did stay busy, and Weiss did, too. With Chutsky’s help, I learned that he had taken a flight to Toronto that left Havana just about the time we arrived at the Havana airport. But what he did after that no amount of computer snooping could uncover. A small voice inside me was stuttering hopefully that maybe he would give up and stay home, but this little voice was answered by a large and very loud bray of laughter from most of the other voices inside me.

I did the very few small things I could think of; I ran some Internet searches that technically I should not have been able to do, and I managed to find a little bit of credit-card activity, but all of it in Toronto. This led me to Weiss’s bank, which was easy enough to make me a little bit indignant: Shouldn’t people guarding our sacred money be a little bit more careful about it? Weiss had made a cash withdrawal of a few thousand dollars, and then that was it. No activity at all for the next few days.

I knew that the cash withdrawal would somehow turn into bad news for me, but beyond that I could think of no way to turn that certainty into any kind of specific threat. In desperation, I went back to Weiss’s YouTube page. Shockingly, the whole “New Miami” motif was completely gone, as were all the little thumbnail film boxes. Instead, the background was a dull gray and there was a rather horrible picture, a nasty-looking nude male body, with the privates partially hacked off. Underneath it was written, Schwarzkogler was just the beginning. The next step is on the way.

Any conversation that starts with, Schwarzkogler was just the beginning is not going anywhere that a rational being could possibly want to go. But the name sounded vaguely familiar to me and, of course, I could not possibly leave a potential clue unexamined, and so I did my due diligence and ran a Google check.

The Schwarzkogler in question turned out to be Rudolf, an Austrian who considered himself an artist, and in order to prove it he reportedly sliced his penis off a little bit at a time and took photographs of the process. This was such an artistic triumph that he continued his career, until his masterpiece finally killed him. And I remembered as I read it that he had been an icon of the group in Paris who had so brilliantly given us Jennifer’s Leg.

I don’t know much about art, but I like hanging on to my body parts. So far even Weiss had proven to be stingy with his limbs, in spite of my best effort. But I could see that this whole artistic movement would have a very definite aesthetic appeal to him, particularly if he took it one step further, as he said he was doing. It made sense; why create art with your own body, when you can do the same thing with someone else’s and it won’t hurt? And your career would last a lot longer, too. I applauded Weiss’s great common sense, and I had a very deep feeling that I was going to see the next step in his artistic career sometime soon, and someplace far too close to Dexter the Philistine.

I checked the YouTube page several more times over the next week, but there was no change, and the rhythm of a very busy week at work began to make it all seem like an unpleasant memory.

Things at home were no easier; a cop was still waiting at our door when the kids came home, and although most of them were very nice, their presence added to the strain. Rita got a little bit distant and distracted, as though she was perpetually waiting for an important long-distance telephone call, and this caused her usually excellent cooking to suffer. We had leftovers twice in one week—previously unheard of in our little house. And Astor seemed to pick up on the weirdness and, for the only time since I had known her, she got relatively silent, sitting in front of the TV with Cody and watching all her favorite DVDs over and over, with no more than two or three words at a time for the rest of us.

Cody, oddly enough, was the only one showing any kind of animation. He was very eagerly looking forward to his next Cub Scout meeting, even though it meant wearing his dreaded uniform shorts. But when I asked him why he’d had a change of heart, he admitted it was only because he was hoping the new den leader might turn up dead, too, and this time he might see something.

So the week dragged on, the weekend was no relief, and Monday morning came around again as it almost always seems to do. And even though I brought a large box of doughnuts in to work, Monday had nothing much to offer me in return, either, except more work. A drive-by shooting in Liberty City took me out onto the hot streets for several unnecessary hours. A sixteen-year-old boy was dead, and it was obvious from one quick look at the blood pattern that he had been shot from a moving vehicle. But “obvious” is never enough for a police investigation, so there I was sweating under the hot sun and doing things that came perilously close to physical labor, just so I could fill out the correct forms.

By the time I got back to my little cubby at headquarters, I had sweated away most of my artificial human covering and I wanted nothing more out of life than to take a shower, put on some dry clothes, and then possibly slice up somebody who thoroughly deserved it. And of course that led my slowly chugging train of thought straight down the track to Weiss, and with nothing else to do except admire the feel and smell of my own sweat, I checked his YouTube page one more time.

And this time there was a brand-new thumbnail waiting for me at the bottom of the page.

It was labeled, dexterama!

There wasn’t any realistic choice in the matter. I clicked on the box.

