And then, of
course, the police are on their way. Dexter hears from his colleagues
that there's a homicide alert. Gunshots reported. He sees the warehouse
address and looks genuinely panicked as he realizes, "Isn't that...here?"
Fifteen minutes before Miami's homicide cops arrive at the warehouse.
The
tension is magnetic as Dexter and Lumen scramble to find the runaway
body. They do track down the bleeding victim soon enough, at least
Dexter quickly processes a half dozen complications, including a call
from his "Irish super-hero nanny" and initial doubts about whether this
man, a trembling dentist, is actually one of the men who raped and
tortured Lumen. "You don't have any proof!" he tells her. "I'm the
proof!" Lumen fires back. "My memories, my experience." The stakes feel authentic.
Dexter
plans to tend to the dentist's wounds until they overhear a phone call
he makes: "She's alive ... that last fucking bitch is alive!" Dexter and
Lumen approach him with poise, his guilt suddenly confirmed. In a nice
touch, Dexter repeats baby Harrison's first mispronounced words of
"die-die" as he breaks the man's neck. Lumen's mission of vengeance has
now officially become Dexter's, too.
One final wild
turn: the unconscious guy in Dex's trunk escapes right as Dexter had
hoped to remove the new murder victim. Dexter jogs after the fleeing
plastic-wrapped Internet predator while his sister Debra and Masuka
scout the location as part of the homicide alert. The police are just
around the corner. At the final, heart-pounding second, Dexter drags
the Internet predator away from the police and chokes him with the
plastic wrap.
The solution? Dexter pops out of the
warehouse, now dressed in his standard forensics clothing. "You will
not believe what I've found," he tells Deb and Masuka.
Inside:
the two dead bodies face each other in what appears to be a lover's
quarrel gone wrong. To the perverted Masuka, everything about the
scene, from the plastic to the sexual possibilities of the warehouse
components, makes complete sense. "Two words," says the short forensics
expert with a smile as he eyes the bodies, "Auto-erotic mummification."
Dexter predicts an easy case closed as Masuka begins describing
asphyxiation and acting out the sexual moves.
Compartmentalization
began as an architectural theory, Dexter muses in this week's episode.
Life can also be divided into closed-off sections. Makes everything
much simpler. If only. The episode begins with Dexter trying to right
past mistakes, to keep his life neat and well-ordered—the blood slides
over here, the police work there, and being a father? That whenever
there's time. But our serial killer quickly realizes, in an episode
more dynamic and fun than many in recent weeks, that
compartmentalization is a dream. Lumen happened.