I kept waiting for some clue that this might include me, but neither Freddy Prinze nor Redd Foxx ever chopped up a neighbor. Still, everyone else seemed to enjoy the show. Deborah laughed out loud now and then, and Harry kept a contented smile on his face, and I did my best just to keep a low profile and fit in amid the hilarity.

But in the middle of the climactic scene, right when we were about to learn that we are all the same and then hug, the doorbell rang. Harry frowned a little bit, but he got up and went to the door with one eye still on the TV. Since I had guessed how the show would end and I was not particularly moved by artificial hugs of compassion, I watched Harry. He turned on the outside light, peeked through the eyehole, and then unlocked and opened the door.

“Gus” he said, with surprise. “Come on in.” Gus Rigby was Harry's oldest friend on the force. They had been best man at each other's weddings, and Harry was godfather to Gus's daughter, Betsy. Since his divorce, Gus was always at our house for holidays and special occasions, although not as often now that Doris was sick, and he always brought a key lime pie.

But he didn't look terribly social now, and he was not carrying a pie. He looked angry and frazzled, and he said, “We gotta talk” and pushed past Harry into the house.

“About what?” Harry said, still holding the door open.

Gus turned and snarled at him. “Otto Valdez is out on the street.” Harry stared at him. “How did he get out?”

“That lawyer he's got” Gus said. “He said it was excessive force.” Harry nodded. “You were rough on him, Gus.”

“He's a baby-raper” Gus said. “You want me to kiss him?”

“All right” Harry said. He closed and locked the door. “What is there to talk about?” he said.

“He's after me now” Gus said. “The phone rings and nobody's there, just breathing. But I know it's him. And I got a note under my front door. At my home, Harry.”

“What did the lieutenant say?” Gus shook his head. I want to do this myself” he said. “On the side. And I want your help.” With the wonderful timing that only happens in real life, the TV show came to an end and the laughter track blasted out right on the toes of Gus's words. Deborah laughed, too, and finally looked up.

“Hi Uncle Gus” she said.

“Hello, Debbie” Gus said. “You're more beautiful every day” Debs scowled. Even then she was embarrassed by her good looks, and she didn't like being reminded of it. “Thank you” she said grumpily.

“Come on into the kitchen” Harry said, taking Gus by the elbow and leading him away.

I knew perfectly well that Harry was taking Gus into the kitchen to keep me and Deborah from hearing what would be said, and naturally enough that made me want to hear it all the more. And since Harry had not specifically said, “Stay here and do not listen ...” Why, it would hardly be eavesdropping at all!

So, I got up from in front of the TV set very casually and went down the hall toward the bathroom. I paused in the hallway and looked back: Deborah was already engrossed in the next program, and so I slid into a small patch of shadow and listened.

“... courts will handle it” Harry was saying.

“Like they handled it so far?” Gus said, sounding angrier than I had ever heard him. “Come on, Harry, you know better than that.”

“We're not vigilantes, Gus.”

“Well maybe we should be, goddamn it.” There was a pause. I heard the refrigerator door open and then the sound of a beer can opening. A moment went by and nothing was said.

“Listen, Harry” Gus said at last. “We've been cops for a long time now.”

“Coming up on twenty years” Harry said.

“And from the first day on the job, didn't it hit you that the system just doesn't work? That the biggest assholes always find a way to fall out of jail and back onto the streets? Huh?”

“That doesn't mean we have the right to—”

“Then who does have the right, Harry? If not us, who does?” There was another longish pause. Finally Harry spoke, very softly, and I had to strain to make out the words.

“You weren't in Vietnam” Harry said. Gus didn't respond.

“Something I learned there is that some people can kill in cold blood, and others can't. And most of us can't” Harry said. “It does bad things to you.”

“So what are you saying: you agree with me, but you can't do it?

If ever anybody deserved it, Harry, Otto Valdez ...”

“What are you doing?” came Deborah's voice, approximately eight inches from my ear. I jumped so hard I bumped my head on the wall.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“Funny place to do it” she said, and since she showed no inclination to move on, I decided I was done listening and I went back to zombie-land in front of the TV. I had certainly heard enough to understand what was going on, and I was fascinated. Dear sweet kindly Uncle Gus wanted to kill somebody, and wanted Harry to help him. My brain whirled with the excitement of it, frantically searching for a way to persuade them to let me help —or at least watch. Where was the harm in that? It was almost a civic duty!

But Harry refused to help Gus, and a little while later Gus left the house looking like someone had let all the air out of him. Harry came back to the TV with me and Debs, and spent the next half hour trying to get his happy face back on.

Two days later they found Uncle Gus's body. It had been mutilated and beheaded and apparently tortured first.

Three days after that, unknown to me, Harry found my little pet memorial under the bushes in the backyard. Over the next week or two I caught him staring at me more than once with his work face on. I did not know why at the time, and it was somewhat intimidating, but I was far too much of the young gawp to be able to phrase a statement like, “Dad, why are you staring at me with that particular expression?”

In any case, the why of it very soon became apparent. Three weeks after Uncle Gus met his untimely end, Harry and I went on a camping trip to Elliot Key, and with a few simple sentences —starting with, “You're different, son” —Harry changed everything forever.

His plan. His design for Dexter. His perfectly crafted, sane and sensible road map for me to be eternally and wonderfully me.

And now I had stepped off the Path, taken a small and dangerous back road detour. I could almost see him shake his head and turn those ice-cold blue eyes on me.

“We've got to get you squared away” Harry would have said.

A PARTICULARLY LOUD SNORE FROM CHUTSKY BROUGHT me back to the present. It was loud enough that one of the nurses stuck her head in the door, and then checked all the dials and gauges and whirling machinery before going away again, with a suspicious backward glance at the two of us, as if we had deliberately made terrible noises in order to upset her machines.

Deborah moved one leg slightly, just enough to prove she was still alive, and I pulled myself all the way back from meandering down memory lane. Somewhere, there was somebody who actually was guilty of putting the knife into my sister. That was all that mattered. Someone had actually done this thing. It was a large and untidy loose end wandering around and I needed to grab hold and snip it back into neatness. Because the thought of such a large piece of unfinished and unpunished business gave me the urge to clean the kitchen and make the bed. It was messy, plain and simple, and Dexter doesn't like disorder.

Another thought poked its nose into the room. I tried to shoo it away, but it kept coming back, wagging its tail and demanding that I pet it. And when I did, it seemed to me to be a good thought.

I closed my eyes and tried to picture the scene one more time. The door swings open —and it stays open as Deborah shows her badge and then falls. And it is still open when I get to her side ... which means that someone else could very well have been inside and looking out. And that meant that somewhere, there just might be somebody who knew what I looked like. A second person, just like Detective Coulter had suggested. It was a little insulting to admit that a drooling dolt like Coulter might be right about something, but after all, Isaac Newton didn't reject gravity just because the apple had a low IQ.