assume the role of legal guardian to Dexter in Disgrace, until such time as my good name was re-untarnished? It went far beyond what I hoped for—it sounded very much like a full pardon, if only a nonlegal one from Deborah. “Custody,” I repeated inanely, “well, of course, that’s—I mean, thank you! I didn’t think you would—”
“Custody for your
kids,
” she said, nearly spitting the words. “So they don’t go to a foster home.” And she looked at me as if it had been my plan, my entire purpose in life, to send children to orphanages.