The next day, Dexter considered the economic impact of getting a meat grinder. It would certainly make it easier to feed the head to the local wildlife. Not to mention the removal of all identifying markers would make any possible investigation several times more difficult. But industrial-grade meat grinders were a fair bit beyond Dexter's budget…
"You seem thoughtful, Dexter."
Pulled out of his musings, Dexter turned to regard Barry. It had been a year. Silently, Dexter pulled out a small pad he kept on his person. He'd gotten it for the job, and he'd kept it for Barry. 'Considering meat grinder.'
Barry leaned over, quickly reading the words. "A meat grinder? For, like, sausage?"
'No.'
Humming, Barry absently hosed down a patch of no-longer-dried blood. A few hours ago, there'd been a woman lying atop all that blood, staring blankly at a hotel across the road. Cops were there within ten minutes, took photos, charted off the body, and an hour later, here they were. "Pretty expensive things. How much've you got saved up?"
'Not enough.'
"Ah. Yeah, that could be a problem. Taking a loan… Hm. Have you considered daylight robbery?" Saying so, Barry turned to give Dexter an innocent, rabbit-like look.
Dexter quickly scribbled, 'Too risky,' on the notepad before showing it to Barry.
"Well, you can always try stripping. I've heard the Pink Flamingo's looking for new escorts? Ah, assuming you're willing to sell your body alongside your dignity. How much worse can it be than this?"
For once, Dexter refused to answer.
Prostitutes… Might not make too shabby victims. They're bound to carry more cash than most, which could bolster his meat-grinder-jar substantially. There it was, then. An answer. Mutely, Dexter nodded to himself.
Beside him, Barry blanched. "Uh, um, don't do that though. Not for real. Right? You won't, right? I'm not-, it was a joke, okay? Don't go and become an escort!"
Dexter glanced at him. Without saying or writing anything, he stood up, and moved over towards the tape.
"Dexteeeerrrr~!"
And so the work continued. Driven by his goal of buying an industrial grade meat grinder, Dexter set out to butcher like he never had before. Once a month was too sparse, so once a week it was. Going after randos was no longer viable. Too much chance for something unwelcome to happen. But prostitutes and the homeless had a pretty good chance of carrying some sickness or another, which his prospective buyers wouldn't be too happy to have. Nevertheless, it was the lesser of two evils, and so, he took it.
It had been three months since Dexter had opened his butcher shop. The room was no longer perpetually empty, but instead held many interesting things. A number of mostly-drained, yet to be butchered bodies hung from meat hooks on the far side of the room. A few choice cuts were hanging and had been for a while, tenderising in the cold room. Since buckets were no longer viable to store all the damn blood, Dexter had been forced to invest in barrels, something that hampered his quest to buy a meat grinder quite substantially.
More problematic than that, however, was his growing collection of heads.
The guts could be fed to animals. The bones wouldn't be a problem once he got the grinder. But the heads were starting to bother him. There just wasn't any good way of storing them for a longer time. While in his almost freezing butcher room they could be kept pretty much in their original state, and he had to admit that he did enjoy their company somewhat, but it just didn't fit the otherwise spotless interior. Every time he had a new visitor, which was just about once every week, he always took the time to clean up everything unsanitary they left. But the heads…
What in the world could he do with them?
While still mulling this question, Dexter made his monthly errand run.
Butchering all the bodies at once was easier than spending an entire night once a week, and this special day usually happened on the final Saturday of the month. During this day, once the sun went down, he also went around town by bike, selling off the cuts for cheap to prospective buyers. It was mostly restaurants, but a few private buyers had also taken an interest. It was cheap, and he had good cuts.
And it had gone just fine, until this night.
"No, I… No buy. Sorry. No buy," the owner of the cerdo y pechuga said, shaking his head. Dexter froze where he stood. The stout man in front of him made a face at the plastic bag filled with meat Dexter was holding out to him. "No buy."
Dexter felt his lips twist into a frown. This was the third place to refuse his meat this night. The third. In a silent question, Dexter cocked his head.
