OR A FEW MINUTES I JUST STOOD AND WATCHED THE house, partly because I was being cautious. I had not actually seen the driver of the airboat, and it was possible that the Doctor was still lurking inside, waiting to see what would happen. And to be honest, I did not wish to be savaged by any more gaudy predatory chickens, either.

But after several minutes when nothing at all happened, I knew I had to go into the house and take a look. And so, circling widely around the tree where the evil bird roosted, I approached the house.

It was dark inside, but not silent. As I stood outside next to the battered screen door that faced the parking area, I heard a kind of quiet thrashing coming from somewhere inside, followed after a moment by a rhythmic grunting and an occasional whimper. It did not seem like the kind of noise someone would make if they were hiding in a lethal ambush. Instead, it was very much the kind of sound somebody might make if they were tied up and trying to escape. Had Dr. Danco fled so quickly that he had left Sergeant Doakes behind?

Once again I found the entire cellar of my brain flooded with ecstatic temptation. Sergeant Doakes, my nemesis, tied up inside, gift-wrapped and delivered to me in the perfect setting. All the tools and supplies I could want, no one around for miles—and when I was done I only had to say, “Sorry, I got there too late. Look what that awful Dr. Danco did to poor old Sergeant Doakes.” The idea was intoxicating, and I believe I actually swayed a little as I tasted it. Of course it was just a thought, and I would certainly never do anything of the kind, would I? I mean, would I really? Dexter? Hello? Why are you salivating, dear boy?

Certainly not, not me. Why, I was a moral beacon in the spiritual desert of South Florida. Most of the time. I was upright, scrubbed clean, and mounted on a Dark Charger. Sir Dexter the Chaste to the rescue. Or at any rate, probably to the rescue. I mean, all things considered. I pulled open the screen door and went in.

Immediately inside the door I flattened against the wall, just to be cautious, and felt for a light switch. I found one right where it should be and flipped it up.

Like Danco’s first den of iniquity, this one was sparsely furnished. Once again, the main feature of the place was a large table in the center of the room. A mirror hung on the opposite wall. Off to the right a doorway without a door led to what looked like the kitchen, and on the left a closed door, probably a bedroom or bathroom. Directly across from where I stood was another screen door leading outside, presumably the way Dr. Danco had made his escape.

And on the far side of the table, now thrashing more furiously than ever, was something dressed in a pale orange coverall. It looked relatively human, even from across the room. “Over here, oh please, help me, help me,” it said, and I crossed the room and knelt beside it.

His arms and legs were bound with duct tape, naturally, the choice of every experienced, discriminating monster. As I cut the tape I examined him, listening but not really hearing his constant blubbering of, “Oh thank God, oh please, oh God, get me loose, buddy, hurry hurry for God’s sake. Oh Christ, what took you so long, Jesus, thank you, I knew you’d come,” or words to that effect. His skull was completely shaved, even the eyebrows. But there was no mistaking the rugged manly chin and the scars festooning his face. It was Kyle Chutsky.

Most of him, anyway.

As the tape came off and Chutsky was able to wiggle up to a sitting position, it became apparent that he was missing his left arm up to the elbow and his right leg up to the knee. The stumps were wrapped with clean white gauze, nothing leaking through; again, very nice work, although I did not think Chutsky would appreciate the care Danco had used in taking his arm and leg. And how much of Chutsky’s mind was also missing was not yet clear, although his constant wet yammering did nothing to convince me that he was ready to sit at the controls of a passenger jet.

“Oh, God, buddy,” he said. “Oh Jesus. Oh thank God, you came,” and he leaned his head onto my shoulder and wept. Since I had some recent experience with this, I knew just what to do. I patted him on the back and said, “There there.” It was even more awkward than when I had done it with Deborah, since the stump of his left arm kept thumping against me and that made it much harder to fake sympathy.

But Chutsky’s crying jag lasted only a few moments, and when he finally pulled away from me, struggling to stay in an upright position, my beautiful Hawaiian shirt was soaked. He gave a huge snuffle, a little too late for my shirt. “Where’s Debbie?” he said.

“She broke her collarbone,” I told him. “She’s in the hospital.”

“Oh,” he said, and he snuffled again, a long wet sound that seemed to echo somewhere inside him. Then he glanced quickly behind him and tried to struggle to his feet. “We better get out of here. He might come back.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that Danco might come back, but it was true. It’s a time-honored predator’s trick to run off and then circle back to see who’s sniffing your spoor. If Dr. Danco did that, he would find a couple of fairly easy targets. “All right,” I said to Chutsky. “Let me have a quick look around.”

He snaked a hand out—his right hand, of course—and grabbed my arm. “Please,” he said. “Don’t leave me alone.”

“I’ll just be a second,” I said and tried to pull away. But he tightened his grip, still surprisingly strong considering what he had gone through.

“Please,” he repeated. “At least leave me your gun.”

“I don’t have a gun,” I said, and his eyes got much bigger.

“Oh, God, what the hell were you thinking? Christ, we’ve got to get out of here.” He sounded close to panic, as though any second now he would begin to cry again.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s get you up on your, ah, foot.” I hoped he didn’t catch my glitch; I didn’t mean to sound insensitive, but this whole missing-limbs thing was going to require a bit of retooling in the area of vocabulary. But Chutsky said nothing, just held out his arm. I helped him up, and he leaned against the table. “Just give me a few seconds to check the other rooms,” I said. He looked at me with moist, begging eyes, but he didn’t say anything and I hurried off through the little house.

