Return to Sender

"Return to Sender" is the sixth episode of the first season of the American television drama series Dexter, which first aired on November 5, 2006 on Showtime in the United States. The episode was written by Timothy Schlattmann and was directed by Tony Goldwyn. In the episode, Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) investigates a murder scene where one of his own victims has returned after he disposed of the body. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Rita Bennett (Julie Benz) tries to prevent her husband Paul from attending their daughter's birthday party, and Lt. María LaGuerta (Lauren Vélez) considers adopting a young witness of the murder whom she finds at the crime scene. Though set in Miami, Florida, the episode was filmed at various locations in and around Los Angeles, California including a salvage yard, a field by Tujunga Wash and a waterfront house on Hibiscus Island. Goldwyn, who Erik King said was "a joy to work with", allowed actor C.S. Lee to improvise and David Zayas to memorize his Spanish lines in English and translate them mentally during each take. "Return to Sender" received generally positive reviews from critics. Plot While eating breakfast with Rita, Dexter is called to a crime scene, only to discover that it is the salvage yard where he committed a double murder the previous night. He finds Valerie Castillo's body lying in the Airstream trailer where he killed her and her husband Jorge, despite having thrown the corpses into the ocean. He deduces that the Ice Truck Killer retrieved and planted the body. LaGuerta, Doakes, and Debra discover a young Cuban boy, Oscar, who claims to have seen somebody take Valerie into the trailer. Dexter begins to fear discovery, and has a nightmare of Debra being a serial killer with a modus operandi similar to his own. As the investigation proceeds, Dexter attempts to discredit each of his colleagues' leads on the case. When Debra asks him to read her report on the killer, profiling a man sharing many of Dexter's characteristics, he second-guesses her theory. Worried about coming under suspicion, he throws his knives into the ocean. However, while looking at the blood drops from his victims, he notices that Valerie's slide has a happy face etched into her sample. Dexter realizes that this is a hint from the Ice Truck Killer, leading him to go to the salvage yard and plant Jorge's fingerprints and a knife bearing a dry drop of Valerie's blood for Doakes' men to find.