Dearly Devoted Dexter - Plot

Plot

Sergeant Doakes, a detective in Homicide, has grown suspicious of Dexter and begun tailing him in his free time, making it impossible for Dexter to investigate (and perhaps kill) someone he suspects of complicity in the abduction, sexual abuse and murder of a series of young boys.

When an unknown man is found bizarrely mutilated, Doakes recognizes the work of a torturer nicknamed "Doctor Danco" (after a brand of knives), who served with Doakes during the Salvadoran Civil War and has come to Miami to take revenge on his former comrades. Danco drugs his victims with painkillers and psychotropics and, over a period of several days, surgically removes their limbs, genitalia, lips, tongue and eyelids, before leaving them to contemplate themselves in a carefully placed mirror. Dexter is drawn into the case when Danco abducts his sister Deborah's new boyfriend, detective Kyle Chutsky.

Amidst all the chaos, Dexter finds himself accidentally engaged to his girlfriend Rita. While trying to bond with Rita's children, Astor and Cody, he discovers that they are showing the same signs of sociopathy that he did at their age. He looks forward to teaching them to control their "Dark Passengers" as his foster father, Harry, had taught him to control his.

At the climax of the story, Dexter learns that Danco's murder ritual includes a word game resembling hangman. Each victim is asked to guess a word chosen for them by Danco, each wrong answer – or unintelligible answer, after removal of the tongue – resulting in the amputation of a body part.