 | Season 4, Episode 6:
If I Had a Hammer
The episode starts with Trinity singing in front of a congregation, Dexter in attendance… The wolf in sheep’s clothing, hour by hour the spitting image of a normal man. … Father, husband, teacher, deacon. Camouflage is nature’s craftiest trick.
***
Back at home, Rita gives Dexter the cold shoulder. She tells him that she’s made an appointment with a therapist to deal with their emergency.
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The next morning, Dexter is talking to Deb when he gets a call about the bludgeoning death downtown. Debra knows where the killing has taken place, as Lundy suspected.
The last victim in the cycle of three. Trinity’s done... for now. He’s retreated into the safety of his camouflage. His defenses will be down – the perfect time to strike. I just have to stay ahead of my colleagues.
Masuka, Dexter, and Quinn discuss the evidence. The body has been undiscovered all weekend. Masuka recognizes the wound as being inflicted by a framing hammer. Dexter attempts to remove a smudge of evidence found on an opposing wall. When Dexter asks him how he knows so much about hammers, he replies, “Not a tool I haven’t played with, my friend.”
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Scene changes to Trinity’s garage, where he is cleaning the hammer he used on his latest victim.
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Back at the station, Debra watches Batista’s interrogation of Nicky, Rose’s girlfriend, who confessed to the vacation murders as well as to killing Rose. But she did not confess to killing Lundy and shooting Debra. Quinn shuts off the tape and tells her that watching it will only f*ck her up.
LaGuerta and Batista talk about his transfer and he seems reasonably sanguine about it, knowing it will mean a pay raise, a safer life, and the chance to remain in a relationship with her.
***
Dexter and Rita are in therapy; he struggles to say what is “expected” of him. The new therapist challenges Rita about her expectation that Dexter will change, since he is behaving as he did before they were married. “I need a partner, Dexter, someone I can trust.”
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I’m doing everything I can to save my family, and I’m still failing. Rita’s picturing her life without me, and I can’t picture mine without her, the kids, without Harrison.
***
Scene changes to Dexter in the lab testing hammers on plaster-cast skulls full of blood. Quinn and LaGuerta come in to talk to him and the three are interrupted by Masuka, who makes a report about the wall smudge Dexter collected at the scene of the bludgeoning. He says it contained DNA from two sources: a bone fragment contained in ashes from a cremated human and the saliva of the killer, who purposefully wiped the ash on the wall with his own spit. LaGuerta asks Masuka to run it through all available databases to find a match.
No you won’t. Arthur Mitchell isn’t in any of our police databases. I already ran him – he’s squeaky clean. He hides the real him; except from those ashes. He can only be honest with the dead.
***
Batista comes to collect the vacation murder files from Debra and encourages her to go home. She collects a voicemail from a woman whom she had contacted about her association with Harry.
At home, Dexter tries to find something to talk to Rita about, but comes up short again. She says they are out of bread and he offers to go get some. We next see him sitting in the congregation at Arthur Mitchell’s church, watching as Arthur sits with his wife and picture-perfect family.
Arthur’s kept this up for, what, 28 years? My family may not last 20 minutes. Warmth, intimacy… He’s convincing. … But he’s like me – how does it do it?
Following the service, Dexter introduces himself to Arthur as Kyle Butler, and Arthur invites him to come to his house for a meeting about building a house for the needy. Dexter says he’s “Looking for answers” and that he and his wife have separated. “I don’t know where else to go,” he says.
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Scene changes to Quinn and Christine – she asks him to help her get an interview with Debra, to do a “hero piece.” Debra comes over to his house and rings him down. She tells him she wants to be an eye witness to the murder. Quinn encourages her to think about it so that the situation doesn’t come back to “bite her in the *ss.”
***
Back at the station, Dexter prepares to go over to the construction site where Arthur’s congregation is building. He hands off his prelim blood spatter report to LaGuerta; Masuka comes up and delivers his “big reveal”: though the killer’s DNA has not been found in any database, he has discovered that the DNA from the killer and that of the human remains are related. Masuka asks Batista why he’s not working the case.
