Brother-Sister Stuff... <Dex>

[Debra Morgan]

Perfect week this was shaping up to be. It seemed like they'd just finished up a case when a new one called them off to some random area of Miami. This time, it wasn't so random as the homicide department had been called to the banks of the Miami River to investigate the apparent murder of an old Navy officer.

Navy.

Everyone was making a big deal about that one detail. Joint jurisdiction. With the feds. The few cases they'd worked in the past alongside federal officers hardly ever ended well. Debra had no reason to believe this would be any different.

"Workin' with the feds. We do the work, they get the credit, huh?" she asked, hardly needing to spare a glance at her adopted older brother to let him know he was the one she wanted to hear the answer from. Her tone was a bit more than deadpan, which was a tone she had taken to using more and more often around him without really knowing why.

You don't trust him anymore... the annoying voice in the back of her head told her for the millionth time in two years. Which she couldn't really argue with, since it was half-true.

[Dexter Morgan]

'Debra. Beloved sister. She's been increasingly distrusting of me ever since she learned my dark secret, not that she's really shown it. It's in the little things. The tone in her voice. The looks directed at me when she thinks I'm not looking. The wondering look in her eye when I go to Rita's, or when I go to my second... job. The one that says 'is it tonight? Is Dexter killing someone tonight? How much blood does he have on his hands?' If we could even talk about it, I'd tell her that I've been drowning in blood forever. It never shows, but I'm covered in it all the time.'

"Yeah," Dexter said aloud, squinting at the sun drenched sand, the bright glitter of light dancing on the water. "Working with the Feds never ends well." Privately, he thought of Doakes. With the noose tightening more and more with each passing moment, the FBI dogs barking and coming closer, and Doakes breathing down his neck and knowing. Dexter had been pressed for time and space to cover up his own dirty works and his existential crisis, for lack of a better term. Doakes had been dealt a bad hand, while Dexter had gotten the devil's own luck in getting out of that mess intact.

[Debra Morgan]

"I wouldn't exactly say 'never'," Deb replied offhandedly, finally sparing her older brother a glance. She'd gotten along quite well with an FBI agent the previous year. Sure, they'd had to end it because his job was taking him places, but it had been fun while it had lasted. Debra had felt a spark of some kind with Frank Lundy, but he was gone back to whatever it was he'd had to do, and she'd moved on and up in her own life.

"I know you've got some thoughts on this," she said. In previous years, she'd come to rely on the strange and insightful ideas Dexter got from the crime scenes, and the recent events of her discovery of his... tendencies... had not changed her dependence on his hunches. It was part of the reason she couldn't turn him in... she needed him.

[Dexter Morgan]

Dexter shrugged his shoulders languidly as he shoved his hands into his pocket. He squinted up at Deb, his shoulders haunched a little. Last year had been a hellish cat and mouse game, that was for sure. Not exactly fun, though being pursued had been a new... experience.

"I don't think I know anymore than you do. Guy was a veteran. Decorated. But the medals aren't on the body. Bet you dollars to donuts they won't be at his home either. Killer took them." Identifying the Rear Admiral would probably be a mere formality. Though the skin of his face, (his head, really), had been completely removed, dental records would hopefully match the name on the dog tags. Interesting that the killer didn't take the dog tags. It suggested something, a motivation focused on the medals.

He wasn't sure which was the trophy. The face, or the medals.

Looking over at Deb, he remembered briefly how she had looked, trapped helplessly on the table, with his brother and him standing over her. Shaking off the memory, he looked around. "It was a body dump, no blood. He wasn't killed here. He was staged. It means something to the killer." The sun glittered off the ocean, like thousands of sapphires sending their beams into his eyes. He was starting to get a headache.

"I think you should look for an ex-military man. Dishonourably discharged. Why the medals? He was discharged from service for doing something the military did not approve. Maybe he was stripped of the medals, or maybe he had been hoping for the reward…" He trailed off, looking at the space where the body had been earlier. Coroner had put it in a body bag, taken it with him. There were few remnants left that revealed a crime had occurred here. Soon, the regular motions of life would erase the remainder of death that lingered.

[Debra Morgan]

Silently, Deb listened. She chewed her lip for a long moment after he'd finished speaking, staring out into the distance, looking like she was processing. But really, she was thinking about something else. "How do you get all of this just from looking at the body?" she asked suddenly, turning a hard look on him. "I mean, I know how you figure stuff out, but fuck, this is way creepier. Just looking at him, you think the killer one, is ex military and two, took the medals? How the hell do you do it?"

She'd questioned his uncanny observations before, but more along the lines of 'what else?' and 'someday you're gonna hafta tell me how you do that', but this was different. She'd been silent about this for too long, it seemed. Deb turned her whole body towards her brother, her lips twisted into a frown. She hadn't asked a single question after discovering the truth, too numb to even form a simple 'what the fuck?' out loud. She wondered, oftentimes, about how to ask, what to ask, and how to brace herself for the answers. But now, there was no thought to the questions that came.