The owner took a step back. "We… test meat. Not good. Dog, fine… Cheap. But this-,"
Oh, dog was fine to eat but not human? Dogs were all lean, tough meat. Stringy and tasteless, especially when compared to the obviously higher-quality meats Dexter carried. Deep inside, he could feel the blood within his head begin to bubble and churn.
"Please, we not-,"
Before he could even think about what he was doing, Dexter's trusty butcher's knife had leapt from behind his back and slit across the owner's throat. A spray of startled blood misted the front of Dexter's shirt and his nose wrinkled in disgust.
"Blrrghh, bhhhhh…" the owner said, clutching at his neck before hitting his back against the backdoor to his restaurant, his knees buckling out below him, crumpling together as he did.
And for just a second, everything was silent, and the only thing Dexter could see was the betrayal fading from the owner's eyes as he went softly into that dark night.
Dexter didn't have time to enjoy it before a distant dog's bark brought him back to reality. The blood in his brain was no longer merely bubbling; it was boiling and sputtering and bursting and he wanted to slit his own throat but he kept it down. He had to run. There were obviously no cameras nearby, but the second someone gave the alley a second glance, he'd be done for. Dexter took a step towards the nearest exit, only to pause.
The meat he carried in a bag was too heavy to bring along effectively. He wouldn't be able to run fast enough to escape should someone be in pursuit.
His dark eyes turned onto the still warm body.
Yes, that would be a good dumping ground. And a lesson to the rest of his unfortunate buyers on whose wrath they had incurred. Acting swiftly, Dexter raised the bulging plastic bags over the lukewarm body and let the paper-wrapped pieces of meat tumble out. Once he'd dumped the contents of the final bag, the body had collected quite a large pile of meat atop its lap. Dexter smirked at the sight before stuffing the bags in his satchel and taking off.
He went straight home. And since nobody came to bust his in door all night (if they did, he was ready), Dexter assumed he was off the hook.
Morning arrived, as it always did, and Dexter headed out to work. A few hours later, he was squatting in the horrid Miami heat, cleaning out half-melted brain matter from the folds of a rose statue with a comically small brush. Barry, surely sweating just as much as Dexter, stood on the other side of the statue, wiping down already cleaned parts. "You hear what happened last night, Dexter?"
Barry didn't seem to notice the way Dexter froze at the innocuous question. Hesitantly, Dexter perked an eyebrow.
Much as Barry usually talked about recent murders—his hobby of choice—he began with a wistful sigh. "Yeah, pretty standard slashing. Some Cuban guy off Dixie. Funny thing, he was totally covered in meat. Like, a small mountain of it! By the time his body was found they'd already started rotting in this damn heat, and it was really the smell of the meat that gave it away."
Dexter tried not to give away his rabid interest. A nod of the head urged Barry to continue.
"You agree it's weird, right? That much meat… The first officers that arrived assumed it was, like, beef or something, but the lead officer on the scene—Morgan, something—demanded that they do a test on all that meat. Just be sure. Maybe it was a hunch or something, because…" Barry paused, chuckling to himself, a sly glint in his eye. "It wasn't beef."
Dexter tried to show surprise but failed miserably.
It took Barry a few seconds to reel from his campfire story shock ending. "It was human meat. All of it. And there was a real pile of it, too. In the paper, they said it was meat from, like, four or five different people, but they couldn't be sure yet. So far the whole thing is too absurd for anything to come up with a theory more logical than Sweeney Todd, but I think I've got it all figured out. I think I might even know who did it."
Dexter stopped scrubbing the statue. Mechanically, he turned to look at Barry.
How fast could he slash his throat? The owner hadn't seen it coming. Nobody ever did. But there were other people around now, unlike last night. They would see. He'd have to do it when nobody was looking, and then run as fast as he could. He would have to be on his feet before Barry dropped to the floor. Silently, he touched the handle of the short knife stashed in the back of his pants.
And still… he hesitated.
"Yeah," Barry said, unaware of how close to death he had been for all of three seconds, "I know exactly who it was." He grinned. His eyes gleamed. "Aliens."