***
Dexter shows up at the construction site and starts working alongside Arthur, using the framing hammer from the bludgeoning! Dexter introduces himself to Arthur’s son, Jonah. Jonah goes on and on about how cool his parents are and tells Dexter that his father gave him his convertible three days ago.
***
Debra comes by Nicky’s cell to get the truth from her. Nicky tells her that the night Debra and Lundy were shot she and Johnny were shacked up in a motel doing meth, watching porn and cartoons, etc. Debra calls her a liar, and she says that no matter how many times she asks the answer will be the same, that she didn’t shoot Debra and she didn’t “kill that old man.” Debra loses her cool and reaches through the bars to get her hands around Nicky’s neck. Debra say: “I’m going to say I saw you.”
***
LaGuerta asks to be transferred out of homicide to being a press liaison.
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Dexter comes home with a bag full of gifts for the kids and Rita. “A breadmaker?” Rita says archly. “We’re always running out of bread,” Dexter responds. “We’re always running out of milk – did you get me a cow too?”
Rita says she appreciates him trying but the family doesn’t need gifts. They need him to talk to them. Dexter can’t say anything and Rita gets angry, saying she is moving up their next therapy appointment.
***
Masuka and Dexter talk in the lab about the case, and Masuka tells him that the DNA from the human ashes is female, meaning the relation was a mother, daughter, sister, or grandmother.
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Debra tells Quinn that some of Lundy’s research on the Trinity killer was taken from his motel room. She also tells him she thinks Nicky is telling the truth about not shooting her and Lundy.
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LaGuerta and Batista come before the brass with signed affadavits saying they are no longer dating. He says that if he finds out the paperwork is BS that there will be severe consequences to their careers.
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Back at his apartment, where he is packing up the rest of his belongings, Dexter goes online to see if he can determine what fatalities in Arthur Mitchell’s past set him on his path. He discovers the obituary of Vera Mitchell, Arthur’s 16-year-old sister, a cheerleader found dead in the bathtub. Marsha Mitchell, 1961, age 40, jumped to her death off a bridge. Henry Mitchell, 1964, age 45, died in an alley of a fatal head wound. Sister, mother, father. He’s recreating their deaths, decade after decade… We both have skeletons, which means we both get a closet to keep them in. Arthur has a closet. I know almost everything about you, Arthur, except where you hide. Ready or not, here I come.
Dexter watches as Arthur loads tools into his garage. He cuts his finger with a box cutter so he can gain entry into Arthur’s house. Arthur goes to collect the first aid kit. Tacky, but normal – his secrets must be under lock and key.
Dexter walks around the house looking for clues to Arthur’s secrets and discovers that the locations of the previous Four Walls builds are his trophies. He doesn’t need a secret apartment, he’s hiding in plain sight in the center of his family. Dexter also notices an urn, containing the ashes of his dead sister Vera (“his own Dark Passenger”).
Arthur comes back into the room and sees Dexter holding the urn and attacks him, pushing him up against the wall and cutting off his air supply. He calms down and starts treating Dexter’s cut.
“If the ashes bother you so much, why do you keep them out,” Dexter asks. “Because she’s a part of me, Kyle. She is part of who I am. … I used to push people away because of my past. Even lost a relationship over it, like you. I met Sally, had my kids, and I realized that the only way it was going to work was to jump in with both feet. My family saved me.”
They leave the house, and on the way out, Arthur gives him the murder weapon, so he’ll have tools for the next build.
***
Later, in therapy, Dexter tells Rita he wants to jump in with both feet. He allows he never learned, and that his mother’s murder shaped who he is, but that he wants to change. Dexter admits that he’s afraid that if Rita sees him for who he really is that she will “absolutely” leave. The therapist asks him to tell Rita the truth about why he kept the apartment. He says he needs a place to keep his stuff, and Rita says she will give it to him.
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Arthur comes into the bathroom where his wife is taking a bath. He joins her in the bathtub.
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The next morning, Debra shares her theory that Trinity stole Lundy’s research, as well as shot her and killed Lundy. Rejuvenated, Debra heads to the office to get working on the case. Dexter outfits a toolshed in the backyard as his new space to keep all his stuff. | |
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