"This could… I… I found it," Mrs. Aldovar said, and both of her hands went up helplessly for a moment. Then the right one fell to her side, leaving the left in the air with the sheet of paper.

"You found what, ma'am?" Deborah said, already looking back at Recht as if she might lunge forward and grab the paper.

"This is… You said to look, um… medical report," she said, and she twitched the piece of paper. "I found it. With Samantha's blood type."

Deborah made a wonderful move that looked like she had been playing professional basketball her whole life. She stepped between the woman and the feds and got her backside directly in front of Recht, effectively screening her out from any chance of seeing the paper, all while reaching out and plucking the paper politely from Mrs. Aldovar's hand. "Thank you, ma'am," she said, running a finger down the page. After only a few seconds she looked up and glared at me.

"You said type O," she said.

"That's right," I said.

She flipped the page with a fingertip. "This says AB positive."

"Let me see that," Recht demanded, trying to lurch forward and get at the paper, but Deborah's NBA butt-block was too much for her.

"What the fuck, Dexter," Deborah said accusingly, as if it were my fault the two blood types were different.

"I'm sorry," I said, not at all sure what I was apologizing for, but quite certain from her tone of voice that I should.

"This girl, Samantha-she has AB-positive blood," she said. "Who has type O?"

"Lots of people," I reassured her. "It's very common."

"Are you saying-" Mrs. Aldovar tried to say, but Deborah plowed on.

"This is no help," Debs said. "If it's not her blood in there, then… who the hell flings somebody else's blood on the wall?"

"A kidnapper," Special Agent Recht said. "Trying to cover his tracks."

Deborah turned and looked at her, and the expression on her face was truly wonderful to see. With just a few rearranged facial muscles and one small raised eyebrow, Debs managed to say, How is it possible that someone this stupid can tie her own shoes and walk among us?

"Tell me," Deborah said, looking her over with disbelief, "is 'special agent' kind of like 'special education'?" Deborah's new partner, Deke, give a vacuous syllable of laughter, and Recht blushed.

"Let me see that paper," Recht said again.

"You went to college, didn't you?" Deborah went on, very conversationally. "And that fancy FBI school in Quantico."

"Officer Morgan," Recht said sternly, but Deborah waved the paper at her.

"It's Sergeant Morgan," she said. "And I need you to get your people off my crime scene."

"I have jurisdiction with kidnapping-" Recht started to say, but Deborah was gaining steam now and cut her off without any real effort.

"Do you want to tell me that the kidnapper threw that much of his own blood on the wall, and was still strong enough to take away a struggling teenager?" she said. "Or did he bring some blood in a mayonnaise jar and say, 'Splat, you're coming with me'?" Deborah shook her head slightly and added a small smirk. "Because I can't see that either way, Special Agent." She paused, and she was on such a roll that Recht apparently didn't dare speak. "What I see," Deborah said, "is a girl pranking us and faking her own kidnapping. And if you have evidence that this is anything else, now is the time to whip it out."

"Whip it out," Deke said with a goofy chuckle, but nobody apparently noticed except me.

"You know very well-" Recht began, but once again she was interrupted-this time by Deborah's new partner, Deke.

"Hey," he said, and we all turned to look at him.

Deke nodded at the floor. "The lady fainted," he said, and we all turned to look where he had nodded.

Mrs. Aldovar, as advertised, was out cold on the floor.

For a very long moment we all stood in a frozen tableau of hostile indecision. Debs and Recht stared at each other, Deke breathed through his mouth, and I tried to decide whether assisting the fallen woman was technically within my jurisdiction as a blood-spatter analyst. And then there was a clatter at the front door and I heard a minor commotion behind me.

"Shit," a male voice called out, quite clearly. "Shit, shit, shit."

It was impossible to argue with the general sentiment, but nevertheless I turned around to see if I could gather some specifics. A middle-aged man hurried toward us. He was tall and soft-looking and had close-cropped gray hair and a matching beard. He slid to one knee beside Mrs. Aldovar and picked up her hand. "Hey, Emily? Honey?" he said as he patted her hand. "Come on, Em."

I have spent my entire career working with first-rate professional investigators, and some of it must have rubbed off on me, because I almost immediately deduced that this had to be Mr. Aldovar. And my sister is no slouch, either, because she had arrived at the same startling conclusion. She managed to rip her gaze away from Recht and look down to the man on the floor.

"Mr. Aldovar?" she said.

"Come on, honey," he said, hopefully not to Deborah. "Yes, I'm Michael Aldovar."

Mrs. Aldovar opened her eyes and wobbled them from side to side. "Michael?" she muttered.

Deborah knelt down beside them, apparently thinking that conscious parents are more interesting than the fainted kind. "I'm Sergeant Morgan," she said. "I'm investigating your daughter's disappearance."

"I don't have any money," he said, and Deborah looked startled for a moment. "I mean, if there's a ransom, or-She knows that. Samantha can't think-Has there been any phone call?"

Deborah shook her head as if trying to shake water off. "Can you tell me where you've been, sir?"

"There was a conference in Raleigh," Mr. Aldovar said. "Medical statistics. I had to-Emily called and said Samantha had been kidnapped."

Deborah looked up at Recht and then quickly back to Mr. Aldovar. "It wasn't kidnapping," she said.

He didn't move at all for a second, and then he looked directly at Deborah, still holding his wife's hand. "What are you saying?" he said.

"Can I talk to you for a moment, sir?" Deborah said.

Mr. Aldovar looked away, then down at his wife. "Can we get my wife into a chair or something?" he said. "I mean, is she all right?"

"I'm fine," Mrs. Aldovar said. "I just…"

"Dexter," Debs said, jerking her head at me. "Get some smelling salts or something. You and Deke help her up."

It's always nice to have a question answered, and now I knew. Apparently, it actually was within my jurisdiction to help women who faint at a crime scene.

So I squatted down beside Mrs. Aldovar, and Deborah led Mr. Aldovar off to one side. Deke looked at me anxiously, reminding me very much of a large and handsome dog who needs a stick to fetch. "Hey, you got some of that smelling stuff?" he said.

Apparently it had become universally accepted that Dexter was the Eternal Keeper of the Smelling Salts. I had no idea where that baffling canard had come from, but in truth, I was completely without.

Luckily, Mrs. Aldovar apparently was not interested in sniffing anything. She gripped my arm, and Deke's, and murmured, "Help me up, please," and the two of us heaved her to her feet. I looked around for a horizontal surface uncluttered by law enforcement where we could deposit her, and spotted a dining table complete with chairs in the next room.

Mrs. Aldovar did not need a great deal of help getting into the chair. She sat right down as if she had done the same thing many times before.

I looked back into the next room. Special Agent Recht and her generic companion were edging their way toward the door, and Deborah was very carefully not noticing them. She was instead busy chatting with Mr. Aldovar. Angel Batista-No-Relation was standing on the patio, just outside a sliding glass door, dusting the glass for fingerprints. And I knew that just down the hallway, the huge bloodstain still hung on the wall, calling for Dexter. This was my world, the land of violence, gore, and mayhem. Both personally and professionally, this was where I had lived my whole life.