I sat behind a wide desk at the top of the Carrington tower, the city spread out beyond the glass.

On the rug near the window, one-year-old Rafferty babbled to his nanny and stacked wooden blocks into a wobbling tower.

And on my desk, centered on the leather blotter, lay a cheap off-white envelope stamped with the seal of a federal penitentiary, covered in Dexter’s handwriting — the script once elegant and confident, now small and frantic and desperate.

Chapter 33 — I Knew What It Was

It had come three days earlier.

I knew what it held without reading a word.