It is always nice to see the synapses clicking in a way that lets you know your opinion of yourself is sometimes justified. But in this particular case, there was just a chance that more was at stake than Dexter’s self-esteem. If Doakes had something to hide, I was a step closer to being back in business.

There are several things that Dashing Dexter is good at, and some of them can actually be legally performed in public. One of these things is using a computer to find information. This was a skill I had developed to help me be absolutely sure about new friends like MacGregor and Reiker. Aside from avoiding the unpleasantness of cutting up the wrong person, I like to confront my fellow hobbyists with the evidence of their past indiscretions before I send them off to dreamland. Computers and the Internet were wonderful means of finding this stuff.

So if Doakes had something to hide, I thought I could probably find it, or at least some small thread of it that I could yank on until his whole dark past began to unravel. Knowing him as I did, I was quite sure it would be dismal and Dexter-like. And when I found that certain something . . . Perhaps I was being naïve to think I could use this hypothetical information to get him off my case, but I thought there was a very good chance. Not by confronting him directly and demanding that he cease and desist or else, which might not be entirely wise with someone like Doakes. Besides, that was blackmail, which I am told is very wrong. But information is power, and I would certainly find some small way to use whatever I found—a way to give Doakes something to think about that did not involve shadowing Dexter and curtailing his Crusade for Decency. And a man who discovers his pants are on fire tends to have very little time to worry about somebody else’s box of matches.

I went happily down the hall from the captain’s office, back to my little cubicle off the forensics lab, and got right to work.

A few hours later I had just about all I could find. There were surprisingly few details in Sergeant Doakes’s file. The few that I found left me gasping for breath: Doakes had a first name! It was Albert—had anyone ever really called him that? Unthinkable. I had assumed his name was Sergeant. And he had been born, too—in Waycross, Georgia. Where would the wonders end? There was more, even better; before he had come to the department, Sergeant Doakes had been—Sergeant Doakes! In the army—the Special Forces, of all things! Picturing Doakes in one of those jaunty green beanies marching alongside John Wayne was almost more than I could think about without bursting into military song.