HE MEDIA FRENZY THAT DEBORAH’S BIG ARREST GENERATED was bigger than anyone had anticipated, and for the next few days Deborah was a very reluctant rock star. She was deluged with requests for interviews and photographs, and even in the relative security of police headquarters she was not safe from people stopping her to tell her how wonderful she was. Of course, being Deborah, the attention did not please her. She turned down all the invitations from the media, and she tried very hard to disengage herself from the workplace well-wishers without showing them any actual hostility. She didn’t always succeed, but that was all right. It made the other cops think that, on top of being spectacular, she was modest, gruff, and impatient with bullshit—which was actually true, for the most part—and it added even more luster to the growing Morgan Legend.

And somehow, some of the shine even reflected onto me. I had helped Deborah solve her cases often enough, usually with my special insight into things as they really are—wicked, and quite happily so—and just as often I had been beaten, bullied, and battered in the process. Never once in all those times had I ever received so much as a casual pat of thanks on my bruised back—but now, the one time I had done absolutely nothing, I began to get credit. I had three requests for interviews from reporters who had suddenly come to believe that blood spatter was fascinating, and I was invited to submit an article to the Forensic Examiner.

I turned down the interviews, of course—I had worked very hard to keep my face out of public view and saw no reason to change now. But the attention continued; people stopped me to say nice things, shake my hand, and tell me what a good job I had done. And it was true enough; I usually do a very good job—I just hadn’t done it this time. But suddenly I was the target of far too much unwelcome attention. It was disconcerting, even annoying, and I found myself flinching when the phone rang, ducking as the door opened, and even chanting the classic mantra of the clueless: Why me?

Tragically, it was Vince Masuoka who finally answered that lame question. “Grasshopper,” he said, shaking his head wisely, on the morning when he overheard me turning down Miami Hoy for the third time. “When temple bell rings, crane must fly.”

“Yes, and one apple every eight hours keeps three doctors away,” I said. “So what?”

“So,” he said, with a sly semismile, “what did you expect?”

I looked at him and he smirked back; he seemed to have some actual point in mind, as much as he ever did, so I gave him a more or less serious answer. “What I expect,” I said, “is to be ignored and unrecognized, laboring on in solitude at my unique level of unmatchable excellence.”

He shook his head. “Then you gotta get a new agent,” he said. “Because your face is all over the blogosphere.”

“My what is where?” I said.

“Lookit,” Vince said. He scrabbled at the keyboard of his laptop for a moment, and then turned the screen to face me. “It’s you, Dexter,” he said. “A superman shot. Very studly.”

I looked at the screen and had a moment of almost hallucinogenic disorientation. The computer showed a Web site with a red and dripping headline that said, “Miami Murder.” And under that was a photo of a male model in a heroic pose in front of the Torch of Friendship—at the scene where Officer Gunther’s body had been discovered. The model looked commanding, brilliant, and sexy—and he also looked an awful lot like me. In fact, to my astonishment, it was me, just as Vince had said. I was standing beside Deborah and pointing toward the waterfront, and she had an expression of eager compliance on her face. I had no idea how someone had managed to capture the two of us frozen in these completely uncharacteristic expressions, and somehow make me look so very studly in the process—but there it was. And even worse, the caption to the picture said, “Dexter Morgan—the real brains in the Cop-Hammer case!”

“It’s a really popular blog,” Vince said. “I can’t believe you haven’t seen this, ’cause everybody else in the world has.”

“And this is why everybody suddenly thinks I’m interesting?” I said.

Vince nodded at me. “Unless you have a hit single I didn’t know about?”

