It was finally provided by Vince. “My God,” he blurted.

Manny nodded. “They’re wonderful, aren’t they?” he said. “But so-o-o-o last year.” He picked one up, the one with the blue top, and gazed at it with a kind of aloof fondness. “The color palette really got tired, and that horrible old hotel over by Indian Creek started to copy them. Still,” he said with a shrug, and he popped it into his mouth. I was glad to see that it didn’t seem to cause any major bleeding. “One does grow fond of one’s own little tricks.” He turned and winked at Eduardo. “Perhaps a little too fond sometimes.” Eduardo went pale and fled to the kitchen, and Manny turned back to us with a huge crocodile smile. “Do try one, though, won’t you?”

“I’m afraid to bite one,” Vince said. “They’re so perfect.”

“And I’m afraid they might bite back,” I said.

Manny showed off a few dozen teeth. “If I could teach them that,” he said, “I would never be lonely.” He nudged the plate in my direction. “Go ahead,” he said.

“Would you serve these at my wedding?” I asked, thinking perhaps somebody ought to find some kind of point in all this.

Vince elbowed me, hard, but it was apparently too late. Manny’s eyes had narrowed to little slits, although his impressive dental work was still on display. “I do not serve,” he said. “I present. And I present whatever seems best to me.”

“Shouldn’t I have some idea ahead of time what that might be?” I asked, “I mean, suppose the bride is allergic to wasabi-basted arugula aspic?”

Manny tightened his fists so hard I could hear the knuckles creak. For a moment I had a small thrill of hope at the thought that I might have clevered myself out of a caterer. But then Manny relaxed and laughed. “I like your friend, Vic,” he said. “He’s very brave.”

Vince favored us both with a smile and started to breathe again, and Manny began to doodle with a pad and paper, and that is how I ended up with the great Manny Borque agreeing to cater my wedding at the special discounted price of only $250 a plate.

It seemed a bit high. But after all, I had been specifically instructed not to worry about money. I was sure Rita would think of some way to make it work, perhaps by inviting only two or three people. In any case, I didn’t get a great deal of time to worry about mere finances, as my cell phone began its happy little dirge almost immediately, and when I answered I heard Deborah say, without even attempting to match my cheery hello, “I need you here right away.”

“I’m awfully busy with some very important canapés,” I told her. “Can I borrow twenty thousand dollars?”

She made a noise in her throat and said, “I don’t have time for bullshit, Dexter. The twenty-four hours starts in twenty minutes and I need you there for it.” It was the custom in Homicide to convene everybody involved in a case twenty-four hours after the work began, to make sure everything was organized and everyone was on the same page. And Debs obviously felt that I had some kind of shrewd insight to offer-very thoughtful really, but untrue. With the Dark Passenger apparently still on hiatus, I didn’t think the great light of insight would come flooding in anytime soon.

“Debs, I really don’t have any thought at all on this one,” I said.

“Just get over here,” she told me, and hung up.

T HE TRAFFIC ON THE 836 WAS BACKED UP FOR HALF A MILE right after the 395 from Miami Beach poured into it. We inched forward between exits until we could see the problem: a truckload of watermelons had emptied out onto the highway. There was a streak of red-and-green goo six inches thick across the road, dotted with a sprinkling of cars in various stages of destruction. An ambulance went past on the shoulder, followed by a procession of cars driven by people too important to wait in a traffic jam. Horns honked all along the line, people yelled and waved their fists, and somewhere ahead I heard a single gunshot. It was good to be back to normal life.

By the time we fought our way through the traffic and onto surface streets, we had lost fifteen minutes and it took another fifteen to get back to work. Vince and I rode the elevator to the second floor in silence, but as the doors slid open and we stepped out, he stopped me. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said.

“Yes, I am,” I said. “But if I don’t do it quickly Deborah will kill me.”

He grabbed my arm. “I mean about Manny,” he said. “You’re going to love what he does. It will really make a difference.”

I was already aware that it would really make a difference in my bank account, but beyond that I still didn’t see the point. Would everyone truly have a better time if they were served a series of apparently alien objects of uncertain use and origin instead of cold cuts? There is a great deal I don’t understand about human beings, but this really seemed to take the cake-assuming we would have a cake at all, which in my opinion was not a sure thing.

There was one thing I understood quite well, however, and that was Deborah’s attitude about punctuality. It was handed down from our father, and it said that lateness was disrespect and there were no excuses. So I pried Vince’s fingers off my arm and shook his hand. “I’m sure we’re all going to be very happy with the food,” I said.

He held on to my hand. “It’s more than that,” he said.

“Vince-”

“You’re making a statement about the rest of your life,” he said. “A really good statement, that your and Rita’s life together-”

“My life is in danger if I don’t go, Vince,” I said.

“I’m really happy about this,” he said, and it was so unnerving to see him display an apparently authentic emotion that there was actually a little bit of panic to my flight away from him and down the hall to the conference room.

The room was full, since this was becoming a somewhat high-profile case after the hysterical news stories of the evening before about two young women found burned and headless. Deborah glared at me as I slipped in and stood by the door, and I gave her what I hoped was a disarming smile. She cut off the speaker, one of the patrolmen who had been first on the scene.

“All right,” she said. “We know we’re not going to find the heads on the scene.”

I had thought that my late entrance and Deborah’s vicious glare at me would certainly win the award for Most Dramatic Entrance, but I was dead wrong. Because just as Debs tried to get the meeting moving again, I was upstaged as thoroughly as a candle at a firebombing.

“Come on, people,” Sergeant Sister said. “Let’s have some ideas about this.”

“We could drag the lake,” Camilla Figg said. She was a thirty-five-year-old forensics geek and usually kept quiet, and it was rather surprising to hear her speak. Apparently some people preferred it that way, because a thin, intense cop named Corrigan jumped on her right away.

“Bullshit,” said Corrigan. “Heads float.”

“They don’t float-they’re solid bone,” Camilla insisted.

“Some of ’em are,” Corrigan said, and he got his little laugh.

Deborah frowned, and was about to step in with an authoritative word or two, when a noise in the hall stopped her.

CLUMP.

Not that loud, but somehow it commanded all the attention there was in the room.

CLUMP.

Closer, a little louder, for all the world approaching us now like something from a low-budget horror movie…

CLUMP.

For some reason I couldn’t hope to explain, everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath and turn slowly toward the door. And if only because I wanted to fit in, I began to turn for a peek into the hall myself, when I was stopped by the smallest possible interior tickle, just a hint of a twitch, and so I closed my eyes and listened. Hello? I said mentally, and after a very short pause there was a small, slightly hesitant sound, almost a clearing of the mental throat, and then-