Jeff Lindsay - Double Dexter

And then a paragraph of text appeared, and with a sick numb helplessness, I began to read it.

If you re like me, it said, you like murder!

All right, I really am like you; what s your point?

It went on:

There s nothing wrong with that you ll find lots of other people who feel the same way! And just like you, they love living here in Miami, where there s always a new case to follow! Until now it s been too hard to keep up with the latest in local homicide. But now, there s a simple way to do just that! Tropical Blood is an exciting new online magazine that offers you an insider s look at all kills on the current casebook all for just $4.99 a month! This special rate is only for our founding subscribers! You must join now, before the price goes up!

There was more, but I didn t read it. I was somewhere between relief that this was mere spam, and anger that it had put me through such a very bad moment. I deleted the e-mail, and as I did my laptop gave a muted bong! announcing one more e-mail, a note with the one-word title Identity.

I moved the mouse to delete this one, too, but I hesitated for just a moment. It made no sense at all, but the timing seemed magical one arriving as I deleted the other. Of course, it wasn t connected, but there was a kind of wondrous symmetry to it. So I opened it. I assumed it would be an advertisement for some amazing new product that would protect me from identity theft, or possibly enhance my sexuality. But that word, identity it had been on my mind as I wrestled with the question of my Witness. I had been thinking about his identity and whether he knew mine, and now this same word in the subject line had tweaked the memory. It was a stupid, almost nonexistent connection, but it was there, and I could not stop myself from taking a quick peek. I opened the e-mail.

A page of single-spaced writing appeared on my screen, under a large stylized heading that said Shadowblog. The letters of the headline were printed in a gray, semitransparent typeface, and under them was a shadowy mirror image of the letters done in faint red. There was no name below it, just a URL: http://www.blogalodeon.com/shadowblog.

Oh, joy and bliss: I had made it onto some anonymous two-bit blogger s mailing list. Was this the price of my newfound fame? To be assailed by every semiliterate twinkie with a keyboard and an opinion? I didn t need this, and once more I moved the mouse to delete the e-mail and then I saw the first sentence and everything went cold and very still.

And now I know your name, it said.

For an endless moment I just stared at that sentence. It was irrational nearly to the point of clinical brain death, but for some reason I was convinced that the sentence referred to me, and it had been written by my Witness. I stared, and I may even have blinked once or twice, but other than that I did nothing. Finally I became aware of a distant pounding, and realized it was my heart, reminding me that I needed to breathe. I did, closing my eyes and giving the oxygen a moment to get up to my brain and whip a few thoughts into action. The first thought was an order to calm down, followed by a very logical reminder that this was, after all, only a spam e-mail and it could not possibly be about me or from my Witness.

And so I took another breath, found it to be good, and opened my eyes. The sentence was still there; it still said, And now I know your name, and there was still a page of writing under it. But I was very proud to discover that I had yet another calm thought, which was that looking at this page would very quickly prove that the blog had nothing to do with me. All I had to do was read one or two sentences to see that I was being a paranoid idiot, and I could go back to sipping calmly from my cup of vile coffee.

So I moved my eyes down to the second line and began to read.

Since I saw you that night in the foreclosed house your face has been stuck in my head. I have seen it everywhere, awake and asleep, and I can t shove away that picture of you standing over a heap of raw red meat that had been a human being just a few minutes before. Even you have to know it is so fucking wrong! And I keep thinking who the fuck are you? Or maybe what the fuck are you even human? Can someone that does that really get away with walking around in the real world, buying groceries and talking about the weather?

I ran from you. I ran from just the sight of you doing what you were doing. But that picture ran with me, and I know I should have done something, but I didn t, and I could not get it out of my head.

And because I ran from you, it seems like I started seeing you everywhere. My whole life I never see you even once, and now you pop up every time I step out the door. I see you with your kids, or out there in the street with your job, and I can t stand it anymore.

I m not stupid. I know it s not an accident, because that kind of coincidence is just impossible. But I didn t want to think about what it meant, because if I did I would have to do something about it. And I kept thinking I wasn t ready for that. I mean, my divorce, on top of all the other shitty stuff that keeps happening to me. It seemed like it was all too much, and to have to deal with you, too forget it.

And then I see your picture, and it has your name and your job. Your job. I m thinking, Holy Christ, he s a fucking cop? Talk about brass balls. How does he get away with that? And I know right off, no fucking way can I do anything about a guy like you who s a cop, too.

But I can t stop thinking about it, and the more I think the more I keep shoving it away, because I ve already got way too many problems to have to deal with your kind of shit, too. And it just buzzes around and around in my head until I think I m going to totally freak and I want to run for it, but there s no place to run, and I can t avoid dealing with you anymore because now I know who you are and where you work, and I got no more excuses, and it just piles up and whirls around in my head and it s making me fucking nuts

And then all of a sudden it s almost like a switch going on in my brain. Click. And I can almost hear a voice saying, You are looking at this all wrong. Like the Priest used to say, every stumbling spot is really a stepping-stone if you look at it right. And I think, Yeah.

This is not another problem. This is an answer.

This is a way to make all the other bullshit mean something, to finally bring it all together. And I may not know exactly how to do it just yet, but I know it s right, and I know I can do this.

And I will do this. Soon.

Because now I know your name.

Somewhere down the hall I heard a door slam shut. Two voices called to each other, but I couldn t hear the words, and I wouldn t have understood them if I did, because there was only one thing in the entire world that meant anything:

He knew my name.

He had seen the pictures online, with my name on them, and he had put that together with what he had Witnessed me doing with Valentine. He knew me. He knew who I was and he knew where I worked. I sat there and tried to be calm and think of the right thing to do about this, but I could not get beyond that one wild, world-shattering thought. He knew me. He was out there and he could destroy me at any moment. I didn t have the faintest notion of who he was, but he knew me and he could expose me whenever he wanted to and there didn t seem to be a whole lot I could do about it.

And what was that about seeing me with my kids was he threatening Lily Anne? I could not allow that I had to find some way to get to him and stop him. But how could I, when I d been trying to find him for two weeks and failing?

I scanned the blog again, looking for any clue that might tell me who he was, just some tiny hint of a way out of this nightmare, but the words had not changed. Still, on second reading, I saw that he had not written anything that might reveal me to anyone else. I was at least safe from that. So what was he really threatening? A physical attack on me or my family? He wrote about dealing with me, and I had no idea what that meant, but I didn t like the sound of it. And there, at the end, he said he didn t know yet exactly what to do that could mean anything, and I couldn t rule out a single thing until I knew more about who he was.