She took me by surprise. I had been using the silence to think about the nicely stacked body parts we had just left. My mind had been hungrily circling the clean dry chopped-up limbs like an eagle looking for a chunk of meat to rip out. Rita's observation was so unexpected I couldn't even stutter for a minute. “What do you mean?” I managed to say at last.

She frowned. “I—I'm not sure. Just— We all assume that . . . things . . . really are a certain way. The way they're supposed to be? And then they never are, they're always more . . . I don't know. Darker? More human. Like this. I'm thinking, of course the detective wants to catch the killer, isn't that what detectives do? And it never occurred to me before that there could be anything at all political about murder.”

“Practically everything,” I said. I turned onto her street and slowed down in front of her neat and unremarkable house.

“But you,” she said. She didn't seem to notice where we were or what I had said. “That's where you start. Most people would never really think it through that far.”

“I'm not all that deep, Rita,” I said. I nudged the car into park.

“It's like, everything really is two ways, the way we all pretend it is and the way it really is. And you already know that and it's like a game for you.”

I had no idea what she was trying to say. In truth, I had given up trying to figure it out and, as she spoke, I'd let my mind wander back to the newest murder; the cleanness of the flesh, the improvisational quality of the cuts, the complete dry spotless immaculate lack of blood—

“Dexter—” Rita said. She put a hand on my arm.

I kissed her.

I don't know which one of us was more surprised. It really wasn't something I had thought about doing ahead of time. And it certainly wasn't her perfume. But I mashed my lips against hers and held them there for a long moment.

She pushed away.

“No,” she said. “I— No, Dexter.”

“All right,” I said, still shocked at what I had done.

“I don't think I want to—I'm not ready for— Damn it, Dexter,” she said. She unclipped her seat belt, opened the car door, and ran into her house.

Oh, dear, I thought. What on earth have I done now?

And I knew I should be wondering about that, and perhaps feeling disappointed that I had just destroyed my disguise after a year and a half of hard maintenance.

But all I could think about was that neat stack of body parts.

No blood.

None at all.

CHAPTER 7

T HIS BODY IS STRETCHED OUT JUST THE WAY I LIKE it. The arms and legs are secure and the mouth is stopped with duct tape so there will be no noise and no spill into my work area. And my hand feels so steady with the knife that I am quite sure this will be a good one, very satisfying— Except it's not a knife, it's some kind of—