F WE ARE CAPABLE OF LEARNING ANYTHING AT ALL IN THIS life, we very quickly discover that anytime somebody is absolutely certain about something, they are almost always absolutely wrong, too. And the present case was no exception. My sister is a very good detective and an excellent pistol shot, and I’m sure she has several other praiseworthy qualities—but if she ever has to make a living as a fortune-teller, she will starve to death. Because her words of reassurance, It can’t get any worse, were still echoing in my ears when I discovered that actually, things could get worse by a great deal, and they already had.

Things were not great to start with: I had crawled through the entire rest of the day at work with everyone avoiding me, which is much more difficult than it sounds, and it resulted in several moments of classic comedy, as people scrambled to escape my presence while pretending that they hadn’t seen me. For some reason, however, I had a bit of difficulty in appreciating the comic effect, and by six minutes of five o’clock I was feeling more worn-down than I should have as I slumped into my chair to watch the clock tick away the last few minutes of my career, and possibly my liberty.

I heard a noise in the lab and turned to watch as Vince Masuoka came in, saw me, and stopped dead. “Oh,” he said. “I forgot, um.” And he spun around and raced out the door. Clearly, what he forgot was that I might still be there and he would have to say something to a coworker under investigation for the murder of another coworker, and for someone like Vince that would have been too uncomfortable.

I heard myself sigh heavily, and I wondered if this was really how it all ended; framed by a brainless thug, shunned by my colleagues, stalked by a whining computer nerd who couldn’t even make it in minor-league baseball. It was well beyond ignoble, and very sad—I’d shown such tremendous early progress, too.

The clock ticked; two minutes of five. I might as well get my things together and head for home. I reached for my laptop, but as I put my hand on the screen to close it up a small and ugly thought crawled across the floor of my brain and I clicked on my in-box instead. It was really not even definite enough to call a hunch, but a soft and leathery voice was whispering that after I found the Dexter-ized body in the grubby little house he had sent an e-mail and now Camilla was dead and maybe, just maybe …

And as I opened my in-box, maybe turned to certainly as I read the subject line of my most recent e-mail. It said, “If you can read this, you’re not in jail!”

With no doubt at all in my mind about who had sent this, I clicked it open.!!!At least, not yet. But don’t worry—if your luck stays this good, you’ll be there soon, which is anyway better than what I have in mind for you. It’s not enough for me just to put you in the ground. I want people to know what you are first. And then … Well, you’ve seen what I can do now. And I am totally getting better at it, just in time for your turn.!!!She really liked you—I mean, all those pictures? They were everywhere! It was really sick, an obsession. And she let me in to her apartment on like the second date, which you have to say, she wouldn’t do if she was a Good person. And when I saw your face plastered all over the place, I knew what I was supposed to do about it, and I did it.!!!Maybe I was a little hasty? Or maybe I’m just getting to like doing this, I don’t know. Ironic, huh? That trying to get rid of you, I’m becoming more and more like you. Anyway, it was too perfect to be an accident, so I did it, and I am not sorry, and I am just getting started. And if you think you can stop me, think again. Because you don’t know anything about me except that I can do exactly what you do and I am coming to do it to you and you don’t even know when except it’s soon.!!!Have a nice day!

On the plus side, it was nice to see that I was not having paranoid delusions. My Shadow really had killed Camilla to get at me. On the minus side, Camilla was dead and I was in deeper trouble than I had ever been.

And of course, things got even worse, all because Deborah said they couldn’t.

I headed home in a state of numb misery, wanting only a little bit of quiet comfort from my loving family. And when I arrived, Rita was waiting for me by the front door—but not in a spirit of tender welcome. “You son of a bitch, I knew it,” she hissed at me in greeting; it was as shocking as if she had flung the couch at my head. And she wasn’t done yet. “Goddamn you, Dexter, how could you?” she said, and she glared at me, with her fists clenched and a look of righteous fury on her face. I know very well that I am guilty of a great many things that might make many people unhappy with me—even Rita—but lately it seemed like everyone was finding me guilty of all the wrong things: things that I hadn’t done and couldn’t even guess at. So my normally rapid wit did not respond with the kind of clever, brainy comeback for which I am so justly famous. Instead, I just goggled at Rita and stammered, “I could … How … What do I …?”