Dexter fumbled and the brush fell from his hand.
"Startling, yeah? Nobody else could figure it out, but I got it in minutes." As Barry continued talking, Dexter picked the brush back up, his brain buzzing. "It's simple, really, but they don't want you to figure it out. See, it's like this…" And as Barry told his tale of how the Cuban sandwich shop owner sold his customers to aliens who butchered them into meat, which was then fed to other customers, Dexter silently zoned out.
He'd almost killed Barry right then and there. Over something as petty as a conspiracy theory with as much credibility as the average politician. It wouldn't even have been difficult.
But as he sat there, crouched, slowly brushing off brain matter, another thought wormed its way in.
Why didn't he kill him?
Dexter didn't have emotions. He didn't feel empathy, and he felt no remorse for those he'd killed. Meat was meat. Simple as that. And yet, even as he mentally brought forth the image of Barry, dangling by the leg inside his butcher shop, Dexter could find no joy in it. None of the savage, dark glee that usually accompanied his process. It just wasn't there.
He even had trouble imagining Barry with his throat open and his blood staining the pavement. It just… wasn't… right.
If Barry had known, if he'd been right on the money, would Dexter have killed him?
Dexter felt his clawed grip grow tighter around the brush.
No. He wouldn't have. And he had no idea why.
But he knew that this was a weakness. What he had with Barry… it was simple, it was pleasant, it was the closest thing he'd ever had to a friendship, and it was dangerous. If he'd been this close to anyone at the foster home, he wouldn't have been so quick to earn their ire. If he'd felt like this for one of his foster siblings, he wouldn't have left them to their loveless "parents." If anyone at Dodge City had been this near to him, he would never have left it.
He wouldn't have been able to do the things that he does.
Dexter grit his teeth. Silently, he turned his eyes towards Barry as he flapped on about extraterrestrials and human meat.
Dexter could not afford to have such a weakness.
He had to do something about it.
But not now. Not yet. Not today, and not tomorrow either. For now, he still had the issue of his entering the limelight. If it had just been the shop owner, the murder would simply have been called "grisly" and "shocking" and then the next day it would get overshadowed by a slightly more grisly and shocking murder and everyone would move on and the whole ordeal would be forgotten within days. That was the way of life in Miami.
But this wasn't a normal murder.
That night, in defiance of Dexter's own budget, he bought an issue of the Miami Herald. On the third page, below an article on the Australian royal family adopting one of the queen's corgis, stood a small but sweet shocker about the sandwich shop owner covered in human meat. Dexter didn't bother to read most of the article since he already knew that the cuts on the meat were made by the same knife that slashed the victim's throat, so he just skipped to the quotes taken from the officer on scene.
Dexter put his name to memory.
"We've seen bloodier scenes," Lieutenant Harry Morgan said, "but the truly shocking aspect of this scene was the meat placed on top of the victim. They were all choice cuts, rump, sirloin, etcetera, but when we tested the origin of the meat, we found that it was, ah, human. On account of the similarity between the, erm, human cuts, and those kept in the store walk-ins, we decided to test those as well, and… there was a clear, eh, connection. We are not saying that this meat was necessarily used in the preparation of the sandwiches, but-,"
Dexter let his eye hop back up to the title of the article. "MR LOVETT'S HUMAN SANDWICHES—BUT WHERE IS SWEENEY TODD?"
Lieutenant Harry Morgan continued, "There is little pointing to this being more than a one-time deal. Had any other shops been using this, ah, sort of meat, then we would have known by now. This sort of passion murder would only happen if…" The Lieutenant paused. The article wrote something about an officer suddenly appearing and whispering into his ear. "Yes, the theory we have now is that, uh, he was being bribed with this meat, but once he figured out-,"
"Bribed how?" the author of the article posited.
"We-, we can't know. It hasn't been that long since the investigation began, and we have yet to interview the workers here, so…" Quote from the article: 'The tall Lieutenant stood up straight, here, and put on a look that seemed taken straight out of Hawaii 5-O,' "Until further notice, we have no more comments."
And there it ended. Dexter put down the paper. Well, that was a waste of 50 cents.
