Number five, the last one down, showed no picture in its box, just an area of blurry darkness. I moved the cursor over it and clicked. For a moment nothing happened; then a thick white line pulsed across the screen from left to right, and there was a blare of trumpets that was oddly familiar. And then a face appeared on the screen —Doncevic, smiling, his hair puffed out, and a voice began to sing, “Here's the story ...” and I realized why it sounded familiar.

It was the opening to The Brady Bunch.

The horribly cheerful music bumped out at me and I watched as the voice warbled, “Here's the story, of a guy named Alex, who was lonely, bored, and looking —for a change.” Then the first three arranged corpses appeared to the left of Doncevic's happy face. He looked up at them and smiled as the song went on. They even smiled back, thanks to the plastic masks glued on to their faces.

The white line slid across the screen again, and the voice went on. “It's the story, of a guy named Brandon, who had time of his own on his hands.” A picture of a man's face appeared in the middle Weiss?

He was thirty or so, about the same age as Doncevic, but he was not smiling as the song continued. “They were two guys living all together, until suddenly Brandon was alone.” Three boxes appeared on the right side of the screen, and in each one a dark and blurry frame appeared that was just as familiar as the song, but in a very slightly different way: these were three action shots lifted from the film of Dexter at play.

The first showed Doncevic's body dumped in the tub. The second showed Dexter's arm raising the saw up, and the third was the saw slashing down on Doncevic. All three were short, two second loops that repeated, over and over, as the song lurched on.

From the middle box Weiss looked on as the voice sang, “Until one day Brandon Weiss will get this fellow, and I promise he will not be saved by luck. There is nothing you can do to escape me.