I blinked and looked at the picture again, hoping to find that it had gone away, but it hadn’t. And as I looked I felt my stomach churn with something that was very close to fear. Because there was my face and my name and even my job all together in one convenient package, and the first thought that popped into my brain was not, Oh, boy, I look studly. Instead it instantly gave a shape to the anonymous unease I had been feeling, and it looked like this:

What if my unknown Witness saw the pictures? My name was right there with my face, along with my job—practically everything but my shoe size. Even if he had not traced my license plate or tracked me before, this would give him everything he needed. This was not even a matter of putting two and two together; it was looking at four. I swallowed, which was not as easy as it should have been, since my mouth was suddenly dry, and I realized that Vince was staring at me with a strange look on his face. I searched for something witty and forceful to say and finally settled on, “Oh. Um—shit.”

Vince shook his head and looked very serious. “Too bad you’re not still single,” he said. “This would so get you laid.”

It seemed more likely that it would so get me arrested and executed. I had always been very careful to avoid publicity of any kind; it was far better for someone with my recreational tendencies to stay anonymous as much as possible, and until now I had managed to keep my face out of public view. But here it was, apparently splashed across the blogosphere, and there was nothing I could do except hope that my Witness was not a reader of the Miami Murder blog. If my picture had really spread as much as Vince said, maybe I should also hope he lived under a rock—and a rock without an Internet connection at that. There was no way to cover myself; this was public nudity, pure and simple. Worse still, there was absolutely no way out; I just had to wait for all the attention to go away when things calmed down.

Things did not, in fact, calm down right away, not as far as the Cop-Hammer case was concerned—but happily enough, things did move on away from me. The details of the case began to pour out into the mainstream media. A few photographs of the bodies appeared online—originating at Miami Murder, of course, but the newspapers got hold of them, as well as some very graphic descriptions of what had been done to Klein and Gunther. Public interest shot up several notches, and when the exciting conclusion leaked out, the newspaper and TV talking heads found the headline just too good to ignore—“Working Mom Puts Psycho Killer in Time-out!”—and the press stampede for Deborah left me far behind in the dust, and made me wonder if my sister had actually been one of the Beatles and forgotten to mention it.

Debs really was a much better story than me, but, of course, she wanted no part of it. And, of course, the reporters assumed that meant she was holding out for money, which made her even less eager to talk to them. Captain Matthews had to order her to accept one or two requests for interviews with the national media; he considered it his primary job to maintain a positive public image, for himself and the department, and nationally televised interviews do not grow on trees. But Deborah was clearly uncomfortable, awkward, and terse on camera. So Captain Matthews quickly decided that Debs as PR maven was a bad idea, and concentrated on trying to get his own manly face on TV instead. TV was not terribly interested, however, in spite of the captain’s truly impressive chin, and after a week or so the requests for Deborah died out and our happy nation moved on to the next Incredibly Fascinating Story: an eight-year-old girl who had climbed halfway up Mount Everest all by herself before getting frostbite and losing her leg. The interviews with her proud parents were particularly compelling—especially the mother weeping at the expense of a new prosthetic leg every six months as the girl grew—and I made a mental note to be certain not to miss their reality show in the fall.

At about the same time the press moved on, the rest of the police force got tired of telling Deborah how terrific she was, too, especially since her thank-yous were growing very close to vicious. One or two of the other detectives even began to make the kind of sarcastic remarks that a suspicious mind might assume were tinged with envy. In any case, the congratulations and praise at work dried up and the force returned to the routine brutality of life on the job as Miami’s Finest. The tense, haunted-house atmosphere seeped out of the department, and things settled back into their old comfortable workday rut once more, with Debs happily back out of the spotlight and working on routine stabbings and beheadings again. Her broken arm didn’t seem to slow her down too much, and Alex Duarte was always at her side on the job if she needed a hand, literal or figurative.

