I dried my hands and went to bed again, but there was no sleep left in this night for dear decimated Dexter. I simply lay on my back and watched the dark pools flowing across the ceiling until the telephone rang at a quarter to six.

“You were right,” Deb said when I picked up. “It's a wonderful feeling,” I said with a great effort at being my usual bright self. “Right about what?” “All of it,” Deb told me. “I'm at a crime scene on Tamiami Trail. And guess what?” “I was right?” “It's him, Dexter. It has to be. And it's a whole hell of a lot splashier, too.” “Splashier how, Deb?” I asked, thinking three bodies, hoping she wouldn't say it and thrilled by the certainty that she would. “There appear to be multiple victims,” she said.

A jolt went through me, from my stomach straight up, as if I had swallowed a live battery. But I made a huge effort to rally with something typically clever. “This is wonderful, Deb. You're talking just like a homicide report.”

“Yeah, well. I'm starting to feel like I might write one someday. I'm just glad it won't be this one. It's too weird. LaGuerta doesn't know what to think.” “Or even how. What's weird about it, Deb?” “I gotta go,” she said abruptly. “Get out here, Dexter. You have to see this.”

By the time I got there the crowd was three deep around the barrier, and most of them were reporters. It is always hard work to push through a crowd of reporters with the scent of blood in their nostrils. You might not think so, since on camera they appear to be brain-damaged wimps with severe eating disorders. But put them at a police barricade and a miraculous thing happens. They become strong, aggressive, willing and able to shove anything and anyone out of the way and trample them underfoot. It's a bit like the stories about aged mothers lifting trucks when their child is trapped underneath. The strength comes from some mysterious place—and somehow, when there is gore on the ground, these anorexic creatures can push their way through anything. Without mussing their hair, too.

Luckily for me, one of the uniforms at the barricade recognized me. “Let him through, folks,” he told the reporters. “Let him through.” “Thanks, Julio,” I told the cop. “Seems like more reporters every year.” He snorted. “Somebody must be cloning 'em. They all look the same to me.”

I stepped under the yellow tape and as I straightened on the far side I had the odd sensation that someone was tampering with the oxygen content of Miami's atmosphere. I stood in the broken dirt of a construction site. They were building what would probably be a three-story office building, the kind inhabited by marginal developers. And as I stepped slowly forward, following the activity around the half-built structure, I knew it was not coincidence that we had all been brought here. Nothing was coincidence with this killer. Everything was deliberate, carefully measured for aesthetic impact, explored for artistic necessity.