OR A VERY LONG MOMENT WE ALL STOOD IN A FROZEN tableau of hostile indecision. Debs and Recht stared at each other, Deke breathed through his mouth, and I tried to decide whether assisting the fallen woman was technically within my jurisdiction as a blood-spatter analyst. And then there was a clatter at the front door and I heard a minor commotion behind me.

“Shit,” a male voice called out, quite clearly. “Shit, shit, shit.”

It was impossible to argue with the general sentiment, but nevertheless I turned around to see if I could gather some specifics. A middle-aged man hurried toward us. He was tall and soft-looking and had close-cropped gray hair and a matching beard. He slid to one knee beside Mrs. Aldovar and picked up her hand. “Hey, Emily? Honey?” he said as he patted her hand. “Come on, Em.”

I have spent my entire career working with first-rate professional investigators, and some of it must have rubbed off on me, because I almost immediately deduced that this had to be Mr. Aldovar. And my sister is no slouch, either, because she had arrived at the same startling conclusion. She managed to rip her gaze away from Recht and look down to the man on the floor.

“Mr. Aldovar?” she said.

“Come on, honey,” he said, hopefully not to Deborah. “Yes, I’m Michael Aldovar.”

Mrs. Aldovar opened her eyes and wobbled them from side to side. “Michael?” she muttered.

Deborah knelt down beside them, apparently thinking that conscious parents are more interesting than the fainted kind. “I’m Sergeant Morgan,” she said. “I’m investigating your daughter’s disappearance.”

“I don’t have any money,” he said, and Deborah looked startled for a moment. “I mean, if there’s a ransom, or—She knows that. Samantha can’t think—Has there been any phone call?”

Deborah shook her head as if trying to shake water off. “Can you tell me where you’ve been, sir?”

“There was a conference in Raleigh,” Mr. Aldovar said. “Medical statistics. I had to—Emily called and said Samantha had been kidnapped.”

Deborah looked up at Recht and then quickly back to Mr. Aldovar. “It wasn’t kidnapping,” she said.

He didn’t move at all for a second, and then he looked directly at Deborah, still holding his wife’s hand. “What are you saying?” he said.

“Can I talk to you for a moment, sir?” Deborah said.

Mr. Aldovar looked away, then down at his wife. “Can we get my wife into a chair or something?” he said. “I mean, is she all right?”

“I’m fine,” Mrs. Aldovar said. “I just …”

“Dexter,” Debs said, jerking her head at me. “Get some smelling salts or something. You and Deke help her up.”

It’s always nice to have a question answered, and now I knew. Apparently, it actually was within my jurisdiction to help women who faint at a crime scene.

So I squatted down beside Mrs. Aldovar, and Deborah led Mr. Aldovar off to one side. Deke looked at me anxiously, reminding me very much of a large and handsome dog who needs a stick to fetch. “Hey, you got some of that smelling stuff?” he said.

Apparently it had become universally accepted that Dexter was the Eternal Keeper of the Smelling Salts. I had no idea where that baffling canard had come from, but in truth, I was completely without.

Luckily, Mrs. Aldovar apparently was not interested in sniffing anything. She gripped my arm, and Deke’s, and murmured, “Help me up, please,” and the two of us heaved her to her feet. I looked around for a horizontal surface uncluttered by law enforcement where we could deposit her, and spotted a dining table complete with chairs in the next room.

Mrs. Aldovar did not need a great deal of help getting into the chair. She sat right down as if she had done the same thing many times before.

I looked back into the next room. Special Agent Recht and her generic companion were edging their way toward the door, and Deborah was very carefully not noticing them. She was instead busy chatting with Mr. Aldovar. Angel Batista-No-Relation was standing on the patio, just outside a sliding glass door, dusting the glass for fingerprints. And I knew that just down the hallway, the huge bloodstain still hung on the wall, calling for Dexter. This was my world, the land of violence, gore, and mayhem. Both personally and professionally, this was where I had lived my whole life.

But today it had lost the rosy glow that had for so many years kept me enchanted. I did not want to be here, browsing through the residue of someone else’s happy frolic—and even more, I did not want to be off on a carefree romp of my own. I needed different vistas today. I had come to the old turf unwillingly, out of duty to Deborah, and now I wanted to go back to my new country, where all was bright and beautiful, the Land of Lily Anne.

Deborah glanced up at me without any real recognition and then back to Mr. Aldovar. I was scenery to her, part of what a crime scene looked like, Dexter as Background. Enough: It was time for me to leave, to go back to Lily Anne and Wonder.

And so without lingering for any awkward farewells, I slid out the door and walked back to my car, where it still sat nestled in by the Dumpster. I drove to the hospital in the prelude to evening rush hour, a magical time when everyone on the road felt empowered and entitled to all the lanes at once because they had left work early, and in my past life I had taken great joy in the sight of so much naked contempt for life. Today it left me cold. These people were endangering others, not something I could tolerate in a world where I would soon be driving Lily Anne to ballet lessons. I drove at a careful ten miles per hour over the speed limit, which only served to enrage most of the other drivers. They flew past me on both sides, honking and extending their middle fingers, but I held firm to my safe and sane course, and soon I arrived at the hospital, without any actual exchange of gunfire.