For my part, I crossed off a few more names on the list, but it was all happening with nightmare slowness now, and I could do nothing but plod on. I knew something terrible was about to happen, and that I would be on the receiving end. My Witness absolutely had to know who I was now. I had been identified by name, with a picture, and it seemed to me that it would have to be only a matter of time before those two hard facts crashed together, with Dexter in between. I moved through my day with the horrible uneasy feeling of being observed by hostile eyes. I couldn’t see any sign that I was, no matter how hard and long I stared around me, but the feeling would not go away. No one was staring intently at me when I was out in public, although I imagined that I could feel his eyes on me everywhere. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary anywhere, not even once, but I felt it. Something was coming my way, and I knew I wouldn’t like it when it got here, not at all.

The Dark Passenger was just as disturbed; it seemed to be pacing endlessly back and forth, like a tiger in a cage, but it offered no help and no suggestions, nothing but more unease. And my near-constant feeling of creeping dread stayed with me over the next few days. At home I found it almost impossible to keep up my mask of cheerful daddyhood. Rita had not mentioned hunting for a new house again, but it might have been because some kind of crisis involving euros and long-term-bond yields had come up at her job, and she was suddenly too busy to do anything about it, although she still found time to give me odd, disapproving looks, and I still had no idea what I had or hadn’t done.

It also fell to me to take Astor to the dentist to get her braces, a trip that did not delight either one of us. She still considered the whole idea of braces as a kind of personal Apocalypse, designed by a vengeful world to force her into social death, and she sulked for the entire drive. She would not speak at all, all the way to the dentist, which was very unusual for her.

And on the trip home, with brand-new shiny silver bands on her teeth, she was just as silent, but more aggressively so. She glowered at the scenery, snarled at the passing cars, and none of my clumsy attempts to cheer her up got anything out of her except some very bitter glares and two simple declarative sentences: “I look like a cyborg,” she said. “My life is over.” And then she turned to look out the side window of the car and would say no more.

Astor sulked, Rita stared and crunched numbers, and Cody maintained his normal silence. Only Lily Anne knew that something was wrong. She tried very hard to bring me out of my funk, distracting me with numerous rounds of “Old MacDonald” and “Frog Went A-Courtin’,” but even her great musical talent brought no more than a temporary fading of my deep disquiet.

Something was coming; I knew it, and I couldn’t stop it. It was like watching a piano fall from a tall building and knowing that in just a few seconds there is going to be a huge and terrible crash and there is nothing you can do but wait for it. But even though this piano was entirely in my head, I still found myself bracing for the shattering din when it inevitably hit the pavement.

And then one morning I arrived at work to find that my piano wasn’t imaginary after all.

I had just settled into my chair with a cup of toxic sludge disguised as coffee. No one else was around yet, so I turned on my computer to check my in-box. It was all junk—a departmental memo advising us all that the new departmental dress code did not permit guayaberas, a note from Cody’s Cub Scout leader reminding me to bring snacks next week, three offers from online Canadian pharmacies, two notes suggesting some highly improper and rather personal activities, a letter from my attorney in Nigeria urging me to claim my huge inheritance, and an invitation for me to submit a blog on blood spatter to a homicide fan site. For just a moment I allowed myself to be distracted by the idea of writing for a Web site for murder groupies. It was absurd, bewildering, and weirdly attractive, and I could not stop myself from taking a quick peek. I opened the e-mail.

My screen went briefly blank, and for two heartbeats I felt panic; had I let in some kind of virus? But then a flash-graphics file started up, and a bright red glob of animated blood went splat! across the screen. It dripped down toward the bottom edge, looking realistic enough to make me feel deeply uneasy. Dark letters began to form in the awful red mess, and as they slowly spelled out my name I felt a sick jolt of dread run through me, which did not get any better when the screen suddenly flashed a blinding blast of light and then, in huge black letters, GOTCHA!

For a moment I could only stare at the screen. The words began to fade, and I could feel my entire life fading away with them. I was Got; it was all over. Who it was, what they were going to do—it didn’t matter. Dexter was Done.

And then a paragraph of text appeared, and with a sick numb helplessness, I began to read it.

“If you’re like me,” it said, “you like murder!”

All right, I really am like you; what’s your point?