There was an unfocused blur, and then the sound of an orchestra that led into noble-sounding music that reminded me of high school graduation. And then a series of pictures; the “New Miami” bodies, intercut with reaction shots from people seeing them, as Weiss’s voice came in, sounding like a wicked version of a newsreel announcer.

“For thousands of years,” he intoned, “terrible things have happened to us—” and there were some close-up shots of the bodies and their plastic-masked faces. “And man has asked the same question: Why am I here? And for all that time, the answer has been the same...” A close-up of a face from the crowd at Fairchild Gardens, looking puzzled, confused, uncertain, and Weiss’s voice coming over it in dopey tones. “I dunno...”

The film technique was very clumsy, nothing at all like the earlier stuff, and I tried not to be too critical—after all, Weiss’s talents were in another area, and he had lost his first partner, and killed his second, who had been good at editing.

“So man has turned to art,” Weiss said with artificially solemn breathlessness, and there was a picture of a statue with no arms and legs. “And art has given us a much better answer...” Close-up of the jogger finding the body on South Beach, followed by Weiss’s famous scream.

“But conventional art can only take us so far,” he said. “Because using traditional methods like paint and stone create a barrier between the artistic event and the experience of art. And as artists, we have to be all about breaking down barriers...” Picture of the Berlin Wall falling as a crowd cheered.

“So guys like Chris Burden and David Neruda began to experiment and make themselves the art—one barrier down! But it’s not enough, because to the average audience member”—another dopey face from the crowd—“there’s no difference between a lump of clay and some crazy artist; the barrier is still there! Bummer!”

Then Weiss’s face came on-screen; the camera jiggled a little, as if he was positioning the camera as he talked. “We need to get more immediate. We need to make the audience part of the event, so the barrier disappears. And we need better answers... to the bigger questions. Questions like, ‘What is truth? What is the threshold of human agony?’ And most important”—and here the screen showed that awful loop of Dexter Dumping Doncevic into the white porcelain tub—“‘What would Dexter do—if he became part of the art, instead of being the artist?’”

And here there was a new scream—it was muffled, but it sounded tantalizingly familiar; not Weiss’s, but something I had heard before, although I couldn’t place it, and Weiss was back on-screen, smiling slightly and glancing over his shoulder. “At least we can answer that last one, can’t we?” he said. And he picked up the camera and twirled it around off his face and onto a twitching heap in the background. The heap swam into focus and I realized why the scream had sounded familiar.

It was Rita.

She lay on her side with her hands tied behind her and her feet bound at the ankles. She squirmed furiously and made another loud and muffled sound, this time one of outrage.

Weiss laughed. “The audience is the art,” he said. “And you’re going to be my masterpiece, Dexter.” He smiled, and even though it was not an artificial smile, it was not particularly pretty, either. “It’s going to be an absolute... Art-stravaganza,” he said. And then the screen went dark.

He had Rita—and I know very well that I should have leaped up, grabbed my squirrel gun, and charged into the tall pine screaming a war cry—but I felt a curious calmness spread over me, and I simply sat there for a long moment, wondering what he would do to her, before I finally realized that, one way or another, I really did have to do something. And so I started to take a large breath to get me out of the chair and through the door.

But I had time for only one small breath, not even enough to get one foot on the floor, when a voice came from close behind me.

“That’s your wife, right?” said Detective Coulter.

After I peeled myself from the ceiling I turned and faced him. He stood just inside the door, several feet away, but close enough that he must have seen and heard everything. There was no way to dodge his question.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s Rita.”

He nodded. “That looked like you, with the guy in the bathtub.”

“That, I...” I stammered. “I don’t think so.”

Coulter nodded again. “That was you,” he said. And since I had nothing to say and didn’t want to hear myself stammer again, I just shook my head.

“You going to just sit there, guy got your wife?” he said.

“I was just about to get up,” I said.

Coulter cocked his head to one side. “You get the feeling this guy doesn’t like you or something?” he said.

“It’s starting to look like that,” I admitted.

“Why do you think that is?” he said.

“I told you. I hurt his boyfriend,” I said, which sounded very weak, even to me.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Coulter said. “The guy that disappeared. You still don’t know where he went, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“You don’t,” he said, cocking his head. “Because that wasn’t him in the bathtub. And it wasn’t you standing over him with a saw.”

“No, of course not.”

“But this guy maybe thinks it was, ’cuz it looks like you,” he said, “so he took your wife. Kind of a trade thing, right?”

“Detective, I don’t know where the boyfriend is, really,” I said. And it was true, considering tide, current, and the habits of marine scavengers.

