A. The roof of the police station.

Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

A. In Miami.

Q. When did we see it on the show?

A. In Episode 10 (of Season 3, "Go Your Own Way".

The battle of wills between Dexter and his new "friend", Miguel Prado, has been growing in intensity following Prado's murder of Ellen Wolf.

When Prado shrugged off Dexter's warnings, Dexter attempted to rein him in by digging up Ellen's body at the cemetery.
He thought that did the trick, but later learned that Prado had been lying to him. Looking deeper, Dexter then learned that the bloody shirt that Prado had given him (as a guarantee of trust) was fake. The "friendship" was over.

But Prado still resisted Dexter's efforts to sever their ties. So, when the investigation into Ellen's murder threatened to expose Miguel's murderous ways, Dexter used the his influence in the investigation to gain the upper hand.

But Miguel - a control freak - wasn't giving up control that easily. He began wooing Maria LaGuerta to gain his own control over the investigation. Dexter tried to scuttle that move by showing up uninvited at LaGuerta's house when the two were alone there together, spoiling the mood.

Later, when Miguel's wife caught him with Maria LaGuerta, Prado assumed that Dexter has set him up, and retaliated by threatening his sister Debra at the donut shop.


Dexter responded by breaking into Prado's house, and stealing Miguel's trophy of the murder: a ring from the finger of Ellen Wolf, that could be used as evidence against him. He replaced the ring with a receipt from a cleaners.
 When Prado took that receipt to the cleaners, he was given back the bloody shirt, a not-so-subtle hint that Dexter knew he had been played, and that he now had real evidence instead of the fake shirt.

As this scene begins, an angry Prado appears at Dexter's workplace, the Police Station, and signals for Dexter to meet him up on the roof.

We see Dexter climb the stairs and emerge on top of the building, where Prado is waiting, enraged, pacing back & forth like an angry bull.

As he & Dexter exchange threats, Prado reveals his true self, exploding with a declaration that he will kill whomever he wants, whenever he wants. It is clear that he is a lost cause.

Dexter knows that he has no choice now but to kill him.

Dexter leaves the roof, but we later see Miguel Prado, still there. He has a cell phone in hand, and is speaking with George King, "The Skinner", who has been watching from afar through binoculars. Prado sics King on Dexter, telling him that if he wants to know where Freebo is, he needs to have a long "conversation" with him.

Q. What is it actually in real life?

A. An actual rooftop, but not in Miami.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. This was filmed on the roof of the Hyatt Regency Hotel, at 200 S. Pine Ave, in Long Beach, CA.

Dexter and Miguel are standing on the roof of the lower building at that hotel - not the hotel's taller tower. (The lower building is to the northwest of that taller tower.)

In the scene, Dexter walks out of the stairway at the northeast corner of that lower building's roof, is stands near that corner for most of the scene, while Prado is south of him. Both men are near the roof's east edge. The camera is most often looking southeast.

The Skinner, on the other hand, is standing on one of the upper balconies that are part of the northeast corner of that taller section of the hotel - which is why Prado has to turn around and look back (south/southeast) to see him.

(See this Bing "Birds-Eye View" shot for the exact locations.)

The Hyatt Regency Hotel is right next to (south of) the Long Beach Convention Center, at the south end of the Promenade, at the northeast corner of Pine Ave & Shoreline Drive. The hotel is surrounded on three sides by a park lake (called the Rainbow Lagoon). It's also just across Pine Avenue (east of) the new Pike entertainment zone.

In the top photo on this page, the camera is looking southeast, at the Hyatt hotel tower.

In the second photo from the top, showing Dexter & Prado, the camera is looking east/southeast, and in the distance we can see the Pacific Ocean, and the infamous Long Beach oil islands just off the coast.

In the third photo from the top, showing Dexter, the camera is looking north/northeast at part of the downtown Long Beach skyline. The white building with the red-tipped roof, seen to the left behind Dexter, is at 200 E. Ocean Blvd. The brown & black striped buildings on his right are the an office building at 301 Ocean Blvd, and the Westin hotel, at 333 Ocean.

The bottom photo, of the Skinner, is taken from near his balcony up on the Hyatt tower, and the camera is looking southeast.  In the foreground, you can see the Rainbow Lagoon lakes and park. In the background, the Shoreline marina and the ocean.


Here is an aerial photo of the area with the positions marked. And here is a map link.




I shot the photo below in 2009, from the pedestrian bridge spanning Shoreline Drive, looking northeast.








The area is very close to where they filmed several other scenes for Season Three, including the bachelor party dock, the boardwalk cafe, the second Skinner murder, the taqueria and the scene where Dexter & Miguel sat on the beach.

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A. There is a good, clear view of the Hyatt Hotel when Dexter first steps out on the roof, and in the distance, you can also see various buildings on the Long Beach skyline (see above), as well the oil islands off the coast. So it was an easy task to determine the camera position. There are also some distinctive markings on that particular roof that make it fairly easy to identify where the actors were standing.