It was almost unforgivably feeble, and Rita took advantage of it. She socked me on the arm, right smack in the middle of the tender bull’s-eye that was Deborah’s favorite target, and said, “You fucking bastard! I knew it!”

I glanced past her to the couch; Cody and Astor were completely hypnotized by the game they were playing on the Wii, and Lily Anne was in her playpen next to them, happily watching them slay monsters. They hadn’t heard any of Rita’s naughty words, not yet, but if it went on much longer, even mesmerized children would wake up and notice. I grabbed Rita’s hand before she could hit me again and said, “Rita, for God’s sake, what did I do?”

She yanked her hand away. “Bastard,” she repeated. “You know goddamned well what you did. You fucked that pasty-faced bitch, god damn you!”

Every now and then we find ourselves living through moments that make no sense at all. It’s almost as if some omnipotent film editor has snipped us out of our familiar everyday movie and spliced us into something completely random, from a different time and genre and even from a foreign country and partially animated, because suddenly you look around you and the language is unknown and nothing that happens has any relationship to what you think of as reality.

This was clearly one of those moments. Mild-mannered, Dexter-Devoted Rita, who never lost her temper and never, never said bad words, was doing both at the same time and directing it all at her innocent-just-this-once husband.

But even though I didn’t know what movie I was in, I knew it was my line, and I knew I had to take control of the scene quickly. “Rita,” I said as soothingly as I could. “You’re not making any sense—”

“Fuck making sense and fuck you!” she said, stamping her foot and raising her fist to hit me again. Astor’s head came up and she looked at us—it was Cody’s turn in the game—and so once more I took Rita’s hand and pulled her away from the front door.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s take this into the kitchen.”

“I’m not going to—” she started to say, and I raised my voice over hers.

“Away from the kids,” I said. She glanced at them guiltily, and then followed along as I led her through the living room and into the kitchen. “All right,” I said, pulling out my chair and sitting at the familiar table. “Using words that are simple, clear, and not outlawed in Kentucky, will you please tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”

Rita stood on the far side of the table and glared down at me with an unchanging look of righteous fury on her face and her arms crossed. “You are so fucking smooth,” she said through her teeth. “Even now, I almost believe you. Bastard.”

I actually am smooth, in fact; Dexter is almost all smooth, icy control, and it has always served him well to be just that way. But right now I could feel the cool and the smooth melting away into a warm pudding of frustration, and I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in an effort to get things back to a more comfortable temperature. “Rita,” I said, opening my eyes and giving her a very authentic look of patient long suffering. “Let’s pretend for just a minute that I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“You bastard, don’t you try—”

I held up a hand. “You don’t need to remind me that I’m a bastard; I remember that part,” I said. “It’s the other part I’m having trouble with—why I’m a bastard. Okay?”

She glared a little more, and I heard her toe tapping the floor, and then she uncrossed her arms and took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. “I’ll play your little game, you son of a bitch.” She pointed at me, and if her finger had been loaded I would have died right then and there. “You had an affair with that bitch from work—a detective called me!” she said, as if a detective calling her proved everything beyond a doubt. “And he said did I know anything about her and the affair you had and were there any more pictures! And then it was on the news that she’s dead, and Jesus Christ, Dexter, did you kill her, too, so I wouldn’t find out?”

I am pretty sure that some level of my brain was still working, because apparently it reminded me to breathe. But all the higher mental functions seemed to be completely shut down; little fragments of thought scuttled past but none of them seemed able to pull themselves together into anything I could actually think or say. I felt another breath come in and then go out and I was dimly aware that a certain amount of time had passed and that the silence was getting uncomfortably long—but I really couldn’t bring together enough of the scurrying pieces of thought to make up a real sentence. Slowly, painfully, the wheels turned, and finally single words came back to me—bastard … kill … detective—and at last, with that third word, a picture floated up out of the scampering neurons and rose to the top of my swirling nonthoughts—a glowering, knuckleheaded portrait of a human ape with a low brow and a mean smile, and at last I had one entire syllable that made sense. “Hood,” I said. “He called you?”

“I think I have a right to know my husband killed somebody,” Rita said. “And he’s cheating on me?” she added, as if killing might be overlooked, but cheating was something truly despicable. It was not quite the proper order of our society’s priorities as I had come to understand them, but this was not the time to debate contemporary ethical concepts.