Desperate to excuse his purchase, Dexter spent an hour or so reading through the entire paper. There were a lot of big words Dexter didn't know, but the words he did understand left him with a pretty mellow and pleasant feeling of justice in the murders he had committed so far. Humanity deserved it, all things considered.
The next day arrived, and still no police officers bust down Dexter's door. Yet one more day passed. Barry didn't say anything more about the case, so it was up to Dexter to find information on it. Truthfully, he had expected some of his other customers to come out into the light and admit their guilt in the whole ordeal. At least one should have had the moral conscience to admit to the police that he had knowingly sold human meat to his patrons.
The fact that nobody had even tried almost made Dexter a little upset. He hadn't done his errands for that month, and he likely wouldn't. But he still wanted to have a few visitors over.
But what to do with their meat? Not to mention the meat he still had left from everyone else?
Until he realised the truth of it all, Dexter didn't know. But once he learned, there was no taking it back.
It had been a little over a month since his public kill. The newspaper had tried to give him a number of nicknames ("America's Sweeney Todd," "Meat-Maker," "Bay Harbour Butcher," etc.) but since there was nothing that really came about from the murder in terms of arrests or further victims, nothing stuck. The world moved on. Dexter, on the other hand, only increased his vigilance. He picked his victims well, and he picked them often.
His little shop was almost completely full. On his monthly 'Butcherday', he separated well over 7 different bodies into over a hundred kilos worth of choice cuts. It was a massive pile, and with nowhere else to put it without the threat of rot, he had to keep it in his shop. He'd been able to outfit a part of it into a proper walk-in freezer, but even this was hardly enough to keep all of the meat.
His number of heads was now at 19. Soon to be 20, as soon as he brought this middle-aged patron of the Pink Flamingo to his maker.
"Where am-," was about as much as the man could say before Dexter slashed his throat, taking his weekly bout of pleasure in how the light faded from his eyes and-,
And a misstep made the bucket below the man's open neck buckle to the side, spilling blood on the floor and splattering Dexter's workboots and staining the pristine floor and making Dexter silently curse as he fell to his knees, clawing for the bucket, his right hand being no use in its constantly half-curled form, his left hand instead reaching out, but the bucket rolled away, and when he tried to reach for it, he instead slipped on the still seeping puddle, sprawling out below the stream of blood still falling, atop the already pooling blood.
Dexter's eyes went wide. Lukewarm, metallic blood splattered across his neck and over his head, seeping down his eyes, blotting the world with red.
And there it was again. The child's scream. Wailing like a raid siren.
No, no, no, Dexter chanted to himself, his teeth gritting, pressing both hands against his ears, no longer caring at all for the bucket.
His mind went blank and red.
The scream echoed through his brain through his mind all the way into the deep pool of red that was everything he was, and the scream parted the red sea inside of him, exposing the black bottom.
There were two children. Not one. One that screamed, and one that sat silent. Dexter had always assumed the scream to be his, but it wasn't so. That scream was his brother's. And through his red haze of blood, Dexter saw his brother with full clarity. Small, with curly brown hair, and a little dopey. "Brian," the thing that swam in the deep red said. 'Brian,' Dexter repeated. Tasting it. Letting the flavour of his name spread across his tongue.
Yes, that was right. Brian Moser. His brother.
A pair of sharp eyes reared from deep inside Dexter's memory, and the thought almost made him laugh.
His brother—a cop?
And then another memory perked up. A woman. A coarse woman with a penchant for violence. A sister.
A false sister.
Dexter wanted to growl but when he opened his mouth he found it filling with disgusting slippery metallic salty horrible blood and all of a sudden he wasn't inside the seafloor of his bloody mind, he was just on the floor of his butcher shop, covered head to toe in blood and dead drool. Groaning, Dexter tried to push himself off the floor, only to bump his head into the skull of his latest victim. Scowling, he crawled out from under him. Everything was covered in blood. Foul, sticky blood.
