DON’T DREAM. I MEAN, I’M SURE THAT AT SOME POINT DURING my normal sleep, there must be images and fragments of nonsense parading through my subconscious. After all, they tell me that happens with everyone. But I never seem to remember dreams if I do have them, which they tell me happens to nobody at all. So I assume that I do not dream.

It was therefore something of a shock to discover myself late that night, cradled in Rita’s arms, shouting something I could not quite hear; just the echo of my own strangled voice coming back at me out of the cottony dark, and Rita’s cool hand on my forehead, her voice murmuring, “All right, sweetheart, I won’t leave you.”

“Thank you very much,” I said in a croaking voice. I cleared my throat and sat up.

“You had a bad dream,” she told me.

“Really? What was it?” I still didn’t remember anything but my shouting and a vague sense of danger crowding in on me, and me all alone.

“I don’t know,” Rita said. “You were shouting, ‘Come back! Don’t leave me alone.’” She cleared her throat. “Dexter—I know you’re feeling some stress about our wedding—”

“Not at all,” I said.

“But I want you to know. I will never leave you.” She reached for my hand again. “This is forever with me, big man. I am holding on to you.” She scooted over and put her head on my shoulder. “Don’t worry. I won’t ever leave you, Dexter.”

Even though I lack experience with dreams, I was fairly sure that my subconscious was not terribly worried about Rita leaving me. I mean, it hadn’t occurred to me that she would, which was not really a sign of trust on my part. I just hadn’t thought about it. Truly, I had no idea why she wanted to hang on to me in the first place, so any hypothetical leave-taking was just as mysterious.

No, this was my subconscious. If it was crying out in pain at the threat of abandonment, I knew exactly what it feared losing: the Dark Passenger. My bosom buddy, my constant companion on my journey through life’s sorrows and sharp pleasures. That was the fear behind the dream: losing the thing that had been so very much a part of me, had actually defined me, for my whole life.

When it scuttled into hiding at the university crime scene it had clearly shaken me badly, more than I had known at the time. The sudden and very scary reappearance of 65 percent of Sergeant Doakes supplied the sense of danger, and the rest was easy. My subconscious had kicked in and supplied a dream on the subject. Perfectly clear—Psych 101, a textbook case, nothing to worry about.

So why was I still worrying?

Because the Passenger had never even flinched before, and I still didn’t know why it had chosen now. Was Rita right about the stress of the approaching wedding? Or was there really something about the two headless bodies by the university lake that just plain scared the Dark out of me?

I didn’t know—and, since it seemed like Rita’s ideas about comforting me had begun to take a more active turn, it did not look like I was going to find out anytime soon.

“Come here, baby,” Rita whispered.

And after all, there really isn’t any place to run in a queen-size bed, is there?

The next morning found Deborah obsessed with finding the missing heads from the two bodies at the university. Somehow word had leaked out to the press that the department was interested in finding a couple of skulls that had wandered away. This was Miami, and I really would have thought that a missing head would get less press coverage than a traffic tie-up on I-95, but something about the fact that there were two of them, and that they apparently belonged to young women, created quite a stir. Captain Matthews was a man who knew the value of being mentioned in the press, but even he was not pleased with the note of surly hysteria that attached itself to this story.

And so pressure came down on all of us from above; from the captain to Deborah, who wasted no time passing it on down to the rest of us. Vince Masuoka became convinced that he could provide Deborah with the key to the whole matter by finding out which bizarre religious sect was responsible. This led to him sticking his head in my door that morning and, without any kind of warning, giving me his best fake smile and saying, firmly and distinctly, “Candomblé.”

“Shame on you,” I said. “This is no time for that kind of language.”

“Ha,” he said, with his terrible artificial laugh. “But it is, I’m sure of it. Candomblé is like Santeria, but it’s Brazilian.”

“Vince, I have no reason to doubt you on that. My question is, what the hell are you talking about?”

He came two steps into the room in a kind of prance, as if his body wanted to take off and he couldn’t quite fight it down. “They have a thing about animal heads in some of their rituals,” he said. “It’s on the Internet.”

“Really,” I said. “Does it say on the Internet that this Brazilian thing barbecues humans, cuts off their heads, and replaces them with ceramic bulls’ heads?”