It went on:!!!There’s nothing wrong with that—you’ll find lots of other people who feel the same way! And just like you, they love living here in Miami, where there’s always a new case to follow! Until now it’s been too hard to keep up with the latest in local homicide. But now, there’s a simple way to do just that! Tropical Blood is an exciting new online magazine that offers you an insider’s look at all kills on the current casebook—all for just $4.99 a month! This special rate is only for our founding subscribers! You must join now, before the price goes up!

There was more, but I didn’t read it. I was somewhere between relief that this was mere spam, and anger that it had put me through such a very bad moment. I deleted the e-mail, and as I did my laptop gave a muted bong! announcing one more e-mail, a note with the one-word title “Identity.”

I moved the mouse to delete this one, too, but I hesitated for just a moment. It made no sense at all, but the timing seemed magical—one arriving as I deleted the other. Of course, it wasn’t connected, but there was a kind of wondrous symmetry to it. So I opened it. I assumed it would be an advertisement for some amazing new product that would protect me from identity theft, or possibly enhance my sexuality. But that word, “identity” … it had been on my mind as I wrestled with the question of my Witness. I had been thinking about his identity and whether he knew mine, and now this same word in the subject line had tweaked the memory. It was a stupid, almost nonexistent connection, but it was there, and I could not stop myself from taking a quick peek. I opened the e-mail.

A page of single-spaced writing appeared on my screen, under a large stylized heading that said “Shadowblog.” The letters of the headline were printed in a gray, semitransparent typeface, and under them was a shadowy mirror image of the letters done in faint red. There was no name below it, just a URL: http://​www.blogalodeon.com/​shadowblog.

Oh, joy and bliss: I had made it onto some anonymous two-bit blogger’s mailing list. Was this the price of my newfound fame? To be assailed by every semiliterate twinkie with a keyboard and an opinion? I didn’t need this, and once more I moved the mouse to delete the e-mail—and then I saw the first sentence and everything went cold and very still.

"And now I know your name", it said.

For an endless moment I just stared at that sentence. It was irrational nearly to the point of clinical brain death, but for some reason I was convinced that the sentence referred to me, and it had been written by my Witness. I stared, and I may even have blinked once or twice, but other than that I did nothing. Finally I became aware of a distant pounding, and realized it was my heart, reminding me that I needed to breathe. I did, closing my eyes and giving the oxygen a moment to get up to my brain and whip a few thoughts into action. The first thought was an order to calm down, followed by a very logical reminder that this was, after all, only a spam e-mail and it could not possibly be about me or from my Witness.

And so I took another breath, found it to be good, and opened my eyes. The sentence was still there; it still said, “And now I know your name,” and there was still a page of writing under it. But I was very proud to discover that I had yet another calm thought, which was that looking at this page would very quickly prove that the blog had nothing to do with me. All I had to do was read one or two sentences to see that I was being a paranoid idiot, and I could go back to sipping calmly from my cup of vile coffee.

So I moved my eyes down to the second line and began to read.!!!Since I saw you that night in the foreclosed house your face has been stuck in my head. I have seen it everywhere, awake and asleep, and I can’t shove away that picture of you standing over a heap of raw red meat that had been a human being just a few minutes before. Even you have to know it is so fucking wrong—! And I keep thinking—who the fuck are you? Or maybe what the fuck—are you even human? Can someone that does that really get away with walking around in the real world, buying groceries and talking about the weather?!!!I ran from you. I ran from just the sight of you doing what you were doing. But that picture ran with me, and I know I should have done something, but I didn’t, and I could not get it out of my head.!!!And because I ran from you, it seems like I started seeing you everywhere. My whole life I never see you even once, and now you pop up every time I step out the door. I see you with your kids, or out there in the street with your job, and I can’t stand it anymore.!!!I’m not stupid. I know it’s not an accident, because that kind of coincidence is just impossible. But I didn’t want to think about what it meant, because if I did I would have to do something about it. And I kept thinking I wasn’t ready for that. I mean, my divorce, on top of all the other shitty stuff that keeps happening to me. It seemed like it was all too much, and to have to deal with you, too—forget it.