Filled with indignation, Dexter spent the evening cleaning. He went home still covered from head to toe in blood, only stopped by a random stranger, ("Are you-, are you okay?!" Nod. "Are you… hurt?" Shake head. "Is that your blood?" Another shake. "Then…?") with whom he disengaged somewhat quickly. Once home, he spent a long hour showering, and then he went out again. It was too early in the morning to be quite bright yet, but it would come soon.
He headed down to the police station.
After waiting about half an hour, the reception area opened and Dexter headed on in.
"How may I-,"
Dexter slid a note across the desk. The receptionist—a man in his early 30's—hesitantly read it before glancing up at Dexter. "'Is Brian here?'... We have several officers by that name. Is this in regards to a case? Do you have something to report? If you would like a sign language interpreter, we can provide one should it be needed."
Dexter slid another note across the reception desk.
"...I'm sorry, but saying that he has a sister does not narrow it down."
Dexter internally frowned and brought out his notepad, quickly writing another, 'Adoptive sister. Also officer. Same department.' After a second or so of deliberating, he added, 'Murder.'
"Homicide department… Tell you what: I'll see what I can do. Give me a second." And then, he began typing things into a little computer behind the counter. Dexter waited patiently. After a minute or so, the receptionist spoke again, "Are you thinking of Brian Morgan? His sister, Debra Morgan, also works in the same department. What did you-,"
Brian Morgan. Brian Morgan. Brian Morgan.
Dexter frowned at the memory of a certain Lieutenant in the papers, but shook it off. Coincidences were a frightening thing, but Morgan was a common name. Not replying to the words of the receptionist, Dexter promptly spun on his heel and marched out. Brian Morgan. Brian Morgan.
Debra Morgan. False sister. Should he do something about her?
Deep in his thoughts, Dexter didn't hear the things the receptionist shouted after him, nor did he see him typing a little number into his phone, preparing to call a certain Brian Morgan regarding a strange man who came looking for him.
That day, Brian Morgan received a pretty interesting phone call from reception. It had taken a year and a half until he got his own desk, but now that he did, he couldn't be happier. Not that he experienced such trivial emotions. No, it was simply a turn of phrase. However, the phone call—and the subsequent notes that were left with him—did elicit a certain emotion that he felt in full. Namely; interest.
The notes were so badly scrawled that it was difficult for him to even tell what they said. It was like someone had painted the beak of a chicken and spread corn over a piece of paper, letting the pecks of the bird become lines and its feet only spread the ink more. And still, after a few minutes of decryption, he knew very well what they were asking for. Him. By name. But not his entire name. Only his first name. Him, and his sister.
Interest briefly bubbled into protective anger. Someone searching for him, he could understand. But Debra?
If anyone put their hands on her, he wasn't sure he could restrain himself.
Brian shook his head. Absently, he let his fingers stroke the little cross that hung below his uniform. No violent thoughts. No death. No blood. The words of his father hung heavy in his head, 'Despite what you are, you can still live well. If not for yourself, then for me. If not for me, then for your sister.' Brian smiled. 'You don't have to be what you were made to be.'
Slowly, Brian relaxed again. But one aspect still hung over him.
The receptionists' description. Apparently, the man who had left it had been quite the sight to behold. Dark eyes, a scarred face and body, heavily muscled… If he'd been a foot or two taller, the receptionist said, he would've called for backup.
Still, this was nothing to be worried about. Just a name was not much to go by. And even if he did find Brian, it wasn't as though the gun he carried was just for show.
Content in the situation, Brian collected the three notes and put them in the drawer of his desk.
He had no reason to fear.
In the meantime, Dexter was doing a bit of investigation. He'd called in sick for the first time in a year and a half, giving him the whole day to figure things out. Buying a phone book just to find the man was out of the question, but that didn't mean he couldn't borrow one.
Apparently, Brian Morgan lived down by coconut grove together with his sister. Strange arrangement, but it helped verify that they were indeed the right people. He almost wanted to call up Brian right away, to let him know he had come into town, and now they could finally be together again, and together they could even do away with that fake sister of his. Like he did with Lily.
But talking over the phone was a no-go for Dexter.