“Rita,” I said, with all the calm authority I could muster. “I barely knew this woman. Camilla.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “Richard said—the detective said there were pictures of you everywhere!”

“Yes, and Astor has pictures of the Jonas Brothers,” I said; and I thought it was a pretty good point, but for some reason Rita didn’t agree.

“Astor is eleven years old,” Rita said venomously, as if I was totally vile even to try this argument and she would never let me get away with something that low. “And she doesn’t stay out all night with the Jonas Brothers.”

“Camilla and I worked together,” I said, trying to break through the cloud of unreason. “And sometimes we have to work late. In public. With lots of cops all around us.”

“And did all of the cops have pictures of you?” she demanded. “In a binder? On the back of the toilet?! Please. Don’t insult my intelligence.”

I very badly wanted to say that I had to find it before I could insult it, but sometimes we have to sacrifice a very good line for the larger purpose at hand, and this was almost certainly one of those times. “Rita,” I said. “Camilla took pictures of me.” I put the palms of my hands up to show that I was man enough to admit an awkward fact. “Lots of them, apparently. Deborah says she had a crush on me. I can’t control any of that.” I sighed and shook my head, to let her see that the full weight of an unjust world lay comfortably on my broad shoulders. “But I have never, ever cheated on you. Not with Camilla, not with anyone else.”

I saw a first small flicker of doubt on her face—I really am very good at portraying a real human being, and this time I had the advantage of telling something that was very close to the truth. It was a genuine Method Acting Moment, and Rita could see that I was being sincere.

“Bullshit,” she said, but with less conviction. “All those nights when you just leave the house? With some stupid excuse about work? As if I was supposed to believe …” She shook her head and gathered steam again. “Goddamn it, I knew it was something like this. I just knew it, because— And now you killed her?”

It was a very uncomfortable moment, even more so than when she had first accused me. “All those nights” in question, I actually had been up to something: not quite an affair, and certainly nothing involving Camilla—just the quiet pursuit of my hobby, which was relatively innocent, at least in the present context. But I couldn’t tell her that, and of course, there was no proof of this innocence—at least, I hoped not; I mean, I was sure I’d always cleaned up quite thoroughly. Worst of all, though, was realizing that I had just assumed she hadn’t really noticed when I slipped “casually” out of the house, which made me look incredibly stupid, even to me.

But surviving in this life almost always means making the best of bad situations, and if a small moment of creativity is called for, I am usually up to the task—especially since I am not burdened by any compulsion to tell the truth. And so I took a breath and let my giant brain lead me out of the woods. “Rita,” I said. “My work is important to me. I help to catch some really bad people—not even people. They’re animals. The kind of animal that’s a real threat to all of us—even …” And I paused shamelessly for dramatic effect. “Especially the kids. Even Lily Anne.”

“And so you leave the house at night?” she said. “To do what?”

“I, um,” I said, as if I was a little bit embarrassed. “Sometimes I get an idea. About something that, you know. Might help break the case.”

“Oh, come on,” Rita said. “That’s incredibly— I mean, I’m not naive enough, for God’s sake—”

“Rita, damn it, you’re the same way—obsessed with your job,” I said. “You’ve been working nights lately, and … I mean, I thought you understood when I did, too.”

“I don’t slink out of the house at night to go to the office,” she said.

“But you don’t have to,” I said, and I felt myself gaining a little bit of momentum. “You can do your work in your head, or on a piece of paper. I need the equipment in the lab.”

“Well, but, I mean,” she said, and I could see the doubt creeping into her eyes. “I just assumed that— I mean, it makes more sense that, you know.”

“It makes more sense that I would cheat on someone as beautiful as you?” I said. “With somebody as drab and shapeless as Camilla Figg?” I know it isn’t considered proper to speak ill of the dead, and doing so puts you at risk of some kind of divine retribution. But as if to prove that God does not really exist, I bad-mouthed dear dead Camilla and yet no bolt of lightning crashed through the ceiling to turn Dexter into chitlins, and Rita’s expression even softened a bit.

“But that’s not …” she said, and to my great relief she was slipping back into her normal speech pattern of partial sentences. “I mean, Richard said— And you never even, all those late nights.” She blinked and fluttered one hand in the air. “How can it just—with all those pictures?”

