50 pages • 1 hour read
Darkly Dreaming Dexter
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Chapter 22-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, including blood and gore.
As law enforcement officers arrive at the scene, Dexter contemplates the tableau. The limbs are arranged to spell out the word “Boo,” an impish flourish that tickles Dexter’s sense of humor. The slasher is letting the police know he’s still out there. LaGuerta sends Deb to interview anyone who might have seen something at the arena, and Dexter accompanies her. They speak with someone who runs a sports website and set up a camera pointed at the arena door so his viewers can watch players coming and going. They scroll through the previous night’s footage and eventually see a van pull up to the entrance sometime after midnight. A man exits the vehicle. Deb and Dexter are both dumbfounded: He looks almost exactly like Dexter.
Chapter 23 Summary
Deborah angrily confronts Dexter, asking if he is the serial killer. He truthfully answers that he probably isn’t, but he can’t be sure: He explains that he’s been having eerie dreams that seem to display a familiarity with the crimes that he cannot explain. He asks if Deb intends to turn him in for questioning. Channeling Harry, she says she will allow him to review the recording again, but she will turn him in if it seems likely that it is him in the video.
Chapter 24 Summary
Dexter gets a call from Captain Matthews early the next morning. He is looking for Deb, who listed Dexter’s apartment on her log-in form. Deb has not been to Dexter’s apartment. She is missing. Though he can’t put his finger on why he is so sure, Dexter knows the slasher has her. The slasher is inviting Dexter to his next crime scene. He knows he must find Deb but wonders if he took her without realizing it. After all, he was asleep when she went missing, though he didn’t have any strange dreams. He sifts through memories of his other dreams, looking for clues that might lead him to Deb. One in particular keeps resurfacing, that of a cool, dark room. He heads out to his car to think while driving.
In his passenger seat, there is a Barbie doll dressed in a bizarre combination of Deb’s sex worker outfits and cruise wear. Dexter thinks of all the refrigerated shipping containers at the port and heads there. When he arrives, he sees the slasher’s vehicle parked next to a section of slashed fencing. Dexter breathes deeply, recognizing this as an invitation. Just as he is about to slip through the fence, LaGuerta interrupts him.
Chapter 25 Summary
LaGuerta explains that she followed Dexter from his apartment because she suspects he is the slasher. Doakes, after all, was always suspicious of Dexter, and Dexter always knows so much about how killers operate. Wondering if she saw the slasher outside his apartment, Dexter asks when she arrived at his place. She got there too late to see the slasher place the Barbie doll, and Dexter mentally curses. He says that he is not her slasher, but he is sure the real killer is in the shipyard with Deb. LaGuerta scoffs and asks why he thinks that. He points out that they’re looking at the slasher’s truck.
At that moment, LaGuerta seems to believe Dexter. She suggests they head into the port to investigate. He asks if she wants to request backup, but she declines; because her job is on the line, she wants to catch the slasher herself. They head in and split up to cover more ground. Dexter panics over the sheer number of shipping containers. Deb is likely in one, but he can’t tell which. Using his intuition, Dexter miraculously finds her. She is strapped to a table, on her way to becoming the slasher’s next victim.
Chapter 26 Summary
There is pure terror in Deb’s eyes as she looks at Dexter. Dexter, too, is terrified. He wonders if he did this. It seems impossible, and yet he somehow identified the right container. He begins to suspect he has been here before, not to kidnap Deb, but some other time. The space is strangely familiar, though he’s not sure why.
As he mulls these questions over, a man emerges from the shadows. He looks exactly like Dexter. Dexter is shocked. His doppelganger smiles and asks if “someone else” was driving tonight, if Dexter was guided to the right container by an unseen force. Dexter is even more stunned, incredulous that this copycat stranger knows about his Dark Passenger.
Chapter 27 Summary
As Dexter silently stares at his doppelganger, a memory resurfaces. He is a small boy sitting in a pool of blood with his older brother. His mother is there, but she is unmoving and does not respond to his cries. Suddenly, he looks at the man standing before him and says, “Biney?” The man smiles and identifies himself. He is Brian, Dexter’s brother. As a young boy, Dexter was unable to say Brian and so called him Biney.
Brian fills in the rest of the story: Their mother was involved in drug trafficking and was murdered in front of them in this same shipping container. She probably ran afoul of the cartel for theft or some other crime, Brian is unsure. He was four, and Dexter three. They’d sat in the pool of their mother’s blood for days before the police arrived. The first officer on the scene was Harry, who adopted Dexter but not Brian. As an adult, Brian found Dexter, watched him, and realized Dexter is also a killer. He tells Dexter that they can kill together and hands him the knife so Deb can be their first shared victim.
Dexter feels a rush of something akin to warmth: Finally, he has a kindred spirit. He stares at Deb, feeling the urge to kill her and join his brother. Just then, LaGuerta enters, and Brian stabs her. Dexter removes the tape from Deb’s mouth. She tells him to let her go, but Dexter is confused. He thinks he sees his mother’s face in Deb and blames her for leaving him and Brian alone, for being a drug trafficker and a bad mother. Brian urges Dexter to kill Deb, but he cannot. He hears Harry’s voice in his head. Harry taught him to only kill people who deserved to die. Deb does not deserve to die.
