It was completely ridiculous, of course; what I had done was totally justified, sanctified by the Code of Saint Harry, and beneficial to society, aside from being a great deal of fun. But because I was so wrapped up in navel-gazing, it was not until I crawled off U.S. 1 to merge onto the Palmetto Expressway that the insistent sibilance of self-preservation finally broke through my egotistical fog. It was just a quiet hiss of warning, but it was persistent enough to get my attention, and as I finally listened to it, it solidified into a single, very definite thought.
Someone is watching me.
I don’t know why I was certain, but I was. I could feel the gaze in a nearly physical way, almost as if somebody was trickling the razor-sharp point of a knife along the back of my neck. It was a sensation as definite and inarguable as the heat from the sun; someone was watching me, specifically me, and they were watching me for some reason that did not have my best interests at heart.
Reason argued that this was Miami at morning rush hour; almost anyone might stare at me with distaste, even hatred, for any reason at all—maybe they didn’t like my car, or my profile reminded them of their eighth-grade algebra teacher. But whatever Reason said, Caution argued back: It didn’t matter why someone was watching me. It only mattered that they were. Someone was watching me with mischief in mind, and I needed to find out who.
Slowly, oh-so-casually, I looked around me. I was in the middle of an exceptionally normal crush of morning traffic, indistinguishable from what I drove through every morning. To my immediate right there were two lanes of cars: a battered Impala, and beyond it an old Ford van with a camper roof. Behind them was a line of Toyotas, Hummers, and BMWs, none of them appearing to be any more menacing than any of the others.
I looked ahead again, inched forward with the traffic, and then slowly turned to look to my left—
—and before my head had turned more than six inches, there was a screech of tires, a chorus of blaring horns, and an old Honda accelerated off the Palmetto’s on-ramp, down the shoulder, and back onto U.S. 1, where it squealed north, slid through a yellow light, and vanished down a side street, and as it went I could see the left taillight dangling at an odd angle, and then the dark birthmark stain on the trunk.
I watched it go until the drivers behind me began to lean on their horns. I tried to tell myself that it was pure coincidence. I knew very well how many old Hondas there were in Miami; I had them all on my list. And I had visited only eight of them so far, and it was very possible that this was one of the others. I told myself that this was just one more idiot changing his mind and deciding to drive to work a different way this morning; probably someone had suddenly remembered that he’d left the coffeepot on, or left the disk with the PowerPoint presentation at home.
But no matter how many good and banal reasons I thought up for the Honda’s behavior, that other, darker certainty kept talking back, telling me with calm and factual insistence that whoever had been driving that car, they had been staring at me and thinking bad thoughts, and when I had turned to look at them they had rocketed away as if pursued by demons, and we knew very well what that really meant.
My breakfast began to churn in my stomach and I felt my hands turn slick with sweat. Could it be? Was it remotely possible that whoever had seen me that night had found me? Somehow tracked me down and learned my license number, long before I found them—and now they were following me? It was wildly, stupidly unlikely—the odds against it were monumental; it was ridiculous, impossible, totally beyond the bounds of belief—but was it possible?
I thought about it: There was no connection between Dexter Morgan, Boy Forensics Whiz, and the house where I had been seen with Valentine. I had gone to and from the house in Valentine’s car, and I had not been followed when I fled. So hunting along my back trail was impossible: There wasn’t one.
That left either magical powers or coincidence, and although I have nothing at all against Harry Potter, coincidence got my vote. And to make it a little more likely, that abandoned house had been only a little more than a mile from where the Palmetto Expressway intersects U.S. 1. I had already assumed that he lived in the same area—and if he did, he would almost inevitably drive to work along U.S. 1 and quite likely up onto the Palmetto, too. Work for most people started at roughly the same time every day, and everyone in this area drove to work along the same road. That was painfully obvious; it was what caused the perpetual traffic jam at this time each morning. So it was not as wildly coincidental as it had seemed at first. In fact, it was even likely that if we both repeated the same drive at the same time long enough, sooner or later he would see my car, and even me.
