When I was twelve, the Dark Passenger and myself weren't exactly on speaking terms. In fact, all I had when I closed my eyes to the world were nightmares of blood and morbidly violent screaming. Entire nights soaked in red under the soft glow of a full moon. Always the nightmare, then the moon. That was the deal for so many years. Now it's the other way around. My, how things have changed.

But I was just a kid, innocent and ignorant, and I hadn't yet the nurturing of my foster father, Harry, to contend with the intoxicating influence of my then deaf and dumb Dark Passenger. As a result, I'd act on instinct and sheer perversion without premise or forewarning. I may not have established a dialogue with the unrestrained monster gnawing at my insides by the nights, but we did come to an understanding; it was Dexter's dark little secret. No matter how morbid the circumstances. ---

"I miss him!"

Deborah's cries resounded throughout the house after another domestic disturbance at casa de Morgan. I sank further into the sofa as I peered over to the dining table in the kitchen from time to time. At the table, my younger sister was crying profusely with Harry sitting beside her, attempting to calm her down. Back and forth from the TV to my damaged sister, I maintained a modest degree of curiosity. Perhaps too much. Harry noticed me. His lips were moving and he was holding Deborah, but his attention was fixed solely on me. I knew then that no one could escape Harry's direct scrutiny, much less a confused twelve year old.

The random pictures on the screen flashed and danced with little interest to me. After several more minutes of wailing, my sister's sobs mellowed into sniffles. Though the calm of the house was restored, it was replaced by a heavy gravity you could feel strongest in the pit of your stomach.

"First, you have to say good night to your brother," I vaguely discerned Harry's send-off before Deborah walked around the sofa and into my view. She stood slouched and infirm. Her cheeks reddened from the consistent wiping of her tears.

"Good night, Dexter." She moved closer and hugged me. I felt entirely too uncomfortable; out of my element; suspended from reality; out-of-body. Regardless, whatever I felt, I didn't want to release. If I was actually feeling, it was a cramped distortion of the traditional sense – far removed from what feeling most likely feels like to normal people. Still, distortion or not, it was something.

Deborah retired into her room and closed the door behind her. Enter the heavy and authoritative foot steps of Harry, "Dexter, can we talk?" He stood above me. I shifted to one side and made room for him on the sofa. Even after he sat, I remained silent. "You've put me in a very tough situation, Dexter." Impossible. Harry couldn't have known what I'd done. I made sure there were no witnesses. It was silent and clean. Or so I thought. "Your sister loved that dog."

Fuck! I was caught. I don't know how, but Harry managed to see right through my disguise every time. "I know things are still complicated for you, but you have to start seeing the lines; especially with family. If you're blind – Son, you can't see the warning signs, and I can't let that happen."

I had to give in, it would save me time in the end, "I'm sorry. I tried, but I really, really couldn't take another bark from that damn dog."

Harry sighed, then recomposed himself, "I can try to understand that, Dex, but in the end, you're asking me to keep lying for you to our little girl. By telling her it was Daniel and not you--"

"It's Taniel."

Harry couldn't care less, "--I have to keep your secret, too. I refuse to lie to my daughter, and you should feel terrible for what you did to your sister. Then lying about it? I'm not raising you to lie to your sister, Dexter."

"I told you I was sorry." I felt my own voice rise with intensity. The pit of my stomach was only minutely relieved.

"Saying sorry to me is not going to put a smile on that girl's face." My foster father was keen to my weaknesses. Almost as if he had a Dexter-biometer. If there was life in me, Harry was the only person at the time who could find it. "You have ten minutes. Be honest with your little sister, Dexter. She's going to be the only family you have for the rest of your life."

My voice cowered, "she'll hate me."

"Only at first. She'll come to respect you." He patted me on the knee, "don't tell her I told you; she was gonna name him after you." Harry flashed me a fake, but reassuring smile, then stood up from the sofa.

"What do I say?" I fought the mild tremors building in the back of my throat.

