Disclaimer: I don't own Dexter or any of the other characters that are usually mentioned in the series. That's all Showtime and Jeff Lindsay's business.

Summary: Set 3 months after the end of Season 2. Dexter stalks a new victim, but due to some interference from beyond the grave, things don't go nearly as well as planned.

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Chapter One ( of Three)

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Tonight’s the night. One of many, at least. One of too few, though, of late.

It’s been three months since the Bay Harbour Butcher case was officially closed. Sergeant James Doakes, once a respected bulldog and ex-Special forces cop, is now simply a name. He’s now nothing more than a boogeyman to both innocent civilians and criminals alike. Doakes’s received the recognition for all Deadly Dexter’s work, but in death is unable to extend me the professional courtesy of giving credit where credit’s due; though I don’t mind anymore. There was a time when much of Miami was privately cheering me on to clean up their city, take out the trash, but all that support is politically incorrect now it’s out that one of their civil servants was the Big Bad Butcher. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been less of a blow if they knew it was a forensics geek and not a cop. Hopefully I’ll never know.

But since the heat has been off me, I’ve been very reluctant to turn it back on. It would seem peculiar, maybe worth a second investigation, if typical Butcher victims started disappearing again after the supposed killer had been cooked in a mysterious stove-top and gas explosion. I’ve therefore had to refine my methods, which first and foremost meant slowing down my disposal of despicable delinquents; I’ve only killed two people since Lila. For most people, two people in three months is a significantly higher body count than their usual no-people-ever, but for me be assured that it has definitely taken serious willpower. It also means higher standards for potential playmates; no criminals that I would normally find easy targets. This means no drug dealers, ex-cons, or people who work with children. They are all too quickly linked to murder, and since that’s the Butcher’s known specialty, I’ve had to find the ones that no one would ever suspect of murder, and then find a way to pin the disappearances on others. Annoying, but I’m also always up for a challenge.

So this is why I sit here, parked on the side of a street in a drug dealer’s car, gloves on and ready to pounce. The drug dealer in question is not my victim; he’s busy with a new shipment he’s bringing in using his brother’s pick-up truck. He’s going to wish tomorrow he had a better alibi. The man in the suit, pulling through the McDonald’s drive through, is my new friend. Dave Angler. Funeral Director. Opportunist. Serial Killer.

It was challenging finding out his dirty little secret; with hundreds of dead bodies passing through his place of work every year, it’s difficult to identify the ones that he brought in himself. But the sudden death of Jessica Lapin, a 7 year old girl with Leukemia and an extremely poor prognosis, caught my attention. She had been killed in a car accident, sitting in the passenger seat while her mom drove her to what looked like her last round of chemo. Her mother must have known it was going to be the last round too, because Jessica Lapin was a preneed at Angler and Sons Funeral Home.

A preneed is someone who comes in and plans their own funeral so they won’t leave the disheartening job to the grieving after their death. Since many of the terminally ill have some time to kill, pre-planned funerals are popular for them. Something to do with acceptance of the inevitable.

Personally, the thought of those closest to me clamoring around my open casket, all weepy eyed and telling stories about what a loving brother/boyfriend/coworker I was, makes me uncomfortable on a level I don’t even want to explore. No, I’ll never tell Angel, Rita, or even Deb my secret, but the finality of people remembering me as wonderful is both ideal and yet slightly…disturbing. Best not to dwell.

Jessica had been a preneed, but her parents had not pre-paid, clearly out of hope that they wouldn’t have to; that the latest treatment would work miracles and Jessica would live for another 80 years. It does actually give me a heavy feeling in the place where my heart would usually reside; I like children.

Some digging turned up two more preneeds that had also failed to put a down-payment on their funeral; Joseph Lopez and Ruth Moresil. Both had had AIDS for several years when they had made their arrangements with Angler, and both had clearly expected their loved ones to pay for the funeral once the disease had won out. What a lovely parting gift. Both Lopez and Moresil were also the victims of a hit and run while crossing the street. Few people have respect for pedestrians in this city, and it would seem that none of the witnesses at either scene were able to describe the driver or the car in question, except that it was black.

Black like the Civic in the drive-through right now, which had made several trips to the dealership coinciding with the days each of the victims had been hit. One suit-clothed arm reached in to grab the take-out bag from the second window, and Mr. Angler pulled his cheap food into his cheap car. Odd, since Funeral Directors usually make a killing. But Angler & Sons had been going struggling of late to keep the business alive; what with Angler Senior and the other son out of the picture, and Dave’s nasty smack habit to boot, it was understandable that keeping the Funeral Home afloat was getting a bit too much for him to bear. Owing money to drug dealers when you don’t have much to start with can make one take desperate measures. So why not off some preneeds? They were already dying anyway, and sometimes one needs the money from guaranteed business sooner rather than later. He probably reasoned with himself that it was an act of mercy. I can’t begrudge him that one; one needs one’s justifications…

The rent-a-cop who patrols this plaza is driving by for the third time in the past half an hour. That’s good. I want him to see the drug dealer’s car at the site of the future abduction, and hopefully take down the license plate. Tinted windows at night means there’s no way he could possibly identify me. The security guard is driving away, and there’s nobody else around. That’s better. I slip from park to drive, and just as Angler is pulling from the drive through onto the road, I smash into the left side of his car. God, that was satisfying. And completely un-Dexter like; the Butcher would never attack his victim in such a flashy way. He’d keep to the shadows. Nope, this rash act lends itself to people who are trying to get attention; like drug dealers who haven’t been paid.

