Marcus White
Setting: "See-Through"


A/N: I'm taking Thanksgiving off, so next update will be on the 27th. Have a happy holiday!

I pull up the driveway slowly, rock to a stop a few yards off the bumper of a red Civic that's already parked there. For a brief moment, I debate whether or not I should roll the windows down, whether it'll make any difference. Finally decide to crack them before killing the engine and stepping out of the car, leaving my sunglasses in a cup holder as I go.

The heat hits like a sledgehammer made of steam, and I'm already sweating as I head from the car up to the front door. To the west, the setting sun burns through the leaves of palm and buttonwood trees, over rooftops. I find myself looking at it after I hit the doorbell, feeling oddly keyed to the moment.

I'm not sure how this conversation is going to go.

It's not long before I hear footsteps, then the sound of a lock turning, and the door pops open.

"Officer Morgan?" the woman who opened it asks without preamble. She's in her forties, black, and a little overweight, wearing slacks and a patterned, dressy-ish, sleeveless shirt that probably spent most of the day hidden beneath a blazer. Her hair hangs in dark, tight ringlets around her face.

"Yes," I say. "And you're Tamara White?"

"Yes," she says. She leans forward, pushes the screen door that's separating us out, and I back up to let it swing past. "Come in," she says when it's open, gesturing me inside.

"Thanks," I say, stepping past her and into the house. She lets the screen door swing shut behind me, then gently closes the main door. It's at least twenty degrees cooler in here, and I breathe a small sigh of relief.

"Sorry about the mess," she says completely unnecessarily as she starts walking toward a couple couches. The house opens into a neat-looking living room that smells vaguely of dog and lavender oil. "I hope you're not allergic."

At her words I notice the thin coat of dog hair covering absolutely everything. Great. "No," I say.

"I put my dog in the yard, but he's a shedder and his fur gets everywhere. I vacuumed yesterday, if you can believe it."

"I can believe it." Resigning myself to my pants' fate, I follow her to the couches.

She seems nervous as she turns to me. "Do you want anything? Coffee? Tea? Water? Coke?"

"No, thank you." I shake my head.

"Okay." She indicates the area. I note a glass of soda sweating on the coffee table next to a laptop and a cell phone. "Want to sit down?"

"Sure." I sit across from the table, in a comfortable chair that seems to want to absorb me. I sit up in it, watching as she goes back to where she was obviously sitting earlier, crosses her legs. "I just wanted to say," I start, because she looks so tense, "I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thanks," she says. "I'll admit it felt strange when I got the call that you had found him. That he was one of those bodies I've been seeing on the news." She pauses. "But I guess I already knew something must've happened to him, for him to have disappeared the way that he did."

"The detective you spoke with before said you last saw your brother in May of 2004?" I ask.

"Yeah." She nods.

"But he was reported missing by a friend of his in July?" I'm just confirming facts at this point. I know Ramos already asked all this last week.

"Yeah." Another nod. "But like I told the other detective I spoke with, I wasn't very close with Mark."

"Any particular reason, if you don't mind my asking?"

She hesitates, and I instantly regret the direct approach. "He just…" she trails off. "I don't know. We never really got along. We had a sort of polite truce, I guess you could call it, but we mostly didn't keep in contact. The last time I spoke to him was on his birthday, which was May 17th. I doubt we were on the phone longer than five minutes." She stops. "I'm not really answering your question, am I?"

"It's okay," I say. "I just want to know what kind of man your brother was."

"What kind of man?" she repeats. And then she looks off for a second. "I've been following the news on this investigation pretty closely since I found out he was one of the people who were killed. At lunch today I saw the press release you put out." She looks back at me. "Is it true they were all killers?"

Shit.

I flash back to the meeting this afternoon, shortly before the press release, when Matthews told us he was going to release the common profile of our victims. Lundy and I and half the cops in the room weren't particularly happy as we watched his statement because it felt like we were giving away our only lead, but it never even occurred to me— or, apparently, to Matthews —how the news would affect any of the victims' relatives who heard it. Especially because while 13 of the victims were associated with one or multiple homicides, not all of them had been convicted for one, or hadn't been connected to anything since they'd served their time.

And then there were the others, like Marcus White, who'd never been suspected of anything at all, who were just down there for reasons we have yet to figure out.