"Just tell her what she needs to hear. You are different, Dexter, but you're still her older brother." Even though I wasn't on the same level as Harry, I trusted his every word, "ten minutes, Dex. Or I tell her." Typical of Harry to drop the bomb at the end of a lecture. He walked away to leave me brooding in the thick nebula of anxiety I created around me. Eventually, my throat tensed up and I collapsed deeper into the couch, suffocating. ---

The faint purring of the engine in my van whirred calmly in the background as I tried to hold my attention on the immediate future. Deborah was in the driver seat, following my impromptu reminder to make a pit-stop along the way to the scene. It was by no means an easy sell, considering the time-constraints we were operating under, but my sister had to agree that performing an on-site Kastle-Meyer presumptive test did require more hydrogen-peroxide than my tools and chemicals field bag had at the time; thanks to the van's open window, gravity and a distracted driver.

After I disposed of the hydrogen-peroxide, it was a simple process of elimination. There were a handful of stores between the station and the scene that sold said solution, but just one that also sold shoes. I had only to direct Deborah toward the latter. In the end, it was nothing but a simple game of chess; moving pawn after pawn in front of my darling sister Deborah without accidentally slipping a tell of my Bishop's plot to checkmate. But it wasn't my conscience, or lack thereof, that could betray my motives. According to Harry's Code, it's absolutely crucial to remain invisible. This includes leaving evidence. If I was going to leave prints at a murder scene singling out the shoe I was carrying in my field bag, I was going to take precautions.

We arrived on-site almost a half-hour after we left the station. I motioned toward the door's handle when the locks were suddenly activated. I knew it was too silent a ride with Deborah to be true,"Dex?" My sister sounded nervous, "can I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

Deborah had trouble forming her words, "back in Maria's office. I didn't upset you did I? Because I feel fucking terrible." Deborah removed her eyes from the windshield to address me in spurts of emotional distress. Mild by recent standards, so I just raised my eyebrows in confusion. "Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how bad I've been feeling?"

For the life of me, I couldn't put my finger on my sister's concerns, but I figured I should respond quickly, "bad?" Well done, Dexter.

"Guess I shouldn't expect anything else from my oblivious brother, huh? Makes it easier to get away with shit, though." Deborah smiled, then the smile vanished, "but I'd still feel bad. So, I'm sorry. When Maria and I were having our pissing contest, I said some things that probably upset you. Completely forgot you were in the room. The truth is, bro, our losses were nothing compared to yours. I wanted you to know I understand that."

This was about loss. This was about Rita. Somehow, everything always came back down to Rita. If it wasn't for my sister, I'd often forget how to respond like a normal human being, but she reminded me of what I only vaguely understood; the grieving process wasn't over. Still, I was pretty fond of Deborah, "you're my sister. I understand."

"Really? So we're cool?"

I merely nodded, "we're cool." After a very brief hug, I motioned for the door handle once more and the lock was released. We exited the car in unison and headed up the walkway to the house of Amelia Gomez, our most recent closed-case victim bludgeoned to death with an aluminum baseball bat.

It was an interesting house. Interesting, in that it didn't have a garage, but it had automatic sprinklers. There was one large lawn in the front with three slices of cement cutting through the grass, browned by a layer of dead leaves fallen from an imposing tree beside the house. Two cement slices were devoted to the 'driveway', and one for the walkway. The windows were barred, but pleasantly so, and the patio itself couldn't even fit a small lawn chair. And again, no garage.

We made our way up the steps to the patio and the front door of Amelia's house. Deborah unlocked the door, and I basically slipped through the caution tape into a virtual piñata of possibilities. After we essentially burst into the belly of this colorful beast, I was overwhelmed with wild incentives and the allure of tasty treats. I was readily thrust into Dexter's playground – a proverbial sandbox of soap operas told through the most microscopic stains of DNA in the carpet fibers and equally elusive finger and foot prints in the soil. Each piece of evidence could tell a different and devilish story if only the appropriate writer was behind the words – if only I had that seductive red ink; I'd bathe my blade in it, then carve my fiction into the walls.

I didn't know what was worse at the time; the actual crime or the ones I imagined in my head. In truth, the ones I imagined felt intensely more vivid. Or maybe I was just drawing from experience. Regardless, a smile grew across my face only temporarily, and the world was none the wiser, "looks clean."

"She was certainly that." My poor sister investigated the Gomez murder the entire month the case was open. This included late nights and long weekends. I suppose it was fortunate for Deborah that Amelia was murdered several days before Rita. At least my sister had something to distract her when she wasn't helping me with Harrison. I know I did. In retrospect, I don't know how I would have lasted the past month if it weren't for Peter Olshansky and his passion for infidelity.

