Author's Note: Many thanks to my beta reader, Celestial Nightmare.

Fun and Games, Chapter One

"Dex!" came the loud voice of Dexter's sister, Debra. She was standing at the door to Dexter's blood lab.

What now? thought Dexter. Dexter swiveled his chair around to face her. "Yeah, Deb?" he asked.

"We're having a dispatch meeting. LaGuerta says you have to be there," she said. Dexter sighed, got out of his chair, and followed her to the dispatch room.

LaGuerta was standing at the front of the room, next to a large screen.

"Everyone here?" she asked when she saw Debra and Dexter enter the room. She nodded slightly as if agreeing with herself. "We can begin then."

After she spoke she turned the screen on with a remote control, revealing a picture of a happy-looking family with a man, a woman, and a little girl.

"Fred and Eve Thompson with their daughter, Jenny."

She changed the screen to the next slide. This one had two separate pictures on it. One was of Fred Thompson on the floor in a pool of blood. The other was of Jenny Thompson in the bathroom. She looked as if she had been shot, and there was blood spatter all over the walls.

"Fred and Jenny Thompson as they were found last night in their vacation home. A relative came to check on them because they had not been answering their cell phones. She saw the bodies and immediately called the police."

"Where's Mrs. Thompson?" asked Angel 'No Relation' Batista from his seat.

LaGuerta glanced at him. "Nobody's seen or spoke to her in the past few days."

Angel smiled and said, "So she's our prime suspect!"

LaGuerta nodded again.

"How were they killed?" came Debra's voice. "Shot, right?"

"Yeah. Both of them."

Debra speculated, "So, mom flies off the handle for whatever reason-"

"-grabs a gun, kills her husband and daughter and then goes into hiding," finished Angel.

"Most likely," LaGuerta said, "but we need to keep an open mind when we go into the scene."

It wasn't hard to figure out why Dexter was needed at the crime scene. There was blood everywhere. Spatter up and down the walls, pools of it on the floor, even a few drops were found on a lamp stand in an otherwise untouched room.

Dexter couldn't help but feel - what he guessed was - a little bit of sympathy towards the victims. What he did know for sure, though, was that he hadn't had one of his 'moonlit missions' since Miguel and he was beginning to feel that old, familiar whine of his Dark Passenger again.

Debra found a pair of boys' tennis shoes, jeans and socks on the patio outside the Thompson's home.

"That's odd," she commented, "the Thompson's don't have a son."

"So, Dex," Masuka was saying, as he and Dexter searched the living room, "are you up for tonight? I'm thinking two Taiwanese hookers-"

Ignoring Masuka, which is the only manner one should handle Masuka in Dexter's opinion, Dexter noticed something odd. It was just a blur of colours, but there was something under the couch cushions.

"Masuka," said Dexter suddenly.

Masuka stopped halfway through his previous sentence. "Yeah?"

"Have you checked under the cushions?"

Masuka frowned slightly. "No. Why?"

Dexter leaned over and removed the cushions from the couch. Hidden underneath was a golf club. The tip of it was bent slightly. Blood was smeared on both the tip and the handle.

"A golf club?" Masuka asked, confused. "Both victims were killed with a gun."

"Why would a golf club be under a couch cushion? It's almost as if-" Dexter started.

Masuka said, "Almost as if what?"

"As if someone was trying to hide it."

Looks like I've made a Hole-In-One, Dexter joked to himself.

When Dexter and all the evidence collected were back at Miami Metro PD, Debra set course to interrogate Dexter.

"So, what did you find?" she asked. "Angel said you found something big."

Dexter became I'm-Fond-of-You-but-You're-Exasperating-Dexter. "In the living room, under the couch cushions. A golf club."

"A golf club?" asked Debra. "What's so great about a fuckin' golf club?"

"What's so great about a 'fuckin' golf club' is that someone tried to hide it."

"Why would someone hide a golf club?" Debra asked.

Dexter sighed. "That's why I ran it by the lab."

"And? What'd they find?" Debra asked eagerly.

"Well, we couldn't pull any DNA from the blood on it, but there was something else."

"Jesus-fucking-Christ, Dex," said Debra, frustrated. "Just tell me already!"

"Saliva," Dexter said. "All over it."

Debra had that look she sometimes got; the one that Dexter had learned meant that she was happy on the inside, but wasn't about to let you know it.

"Dexter, that's awesome!" she said. "Do you think we can match it to Eve Thompson?"

Dexter paused. There was something... familiar about this case. He swore he had seen a murder like this before.

"Yeah, Deb," he said, eager to get rid of her in order to check up on his hunch. "Ask Masuka to compare it to Jenny Thompson's DNA."

Debra nodded and left. Dexter flipped on his computer and ran a quick search for similar cases. Two articles, both old newspaper clippings from Michigan, stood out to him:

_TWO FOUND DEAD IN SECOND HOME_

Terrence Sprouse and his son, Samuel Sprouse, were found dead last Thursday night in their vacation home by Mrs. Elmira Layman, aged fifty-three.

Mrs. Layman described the murder scene between flurries of tears. "It was ghastly," she said. "There was...blood...everywhere. All over the walls."

She then burst into sobbing from recalling the distressing scene. Once she regained her composure, she continued to recount her story, "They were beaten...to death. Whoever did it...the...worst that could possibly happen to them!"

The article continued, but it was mostly about what good up-standing citizens the two victims had been.

The next article was much more interesting:

_MOTHER OF PREVIOUS VICTIMS FOUND IN NEARBY LAKE_

The body of Patricia Sprouse, whom the police have been searching for the past week in relation to the murder of Terrence and Samuel Sprouse (Patricia Sprouse's husband and son, respectively), was discovered by local fishermen in Lake Wittecombe. The Sprouse family owned a second

home on the lake's edge, where the bodies of Samuel and Terrence Sprouse were discovered a week ago. The local police are stunned, as Sprouse had been the prime suspect in her family's murder.

It's not Eve Thompson, Dexter realized. But whoever it is, they already belong to me.