Vince wilted just a bit. “No,” he admitted, and he raised his eyebrows hopefully. “But they use animals.”

“How do they use them, Vince?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, and he looked around my little room, possibly for another topic of conversation. “Sometimes they, you know, offer a part to the gods, and then they eat the rest.”

“Vince,” I said, “are you suggesting that somebody ate the missing heads?”

“No,” he said, turning sullen, almost like Cody and Astor might have done. “But they could have.”

“It would be very crunchy, wouldn’t it?”

“All right,” he said, exceedingly sulky now. “I’m just trying to help.” And he stalked away, without even a small fake smile.

But the chaos had only begun. As my unwanted trip to dreamland indicated, I was already under enough pressure without the added strain of a rampaging sister. But only a few minutes later, my small oasis of peace was ripped asunder once again, this time by Deborah, who came roaring into my office as if pursued by killer bees.

“Come on,” she snarled at me.

“Come on where?” I asked, quite a reasonable question, I thought, but you would have thought I had asked her to shave her head and paint her skull blue.

“Just get in gear, and come on!” she said, so I came on and followed her down to the parking lot and into her car.

“I swear to God,” she fumed as she hammered her car through the traffic, “I have never seen Matthews this pissed before. And now it’s my fault!” She banged on the horn for emphasis and swerved in front of a van that said PALMVIEW ASSISTED LIVING on the side. “All because some asshole leaked the heads to the press.”

“Well, Debs,” I said, with all the reasonable soothing I could muster, “I’m sure the heads will turn up.”

“You’re goddamned right they will,” she said, narrowly missing a fat man on a bicycle that had huge saddlebags stuffed with scrap metal. “Because I am going to find out which cult the son of a bitch belongs to, and then I’m going to nail the bastard.”

I paused in mid-soothe. Apparently my dear demented sister, just like Vince, had gotten hold of the idea that finding the appropriate alternative religion would yield a killer. “Ah, all right,” I said. “And where are we going to do that?”

She slid the car out onto Biscayne Boulevard and into a parking space at the curb without answering, and got out of the car. And so I found myself patiently following her into the Centre for Inner Enhancement, a clearinghouse for all the wonderfully useful things that have the words “holistic,” “herbal,” or “aura” in them.

The Centre was a small and shabby building in an area of Biscayne Boulevard that had apparently been designated by treaty as a kind of reservation for prostitutes and crack dealers. There were enormous bars on the storefront windows and more of them on the door, which was locked. Deborah pounded on it and after a moment it gave an annoying buzz. She pushed, and finally it clicked and swung open.

We stepped in. A suffocating cloud of sickly sweet incense rolled over me, and I could tell that my inner enhancement had begun with a complete overhaul of my lungs. Through the smoke I could dimly see a large yellow silk banner hung along one wall that stated WE ARE ALL ONE. It did not say one of what. A recording played softly, the sound of someone who seemed to be fighting off an overdose of downers by occasionally ringing a series of small bells. A waterfall murmured in the background and I am sure that my spirit would have soared, if only I had one. Since I didn’t, I found the whole thing just a bit irritating.

But of course, we weren’t here for pleasure, or even inner enhancement. And Sergeant Sister was, of course, all business all the time. She marched over to the counter, where there stood a middle-aged woman wearing a full-length tie-dyed dress that seemed to be made out of old crepe paper. Her graying hair radiated out from her head in a kind of random mess, and she was frowning. Of course, it may have been a beatific frown of enlightenment.

“Can I help you?” she said, in a gravelly voice that seemed to suggest we were beyond help.

Deborah held up her badge. Before she could say anything the woman reached over and plucked it from her hand.

“All right, Sergeant Morgan,” the woman said, tossing the badge on the counter. “It seems to be genuine.”

“Couldn’t you just read her aura and tell that?” I suggested. Neither of them seemed ready to give that remark any of the appreciation it deserved, so I shrugged and listened as Deborah began her grueling interrogation.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions, please,” Deborah said, leaning forward to scoop up her badge.

“About what?” the woman demanded. She frowned even harder, and Deborah frowned back, and it began to look like we were in for a good old-fashioned country frown-off, with the winner getting free Botox treatments to freeze her face into a permanent scowl.