And he had. Once again, he had seen me, and this time he’d had an opportunity to study me at length. I tried to calculate how long he might have been staring. It was impossible; traffic had been stop-and-go, with an emphasis on stop that had lasted for almost two minutes. But it was pure guesswork to decide how long he had known it was me. Probably only a few seconds; I had to trust my alarm system.
Still, it was long enough to note the make and color of my car, write down the plate number, and who knows what else. I knew very well what I could do with only half that much information—it was entirely possible that with just the plate number he could find me—but would he? So far he had done nothing but flee in terror. Was he really going to look me up and then plant himself outside my door with a carving knife? If it was me, I would have—but he was not me. I was exceptionally good with computers, and I had resources that weren’t available to most people, and I used them to do things that no one else did. There is only one Dexter, and he was not it. Whoever this was, he could not possibly be anything l
ike me. But it was just as true that I had no idea what he was like, or what he might do, and no matter how many different ways I told myself that there was no real danger, I couldn’t shake the illogical fear that he was going to do something. The voice of calm reason was battered into silence by the screams of pure panic that had taken over my brain. He had seen me again, and this time I was in my workaday secret identity, and that made me feel more naked and helpless than I could remember.
I have no memory of driving up onto the Palmetto and continuing my morning commute, and it was pure blind chance that I was not flattened like a wandering possum by the raging traffic. By the time I got to work, I had calmed down enough to present a reasonably convincing facade, but I could not shake that steady trickle of anxiety that was once again burbling up on the floor of my brain and leaving me just on the edge of panic.
Luckily for the tattered shreds of my sanity, I didn’t have long to dwell on my own petty concerns. I had not even settled into my morning routine when Deborah came steaming in to distract me, with her new partner, Duarte, trailing along behind.
“All right,” she said, as if she was continuing a conversation we’d already been having. “So the guy has to have some kind of record, right? You don’t just suddenly do something like that out of nowhere, and nothing before it.”
I sneezed and blinked at her, which was not a very impressive response, but since I was mired in my own worries it took me a moment to connect with hers. “Are we talking about whoever killed Detective Klein?” I said.
Debs blew out an impatient breath. “Jesus shit, Dex, what did you think I was talking about?”
“NASCAR?” I said. “I think there was a big race this weekend.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” she said. “I need to know about this.”
I could have said that “asshole” might better describe somebody who charged into her brother’s office first thing Monday morning and didn’t even say “gesundheit” or ask how his weekend had been—but I knew very well that my sister had no tolerance for suggestions on workplace etiquette, so I shrugged it off. “I guess so,” I said. “I mean, something like what he did, that’s usually the end of a long process that started with other things, and … you know. The kind of thing that gets you noticed.”
“What kind of thing?” Duarte said.
I hesitated; for some reason, I felt a little bit uncomfortable, probably because I was talking about this stuff in front of a stranger—generally speaking, I don’t really like to talk about it at all, even with Debs; it seems a little too personal. I covered the pause by grabbing a paper towel and blotting at my nose, but they both kept looking at me expectantly, like two dogs waiting for a treat. I was on the spot, with no real choice but to go on. “Well,” I said, tossing the paper towel into the trash, “a lot of the time they start with, you know, pets. When they’re young, just twelve years old or so. And they kill small dogs, cats, like that. Just, um, experimenting. Trying to find what feels right. And, you know. Somebody in the family, or in the neighborhood, finds the dead pets, and they get caught and arrested.”
“So there’s a record,” Debs said.
“Well, there might be,” I said. “But if he follows the pattern, he’s young when he does that, so he goes to Juvie. So the record is going to be sealed, and you can’t just ask a judge to give you every sealed case file in the system.”
“Then give me something better,” Deborah said urgently. “Give me something to work with here.”
“Debs,” I protested, “I don’t have anything.” I sneezed again. “Except a cold.”
“Well, shit,” she said. “Can’t you think up some kind of hint?”