And then I see your picture, and it has your name and your job. Your job. I’m thinking, Holy Christ, he’s a fucking cop? Talk about brass balls. How does he get away with that? And I know right off, no fucking way can I do anything about a guy like you who’s a cop, too.!!!But I can’t stop thinking about it, and the more I think the more I keep shoving it away, because I’ve already got way too many problems to have to deal with your kind of shit, too. And it just buzzes around and around in my head until I think I’m going to totally freak and I want to run for it, but there’s no place to run, and I can’t avoid dealing with you anymore because now I know who you are and where you work, and I got no more excuses, and it just piles up and whirls around in my head and it’s making me fucking nuts—!!!And then all of a sudden it’s almost like a switch going on in my brain. Click. And I can almost hear a voice saying, You are looking at this all wrong. Like the Priest used to say, every stumbling spot is really a stepping-stone if you look at it right. And I think, Yeah.

This is not another problem. This is an answer.

This is a way to make all the other bullshit mean something, to finally bring it all together. And I may not know exactly how to do it just yet, but I know it’s right, and I know I can do this.!!!And I will do this. Soon.!!!Because now I know your name.

Somewhere down the hall I heard a door slam shut. Two voices called to each other, but I couldn’t hear the words, and I wouldn’t have understood them if I did, because there was only one thing in the entire world that meant anything:

He knew my name.

He had seen the pictures online, with my name on them, and he had put that together with what he had Witnessed me doing with Valentine. He knew me. He knew who I was and he knew where I worked. I sat there and tried to be calm and think of the right thing to do about this, but I could not get beyond that one wild, world-shattering thought. He knew me. He was out there and he could destroy me at any moment. I didn’t have the faintest notion of who he was, but he knew me and he could expose me whenever he wanted to and there didn’t seem to be a whole lot I could do about it.

And what was that about seeing me with my kids—was he threatening Lily Anne? I could not allow that—I had to find some way to get to him and stop him. But how could I, when I’d been trying to find him for two weeks and failing?

I scanned the blog again, looking for any clue that might tell me who he was, just some tiny hint of a way out of this nightmare, but the words had not changed. Still, on second reading, I saw that he had not written anything that might reveal me to anyone else. I was at least safe from that. So what was he really threatening? A physical attack on me or my family? He wrote about “dealing with” me, and I had no idea what that meant, but I didn’t like the sound of it. And there, at the end, he said he didn’t know yet exactly what to do—that could mean anything, and I couldn’t rule out a single thing until I knew more about who he was.

I needed to find a clue the way a drowning man needs air, and I had nothing but this single page of blather. But wait: It wasn’t technically blather; it was a blog. That implied that it was a semiregular thing, and if there were other postings, one of them might reveal something useful.

I copied the URL at the top of the page, pasted it into my browser’s window, and went to the Web address. It was one of the sites that allowed anybody to post a blog for free, and Shadowblog was just one of thousands. But at least there were other entries, one every few days, and I scanned them all as quickly as I could. The very first one opened with, “Why does everything always turn to shit?” It was a fair question, and it showed a little more insight into life than I expected. But that still told me nothing about him.

I read on: Most of it was a rambling, unfocused whine about how nobody appreciated him, ending with his decision to start this blog to help him figure out why. It ended with, I mean, I don’t get it. I walk into a room and it’s like they can’t even see me, like I’m not real to anyone else, no more than a fucking shadow. So I’m calling this the Shadowblog.… Very touching and sensitive, a true existential call for human contact, and I very much wanted to make contact as quickly as possible. But first I needed to know who this was.