“There have been some murders,” Deborah said, and the woman shrugged.

“What’s that got to do with me?” she asked.

I applauded her reasoning, but after all, I did have to play for my own team now and then.

“It’s because we are all one,” I said. “That’s the basis of all police work.”

She swiveled her frown to me and blinked at me in a very aggressive way. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded. “Lemme see your badge.”

“I’m her backup,” I said. “In case she’s attacked by bad karma.”

The woman snorted, but at least she didn’t shoot me. “Cops in this town,” she said, “are swimming in bad karma. I was at the FTAA rally, and I know what you people are like.”

“Maybe we are,” Deborah said, “but the other side is even worse, so could you just answer a few questions?”

The woman looked back at Deborah, still frowning, and shrugged. “Okay, I guess,” she said. “But I don’t see how I can help. And I call my lawyer if you get out of line.”

“Fine,” Deborah said. “We’re looking for a lead on somebody who might be connected to a local alternative religious group that has a thing for bulls.”

For a second I thought the woman was almost going to smile, but she caught herself just in time. “Bulls? Jesus, who doesn’t have a thing for bulls. Goes all the way back to Sumer, Crete, all those old cradle-of-civilization places. Lots of people have worshipped them. I mean, aside from the huge cocks, they’re very powerful.”

If the woman thought she was going to embarrass Deborah, she didn’t know as much about Miami cops as she thought she did. My sister didn’t even blink. “Do you know of any group in particular that might be local?” Debs said.

“I dunno,” she said. “What kind of group?”

“Candomblé?” I said, briefly grateful to Vince for supplying a word. “Palo Mayombe? Or even Wicca.”

“The Spanish stuff, you gotta go over to Eleggua on Eighth Street. I wouldn’t know about that. We sell some stuff to the Wicca people, but I’m not gonna tell you about it without a warrant. Anyway, they don’t do bulls.” She snorted. “They just stand around in the Everglades naked, waiting for their power to come.”

“Is there anybody else?” Debs insisted.

The woman just shook her head. “I dunno. I mean, I know about most of the groups in town, and nothing like that I can think of.” She shrugged. “Maybe the Druids, they got a spring event coming up. They used to do human sacrifice.”

Deborah frowned even more intensely. “When was that?” she said.

This time the woman actually did smile, just a little, with one corner of her mouth. “About two thousand years ago. You’re a little late on that one, Sherlock.”

“Is there anything else you can think of that might help?” Deborah asked.

The woman shook her head. “Help with what? There might be some psycho loser out there who read Aleister Crowley and lives on a dairy farm. How would I know?”

Deborah looked at her for a moment, as if trying to decide if she had been offensive enough to arrest, and then apparently decided against it. “Thank you for your time,” she said, and she flipped her business card on the counter. “If you think of anything that might be helpful, please give me a call.”

“Yeah, sure,” the woman said, without even glancing at the card. Deborah glared at her for a moment longer and then stalked out of the door. The woman stared at me and I smiled.

“I really like vegetables,” I said. Then I gave the woman the peace sign and followed my sister out.

“That was a stupid idea,” Deborah said as we walked rapidly back to her car.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” I said. And it was quite true, I wouldn’t say it. Of course, it really was a stupid idea, but to say so would have been to invite one of Debs’s vicious arm punches. “If nothing else, we eliminated a few possibilities.”

“Sure,” she said sourly. “We know it probably wasn’t a bunch of naked fruits, unless they did it two thousand years ago.”

She did have a point, but I see it as my job in life to help all those around me maintain a positive attitude. “It’s still progress,” I said. “Shall we check out the place on Eighth Street? I’ll translate for you.” In spite of being a Miami native, Debs had whimsically insisted on studying French in school, and she could barely order lunch in Spanish.

She shook her head. “Waste of time,” she said. “I’ll tell Angel to ask around, but it won’t go anywhere.”

And she was right. Angel came back late that afternoon with a very nice candle that had a prayer to St. Jude on it in Spanish, but other than that his trip to the place on Eighth Street was a waste of time, just as Debs had predicted.

We were left with nothing, except two bodies, no heads, and a very bad feeling.

That was about to change.