“WHAT THE FUCK, BUDDY? DRIVE MUCH? YOU COULD HAVE KILLED ME!”

Don’t despair over missed opportunities just yet. I’ve heard that when God closes one door, he opens a window. I rolled mine down.

“I’m so sorry,” I slur, “Oh god. I didn’t mean…hang on, let me see the damage.” I pull the car in reverse a bit, park, and stumble out like I’ve had 12 too many. Angler gets out of his car.

“Jesus Christ! What the fuck are you doing, asshole? Are you drunk?” He shouts, clearly getting ready to punch me out.

“No…no…no” I say, which sounds incredibly like “yes, yes yes.”

“I’m so, so sorry man. Let’s get this shit out of the road, and then we’ll exchange information.”

Angler shakes his head, “Hell no. I’m not letting you hit and run. You give me your information right the fuck now.”

I sigh, make a half smile, and shrug, “Yeah, ok man. Whatever the hell you want,” as I turn towards my passenger window, supposedly to grab my license and registration, “it was your fault anyway.”

He grabs my shoulder at that, shouting “Fuck no, you…” but whatever I was, I didn’t find out, because it was at that moment I swiftly turned back around and discreetly plunged my needle into his neck. He dropped immediately, and my faux-drunken demeanor no longer required, I caught him and promptly placed him in the passenger seat. I smashed his head against the open glove-compartment; best to get some blood evidence in this car if I was going to be framing its owner. Framing had become part of my ritual, and some nights it was a burden and other nights it was exhilarating and just part of my work.

Within the next hour, it was all business. I hid his black Civic behind the plaza; out of the way for now, but not in the morning. I drove back to his funeral home, with Angler bound and gagged in the back-seat. Can’t be too careful nowadays; I had been using a new tranquilizer, and it had worn off too early a few weeks before. Down in the basement was the prep-room for the bodies which were going to be viewed the next day. Fitting. Plenty of dead people had been in the room in which I was now taping my plastic tarp, but none of them had started out there as alive.

Stripping, taping, plastic wrapping, I was ready to go. But Angler wasn’t awake and ready to go along with me. It seemed rude. A few slaps to the face, and a cut on the right cheek was enough to rouse him. With the same worried, unfocused and shifty eyed look that they all have when they wake with their heads tied to a table, his screams were muffled through the handkerchief in his mouth. Fear is good. I had worked hard enough to catch this guy; the satisfaction of watching him sweat before I wreaked havoc on his many limbs came easy this time, and I was definitely OK with that.

“Do you know why you’re here, Dave?” I asked as I placed a drop of blood on my slide, and slid the cover on top. He simply continued to scream through his gag. I decided that it was best not to allow the volume to increase.

“Let me enlighten you, in case you’ve deluded yourself enough to think that you don’t deserve to be here. You’d have to be slightly off, wouldn’t you, in order to work here. I mean, taking money from people in their greatest time of need I understand. But causing that need? Now that’s a new low, and I’m afraid I don’t approve.”

His screams were getting less frequent, and I hadn’t done anything yet; I hoped he wasn’t getting bored already. I pounced towards him, and inches from his face I began to shout.

“Joseph Lopez, Ruth Moresil, Jessica Lapin? Sound familiar? You killed them for profit. You killed them to feed your drug habit. They trusted you with their pain, and now because of you, they lost precious months they could have had left.”

As I stared into his teared up eyes, a wave of satisfaction came over me. Beside his cheek, I showed him the bone saw, and then flicked the switch. His eyes flickered back from mine to the saw, and the sound the saw made when it came on barely drowned out his muffled screams.

“I hope the high was worth it.”

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Half an hour later, the blood was everywhere, especially on me, as I began to chop the body into packable parts. It was almost morning, and I still had to wrap Angler up and feed him to some hungry crocodiles. Everyone likes breakfast in bed, or swamp as the case may be.

Just then, the hairs raised on the back of my neck.

“Mother fucking mother fuck of Jesus Christ fuck.”

Only one person I know is gifted with such creative wordplay.

I grabbed the side of the tarp, pulling it down to reveal someone by the door. That someone was a skinny, brown-haired cop who happened to be my sister. Deborah. The world fell away; my heart, because apparently I had one now, dropped into the pit of my stomach. Time stood still, as did both of us, and with her mouth agape and tears streaming down the side of her face, she looked at me with anger and the most painful gaze of disbelief I have ever seen on a human , I was not alone in asking myself if this could possibly be happening.

“Dexter? It…it was you?”

Deb turned and ran out of the basement.