The press vans were, in fact, already rolling up and spewing out crews to tape background shots of the area. A couple of the local bloodhounds were standing there, solemnly clutching their microphones and intoning mournful sentences about the tragedy of two lives so brutally ended. As always, I felt reverently grateful to live in a free society, where the press had a sacred right to show footage of dead people on the evening news.

Captain Matthews carefully brushed his already perfect hair with the heel of his hand, clapped Deborah on the shoulder, and marched over to talk to the press. And I marched over to my sister.
She stood where Matthews had left her, watching his back as he began to speak to Rick Sangre, one of the true gurus of if-it-bleeds-it-leads reporting. "Well, Sis," I said. "Welcome back to the real world."

She shook her head. "Hip hooray," she said. "How is Kyle doing?" I asked her, since my training told me that was the right thing to ask about.

"Physically?" she said. "He's fine. But he just feels useless all the time. And those assholes in Washington won't let him go back to work."

It was difficult for me to judge Chutsky's ability to get back to work, since no one had ever said exactly what work he did. I knew it was vaguely connected to some part of the government and was also something clandestine, but beyond that I didn't know. "Well," I said, searching for the proper cliché, "I'm sure it just needs some time."

"Yeah," she said. "I'm sure." She looked back at the place where the two charred bodies lay. "Anyhow, this is a great way to get my mind off it."

"The rumor mill tells me you think it's Santeria," I said, and her head swiveled rapidly around to face me. "You think it's not?" she demanded. "Oh, no, it might well be," I said. "But?" she said sharply. "No buts at all," I said.

"Damn it, Dexter," she said. "What do you know about this?" And it was probably a fair question. I had been known on occasion to offer a pretty fair guess about some of the more gruesome murders we worked on. I had gained a small reputation for my insight into the way the twisted homicidal sickos thought and operated-natural enough, since, unknown to everyone but Deborah, I was a twisted homicidal sicko myself.

But even though Deborah had only recently become aware of my true nature, she had not been shy about taking advantage of it to help her in her work. I didn't mind; glad to help. What else is family for? And I didn't really care if my fellow monsters paid their debt to society in Old Sparky-unless, of course, it was somebody I was saving for my own innocent pleasure.