In the main room, where Chutsky was, there was nothing to be seen beyond Dr. Danco’s working equipment. He had some very nice cutting instruments, and after carefully considering the ethical implications, I took one of the nicest with me, a beautiful blade designed for cutting through the stringiest flesh. There were several rows of drugs; the names meant very little to me, except for a few bottles of barbiturates. I didn’t find any clues at all, no crumpled matchbook covers with phone numbers written in them, no dry-cleaning slips, nothing.

The kitchen was practically a duplicate of the kitchen at the first house. There was a small and battered refrigerator, a hot plate, a card table with one folding chair, and that was it. Half a box of doughnuts sat on the counter, with a very large roach munching on one of them. He looked at me as if he was willing to fight for the doughnut, so I left him to it.

I came back in to the main room to find Chutsky still leaning on the table. “Hurry up,” he said. “For Christ’s sake let’s go.”

“One more room,” I said. I crossed the room and opened the door opposite the kitchen. As I had expected, it was a bedroom. There was a cot in one corner, and on the cot lay a pile of clothing and a cell phone. The shirt looked familiar, and I had a thought about where it might have come from. I pulled out my own phone and dialed Sergeant Doakes’s number. The phone on top of the clothing began to ring.

“Oh, well,” I said. I pushed disconnect and went to get Chutsky.

He was right where I had left him, although he looked like he would have run away if he could have. “Come on, for Christ’s sake, hurry up,” he said. “Jesus, I can almost feel his breath on my neck.” He twisted his head to the back door and then over to the kitchen and, as I reached to support him, he turned and his eyes snapped onto the mirror that hung on the wall.

For a long moment he stared at his reflection and then he slumped as if all the bones had been pulled out of him. “Jesus,” he said, and he started to weep again. “Oh, Jesus.”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get moving.”

Chutsky shuddered and shook his head. “I couldn’t even move, just lying there listening to what he was doing to Frank. He sounded so happy—‘What’s your guess? No? All right, then—an arm.’ And then the sound of the saw, and—”

“Chutsky,” I said.

“And then when he got me up there and he said, ‘Seven,’ and ‘What’s your guess.’ And then—”

It’s always interesting to hear about someone else’s technique, of course, but Chutsky seemed like he was about to lose whatever control he had left, and I could not afford to let him snuffle all over the other side of my shirt. So I stepped close and grabbed him by the good arm. “Chutsky. Come on. Let’s get out of here,” I said.

He looked at me like he didn’t know where he was, eyes as wide as they could go, and then turned back to the mirror. “Oh Jesus,” he said. Then he took a deep and ragged breath and stood up as if he was responding to an imaginary bugle. “Not so bad,” he said. “I’m alive.”

“Yes, you are,” I said. “And if we can get moving we might both stay that way.”

“Right,” he said. He turned his head away from the mirror decisively and put his good arm around my shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Chutsky had obviously not had a great deal of experience at walking with only one leg, but he huffed and clumped along, leaning heavily on me between each hopping step. Even with the missing parts, he was still a big man, and it was hard work for me. Just before the bridge he paused for a moment and looked through the chain-link fence. “He threw my leg in there,” he said, “to the alligators. He made sure I was watching. He held it up so I could see it and then he threw it in and the water started to boil like...” I could hear a rising note of hysteria in his voice, but he heard it, too, and stopped, inhaled shakily, and said, somewhat roughly, “All right. Let’s get out of here.”

We made it back to the gate with no more side trips down memory lane, and Chutsky leaned on a fence post while I got the gate open. Then I hopped him around to the passenger seat, climbed in behind the wheel, and started the car. As the headlights flicked on, Chutsky leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “Thanks, buddy,” he said. “I owe you big-time. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. I turned the car around and headed back toward Alligator Alley. I thought Chutsky had fallen asleep, but halfway along the little dirt road he began to talk.

“I’m glad your sister wasn’t here,” he said. “To see me like this. It’s— Listen, I really have to pull myself together before—” He stopped abruptly and didn’t say anything for half a minute. We bumped along the dark road in silence. The quiet was a pleasant change. I wondered where Doakes was and what he was doing. Or perhaps, what was being done to him. For that matter, I wondered where Reiker was and how soon I could take him somewhere else. Someplace quiet, where I could contemplate and work in peace. I wondered what the rent might be on the Blalock Gator Farm.

“Might be a good idea if I don’t bother her anymore,” Chutsky said suddenly, and it took me a moment to realize he was still talking about Deborah. “She’s not going to want anything to do with me the way I am now, and I don’t need anybody’s pity.”

“Nothing to worry about,” I said. “Deborah is completely without pity.”

“You tell her I’m fine, and I went back to Washington,” he said. “It’s better that way.”

“It might be better for you,” I said. “But she’ll kill me.”

“You don’t understand,” he said.

“No, you don’t understand. She told me to get you back. She’s made up her mind and I don’t dare disobey. She hits very hard.”

He was silent for a while. Then I heard him sigh heavily. “I just don’t know if I can do this,” he said.

“I could take you back to the gator farm,” I said cheerfully.

He didn’t say anything after that, and I pulled onto Alligator Alley, made the first U-turn, and headed back toward the orange glow of light on the horizon that was Miami.