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was a
cop
who had died this way, one of
us
, so terribly hammered into oblivion, and all of the watching cops took this as a very personal affront. But worse than that, somehow we were all quite sure it would happen again, to another one of us. Sometime soon, this frightful pounding would fall once more on one of our small tribe, and we could not know who, or when, only that it was coming—
    It was the dark of the moon, and a dark time for Dexter; there was dread spreading through the ranks of all Miami cops, and in spite of all this fearsome unease Dexter stood dripping and thinking only one dark thought:
    I missed my dinner
.

FOUR
    I T WAS PAST TEN WHEN I FINISHED, AND I FELT AS IF I HAD been standing underwater for the last four hours. Even so, it seemed like a shame to head for home without checking some of the names on my list. So I cruised slowly past two of the more distant addresses that were more or less on my way. The first car was parked right in front of the house; its trunk was unblemished and I drove past.
    The second car was under a carport, hidden by shadows, and I could not see the trunk. I slowed to a crawl, and then nosed into the driveway as if I was lost and merely turning around. There was something on the trunk—but as my lights hit it, it moved, and the fattest cat I had ever seen raced away into the night. I turned the car around and drove home.
    It was past eleven when I parked in front of my house. The light was on over the front door, and I got out of my car and stood just outside the small circle of light it cast. The rain had finally stopped, but there was still a low bank of dark clouds filling the sky, and it reminded me of the night almost two weeks ago when I had been seen, and an echo of unease clattered through me. I stared up at the clouds,but they did not seem intimidated.
We made you wet
, they sneered,
and you’re standing there like a schmuck while your whole body puckers
.
    It was true. I locked my car and went inside.
    The house was relatively quiet, since it was a school night. Cody and Astor were asleep, and the late news muttered softly from the TV. Rita dozed on the couch with Lily Anne tucked onto her lap. Rita did not wake up when I came in, but Lily Anne looked up at me with bright and wide-awake eyes. “Da,” she said. “Da da da!”
    She recognized me right away, a brilliant girl. I felt a few of the interior clouds roll away as I looked at her happy little face. “Lily-willy,” I replied with all the great seriousness required for the occasion, and she chortled back.
    “Oh!” Rita said, jerking awake and blinking at me. “Dexter—are you home? I didn’t,” she said. “I mean, you’re out so late. Again.”
    “Sorry,” I said. “All part of the job.”
    She looked at me for a long moment, doing no more than blinking, and then she shook her head. “You’re soaking wet,” she said.
    “It was raining,” I told her.
    She blinked a few more times. “It stopped raining an hour ago,” she said.
    I couldn’t see why that mattered, but I am full of polite clichés, so I just said, “Well, it just goes to show.”
    “Oh,” Rita said. She looked at me thoughtfully again and I began to feel a little self-conscious. But she finally sighed and shook her head. “Well,” she said, “you must be very— Oh. Your dinner. It was getting so— Are you hungry?”
    “Starving,” I said.
    “You’re dripping on the floor,” Rita said. “You’d better change into some dry clothes. And if you get a cold …” She waved a hand in front of her face. “Oh, Lily Anne—she’s wide-awake.” She smiled at the baby, that same mother-to-child smile Leonardo tried so hard to capture.
    “I’ll get changed,” I said, and I went down the hall to the bathroom, where I put my wet clothes in the hamper, toweled off, and put on some dry pajamas.
    When I came back, Rita was crooning and Lily Anne was gurgling,and although I didn’t really want to interrupt, I had some