"Clean, I mean," she followed up, "all except for this section of the living room." Deborah stood at the foot of an adjacent wall facing the not surprisingly small kitchen, "she was struck here." Game time, Dexter.

I carried my field bag over to the spatter of blood Amelia's brain sprayed onto the wall, intent on proving a theory I may or may not have imagined. Whatever the case, once I had a closer look, I was impressed with the size, control and distinction of the overall spatter. If only Jackson Pollock had this much discipline. I hastily strangled my right hand within a tight latex glove, raised my hand toward the top of the spatter and ever-so-gently dragged my fingers down over the tiny, yet perfectly maintained droplets. My eyes closed as I sensed the subtle nuances of texture undulation around the perimeters of each precious impact. It was as if I suddenly understood braille; reading the morbid writing on the walls.

"She was only twenty-seven," my sister started, "a fucking vet tech for some podunk animal hospital in town. One more year, she would have had her bachelors. I know what you're thinking; twenty-seven getting her bachelors, who the fuck cares?" Actually, I was thinking something along those lines, "she would have been the first in her family to get a degree. Fucking shame."

I was never interested in the details of a victim's life, but I had a feeling Deborah was going to tell me anyway, "so she cheats on her boyfriend, he finds out, grabs his bat and..." I gestured to the large spatter of brain-blood in front of me.

Deborah slapped me across the back of my head, "she didn't cheat, asshole. But it's more fucked up than that anyway, the piece of shit doesn't even remember doing it." I tried to keep my focus on the crimson story developing in front of me, but my ears were too busy being subjected to the depressing woes coming from my sister, the backseat thinker. "I spent hours grinding the son of bitch, hoping he'd crack. He just cried, and cried, and cried, and cried. He never confessed why, though. I could tell there was something he wasn't spilling. So, if you're right about this second suspect--"

"It's what you can prove, Debs." Finally, I got to be the one interrupting, "don't get your hopes up just yet." I took one more good look at the spatter, placing emphasis on layered cohesion, impact angles and eye-balling source trajectories. Considering the projected spray was no more than two feet, and accounting for the missing flannel obstruction; I couldn't be absolutely sure, but there appeared to be a vague overlap signifying two separate angels of impact. The closer I inspected, the larger and more overwhelming the thrill of my own brilliance grew. My hands and legs began to shake. Honestly, I impressed even myself.

However, my silence and intense concentration must have garnered my sister's curiosity, "well?" And now I had to explain.

I cleared my throat, "again, don't get your hopes up, but it seems to me that we got ourselves two different sources." Deborah walked into my personal bubble with little objection from myself, then knelt down for a closer look, "in the report, Masuka said the spray shot from a source low to the ground. As if the victim was on her knees, but I don't think it started there. Look." I pointed to the large blotches of blood at the top of the spatter some five feet off the carpet, "the impact radii are only slightly larger than what they should be." Deborah flashed me a confused look, "any blood dropped or sprayed at an angle will present a circular stain at the point of impact, and a tail end as the rest of the blood is carried over with the momentum. We use the tail to measure the angle from a prospective source, judging by its length and width. If there's no angle, there's no tail."

"And..."

"So, some of the tails are too small to be consistent with the impact stains. Only slightly, of course."

"For fuck's sake, Dex."

"They're overlapped. The impact stains and the tails are from two different sources." Something still wasn't registering with her. I had to paint her a more colorful picture, "right now it seems like all of the blood is spraying up, right?"

"Right."

"Wrong. At the top – and this is purely assuming they're disparate parts -- the impacts have no angle. Which means they had to come from a source level to the spatter. Five or so feet."

Her eyes lit up, "Amelia Gomez was standing." I knew Deborah would catch on, "why aren't there any tails leading down, then?" She was right. If blood came from a higher source, gravity and momentum would carry the blood down and create south-bound tails.

"I'd say Mr. Flannel caught the rest of it. When he moved away, your victim was already on her knees. Hence the upward spray and the resulting overlap."

"Jesus fuckin' Christ, Dex. You're a goddamned genius." I couldn't lie, it felt good to be appreciated again.

"It's all circumstantial, anyway. I imagine that's why Masuka didn't put this in the report." My ego was satisfied enough, and I didn't mind giving Vince the benefit of the doubt.

"You think he knew?"

