Episode 808: Are We There Yet?

Are We There Yet? is the eighth of twelve episodes in Season Eight of DEXTER, and the ninety-second overall episode of the series. Directed by Holly Dale and written by Wendy West, it first aired 18 August 2013 on Showtime.

The estimated number of viewers for the episode during its original airing was 1.94 million.

Dexter tracks down Zach, concerned that he may have murdered an innocent person. Meanwhile, Dexter tries to help Hannah escape the country.

Summary
Dexter is taking photos of Cassie's crime scene. She had been bludgeoned to death and he speculates that Zach killed her, since that’s how he killed Norma Rivera. The murder weapon is a swan statuette. Thoughts of Hannah keep distracting him.

Masuka ventures a guess that Cassie was killed by the “guy she was dating.”  Meanwhile, Angel questions Cassie's boyfriend, Oliver Saxon, who apparently has an alibi. He was coming to pick up Cassie for a date but was late because he had a building inspection, adding that he’s a structural engineer.

Jamie Batista is inconsolable. When Quinn asks her about any issues that Cassie may have had, she’s too distraught to think about it.

As Dexter is collecting a sample of blood from under Cassie’s fingernails, Debra shows up and asks him if Hannah is still in Miami. Angel greets her and she begins to question him about Cassie’s murder, but stops, realizing it’s not her business. Angel tells Deb that the door is open if she wants to come back to the department.

Dexter meets with Hannah at Vista Marina. They need to get her out of town and he knows a guy who can get her a new passport. Hannah says they missed a spot of blood while cleaning up, but she was glad to see it because it reminded her of him. This concerns Dexter and he asks if she cleaned it up with bleach, which she has.

At the lab, Dexter runs the blood from under Cassie's fingernails and gets a DNA match for Zach Hamilton. He keeps it to himself since he plans to kill Zach. Dexter thinks of Zach as a waste who could have had a great future.

Masuka introduces his daughter, Niki Walters, to Dexter as the new lab assistant who will deal with the paperwork. When Niki reads the gruesome details in a report, she wants to “sage the place.”

As Dexter is leaving work, Quinn stops him and compares the bludgeoning photos of Cassie and Norma. Quinn thinks Zach may be responsible for the former's death, but Dexter says bludgeonings look similar. He lies that Zach's DNA wasn't at Cassie's crime scene and advises Quinn to lay off Zach for sake of his career.

Dexter meets with Dr. Vogel after Zach doesn’t return their calls. Neither of them know where he is hiding out. She asks if Cassie is dead because he was with Hannah, and Dexter retorts that Cassie is dead because she talked him out of killing Zach in the first place. She says Zach spoke to her about trying to live up to his rules and standards, but Dexter states that he can’t control himself. Dr. Vogel thinks that Dexter will find it difficult to kill Zach because of what could have been, but he disagrees.

Back at his apartment, Dexter tracks Zach's credit card online to the Florida Keys where he’s rented a room. Jamie is forlornly gathering up clothes to wash.

Debra shows up and asks Dexter whether or not Hannah is out of their lives. “Are you on top of it, or are you on top of her?” He confirms that Hannah is still in Miami and Deb wants to know why. Dexter explains that Hannah’s husband is verbally and physically abusive, which Deb finds amusing, and she wanted him to kill Miles; however, he didn’t do it. Dexter assures Deb that Hannah isn’t a threat and she only poisoned them to get his attention. Deb unsuccessfully tries to convince Dexter that Hannah is using him. She wants Hannah locked up, but he says she could talk and he can’t afford another round of questions after LaGuerta. He promises her that once Hannah gets her passport, she will be out of their lives forever. Deb accuses Dexter of lying to himself.

Dexter finds a despondent Jamie standing outside Cassie’s apartment. She tells him that she can’t be there right now and has moved in with Quinn. Dexter will be working the next few days, so she obtains Dexter’s permission to take Harrison to stay with her.

Dexter is on the yacht, Reverie, taking a photo of Hannah for her new passport, which he will drop off the next day. He going to the Keys that night and asks her to come with him.

Debra tells Elway that she believes Hannah is back in Miami going under the alias of Maggie Castner. When she informs him about the $250,000 bounty on her head, Elway immediately agrees to pursue the case.