“I know it looks bad,” I said, and then I had one of those wonderfully happy inspirations that only a totally empty, wicked, hollow mockery of a person could ever have the gall to actually use—which, of course, made it just perfect for me. “It’s looks bad to Detective Hood—Richard,” I said, and gave her a bitter shake of the head to show I had noticed she was on a first-name basis with the enemy. “So bad that I’m in a lot of trouble,” I said. “And to be honest, I thought you were the one person I could count on to stand by me. When I really need somebody in my corner.”

It was a perfect punch, a true body blow, and it took the wind out of her so completely that she collapsed into a chair as if she was an inflatable doll and somebody had just punctured her. “But that’s only …” she said. “I didn’t even— And he said,” she said. “I mean, he’s a detective.”

“A really bad detective,” I said. “He likes to beat up suspects to make them talk. And he doesn’t like me.”

“But if you didn’t do anything …” she said, trying one last time to convince herself that I actually did.

“People have been framed before,” I said wearily. “This is Miami.”

She shook her head slowly. “But he was so sure— How could he even …? I mean, if you didn’t.”

There comes a time when repeating your arguments starts to sound like you’re only making excuses. I knew this very well from the hours of daytime drama I had watched over the years, and I was pretty sure I was at that point now. Luckily, I had seen this exact situation so many times on TV that I knew precisely what to do to. I put both hands on the table, pushed upward, and stood. “Rita,” I said, with truly impressive dignity, “I am your husband, and there has never been anybody else but you. If you can’t believe me now, when I really need you—then I might as well let Detective Hood take me away to jail.” I said it very sincerely, and with such conviction and pathos that it nearly persuaded even me.

It was my last round of ammunition—but it was a bull’s-eye. Rita bit her lip, shook her head, and said, “But all those nights when you— And the pictures … And then she’s dead.…” For just a second a last small doubt flickered across her face and I thought I had failed; and then she closed her eyes tightly and bit her lip and I knew I had won. “Oh, Dexter, what if they believe him?” She opened her eyes and a tear rolled out of the corner and down across one cheek, but Rita brushed it away with a finger and pursed her lips. “That bastard,” she said, and I realized with great relief that she no longer meant me. “And he’s supposed to— But he can’t just …” And she slapped a hand on the table. “Well, we won’t let him,” she said, and then she stood up and ran around the table and grabbed me. “Oh, Dexter,” she said into my shoulder. “I’m so sorry if I— You must be so …”

She snuffled, and then pushed herself away to arm’s length. “But you have to understand,” she said. “And it wasn’t just— It’s … for a while now. And then lately, you’ve been so … kind of …” She shook her head slowly. “I mean, you know,” she said, but in fact I didn’t know, or even have a guess. “It just all made sense, because sometimes it seems lately like … I don’t know— And it isn’t just the house,” she said. “The foreclosures? It’s everything, all of it.” She kept shaking her head, faster now. “So many nights, when you— I mean, that’s how … men act. When they’re doing that— And I have to, with the kids here, and all I can do about it is just …”

She turned half away from me and crossed her arms again, placing the knuckle of one finger between her teeth. She bit down and a tear rolled down her cheek. “Jesus, Dexter, I feel so …”

It may be that I really am becoming more human, slowly but surely, but I had a sudden moment of insight of my own as I watched Rita hunch her shoulders and drip tears onto the floor. “That’s why you’ve been drinking so much wine,” I said. Her head jerked back around toward me and I could see the muscles of her jaw tighten down even more on her poor helpless finger. “You thought I was sneaking out to have an affair.”

“I couldn’t even …” she said, and then she realized she was still chewing her finger and dropped it from her mouth. “I wanted to just— Because what else can I do? When you are just so— I mean, sometimes …” She took a deep breath and then stepped closer. “I didn’t know what else to do and I felt so … helpless. Which is a feeling I really— And then I thought it was probably me—because right after a new baby? And you never seem to …” She shook her head vigorously. “I’ve been such an idiot. Oh, Dexter, I’m so sorry.”

Rita leaned her forehead against my chest and snuffled, and I realized it was my line again. “I’m sorry, too,” I said, and I put an arm around her.