I read more postings. They covered a period of over a year, and they seemed increasingly angry, but they were all anonymous, even the ones that mentioned the writer’s divorce from someone he referred to only as “A.” He wrote very bitterly about the fact that she wouldn’t get off her ass and get a job and still expected him to give her alimony to pay for everything, and he couldn’t afford two places so even though they were divorced now, he had to live under the same roof with her. It was a very touching portrait of lower-middle-class anguish, and I’m sure it would have melted my heart, if only I had one.

A’s refusal to work seemed to make him madder than anything else; he wrote passionately about responsibility and the fact that not doing your Fair Share was just plain Evil. That led him to a series of observations about Society in general and the “assholes” who refused to “follow the rules like the rest of us have to.” From there he rambled on into several tedious rants about Justice, and people getting what they deserved, and his apparent belief that the world would be a much better place if only everyone in it was more like him. Altogether, it was a portrait of someone with anger-management issues, low self-esteem, and a growing frustration with a world that refused to acknowledge his sterling qualities.

I read more. I hit a section of a half dozen entries in which he went on at great length about growing problems with “A”—and I really did sympathize, but why couldn’t he use real names? It would make things so much easier. But, of course, then he would have used my name, too, so I guess it balanced out. I worked forward through the blogs. They were all the same sort of grouchy, self-involved drivel, until I came to an entry headed, “Snap!” I recognized the date at the top; it was the day after my rendezvous with Valentine. I stopped scanning and began to read.!!!So it was just too much with “A,” just one bitchy crack too many about how I couldn’t even make decent money, which is a laugh since she can’t make ANY. But it’s like, no, you’re the man, you’re supposed to. And I look at her sitting there in a house where I pay the bills, and I buy the groceries, and she doesn’t do shit! She won’t even clean up properly! And I look at her and I don’t see lazy and bitchy anymore, I see Evil with a capital E, and I know I can’t take any more of this shit without doing something about it and I have to get out before I do it. So I take her Honda, just to piss her off, and I drive around for a while, just chewing on my teeth and trying to think. And after maybe an hour, I’m up in the Grove and all I got is a sore jaw and a nearly empty gas tank. I really need to just sit somewhere and think what to do, like maybe Peacock Park or someplace, but it’s raining, so I circle back south. The closer I get to home, the madder I get, and when I turn on Old Cutler some asshole in a new Beemer cuts me off. And I think, That’s it, that fucking does it, and I can almost hear something go snap inside. And I put the pedal down and go after him, and it’s like, Dude, wake up: He’s in a new Beemer and you’re in a beat-to-shit old Honda. And he’s totally gone in about three seconds, and I’m even madder. I turn down the street where I thought he went, and there’s no sign. And I cruise for a few minutes, thinking, What the hell, maybe I’ll get lucky. But there’s nothing. He’s totally gone.!!!And then I see this house. It’s totally trashed, another foreclosed place. Some dumb asshole ripping off the bank and raising the rates for the rest of us. I slow down and look, because there’s an old Chevy kind of hidden in the carport, like he’s still in there, living for free, while I bust my ass making payments.!!!I park the car, and I go around to the side door by the carport, and I slip inside. I don’t know what I was thinking or what I would have done, but I know I was pissed off. And I hear something in the next room, and I sneak to the doorway and peek—!!!The counter. There’s a hand lying there. A human hand.!!!But it’s not attached to anything. This doesn’t make sense.!!!And right next to it that’s a foot, also not attached. And other parts, too, and oh holy shit that’s the head right there on top, eyes wide-open and looking right at me and all I can do is stare back—!!!And something moves and I see this guy standing there, totally calm, just cleaning up and looking like no big deal, another day at the office. And he starts to turn toward me—and I see his face—!!!The Priest used to try to scare us with these pictures of the Devil. Horns and red face and evil stare—but this guy is scarier, because he’s just so fucking ordinary-looking and real but so totally fucking evil and really, really happy about that, and about being there with this chopped-up body.!!!And now he’s turning to look at me—!!!It’s too much. Something just popped and I was in the car and hauling ass out of there before I even knew I was moving. And I’m almost all the way home before I think, Why didn’t I do something? Even if it was only just calling the cops? It pisses me off to think I’m being a wuss, like maybe they’re all right about me being nothing but a fucking shadow. I should have done something. I should still do something.

