INNER WAS READY WHEN I GOT TO RITA’S HOUSE. CONSIDERING what I had gone through and what I was thinking about it, you might have thought that I would never eat again. But as I walked in the front door I was assaulted by the aroma; Rita had made roast pork, broccoli, and rice and beans, and there are very few things in this world that compare to Rita’s roast pork. And so it was a somewhat mollified Dexter who finally pushed the plate away and rose from the table. And in truth, the rest of the evening was mildly soothing as well. I played kick the can with Cody and Astor and the other neighborhood children until it was bedtime, and then Rita and I sat on the couch and watched a show about a grumpy doctor before turning in for the night.

Normality wasn’t all bad, not with Rita’s roast pork in it, and Cody and Astor to keep me interested. Perhaps I could live vicariously through them, like an old baseball player who becomes a coach when his playing days are over. They had so much to learn, and in teaching them I could relive my fading days of glory. Sad, yes, but it was at least a small compensation.

And as I drifted off to sleep, in spite of the fact that I really do know better, I caught myself thinking that maybe things weren’t that bad after all.

That foolish notion lasted until midnight, when I woke up to see Cody standing at the foot of the bed. “Somebody’s outside,” he said.

“All right,” I said, feeling half asleep and not at all curious about why he needed to tell me that.

“They want in,” he said.

I sat up. “Where?” I said.

Cody turned and headed into the hallway and I followed. I was half convinced that he had simply had a bad dream, but after all, this was Miami and these things have been known to happen, although certainly seldom more than five or six hundred times on any given night.

Cody led me to the door to the backyard. About ten feet from the door he stopped dead, and I stopped with him.

“There,” Cody said softly.

There indeed. It was not a bad dream, or at least not the kind you need to be asleep to have.

The doorknob was moving, wiggling as someone on the outside tried to turn it.

“Wake up your mom,” I whispered to Cody. “Tell her to call 9-1-1.” He looked up at me as if he was disappointed that I wasn’t going to charge out the door with a hand grenade and take care of things myself, but then he turned and walked back down the hall toward the bedroom.

I approached the door, quietly and cautiously. On the wall beside it was a switch that turned on a floodlight which illuminated the backyard. As I reached for the switch, the doorknob stopped turning. I turned the light on anyway.

Immediately, as if the switch had caused it to happen, something began to thump on the front door.

I turned and ran for the front of the house—and halfway there Rita stepped into the hall and crashed into me. “Dexter,” she said. “What—Cody said—”

“Call the cops,” I told her. “Someone is trying to break in.” I looked behind her at Cody. “Get your sister and all of you get into the bathroom. Lock the door.”

“But who would—we’re not—” Rita said.

“Go,” I told her, and pushed past her to the front door.

Once again I flipped on the outside light, and once again the sound stopped immediately.

Only to start up again down the hall, apparently on the kitchen window.

And naturally enough when I ran into the kitchen the sound had already stopped, even before I turned on the overhead light.

I slowly approached the window over the sink and carefully peeked out.

Nothing. Just the night and the hedge and the neighbor’s house and nothing else whatsoever.

I straightened up and stood there for a moment, waiting for the noise to start up again at some other corner of the house. It didn’t. I realized I was holding my breath, and I let it out. Whatever it was, it had stopped. It was gone. I unclenched my fists and took a deep breath.

And then Rita screamed.

I turned around fast enough to twist my ankle, but still hobbled for the bathroom as quickly as I could. The door was locked, but from inside I could hear something scrabbling at the window. Rita shouted, “Go away!”

“Open the door,” I said, and a moment later Astor opened it wide.

“It’s at the window,” she said, rather calmly I thought.

Rita was standing in the middle of the bathroom with her clenched fists raised to her mouth. Cody stood in front of her protectively holding the toilet plunger, and they were both staring at the window.

“Rita,” I said.

She turned to me with her eyes wide and filled with fear. “But what do they want?” she demanded, as if she thought I could tell her. And perhaps I could have, in the ordinary course of things—“ordinary” being defined as the entire previous portion of my life, when I had my Passenger to keep me company and whisper terrible secrets. But as it was, I only knew they wanted in and I did not know why.

I also did not know what they wanted, but it didn’t seem quite as important at the moment as the fact that they obviously wanted something and thought we had it. “Come on,” I said. “Everybody out of here.” Rita turned to look at me, but Cody stood his ground. “Move,” I said, and Astor took Rita by the hand and hurried through the door. I put a hand on Cody’s shoulder and pushed him after his mother, gently prying the plunger from his hands, and then I turned to face the window.

The noise continued, a hard scratching that sounded like someone was trying to claw through the glass. Without any real conscious thought I stepped forward and whacked the window with the rubber head of the toilet plunger.

The sound stopped.

For a long moment there was no sound except for my breathing, which I realized was somewhat fast and ragged. And then, not too far away, I heard a police siren cutting through the silence. I backed out of the bathroom, watching the window.

Rita sat on the bed with Cody on one side of her and Astor on the other. The children seemed quite calm, but Rita was clearly on the edge of hysteria. “It’s all right,” I said. “The cops are almost here.”

“Will it be Sergeant Debbie?” Astor asked me, and she added hopefully, “Do you think she’ll shoot somebody?”

“Sergeant Debbie is in bed, asleep,” I said. The siren was near now, and with a squeal of tires it came to a stop in front of our house and wound its way down through the scale to a grumbling halt. “They’re here,” I told them, and Rita lunged up off the bed and grabbed the children by the hand.

The three of them followed me out of the bedroom, and by the time we got to the front door there was already a knock sounding on the wood, polite but firm. Still, life teaches us caution, so I called out, “Who is it?”

“This is the police,” a stern masculine voice said. “We have a report of a possible break-in.” It sounded authentic, but just to be sure, I left the chain on as I opened the door and looked out. Sure enough, there were two uniformed cops standing there, one looking at the door and one turned away, looking out into the yard and the street.

I closed the door, took the chain off, and reopened it. “Come in, Officer,” I said. His name tag said Ramirez, and I realized I knew him slightly. But he made no move to enter the house; he simply stared down at my hand.

“What kind of emergency is this, chief?” he said, nodding at my hand. I looked and realized I was still holding the toilet plunger.

“Oh,” I said. I put the plunger behind the door in the umbrella stand. “Sorry. That was for self-defense.”

“Uh-huh,” Ramirez said. “Guess it would depend what the other guy had.” He stepped forward into the house, calling over his shoulder to his partner, “Take a look around the yard, Williams.”

“Yo,” said Williams, a wiry black man of about forty. He walked down into the yard and disappeared around the corner of the house.

Ramirez stood in the center of the room, looking at Rita and the kids. “So, what’s the story here?” he asked, and before I could answer he squinted at me. “I know you from somewhere?” he said.

“Dexter Morgan,” I said. “I work in forensics.”

“Right,” he said. “So what happened here, Dexter?”

I told him.