She raised her head and looked deep into my eyes. “I’m an idiot,” she said again. “I should have known that— Because it’s you and me, Dexter,” she said. “That’s what matters. I mean, I thought so. Until just suddenly, it seemed like …” She straightened suddenly and gripped my upper arms. “And you didn’t sleep with her? Really?”

“Really and truly,” I said, greatly relieved to have a sentence fragment with a complete thought behind it that I could react to at last.

“Oh, my God,” she said, and she put her face down onto my shoulder and made wet noises for a minute or two. And from what I know about people, it’s possible that I should have felt a little guilt about the way I had manipulated Rita so completely. Or even better, maybe I should have turned to the camera to show my true villainy with a leer of wicked satisfaction. But there was no camera, as far as I knew, and I had, after all, manipulated Rita with the truth, for the most part. So I just held on to her and let her soak my shirt with tears, mucus, and who knows what else.

“Oh, God,” she said at last, raising her head. “I can be so stupid sometimes.” I did not rush in to disagree, and she shook her head and then wiped at her face with a sleeve. “I never should have doubted you,” she said, looking at me closely. “I feel like such a— And you must be so totally … Oh, my God, I can’t even begin to— Dexter, I am so sorry, and it isn’t just— Oh, that bastard. And we need to get you a lawyer, too.”

“What?” I said, trying to switch gears rapidly from following her mental leaps with bemusement to dealing with an alarming new idea. “Why do I need a lawyer?”

“Don’t be simple, Dexter,” she said with a shake of her head. She sniffled, and began to brush absentmindedly at my shoulder where she had leaked all over it. “If this man Rich—Detective Hood,” she went on, pausing just a second to blush. “If he’s trying to prove you killed her, you need to get the best possible legal advice and— I think Carlene, at work? She said her brother-in-law … And anyway the first consultation is almost always free, so we don’t have to— Not that money is any— So I’ll ask her tomorrow,” she said, and clearly that was settled, because she stopped talking and looked at me searchingly again, her eyes jerking from left to right. Apparently she didn’t find what she was looking for on either side, and after a moment she just said, “Dexter—”

“I’m right here,” I said.

“We really have to talk more.”

I blinked, which must have been startling to her at such close range, and she blinked back at me. “Well, sure, I mean … talk about what?” I said.

She put her hand on my cheek and for just a second she pressed so tightly that I wondered if she was trying to stop a leak in my face. Then she sighed and smiled and took her hand away and said, “You can be such a guy sometimes,” and it was difficult to disagree with that, since I had no idea what it meant.

“Thank you?” I tried, and she shook her head.

“We just need to talk,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be about— Because that’s where this whole thing has gone so completely— And it’s probably my fault,” she said. Again, it was very tough to argue with the conclusion, since I hadn’t understood anything leading up to it.

“Well,” I said, feeling remarkably awkward, “I’m always happy to talk with you.”

“If I had only said,” she told me sadly. “Because I should know you wouldn’t— I should have said something weeks ago.”

“Um,” I said, “we didn’t know any of this until today.”

She gave her head one brief, irritated shake. “That isn’t the point,” she said, which was a relief, even though I still didn’t know what the point was. “I just mean, I should have …” She took a deep breath and shook my shoulders slightly. “You have been very, very— I mean, I should have known that you were just busy and working too hard,” she said. “But you have to see how it looked to me, because— And then when he called it all seemed to make sense? So if we only just talk more often …”

“All right,” I said; agreeing seemed a little easier than understanding.

It was clearly the right thing to say, because Rita smiled fondly and then leaned forward to give me a big hug. “We’ll get through this,” she said. “I promise you.” And then, maybe oddest of all, she leaned back slightly from our embrace and said, “You didn’t forget that this weekend is the big summer camping trip? With Cody and the Cub Scouts?”

I hadn’t actually forgotten—but I also hadn’t remembered it in the context of playing out a dramatic scene of domestic anguish, and I had to pause for just a second to catch up with her. “No,” I said at last. “I didn’t forget.”

“Good,” she said, putting her head back down onto my chest. “Because I think he’s really looking forward— And you could use some time away, too,” she said.

And as I patted Rita’s back with absentminded little thumps, I tried very hard to feel good about that thought—because, thanks to a Neanderthal detective and a copycat murder, I was going to get some time away whether I wanted it or not.