Ruefully, he decided to practice patience.
The apartment Brian and his sister shared was less of a condo and more of a hole in the wall big enough for two entire mouse families to occupy. It was not glamorous, but it was in a pretty good part of town—far, far away from where Dexter lived.
For an hour or so, Dexter simply stalked out the home. There was no movement inside. Although it was a pretty good area, the security was relatively lax, and it didn't take Dexter much to reach all the way to the front door. No neighbour was about. Dexter fished a small toolbox out of his pocket, removing his trusty lockpick. He hadn't needed to use it much lately, but he was glad to put it to use. Within ten seconds max, he was inside, smoothly closing the door behind him.
Well inside, he began to look around. It was neat. Clean.
Cool.
He moved through it like a ghost, taking in everything he saw. There were a few bookshelves, containing books both fiction and non-fiction, with titles he couldn't quite grasp. The kitchen was ordinary, and the selection of knives was diverse, all of them kept neat and sharp. Dexter silently nodded in approval.
There were two bedrooms, both equally ordinary, one kept tidy and the other looking like a small hurricane had gone through it. Dexter spent a certain amount of time checking the tidy bedroom: looking beneath the bed, checking the dresser, inspecting the closet.
Nothing.
The thing of most interest was the picture of Jesus Christ that hung over the bed frame. The only thing resembling personal attachment in the whole room.
Dexter left the bedroom.
And he really did search everywhere. He checked the bookshelves, he checked the cupboards, he checked the ventilation unit, he checked the couches, and he even checked beneath the stove. But there was nothing. Nothing that so much as suggested that Brian was not an upstanding member of society in every way possible. The only thing that sullied his image even slightly was the jar of jellied pig's feet in the fridge.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing at all.
Dexter felt an irrational rage rise to the top of the churning red sea in his head. Had he been wrong? Was this the wrong man? Had he hallucinated, psychotically projecting onto this police officer? Was he really that far gone? Dexter let his fist curl closed fully.
No. He couldn't let that be the answer. He had to know.
And as he stood there in the apartment of his long lost brother, he felt a lightbulb go off in his head. He blinked at the polished floorboards. That was it. It really was that simple, wasn't it?
All he had to do was catch his attention.
How fortunate, then, that Brian just so happened to work in homicide.
Smiling softly, Dexter left the apartment exactly as it was when he entered it, leaving nothing behind to give hint to his presence save for his breath.
The air outside, as humid and hot as it was, felt especially light now that Dexter finally knew what to do with all his meat.
A few days later, the owner of a bar and brisket operation was found with his neck sliced open, slumped over the grill at the back of his restaurant. Apparently, the grill hadn't been quite turned off for the night, because the man was found half-charred. This wasn't to mention the rest of the meat found at the crime scene, all piled atop the grill alongside the owner. According to witness testimony from his employees, he'd been left alone to close up shop. By that point, the grill had already been turned off.
For some reason, it had been turned on specifically for his being burnt atop it.
Considering his work on the former murder, Lieutenant Harry Morgan quickly took over. The meat grilled was indeed human meat, but the state of it made that hard to tell, not to mention trying to place gender, age or similar. Trying to identify these additional victims was practically impossible. The only reason they could ascertain that they did indeed come from different people was because of the varying fat contents and the number of duplicate cuts.
But there was one difference between this murder and the last one. The meat in the restaurant's fridge was all beef. They tested all of it and were quite relieved to find it pure.
They even checked the meat in the freezer.
And still, it didn't sit quite right. After several hours of prompting and promising that nothing said in the interrogation would place them under arrest, one older line cook admitted to the presence of some strange meat a few months back. The owner had allegedly been acting strangely, always insisting on closing up shop on certain days of the week.
Most damningly of all, the cook admitted—choked by tears—that the smell of his owner's cooked corpse that morning had smelled a lot like the meat they used to serve.
That was enough for Harry. This was no mere coincidence, and the fact that it had happened twice was an indication of something much bigger than even he wanted to admit. That day, with the cameras shoved in his face, reporters tossing questions at him like loose change, the old Lieutenant reluctantly urged shop owners who had bought strange meat for cheap to report to the police.