"You getting all that just from looking at the body doesn't make sense. There's something else... And if you tell me you know what he's thinking because you're like him," she hissed, not wanting any of their other co-workers to overhear the conversation, "you know I won't accept it." Just because she knew what Dexter really was didn't mean she liked it, or even accepted it. Hearing that killers thought alike wouldn't help her solve the case. Debra hated thinking of her brother as a killer, preferred to try to think of him the way she did before she learned the truth, but on cases like this one, it was highly difficult to keep that frame of mind.

"I don't want to think of you that way..." she finished softly.

[Dexter Morgan]

Dexter took Debra's barrage of questions and rants stoically, listening to the desperation under it all. Deb was still a little girl under the tough cop exterior. She still needed her daddy and her big brother. Not to protect her from the world, but to lean on when things got tough and shit hit the fan. Debra would never admit it, but Dexter knew all the same. He'd grown up twenty odd years with Debra Morgan, and while some facets of her mystified him beyond all ken, this much he understood about her: she loved him, fiercely, like a sister for her brother. Two years ago, he hadn't understood why she didn't turn him in. It was Rita who offered him the clue, and eventually he came to understand that love, that mysterious emotion that was so alien to him, bound Deb to him.

He was sure, though, that Debra didn't truly know her own motivations for keeping his secret. He dreaded the day she realized, for he was certain that was the day she let him go. Emotions were so inconvenient.

So he smirked, being Debra's reassuring big brother. "I read it in a book. Big psychology book full of treatises on serial killers and their psychological evaluations." Well, he had read a book. There had been serial killers in the book. And a psychologist. And a very darling FBI agent.

Hey, what was one half lie next to dozens of murders?

[Debra Morgan]

"You read it in a fuckin' book?" Deb repeated incredulously. Shaking her head slowly, she blew a lock of hair out of her face. Vaguely, she thought she might actually like to hear that all killers thought the same way. Woulda been a lot more helpful than a fuckin book. "Yeah, Dex, that really helps..." She had to fight not to roll her eyes. "You have any idea how hard it's gonna be to find ex-military around here?" Narrowing her eyes slightly, she stared at him. "I don't wanna hafta hand over fifty thousand pages of names to the feds when they get here." She was exaggerating, of course, but her point was still the same. If they didn't have solid info to share, they'd be blamed, and the team that was coming down would likely take over the case entirely. She really didn't want to see that happen.

"We gotta have somethin' solid, Dex... Not just an 'I think' and a list of names that might not go anywhere. Sure, LaGuerta probably trusts these guys, but we don't know 'em... For all we know, they could say 'hey, thanks for doing nothing, we'll take it from here'..." She sighed, her breath heavy, her shoulders slumped.

[Dexter Morgan]

Dexter shrugged as though he couldn't be bothered by Deb's outburst. Which, really, he couldn't. He had grown up with her temper, multiple slag-sessions had inured him from getting offended. Well, either that or because he was a psychopathic serial killer who didn't have feelings. Gee, I wonder which was more likely, Dexter thought. He scratched his neck, feeling a little itch that was caused by a drop of sweat dripping from under his hair. The heat was already brilliant, even though they were close to the water, the dog days of summer still clinging on. He was aware that Florida was basically the dumping ground of the retirees, but Deb didn't need to get all huffed up about finding a name for their dead guy.

"Before the coroner took the body away, I saw a chain around his neck." It hadn't been hard for him to look at the body, unlike the others who winced and the rookie cop who had run off to lose his shit anywhere but their crime scene. "On the off chance that dog tag is really his, dental records should confirm it." If it didn't, well then, they were SOL.

[Debra Morgan]

She had to try very hard to resist another outburst. Yeah, having the dead guy's name would really help find the killer... Instead she just sighed heavily. She hated cross-jurisdictional cases. Especially these kind. The kind the feds had to be called in on. God only knew how many they were bringing down.

"Well, if we don't find the bastard that did this, the government will... God only knows how many they're bringing down..." Deb knew that it really didn't matter which team caught the killer, the feds would get the credit because the sonovabitch was killing Marines. But she still wanted Miami to be the ones that got him. But if this... N CSI... whatever organization got him...

Deb shook her head to clear it. No matter who caught him, the end result would be the same. There was only one other outcome, and Debra didn't really want to ponder that one for too long. She wanted to make Dexter promise not to kill this guy before they caught him, but that would mean she was actually thinking about him as a killer, which she'd sworn not to do. Even knowing that he was still on their side, she also knew he was still the Bay Harbor Butcher. The kills had been pinned on someone else, but she knew it was Dexter. She'd been living with him when the news had reported that at least thirty bodies had been found, seen how pale her brother had become, and had known. She hadn't been able to force herself to ask, to confirm, but she didn't need to. Now though, she did have the courage to ask, and damn her resolve to ignore that part of him.

"You're not thinking of killing this bastard, are you? 'Cause we got the fuckin Navy cops practically breathing down our necks... if one of them finds out what you are, I could lose you. You're all I got left, you know?"