Epilogue Summary
Dexter and Deb attend LaGuerta’s funeral. Deb has been promoted. Doakes stares hard at Dexter in a way that makes Dexter realize Doakes suspects him in LaGuerta’s death and for having more information about the Tamiami Slasher. Dexter wonders if his brother will be arrested or if he will strike again. He was unable to join Brian, but he did not stop him from fleeing. He does not regret either choice.
Chapter 22-Epilogue Analysis
Deb’s characterization continues to be a key focal point in these chapters. She reveals her black-and-white understanding of crime and criminality when security footage of the Tamiami Slasher reveals that he looks remarkably like Dexter. Dexter is the most important person in Deb’s world, but she takes her role as a police officer seriously. She swore to uphold the law when she took her law enforcement oath, and she is even willing to turn in her own brother. She values the preservation of good more than she values family, which reveals quite a bit about her morals and motivations, as family is Deb’s other most important value.
In Chapter 27, the Tamiami Slasher is revealed as none other than Brian, Dexter’s long-lost (and forgotten) brother. As soon as Dexter sees Brian, memories come flooding back, and their tragic backstory is revealed. They watched their mother’s brutal murder and then sat in a pool of her blood for days before being rescued by Harry and the police. The Impact of Childhood Trauma on Adult Behavior and The Importance of Moral and Behavioral Codes become even more important here, as it is now obvious that Dexter and Brian were so deeply traumatized by their mother’s murder that they became entrenched in the cycle of violence as adults.
However, the two brothers perpetuate that violence in different ways, and that difference stems from the environments they grew up in after their mother’s death. Because Brian was one year older than Dexter, the police were convinced he would never recover from the trauma but believed Dexter was young enough to forget. Brian notes, “They thought you were young enough to recover. I was just over the age limit” (275). Because of these assumptions, Brian was abandoned by the system (later books reveal he bounced between various unstable living environments and psychiatric institutions), while Dexter was adopted by Harry.
Dexter’s adoption into the Morgan family may have “saved” him from becoming entirely evil. It gave him stability and strong familial connections, and Dexter’s relationship with Harry and respect for Harry’s code is what curtails his murderous intent. Brian, who never received any kind of mentorship, love, or guidance, became a cold-blooded serial killer. He serves as a foil to his younger brother, a dark mirror that reflects who Dexter may have become without Harry’s influence. Dexter holds his Dark Passenger at a remove, imagining it as a separate entity within himself, while Brian has become one with his Dark Passenger, fully embracing his desires and acting on his impulses.
Dexter’s backstory further grounds the novel in the tradition of Miami crime thrillers. Miami’s descent into cartel-fueled violence during the 1980s was why it rose to prominence as a setting of print and film crime thrillers. Lindsay’s choice to place Dexter’s mother in that underworld establishes Darkly Dreaming Dexter as a Miami crime novel. The cartels, although based in South America and staffed largely with career criminals, did ensnare countless locals, and Dexter’s mother speaks to a generation of Miami natives who fell victim to the 1980s drug wars. This novel is set after that violent era, but Dexter was only three when his mother was killed, precisely in the period marred by violence.
The novel’s dramatic conclusion, although action-packed and suspenseful, speaks to Dexter’s, Deb’s, and Harry’s characterization. Dexter feels a surge of warmth when he realizes who Brian is. He knows Brian is the only person in the world who truly understands him. It is clear they both have a Dark Passenger, and at this discovery of a kindred spirit, Dexter becomes momentarily disconnected from Deb and from Harry’s memory.
When Brian encourages Dexter to kill Deb, Dexter almost stabs her because the recognition and kinship he feels toward Brian is so strong. And yet, he feels “Harry there in the room” with him and finds that he cannot kill Deb (236). This shows the strength of family ties and the importance of Harry’s values to his children. Dexter ultimately feels closer to Deb than he does to Brian, in part because Harry guided both Dexter’s and Deb’s development. He knows he shares more with Deb than he does with Brian. All he and Brian have in common is childhood trauma and their Dark Passenger, but much more binds him to Deb: They have their work ethic, their moral and behavioral codes, their relationship, and their family memories. This scene further cements Dexter as a figure more associated with good than evil, despite his violent urges and the fact that he almost gives in to Brian’s desire for him to kill Deb.
The novel ends on an ambiguous note. Deb is promoted, and Dexter is no longer suspected of being the Tamiami Slasher. And yet there is still tension in the air. Dexter allowed his brother to flee the scene of Deb’s would-be killing and LaGuerta’s death, and he feels no remorse about his decision. Deb witnessed the brothers’ reunion. Doakes still suspects Dexter of something nefarious. This leaves several loose threads for the author to pick up in the series’s next book and leaves the reader wondering what will happen next to Deb and Dexter Morgan.
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