“Huh,” he said, and he put an expression on his face that I assumed was meant to look thoughtful. “So he just decides to, what...? Make your wife into some kind of art, right? Because...?”

“Because he’s crazy?” I said hopefully. And that was true, too, but that didn’t mean that Coulter would be impressed.

Apparently, he wasn’t. “Uh-huh,” he said, looking a little dubious. “He’s crazy. That would make sense, right.” He nodded, like he was trying to convince himself. “Okay, so we got a crazy guy, and he’s got your wife. And so what now?” He raised his eyebrows at me with a look that said he hoped I might come up with something really helpful.

“I don’t know,” I said. I guess I should report this.”

“Report it,” he said, nodding his head. “Like to the police. Because last time when you didn’t do that, I spoke harshly to you on the subject.”

Intelligence is generally praised as a good thing, but I really have to admit that I had liked Coulter a lot more when I thought he was a harmless idiot. Now that I knew he was not, I was caught between the urge to be very careful what I said to him and an equally powerful desire to break my chair over his head. But good chairs are expensive; caution won.

“Detective,” I said. “This guy has my wife. Maybe you’ve never been married—”

“Twice,” he said. “It didn’t work.”

“Well, it works for me,” I said. “I’d like to get her back in one piece.”

He stared at me for a very long moment before he finally said, “Who is this guy? I mean, you know.”

“Brandon Weiss,” I said, not sure where this was going.

“That’s just his name,” he said. “Who the fuck IS he?”

I shook my head, not truly sure what he meant, and even less sure that I wanted to tell him.

“But this is the guy that, you know. Did all those fancy dead-body displays that the governor was pissed off about?”

“I’m pretty sure he did,” I said.

He nodded and looked at his hand, and it occurred to me that there was no Mountain Dew bottle hanging from it. The poor man must have run out.

“Be a good thing to nail this guy,” he said.

“Yes, it would,” I said.

“Make all kinds of people happy,” he said. “Good for the career.”

“I suppose so,” I said, wondering if perhaps I should have hit him with the chair, after all.

Coulter clapped his hands. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go get him.”

It was a wonderful idea, very decisively delivered, but I saw one small problem with it. “Go where?” I said. “Where has he taken Rita?”

He blinked at me. “What? He told you,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Come on, you don’t watch public television?” he said, sounding like I had committed some kind of crime with small animals.

“Not very much,” I admitted. “The kids have outgrown Barney.”

“They been running promos for it for three weeks,” he said. “The Art-stravaganza.”

“The what?”

“The Art-stravaganza, at the Convention Center,” he said, starting to sound like the promo. “Over two hundred cutting-edge artists from across North America and the Caribbean, all under one roof.”

I could feel my mouth moving in a game attempt to make words, but nothing came out. I blinked and tried again, but before I could make any sound at all, Coulter jerked his head at the door and said, “Come on. Let’s go get ’em.” He took one step backward. “Afterward we can talk about why that looks like you with the guy in the tub.”

This time I actually got both of my feet on the floor, together, ready to propel me up and out—but before I could take it any further my cell phone rang. Out of habit more than anything else, I answered it. “Hello,” I said.

“Mr. Morgan?” a tired young female voice asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“This is Megan? At the after-school program? That, you know, um, with Cody? And Astor?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, and a new alarm began to clatter on the main floor of my brain.

“It’s like five after six?” Megan said. “And I gotta go home now? ’Cause I have my accounting class tonight? Like, at seven?”

“Yes, Megan,” I said, “how can I help you?”

“Like I said? I need to go home?” she said.

“All right,” I said, wishing I could reach through the telephone and fling her away to her house.

“But your kids?” she said. “I mean, your wife never came for them? So they’re here? And I’m not supposed to go if there are kids here?”

It seemed like a very good rule—especially since it meant that Cody and Astor were both all right, and not in Weiss’s clutches. “I’ll come get them,” I said. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

I snapped the telephone shut and saw Coulter looking at me expectantly. “My kids,” I said. “Their mother never picked them up, and now I have to.”

“Right now,” he said.

“Yes.”

“So you’re gonna go get them?”

“That’s right.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “You still want to save your wife?”

“I think that would be best,” I said.

“So you’ll get the kids and come for your wife,” he said. “And not, like, try to leave the country or anything.”

“Detective,” I said, “I want to get my wife back.”

Coulter looked at me for a long moment. Then he nodded. “I’ll be at the Convention Center,” he said, and turned around and walked out the door.