Detective Coulter was just as lucky. Department gossip told me that he had been passed over for promotion, twice, and I suppose he thought he could jump-start his career by making a dramatic arrest single-handed. And it worked! The department decided it needed some good publicity out of this whole dreadful mess, and Coulter was all they had to work with. So he was promoted posthumously for his heroism in single-handedly almost saving Rita.

Of course, I went to Coulter's funeral. I love the ceremony, the ritual, the outpouring of all that rigid emotion, and it gave me a chance to practice some of my favorite facial expressions —solemnity, noble grief, and compassion, all rarely used and in need of a workout.

The whole department was there, in uniform, even Deborah.

She looked very pale in her blue uniform, but after all, Coulter had been her partner, at least on paper, and honor demanded that she attend. The hospital fussed, but she was close enough to being released anyway that they didn't stop her from going. She did not cry, of course —she had never been nearly as good at hypocrisy as I was. But she looked properly solemn when they lowered the coffin into the ground, and I did my best to make the same kind of face.

I thought I did it rather well, too —but Sergeant Doakes did not agree. I saw him glaring at me from the ranks, as if he thought I had personally strangled Coulter, which was absurd; I had never strangled anyone. I mean, a little noose play now and then, but all in good fun —I don't like that kind of personal contact, and a knife is so much cleaner. Of course, I had been very pleased to see Coulter pronounced dead and Dexter therefore off the hook, but I'd had nothing at all to do with it. As I said, it's just nice when things work out, isn't it?

Life staggered back onto its feet and lurched into its old routines once again. I went to work, Cody and Astor went to school, and two days after Coulter's funeral Rita went to a doctor's appointment.

That night after she tucked the children in she settled down beside me on the couch, put her head on my shoulder and pried the remote control out of my hands. She turned the TV off and sighed a few times, and finally, when I was mystified beyond endurance, I said, “Is something wrong?”

“No” she said. “Not wrong at all. I mean, I don't think so. If you don't, um, think so.”

“Why would I think so?” I said.

I don't know” she said, and she sighed again. “It's just, you know, we never talked about it, and now ...”

“Now what?” I said. It was really too much; after all I had gone through, to have to endure this kind of circular non-conversation, and I could feel my irritation level rising rapidly.

“Now, just” she said. “The doctor says I'm all right.”

“Oh” I said. “That's good.”

She shook her head. “In spite of” she said. “You know.”

I didn't know, and it didn't seem fair that she expected me to know, and I said so. And after a great deal of throat-clearing and stammering, when she finally told me, I found that I lost the power of speech just as she had, and the only thing I could manage to say was the punchline of a very old joke that I knew was not the right thing to say, but I could not stop it and it came out anyway, and as if from a great distance, I heard Dexter's voice calling out: You're going to have a WHAT?!

THE END