A PARTICULARLY LOUD SNORE FROM CHUTSKY BROUGHT me back to the present. It was loud enough that one of the nurses stuck her head in the door, and then checked all the dials and gauges and whirling machinery before going away again, with a suspicious backward glance at the two of us, as if we had deliberately made terrible noises in order to upset her machines.

Deborah moved one leg slightly, just enough to prove she was still alive, and I pulled myself all the way back from meandering down memory lane. Somewhere, there was somebody who actually was guilty of putting the knife into my sister. That was all that mattered. Someone had actually done this thing. It was a large and untidy loose end wandering around and I needed to grab hold and snip it back into neatness. Because the thought of such a large piece of unfinished and unpunished business gave me the urge to clean the kitchen and make the bed. It was messy, plain and simple, and Dexter doesn't like disorder.

Another thought poked its nose into the room. I tried to shoo it away, but it kept coming back, wagging its tail and demanding that I pet it. And when I did, it seemed to me to be a good thought.

I closed my eyes and tried to picture the scene one more time. The door swings open —and it stays open as Deborah shows her badge and then falls. And it is still open when I get to her side ... which means that someone else could very well have been inside and looking out. And that meant that somewhere, there just might be somebody who knew what I looked like. A second person, just like Detective Coulter had suggested. It was a little insulting to admit that a drooling dolt like Coulter might be right about something, but after all, Isaac Newton didn't reject gravity just because the apple had a low IQ.

Happily for my self-esteem, however, I was one step ahead of Coulter, because I might know this hypothetical second person's name. We had been going to ask someone named Brandon Weiss about his threats to the Tourist Board, and somehow ended up with Doncevic instead. So there might well have been two of them, living together. Another small train chugged into the station: Arabelle, the cleaning woman at Joe's, had seen two gay tourists, with cameras.

And I had seen two men who fit that description at Fairchild Gardens, also with cameras, filming the crowd. A film of the crime scene arriving at the Tourist Board had started all this. It was not conclusive, but it was certainly a nice start, and I was pleased, since it proved that a certain amount of mental function might well be returning to Cyber-Dex.