As I came off the elevator on the floor for maternity I paused for a second as the faint echo of a whisper rattled off the back wall of Dexter’s Dark Subbasement. This was where I had almost seen somebody who might have been watching me for some reason. But the thought came out sounding so ludicrous that I could do no more than shake my head and send a distant Tut-tut to the Passenger. “Almost Somebody” indeed. I moved on past, turning the corner to the nursery.

All my new friends at the nursery window were gone, replaced by a new crop, and Lily Anne, too, was no longer visible on the other side of the glass. I had a moment of crippling disorientation—where had she gone?—but then logic reasserted itself. Of course—it had been several hours. They would not leave her there alone and on display for so long. Lily Anne would be with her mother, feeding and growing closer. I felt a small surge of jealousy. Rita would have this important and intimate bond with the baby that I could never know—a head start on Lily Anne’s affections.

But happily for all, I heard the soft and mocking chuckle that lives inside, and I had to agree. Come now, Dexter: If you suddenly choose to feel emotions, is breast envy the best one to start with? Your role is just as important: to provide firm and loving guidance on the thorny path through Lily Anne’s life. And who better than me, who had lived on the twisted trail, savoring the thorns, and who now wanted nothing more than to help her through the thickets unharmed? Who better, in short, than No-Longer-Demented Daddy Dexter?

It was all so neat and logical. I had lived the wicked life in order to know how to steer Lily Anne into the light. Everything made sense at last, and although bitter experience has taught me that if everything makes sense you are looking at it wrong, I nevertheless felt great comfort from the notion. There was a Plan, a True Pattern, and at long last Dexter knew what it was and could actually see his feet on the game board. I knew why I was Here—not to harry the wicked, but to shepherd the pure.

Feeling greatly enlightened and uplifted, I walked briskly past the nurses’ station and down to Rita’s room at the far end of the hall, right where it was supposed to be. Even better, Lily Anne was there, sound asleep on her mother’s chest. A large bouquet of roses sat on the bedside table, and all was right with the world.

Rita opened her eyes and looked up at me with a tired smile. “Dexter,” she said. “Where have you been?”

“There was an emergency at work,” I said, and she looked at me blankly.

“Work,” she said, and she shook her head. “Dexter, I—This is your newborn child here.” And right on cue, Lily Anne wiggled slightly and then continued sleeping. She did it very well, too.

“Yes, I know,” I said reassuringly.

“It’s not—How can you just wander off to work?” she said, and she sounded very peeved, in a way I had never heard before. “When your brand-new baby is—I mean, work? At a time like this?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Deborah needed me.”

“So did I,” she said.

“I’m really very sorry,” I said, and weirdly enough, I really was. “I’m very new at this, Rita.” She looked at me, shaking her head again. “I’ll try to get better,” I added hopefully.

Rita sighed and closed her eyes. “At least the flowers you sent were nice,” she said, and a tiny bell began to ring in the dark backseat of Dexter’s wicked wagon. I had not sent any flowers, of course. I was not experienced enough at all the many subtle hypocrisies of married life to think of such a clever ploy—I had not even realized that responding to an emergency at work was wrong, let alone that I needed to apologize with flowers. Of course, Rita had many friends who might have sent them, and I knew several people who were theoretically friends—even Deborah might have had a moment of sensitivity, unlikely as that seemed. In any case, there was absolutely no reason a few fragrant blossoms should set off any kind of alarm.

But they did. They definitely did—a steady, annoying ding-ding-ding of an alarm that very definitely meant all was not what it should be. So I leaned casually over and pretended to sniff the roses, while actually trying to read the accompanying card. Again, there was nothing at all unusual about it, just a small tag that said, Congratulations to us! and scribbled in blue ink underneath was, An admirer.

From the same general region that provided the little alarm bell, I heard a soft and wicked chuckle well up. The Dark Passenger was amused, and no wonder. Dexter is many things, but “admirable” is not one of the top ten. As far as I knew, I had no admirers. Anyone who really knew me well enough to admire me was theoretically already dead, dissected, and disposed. So who would sign the card like that? I knew enough about humans to know that a friend or family member would sign their own name to make absolutely sure they got credit for the flowers. An ordinary human, in fact, would already have called on the telephone to say, “Did you get my flowers? I wanted to be sure because they’re so expensive!”

Clearly, no such call had come, since Rita assumed the roses were from me. Just as clearly, there was nothing really threatening about such a minor mystery.

So why did I feel small and icy feet walking up the back of my neck? Why was I so certain that some hidden danger threatened me and, therefore, Lily Anne? I tried to be logical, which is something I had once been very good at. Of course, I told myself reasonably, it was not merely the anonymous flowers—I also had the alarm from the possible sighting of a potential someone earlier on. And when I added it all up, I realized what I had: a very strong possible maybe something or not, which might or might not be an actual threat or not. Or something.

Put that way, in clear and logical form, it made perfect sense for me to feel uneasy. Lily Anne was being stalked by an idiot.

Me.