City in chaos or no, it was premature.

But, then, what the fuck do I know?

"13 of the 18 people we recovered were associated with murder, yes," I answer. "But your brother was not one of the 13."

"I figured." She doesn't say anything more, though she looks like she wants to. "I—" She stops. "How did he die? When I talked with that first detective— what was his name, sorry?"

"Detective Ramos," I supply.

"Detective Ramos," she repeats. "When we spoke he said his autopsy hadn't been completed yet. Do you know anything more now?"

Fuck me, this doesn't get any easier. "Yes." But I don't think there's a way to soften it. "He was stabbed in the chest, once. He died instantly." Though who fucking knows how long he was left strapped to that table…

"Oh," she says. After a beat she reaches for her soda, takes a long drink of it.

"I'm sorry," I say. "We can take a break if you need to."

"No." She shakes her head. "I'm fine, really. I've had awhile to think about this now." She still looks like she wants to say something, but instead she takes another sip of soda.

"Alright." After another moment passes, I decide to nudge her. "I know you weren't close with your brother," I say, "but can you think of any reason he would've been targeted by the Bay Harbor Butcher?"

Another beat, then she sets down the glass. Slowly. "Yes."

My attention sharpens as she recrosses her legs, looking like she's struggling to voice her thoughts. I wasn't expecting her to say that.

"Sorry, I don't know how to say this," she says finally. "I don't even know why I think this. I don't have any proof."

"Take your time."

She starts picking at a cuticle. "Mark…" She trails off. "This is going to sound ridiculous. But I always…" Again, she stops. "I work for an international engineering firm." Now I have no idea where she's going. "I went to school in Germany, spent most of my 20s in Europe. I came back Stateside to take a job with the firm I'm currently with because they wanted to shuttle me back and forth between our European offices. It's only in the last few years that I've stopped moving around so much, since Mark disappeared and I had to come back to deal with what he left behind." She stops picking at her fingers, flattens her palms against her legs.

"My parents had property. Like this house." She gestures around. "And some others. When they were setting up their estate, I basically told them to leave all of it to Mark, because at the time I thought I'd eventually end up staying in Germany permanently. I figured I wouldn't want to deal with any of it, and he could use the money anyway. He never really…" She trails off, then continues, "When he died, he was a tow-truck driver." She looks slightly abashed. "I was doing fine."

I nod, starting to guess where this is going.

"I was in Munich when they died— my parents. They died in a car accident." Her fingers are drifting back together. "I still don't really know what happened. There was an investigation into the accident, and they said it was a brake failure. Obviously, I flew back for the funeral. When I got here…" She's started picking again. "I don't know. I don't think I can explain this. I've never talked about this before."

"It's okay." I nod to encourage her. "Take your time."

She's quiet for a moment before speaking again. "There was just something about him," she says. "I hadn't really seen him since the last holiday I was here— probably Christmas or something, I don't remember. There was something about his reaction. He didn't want to go to the funeral. He didn't want to hold the wake. He just… there was just something off. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I understand," I say. Even if my recent track record for detecting that kind of shit has been… poor.

Crystal fucking clearly.

"He was always kind of an alcoholic, but those couple weeks I was here it was like he was never sober," she continues. "At first I thought it was just grief, but he said some strange things."

"What kind of things?"

She shrugs, hesitates. "I… don't remember."

She's obviously lying about that, but I don't push it. This is a conversation, not an interrogation. And, besides, I know what it's like not to want to think about something. "But it was enough to make you suspicious?" I ask.

"Yeah." She nods.

"About what?"

Again, she hesitates. "I think… I think Mark might've had something to do with the car accident." She looks horrified about the words that just left her mouth.

I don't say anything, but the thought is immediate: that makes 14 out of 18.

"He was a tow truck driver. He used to work in a garage. He knew about cars. And I know he worked on their car a few times." She stops. "For a long time I buried the idea, because it just seemed so terrible and insane. I mean, he was my brother. I know he wasn't happy with his life, and I know he resented me and my parents for our success, but to kill them?"

"You think he killed them out of resentment?"

She shakes her head. "No. I think he killed them because the living trust was in his name, and because he was sick of his job and of being poor."

"What made you believe he did it?" I ask, when she doesn't go on.