Elway and Deb arrive at Vista Marina, but the yacht is gone. He doubts that Hannah was ever there, stating that there are a "lot of pretty blonde girls in Miami." Deb, however, insists that she was there. Elway thinks emotions are clouding her judgment. He decides to see if the dockmaster is bribe-able.

During dinner with Quinn, Jamie is freaking out that her friend was murdered, and doesn’t want to be alone. When Quinn says that once he catches the killer, she won’t be scared anymore, Jamie quips, “You know, if it were Deb asking you to stay, you wouldn't even put up a fight.” Quinn, taken aback, replies, “Deb wouldn't ask me to stay. She'd want to catch the killer as bad as I do.” Jamie apologizes for not being Deb and leaves the table. Quinn follows her to the kitchen, hugs her, and promises to stay with her.

Debra returns to her beach house and quickly tracks Dexter's car, by using the GPS tracker. She sees that he's traveling to the Keys and swears. Deb then calls him and asks about Hannah. Dexter claims he hasn’t seen her, even though she’s sitting next to him. He doesn’t reveal his location and agrees to meet Deb the next day.

While he’s driving, Dexter tells Hannah that Zach is someone that Dr. Vogel thought he could mentor, but Zach “disappointed” him. He explains that Dr. Vogel studies psychopaths and his father went to see her about him when he was young because he was at the end of his rope. Dr. Vogel came up with the idea of the Code and “created” him. Hannah asks Dexter how it feels to finally meet her, to find out that she even existed. “Like finding a family member,” he replies. Hannah describes Zach as a problem Dexter has to solve, and asks why he didn’t try to find her to “solve the problem.” He answers, "I liked knowing you were out there."

Deb calls Elway from her car as she's pursuing Dexter. The dock master had told him that Mr. Castner flew yesterday to New York, without Mrs. Castner, who just sent the yacht to St. Kitts earlier that day. However, Elway checked and Miles Castner never left the airport... and he’s missing. When Deb speculates that Hannah killed him, Elway chuckles. She ventures that Hannah is in the Keys and says she is on her way down there to check it out. Elway orders Deb not to be a crusader, and just bring in Hannah so they can get paid.

Along the way, Dexter and Hannah stop at a fish shack. As they sit at a picnic table on the beach, they engage in idle banter. She asks Dexter what turn of phrases he has come up with to describe her, such as “evil temptress,” “passionate poisoner,” or “fiendish florist.” He says that he thinks of her as just “Hannah,” and she jokingly calls him a “flirt” and “master manipulator.

Dexter and Hannah arrive at the motel where Zach used his credit card. Dexter finds a room with plastic over the window, and breaks in. Zach isn't there but he has set up a kill room styled after his own. A new set of knives lay on the bed and the plastic wrap is sagging off the walls. Dexter decides to kill Zach in his very own kill room. He improves it by using Zach's rolls of plastic.

Quinn meets with Oliver at an outdoor café and shows him a photo of Zach, as a person of interest. Oliver says he looks familiar but he doesn’t know him and never noticed him around Cassie. This is apparently a lie because Oliver saw Zach with Dexter when he was leaving Cassie's apartment.

Quinn, Masuka, and Matthews watch Niki “sage” the lab. Matthews asks Masuka what on earth is his daughter doing, and Masuka explains that she’s “clearing the bad murder juju out of the lab.” Matthews says half-jokingly, “Does she realize this is a department founded in bad murder juju?”

Matthews asks Quinn about leads on Cassie's murder case and Quinn says there are none worth talking about.

Zach returns to the motel room, and Dexter pins him against the wall with a knife to his throat, demanding to know why he killed Cassie. Zach denies killing her, and says he went after Shawn Decker, who killed a girl two years ago on spring break and bragged about it. He shows Dexter time stamped photos on his camera of Decker as he was tracking him. Zach decided to go after "someone who deserves it." Dexter realizes that Zach was following the Code and asks, “Where is Shawn now?”

In the parking lot, Zach opens his trunk and shows Dexter and Hannah the bludgeoned corpse of Decker. Zach says he tried to knock him out, but Decker didn’t go down, so he kept hitting him. Dexter points out that anyone on the second floor of the motel could have seen him moving the body, and criticizes him for not having a backup plan. Dexter and Zach leave to dump the body and clean the car. Hannah stays behind to take down the plastic.