Not one person stepped forward.
That was, until a week later.
"And this man, he was…"
"I don't know," the young man said with a Polish accent. "I didn't see his face. Always hidden, always in the dark."
Harry paused, letting the silence briefly choke the air.
"Did you know what you were buying?" the young man beside Harry asked. Harry glanced at his adoptive son. Purely by fatherly instinct, he gave a small smile, but quickly hid it beneath a soft but stringent look.
"He didn't ever tell you what he was selling you, did he?" Harry asked. The young man, the son of an immigrant worker, slowly drew in on himself.
"No. He didn't say. Never said anything at all. He gave meat, and I gave money, and then he left."
"Did he sell to anyone else?" Brian asked smoothly. Quick and considerate. A good question, asked just the right way. Harry was proud to call the man his son.
The young man shook his head. By this point, it was more of a reflex than anything else. "I don't know. But he always carried a lot of meat."
Harry narrowed his eyes. "How much meat?"
For a few seconds, the young man gave no answer, simply staring down at the blank metal table. "Not sure. Over fifty kilos. But he never seemed to struggle with it. He had these two big bags. But he only came once a month. I never asked him to come more often." Suddenly the young man reared up, face twisted in desperation, "I-, I swear I had no choice! Times were hard, and it was cheap, and I-, I didn't know, I thought it might be dog, but-,"
"A bit too big to be dog, don't you think?" Brian said sharply, slicing through the man's sudden hysteria. "You must at least have had a suspicion-,"
Harry held out one hand in front of the younger officer, cutting him short. "When did he stop selling the meat?"
"...Month after that man died, all covered in meat, he didn't show up. I-, I think, had I not bought his meat that night, then… Then maybe…" A shudder quickly shook the young man's form, making him look like no more than a teenager where he sat. It took him a minute or so to gather himself again, and Harry let him. "I don't think such a man should go free."
Harry nodded in his best show of solemn approval. "And we are most pleased that you would come to give us this testimony. When we have him in cuffs, we're sure to call on you again to make sure he stays that way."
The young man lit up in a smile for the first time that day. "I-, it would be my honour, sir!"
Harry smiled back at him.
Later, out in the hallway…
"He knowingly fed human meat to people. And we're just going to let him go? Dad, this is-,"
"Haven't I told you," Harry said slowly, "to call me by my proper title while we're at the station?"
It took a second or so before Brian's face took on the emotion his brain registered as proper: the lips twisting down, his brows furrowing. A perfect show of frustration, just the way Harry had taught him. Putting the kid in acting school had been one of the best things he'd done. "He should still receive some sort of punishment. Whatever happened to justice?"
"Justice will have its due, Brian." Harry almost felt like chuckling. "As it always has, as it always did."
Brian didn't seem too content with the answer, but he chose to show a different emotion, namely hunger. "Da-, sir, how about a lunch to celebrate getting an actual lead on the butcher?" A small smile. Amicable. Sometimes, even Harry could have believed that the young man held real emotions somewhere deep inside. And then, surprisingly, a glint of actual emotion, as he added, "And we can bring Debra, too. She should have finished pestering the lab geeks by this point, wouldn't you say so?"
Ignoring the subtle manipulation into a different question, Harry said, "When will you two start paying for your own lunches? One day I won't be around, you know."
Another small flash of real emotion. Deep inside of him, besides all of the bad that was born in that shipping container, Brian happened to carry a tiny, shining firefly of actual love, one that he reserved only for Harry and Debra. It was so obvious to those who knew, a number that for the moment only contained Harry himself. Debra didn't know, and she could never know. "You will always be with me. Someway or another."
Ominous. Harry decided to take it as a joke and gave a curt chuckle. "Fine, fine. Lunch on me, then. But if you get queasy and decide not to eat because you think the meat might be human…"
Brian gave a peal of laughter that sounded exactly the same as the last time Brian laughed, and the time before that, and the time before that, too. Harry didn't mind it, though. He preferred it to silence.
And off they went to lunch.