"He's a smart man. I wouldn't put it past him." Unfortunately, simply bringing validation to the overlap theory wasn't enough. If my sister was going to continue following the scent, she needed something concrete but with a hint of reasonable doubt. There wasn't much time.

I pulled open the front flap of my field bag and withdrew all the items necessary to perform an on-site Kastle-Meyer. "Looking around, I noticed a few stains on the walls. Some of them look like they were cleaned with glass cleaner. Probably nothing, but we should check it out anyway. Possible foreign DNA and whatnot." I handed Deborah some Q-tips and the hydrogen-peroxide, as well as ethanol and the reagent, "this is the phenolphthalin reagent. The stains are all dry so you'll need to lightly, and I do mean lightly, dab the Q-tip in ethanol first then swab the stain. Then you drop on a bit of the reagent. Wait thirty seconds or so. Add the hydrogen-peroxide, and voila! Have fun." Grabbing my field bag, I stood up with a controlled pace and attempted my escape.

"Wait! What the fuck are you doing?"

"I have to check the rest of the house. This won't be enough to sway the Lieutenant."

"Are you kidding? I'm surprised we found anything at all."

I insisted, "just swab the stains. You asked me for help, right? Let me help you." With an instinctual impulse, my throat fought off a freak spasm.

"Thanks, Dex." She turned her head toward the items I handed her and began picking them apart with her brain. I stood for a moment, shocked by the sudden tremor in the pit of my stomach that nearly caught my throat off guard. After a deep breath, I shook the alien nerves and retreated to the backyard of the house. Even standing in the sunlight, I still found it uncomfortable to breathe. Taking in longer breaths than before.

'Wake the fuck up!' The dark passenger was quick to shake me into coherence. At once, my pupils dilated and ideas fired instantaneously through my head. I needed something plausible – something believable that didn't carry much weight. Who knows, at that point, Deborah could have believed anything. But all I had at my disposal was an open lawn yard and a shaky wooden fence lined with bushes surrounding the house. I suppose I had only the one option.

I made my way toward the nearest fence and surveyed the bushes rooted at the base. Fortunately, the automatic sprinklers kept the soil soft enough for a clearer imprint. I planned to simply snap a few twigs, place a firm heel print obscured within one of the bushes, and leave a faint scrape of dirt on the top of the fence. It was certainly flimsy, but it would catch my sister's attention. If she brought it up to the Lieutenant, she'd only be turned down again. Knowing my sister, the rejection would most likely intensify her pursuit. Finally, in the end, I'd be handsomely rewarded with a clear and open road to the mysterious Gravedigger. After all, my sister had an enormously interesting and equally unsettling thought; what happens when he finds his identity? Judging by the pattern he's forming, I still had two more shows to catch before his first original act; the Skinner and Trinity. Given his obvious skill with a blade, I could only imagine what he would be capable of on his own – free from stealing the hard work of his superiors. If only. Unfortunately for him, the original artist wants his identity back. But since the damage has already been done, I suppose I could settle for a small glass slide and a drop of his best blood.

I removed the shoe from my field bag, bent down and reached into the bush. The snap of the twigs were infinitely louder than I expected, but my years of training reminded me that panic was capable of distorting the senses. Get it done quickly, but get it done right.

'Stop this, Dex.' Harry's voice echoed into my head, 'she'll never forgive you for this.'

"Relax. None of this is traceable back to me. They'll think I was just encouraging my depressed sister."

'Obstructing justice? Tampering with evidence? How long do you think you have before you get caught, son?'

"I'd have more time if you didn't distract me." I pushed the shoe firmly into the soft dirt.

'You're making a lot of foolish mistakes. I didn't want to say anything, but Rita died only a month ago, son. You don't see the connection?'

"This has nothing to do with Rita." I remembered to take a deep breath.

'You're lying to yourself, Dex. Worst of all, you're lying to your sister.' Harry reminded me time and time again. 'I didn't raise you to lie to our little girl.' And again.

My eyes twinged, "like father, like son. Right, Harry?" I stood up and prepared to scrape the sole of the shoe on the top of the fence.

Suddenly, I heard the crunch of ripe apple flesh pierce like a razor into my lungs. I turned immediately toward the source of the sound, "who's Harry?" Quinn stood several feet behind me with his black eye, a smug look and a smile that could buy an island. I was frozen with the shoe grasped tightly within my white knuckles. Quinn took another bite of his refreshing green apple.