CHAPTER 38: THE PATTERN
Debra showed up at my apartment three nights later with a six-pack and a folder full of crime scene photos.
"I need your brain," she announced, pushing past me into the living room. "The blood spatter genius brain, not the annoying big brother brain."
"Those are the same brain."
"Then I need the smart half." She dropped the folder on my coffee table and cracked open a beer. "Look at these."
I sat beside her, pulling the folder toward me with a reluctance I didn't let show. The photos were familiar—victim recovery shots from the Gulf Stream, the kind of images that had been circulating through Miami Metro for weeks.
"What am I looking at?"
"Victim profiles." Debra took a long drink, organizing her thoughts. "I've been digging deeper since the briefing. Every confirmed victim? Criminal. Not just petty stuff—serious criminal. Drug dealers who got people killed. Rapists who walked because witnesses disappeared. Murderers who made parole." She pointed at a photo. "This guy? Jorge Castillo. Killed three people in a drug dispute in 1998. Served four years, got out on good behavior, disappeared six months later."
"And you think the Butcher took him."
"I know the Butcher took him. Dental records match." Her eyes were bright with the particular energy of a detective who'd found a thread and couldn't stop pulling. "Dex, the pattern is consistent across every single identified victim. These weren't random people. These were bad people. Killers and rapists and dealers who got away with it."
I set down the photo. "What's your theory?"
"The Butcher has a code." She said the word with a mix of fascination and unease. "He's not killing for fun or sexual gratification or any of the usual serial killer bullshit. He's killing because he thinks these people deserve it. He sees himself as... I don't know. A cleaner. Someone who takes out the trash the justice system can't handle."
The silence stretched between us. My sister, unknowingly describing my existence in clinical terms.
"Is that insane?" she asked finally. "Killing people who deserve it?"
"It's still murder, Deb."
"I know." She finished her beer, reached for another. "But part of me... part of me understands the impulse. After everything with Brian, after seeing what people like that do to their victims... sometimes I think about what would have happened if someone had stopped him sooner. Before the bodies. Before the shipping container."
Before me, she didn't say. Before he'd strapped her to a table and prepared to watch our brother kill her.
"That's different," I said carefully. "Wanting someone stopped isn't the same as wanting to be the one who stops them."
"Isn't it?" Debra met my eyes. "If you had the chance to stop someone like Brian—someone who was definitely going to kill again—and you knew the system couldn't touch them... would you?"
The question hung in the air like smoke. A test I couldn't afford to fail.
"I'd like to think I'd find another way."
"Yeah." She nodded slowly. "Me too. But late at night, when I'm alone and the nightmares come back... I'm not sure I mean it."
I said nothing. There was nothing safe to say.
We sat in silence for a long moment, two Morgans sharing a couch and a conversation that had wandered too close to truths neither of us could afford to acknowledge.
"You should present this to Lundy," I said finally.
Debra blinked. "What?"
"Your victim analysis. The pattern. If the FBI knows the Butcher targets criminals, it changes the profile. Makes him seem more... ideological than psychotic. That might affect how they investigate."
And how they talk about me, I didn't add. A vigilante narrative was better than a monster narrative. If the public thought the Butcher was cleaning up the streets, there might be less pressure to catch him quickly.
"You think Lundy will buy it?"
"I think he's smart enough to recognize solid investigative work when he sees it." I managed a smile. "And you've done solid work, Deb. This is the kind of insight that moves cases forward."
She grinned—the first genuine smile I'd seen from her in weeks. "Thanks, big brother. I knew there was a reason I kept you around."
"Besides my dashing good looks?"
"Those are adequate at best." She punched my shoulder, the playful violence of siblings who'd survived too much to be gentle with affection. "I'll talk to Lundy tomorrow. See if he thinks this is worth pursuing."
"Good luck."
She gathered her folder, her beers, her theory about a monster she'd never recognize even if he was sitting right beside her.
At the door, she paused. "Hey, Dex?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for listening. I know I can be... intense about work stuff. But it helps, talking to you. You always make me feel like I'm not crazy."
You're not crazy, I thought. You're just standing too close to the fire to see the flames.
"Anytime, Deb. That's what brothers are for."
She left. I closed the door and leaned against it, breathing slowly, controlling the tremor in my hands that no one else would ever see.
My sister had just explained me to myself. Described the Code without knowing it had a name. Come within inches of understanding what her brother really was.
And she had no idea.
The Dark Passenger stirred. Not with hunger—with something closer to dark amusement. She sees the pattern but not the picture. Just like everyone else.
That's how we survive, Harry's voice reminded me. In the spaces between what people see and what they understand.
I poured myself a drink and waited for morning.
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