Zach warns Dexter to watch out for the car door handle because he had cut his hand on it a few days earlier. Dexter wonders if someone damaged the handle so that Zach’s blood could be planted at Cassie's crime scene.

After Hannah throws the plastic in a dumpster, she returns to the room to find Deb waiting for her with handcuffs. Deb states that she’s making a citizen’s arrest, and Hannah retorts that she will arrest Deb for aiding and abetting a serial killer. She tells Deb that she doesn’t enjoy killing, but sometimes it’s the only way she knows how to solve a problem. Hannah insists that she loves Dexter and Dexter loves her. She asks Deb why she wants to destroy Dexter’s happiness.

Dexter returns to find Hannah and Deb in a standoff. He’s annoyed that Deb put a GPS tracker under his car. Suddenly, Zach enters the room. He and Deb ask each other, “Who the fuck are you?” Deb gives up, informs Dexter that Hannah is his problem, and storms out. Zach smiles, under the belief that girls are fighting over Dexter.

Dexter and Hannah give Zach a ride back to Miami. On the way, he grows bored and asks, “Are we there yet?” It amuses Hannah and Dexter.

Dexter and Zach stop by Vogel's house and she’s relieved that Zach is alive. She notices Hannah in the car and insists on meeting her. Vogel invites them all in for dinner and serves an old family recipe. During the conversation, Hannah asks Vogel how she got interested in her field of study. Vogel pauses before answering, “Oh, an incident long ago that I won't bore you with. As to what keeps me interested, well... look around the table.”

Dexter brings up Cassie's murder, and the group gathers around to look at photos of her crime scene. Zach is fascinated by how similar it is to Norma's murder. Dexter says he found Zach’s blood underneath Cassie’s fingernails. He thinks it was planted by someone who deliberately damaged Zach's car door handle.

Jamie is cooking dinner at Angel’s house while Harrison watches television. When Angel arrives home, she asks if they can stay the night. He says they can stay as long as they want, especially if she’s going to cook.

Deb returns from the Keys without Hannah, but Elway wants to keep looking. Hoping that he will drop it, Deb says it's a lost cause, adding that she doesn’t care about the money. Aggravated, Elway asks why she is working there then. Deb says she wants a job that matters more than just zeros on a paycheck. Elway asks if she’s going back to being a poorly paid cop, and advises her to think carefully before she throws away her current opportunity.

Dr. Vogel agrees to drop Zach off at home.

Dexter books a hotel room for Hannah. He offers to pick her up in the morning, but she doesn’t want to say goodbye again. He instructs her to destroy her old passport when she lands in Nassau, and make her last withdrawal as “Maggie Castner.” He will then talk her through how to set up an international bank account. Dexter gives Hannah a new passport and credit card under the name “Claire Thompson” and suggests Argentina as her final destination. As he is about to leave, Hannah suddenly kisses him and they end up in bed.

Dexter returns to his apartment where Zach's motionless body is sitting at his desk. Dr. Vogel's favorite song "Make Your Own Kind of Music" is playing on his laptop. When Dexter swivels Zach around in his chair, he finds his head sliced open. He immediately phones Vogel, who holds a section of Zach's brain in a jar.

Deb takes out her old police uniform, seemingly deep in thought.

In the dead of night, Dexter dumps Zach’s body into the ocean.

Elway calls the U.S. Marshals Service, reporting that Hannah McKay was just in Miami going under the alias of “Maggie Castner.”

In the morning, Dexter catches up with Hannah before she boards a sea plane, and asks her to stay in Miami with him.

Quotes

 * Every contact leaves a trace. That idea is the foundation of all crime scene analysis. - Dexter to himself
 * I would give everything to feel nothing again. - Dexter to himself, about Hannah
 * I forget the impact murder has on real people. - Dexter to himself, as he watches Jamie mourn Cassie’s death
 * “She's a fugitive. She's a poisoner. She's easily discredited.” - Deb to Dexter about Hannah

Related Pages

 * Debra's Beach House
 * Dexter's Apartment
 * Elway Investigations
 * Evelyn Vogel's House
 * The Fish Shack
 * Kill Room
 * Kill Tools
 * Windy Keys Motel