But what?

In a very strange way, it was fascinating to read a description of Dark Dexter at play. A little creepy, perhaps, and not very flattering— “Ordinary-looking”? Moi? Surely not. But other than that, it wasn’t terribly helpful in providing clues to the blogger’s identity.

I moved on to the later blogs. One of them described seeing me in the grocery store—the Publix nearest to my house, no less—and how he had slipped out of the store like a shadow and watched from his car as I came out with my groceries. And two blogs later he described our encounter that morning on the on-ramp to the Palmetto Expressway in his usual riveting prose:!!!I was just crawling along in the usual bullshit morning traffic, going to my stupid fucking temp job, and driving “A”’s car to save on gas, and I’m looking at the cars around me, and boom—I see that profile again. It’s him, no fucking question, totally him. Just sitting there in his shitty little car like all the other wage slaves, just totally normal. And I can’t make it mean anything, because everything around me is so fucking normal, like it is every day, but there’s that face in a car right next to me, that same face I still see in my head surrounded by chopped-up body parts, and it’s right there in traffic waiting to get up on the Palmetto.…!!!And my brain is frozen, I can’t think, and I’m staring, I guess thinking, like, Is he going to do something? I mean, flames shooting out, or make a cloud of bats come out or something? And I cansee it when he all of a sudden knows I am watching, and his head starts to turn toward me, just like that night in the house, and the same thing happens—I totally panic and hit the gas and I am gone before I even know what I am doing. And I think about it later, really, really pissed that I ran like that again—because I am not a fucking nothing and I know I should do something, but I was out of there before I could even think, which is totally not the real me.!!!And I think, So, okay, what is the real me? And I realize I don’t know. Because I have been pushing it away for so long, trying to make people happy with a fake version—the Priest, and my teachers, and “A,” and even the asshole boss at my stupid temp job, who doesn’t know an algorithm from his asshole, and he’s telling me about data mapping, the prick. Even him, all of them—I try harder to make them happy than I try to be Me, and that makes me think about who I am for a long fucking time, the whole rest of the drive to work.!!!Okay, who am I? Make a list: First, I admit it; most people don’t notice me. Second, I believe in following the rules, and it really pisses me off when nobody else does. Really good with computers. Eat healthy, stay fit. Um …

Is that it?!!!I mean, shouldn’t there be more? There’s not even enough to add up to anything except another wage slave so dumb I even pay my taxes.!!!And I think about Him. The guy with the knife.!!!Because it sure looks like he knows who He is. And he’s being it.!!!And another thought hits me, and I wonder: Am I really running from Him because I am scared of Him?!!!Or am I maybe more scared of what He makes me think about doing?

Fascinating stuff, all of it, but if he was half as smart as he seemed to think he was, he actually should be running from me. Because I could not remember ever wanting so badly to see someone taped to a table.

There was a great deal more, a new entry every few days. But before I could read any more I heard a clatter behind me. I reflexively brought my computer back to its home screen as Vince Masuoka came in, and the workday lurched off the blocks and onto its well-worn path of toil and drudgery. But through that whole long day I could think of nothing except that same awful, first sentence in the blog in my in-box. “And now I know your name.” Somebody knew who and what I was, and whoever they were they were not kind and gentle and wanting only to reward my anonymous good works with flowers and the thanks of a grateful nation. At any moment he might attack, or decide to expose me so that my entire carefully crafted, beautifully fulfilling life would crash and burn and it would be Dexter Down the Drain.

Whoever he was, he knew my name. And I had no idea who he was, or what he was going to do about it.