"That was fun," said Astor. "Can we do that again?"
Cody nodded enthusiastically.
"And we could put on the siren next time," Astor said. "How come you don't use the siren, Sergeant Debbie?" "Don't call me Debbie," Deborah snapped. "I just don't like the siren."
"Why not?" Astor insisted.
Deborah blew out a huge breath and glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. "It's a fair question," I said. "It makes too much noise," Deborah said. "Now let me drive, okay?"
"All right," Astor said, but she didn't sound convinced.

We drove in silence all the way to Grand Avenue, and I tried to think about it by myself-clearly enough to come up with anything that might help. I didn't, but I did think of one thing worth mentioning.

"What if Kurt's murder is just a coincidence?" I said. "Even you can't really believe that," she said.

"But if he was on the run," I said, "maybe he tried to get a fake ID from the wrong people, or get smuggled out of the country. There are plenty of bad guys he could run into under the circumstances." It didn't really sound likely, even to me, but Deborah thought about it for a few seconds anyway, chewing on her lower lip and absentmindedly blasting the horn as she pulled around a courtesy van from one of the hotels. "No," she said at last. "He was cooked, Dexter. Like the first two. No way they could copy that."

Once again I was aware of a small stirring in the bleak emptiness inside, the area once inhabited by the Dark Passenger. I closed my eyes and tried to find some shred of my once-constant companion, but there was nothing. I opened my eyes in time to see Deborah accelerate around a bright red Ferrari.

"People read the newspapers," I said. "There are always copycat killings." She thought some more, and then shook her head. "No," she said at last. "I don't believe in coincidence. Not with something like this. Cooked and headless both, and it's a coincidence? No way."

Hope always dies hard, but even so I had to admit that she was probably right. Beheading and burning were not really standard procedures for the normal, blue-collar killer, and most people would be far more likely simply to clonk you on the head, tie an anchor to your feet, and fling you into the bay.

So in all likelihood, we were on our way to see the body of somebody we were sure was a killer, and he had been killed the same way as his own victims. If I had been my cheerful old self, I would certainly have enjoyed the delicious irony, but in my present condition it seemed like just another annoying affront to an orderly existence.