“Daryll Earl McHale is not it,” I said. “There's absolutely no doubt about it.”

“Even if you're right, so what?” she said.

Now it was my turn to blink and wonder. “Excuse me?”

“Well, look, if I'm this killer, why don't I realize I'm off the hook now? With this other guy arrested, the heat's off, you know. Why don't I just stop? Or even take off for someplace else and start over?”

“Impossible,” I said. “You don't understand how this guy thinks.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “How come you do?”

I chose to ignore that. “He's going to stay right here and he's going to kill again. He has to show us all what he thinks of us.”

“Which is what?”

“It's not good,” I admitted. “We've done something stupid by arresting an obvious twinky like Daryll Earl. That's funny.”

“Ha, ha,” Deb said with no amusement.

“But we've also insulted him. We've given this lowbrow brain-dead redneck all the credit for his work, which is like telling Jackson Pollock your six-year-old could have painted that.”

“Jackson Pollock? The painter? Dexter, this guy's a butcher.”

“In his own way, Deborah, he is an artist. And he thinks of himself that way.”

“For Christ's sake. That's the stupidest—”

“Trust me, Deb.”

“Sure, I trust you. Why shouldn't I trust you? So we have an angrily amused artist who's not going anywhere, right?”

“Right,” I said. “He has to do it again, and it has to be under our noses, and it probably has to be a little bigger.”

“You mean he's going to kill a fat hooker this time?”

“Bigger in scale, Deborah. Larger in concept. Splashier.”

“Oh. Splashier. Sure. Like with a mulcher.”

“The stakes have gone up, Debs. We've pushed him and insulted him a little and the next kill will reflect that.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “And how would that work?”

“I don't really know,” I admitted.

“But you're sure.”

“That's right,” I said.

“Swell,” she said. “Now I know what to watch for.”

CHAPTER 13
I KNEW WHEN I WALKED IN MY FRONT DOOR AFTER work on Monday that something was wrong. Someone had been in my apartment.

The door was not broken, the windows were not jimmied, and I couldn't see any signs of vandalism, but I knew. Call it sixth sense or whatever you like. Someone had been here. Maybe I was smelling pheromones the intruder had left in my air molecules. Or perhaps my La-Z-Boy recliner's aura had been disturbed. It didn't matter how I knew: I knew. Somebody had been in my apartment while I had been at work.

That might seem like no big deal. This was Miami, after all. People come home every day to find their TVs gone, their jewelry and electronics all taken away; their space violated, their possessions rifled, and their dog pregnant. But this was different. Even as I did a quick search through the apartment, I knew I would find nothing missing.

And I was right. Nothing was missing.