Another shrug. "Honestly, I wasn't sure I did until I saw the news this afternoon. When I realized he'd been down there with a bunch of other killers." She starts reaching for her soda, changes her mind. "He's been missing for almost three years now. I knew he had to be dead, because he never would've left all the money and the property, never would've let me move into this house, never would've left his shiny new Mercedes in the garage." She's talking without hesitation now, maybe finally putting a voice to all this awful shit that's been inside her all these years. "When he disappeared, he'd already sold one of the houses and had this one on the market. He'd quit his job, moved out of his dinky apartment to live in the condo my parents owned in Surfside."

Surfside, which runs against Bay Harbor.

"I went back to Germany as soon as I could," she goes on. "I was just disgusted by what was going on, by what I felt when I saw him. The last time I talked to him was when I called him for his birthday, for the first time in I don't know how long. I was just wanting to… I don't know. I guess I just wanted to know if I was wrong about my suspicions, and to see if he was doing okay."

"And was he?"

She nods. "Oh, yeah. He was great." Her voice is acrid.

"How long was this after your parents passed?"

"They died in February. So…" she trails off as she counts, "three months." She drinks her soda, drains it. The ice rattles against the glass.

Already I can't wait to get back to Lundy, to tell him about this. But there's another question left to ask, even if I can guess the answer: "Do you have any idea how the Butcher found your brother?"

"I have no idea," she says, predictably. "But, then, I wasn't here, and I wasn't really involved with his life. I can't imagine he told anyone though. Maybe you can ask his friend, the one who reported he was gone. Gabe… something. I don't remember his name."

"I have it."

She nods. Exhales. "You have no idea how strange it is to talk about this as if it's true. But it can't be a coincidence, can it? For me to think this, and for him to have been found down there with over a dozen killers?"

"The Butcher killing him isn't proof positive that he was guilty," I repeat Lundy's mantra to her— though, even saying that, her suspicion is pretty much enough for me.

She nods, looks down at her cup.

"You've never told anyone about this?" I ask after a beat of silence.

"Never." She shakes her head. "It was too horrible to think about, let alone talk about. And what if I was wrong? No. I just wanted to forget it, honestly. Especially since he was dead anyway."

"I understand." I nod.

She exhales again. "I think I need more," she says after a second. "Do you mind if I…?" She lifts the glass and waggles it.

"No. Go ahead."

Nodding, she gets up. "Are you sure I can't get you anything?"

"I'm okay. But thank you." I offer her a small, polite smile.

"Alright. I'll be right back."

I nod as she walks to the kitchen, then disappears behind the island. I hear the fridge open, sounds of rummaging. I suspect she's taking her time, and I don't blame her. When I look to the left of the island, behind the dining furniture and on the other side of a sliding door, I realize a large lab mix is watching me through the glass. When I make eye contact with it, it woofs.

Smiling slightly, I look away, glance around the room. Lots of pictures and knick knacks, bookcases filled with books in German and English, a huge and almost certainly expensive painting of some European street, a couple of dog toys scattered around.

I wonder how much of the narrative she's leaving out, or that she simply wasn't aware of. Wonder how the hell the Butcher figured out Marcus White was a killer even though his own sister wasn't sure. What if she did tell someone and just doesn't remember, or doesn't want to say? Like an old boyfriend or something? I can't imagine being able to keep it to myself if I'd thought something like this about Dexter.

Then again I can't even imagine thinking something like this about Dexter.

I hear the sound of a can popping open. Liquid fizzing.

Or was she really the only one who knew what he'd done? Did Marcus make the mistake of blabbing the reason for his newfound fortune to someone? Maybe to his buddy Gabe?

I blink as the lights come on, look back toward the kitchen as Tamara walks in with a fresh drink.

"Just noticed it was getting dark," she says, then takes a sip. "Sorry about leaving you in it."

It hadn't even registered with me. "It's okay," I say.

She goes back to the couch and reclaims her seat. "So what else is there?" she asks. "I'm sorry. I don't know that I've been that helpful."

"Oh, you have," I reassure her. "And it's just a few more things, and then I'll let you get back to your night."

"Okay." She nods.

Sitting forward, I fish my notebook and a pen out of my pocket, then unscrew the point. And even though I'm sure she doesn't have much else of use to say, I go ahead and start running through the list. Just in case.