“Wilkins did it,” he said. “He had to, there’s no other answer.”

There was a knock on the door and the sergeant came in. He bent over and spoke softly into Deborah’s ear, and I leaned closer to hear. “This guy’s lawyer is making trouble,” he said. “He says now that the heads turned up while his client is in here, he has to be innocent.” The sergeant shrugged. “I can’t keep him outta here,” he said.

“All right,” Debs said. “Thanks, Dave.” He shrugged again, straightened, and left the room.

Deborah looked at me. “Well,” I said, “at least it doesn’t seem too easy anymore.”

She turned back to Halpern. “All right, Jerry,” she said. “We’ll talk some more later.” She stood up and walked out of the room and I followed.

“What do we think about that?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “Jesus, Dex, I don’t know. I need a major break here.” She stopped walking and turned to face me. “Either the guy really did this in one of his blackouts, which means he set the whole thing up without really knowing, which is impossible.”

“Probably,” I said.

“Or else somebody else went to a shitload of trouble to set it up and frame him, and timed it just right to match one of his blackouts.”

“Which is also impossible,” I said helpfully.

“Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

“And the statue with the bull’s head and the fire in its belly?”

“Fuck,” she said. “It’s just a dream. Has to be.”

“So where were the girls burned?”

“You want to show me a giant statue with a bull’s head and a built-in barbecue? Where do you hide that? You find it and I’ll believe it’s real,” she said.

“Do we have to release Halpern now?” I asked.

“No, goddamn it,” she snarled. “I still got him on resisting arrest.” And she turned away and walked back toward the receiving area.

Cody and Astor were sitting with the sergeant when we got back out to the entryway, and even though they had not remained where I told them to, I was so grateful that they had not set anything on fire that I let it go. Deborah watched impatiently while I collected them, and we all headed out the door together. “Now what?” I said.

“We have to talk to Wilkins, of course,” Deborah said.

“And do we ask him if he has a statue with a bull’s head in his backyard?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “That’s bullshit.”

“That’s a bad word,” said Astor. “You owe me fifty cents.”

“It’s getting late,” I said. “I have to get the kids home before their mother barbecues me.”

Deborah looked at Cody and Astor for a long moment, then up at me. “All right,” she said.

I DID MANAGE TO GET THE KIDS HOME BEFORE RITA WENT over the edge, but it was a very close call that was not made any easier when she found out that they had been to see severed heads. Still, they were obviously unbothered and even excited about their day, and Astor’s new determination to be a Mini-Me to my sister Deborah seemed to distract Rita from anything approaching actual wrath. After all, an early career choice could save a lot of time and bother later.

It was clear that Rita had a full head of steam and we were in for Babblefest. Normally I would simply smile and nod and let her run on. But I was in no mood for anything that smacked of normal. For the last two days I had wanted nothing but a quiet place and time to try to figure out where my Passenger had gone, and I had instead been pulled in every other direction possible by Deborah, Rita, the kids, even my job, of all things. My disguise had taken over from the thing it was supposed to be hiding, and I did not like it. But if I could make it past Rita and out the door, I would finally have some time to myself.

And so, pleading important case work that could not wait for Monday morning, I slid out the door and drove in to the office, enjoying the relative peace and calm of Miami traffic on a Saturday night.

For the first fifteen minutes of the drive I could not lose the feeling that I was being followed. Ridiculous, I know, but I had no experience with being alone in the night and it made me feel very vulnerable. Without the Passenger I was a tiger with a dull nose and no fangs. I felt slow and stupid, and the skin on my back would not stop crawling. It was an overall feeling of impending creepiness, the sense that I needed to circle around and sniff the back trail, because something was lurking there hungrily. And tickling at the edges of all that was an echo of that strange dream music, making my feet twitch in an involuntary way, as if they had someplace to go without me.

It was a terrible feeling, and if only I had been capable of empathy, I’m sure I might have had a moment of awful revelation, wherein I flung a hand to my forehead and sank to the ground, murmuring anguished regrets over all the times I had done the stalking and caused this dreadful feeling in others. But I am not built for anguish-at least, not my own-and so all I could think about was my very large problem. My Passenger was gone, and I was empty and defenseless if somebody really was tailing me.

It had to be mere imagination. Who would stalk Dutiful Dexter, plodding through his completely normal artificial existence with a happy smile, two children, and a new mortgage to a caterer? Just to be sure, I glanced into the rearview mirror.

No one of course; no one lurking with an ax and a piece of pottery with Dexter’s name on it. I was turning stupid in my lonely dotage.

A car was on fire on the shoulder of the Palmetto Expressway, and most of the traffic was dealing with the congestion by either roaring around it on the left shoulder or leaning on the horn and shouting. I got off and drove past the warehouses near the airport. At a storage place just off 69th Avenue a burglar alarm was clattering endlessly, and three men were loading boxes into a truck without any appearance of haste. I smiled and waved; they ignored me.

It was a feeling I was getting used to-everyone was ignoring poor empty Dexter lately, except, of course, whoever it was that had either been following me or not really following me at all.

But speaking of empty, the way I had weaseled out of a confrontation with Rita, smooth as it had been, had left me without dinner, and this is not something I willingly tolerate. Right now I wanted to eat almost as much as I wanted to breathe.

I stopped at a Pollo Tropical and picked up half a chicken to take with me. The smell instantly filled the car, and the last couple of miles it was all I could do to keep the car on the road instead of screeching to a halt and ripping at the chicken with my teeth.

It finally overwhelmed me in the parking lot, and as I walked in the door I had to fumble out my credentials with greasy fingers, nearly dropping the beans in the process. But by the time I settled in at my computer, I was a much happier boy and the chicken was no more than a bag of bones and a pleasant memory.

As always, with a full stomach and a clean conscience I found it much easier to shift my powerful brain into high gear and think about the problem. The Dark Passenger was missing; that seemed to imply that it had some kind of independent existence without me. That meant it must have come from somewhere and, quite possibly, gone back there. So my first problem was to learn what I could about where it came from.

I knew very well that mine was not the only Passenger in the world. Over the course of my long and rewarding career I had encountered several other predators wrapped in the invisible black cloud that indicated a hitchhiker like mine. And it stood to reason that they had originated somewhere and sometime, and not just with me and in my own time. Shamefully enough, I had never wondered why, or where these inner voices came from. Now, with the whole night stretching ahead of me in the peace and quiet of the forensics lab, I could rectify this tragic oversight.