CHAPTER 28: CLOSURE
Debra's text had said breakfast, but what she'd meant was interrogation.
"You look good," she said, studying me across the diner booth like I was a suspect. "Better than you have in weeks. You sleeping again?"
"Some." I sipped my coffee—stronger here than the church swill I'd endured at Saint Augustine's. "The nightmares are fading."
"Yeah?" She jabbed her fork at a pile of scrambled eggs. "Mine too. Mostly. Still get them sometimes—wake up and I can feel the straps on my wrists, you know? Like I'm back in that container."
I knew exactly what she meant. The difference was, my nightmares didn't feature me as the victim.
"It gets easier," I said. "That's what the therapist told me, anyway."
"You're seeing someone?" Debra's eyebrows shot up. "Mr. I-Don't-Have-Feelings is actually talking to a professional?"
"Department recommended it. After... everything." The lie came easily. I hadn't seen a therapist—wouldn't know what to tell one that didn't involve confession or commitment. But Debra needed to believe her brother was processing his trauma through normal channels.
"Good." She reached across the table, squeezed my hand. "I'm proud of you, Dex. You saved my life and you're still standing. That takes strength."
If only you knew what kind of strength.
My phone buzzed. Text from Angel: Turn on the news. Channel 7.
I showed Debra. We both turned toward the mounted TV in the corner of the diner, where a waitress was already changing the channel at another patron's request.
"—breaking news this morning as Miami-Dade police have discovered human remains on private property outside the city. Sources tell us at least three sets of remains have been recovered from what investigators are calling a 'burial site' on land owned by Roger Hicks, the sixty-three-year-old choir director who has been missing since last Thursday—"
Debra's fork clattered against her plate. "Holy shit."
The screen showed aerial footage of Hicks' property—the barn, the clearing, the yellow crime scene tape fluttering in the morning breeze. Officers in protective gear moved around the dig site like ants disturbing a nest.
"—Hicks was reported missing by concerned parishioners when he failed to appear for Sunday services. Police now believe the church choir director may have fled the country or taken his own life after an anonymous tip led investigators to this rural property—"
"That's the church case," Debra breathed. "Those cold cases you were looking at—the choir members."
"Looks like someone connected the dots." I kept my voice neutral. Concerned citizen, horrified by the news. Nothing more.
"Jesus Christ." She shook her head slowly. "A choir director. All those years, hiding in plain sight. How does something like that happen?"
"Monsters are good at hiding." I took another sip of coffee. "That's what makes them monsters."
[MIAMI METRO — FORENSICS LAB — 2:15 PM]
The Hicks case wasn't officially mine—different jurisdiction, different department—but news traveled fast through law enforcement circles. By afternoon, everyone at Miami Metro was talking about the church burial site.
"Five bodies," Masuka announced, bursting into my lab with the enthusiasm of a man who lived for grotesque details. "Three identified from the original cold cases, two more they're still working on. DNA's going to take weeks, but dental records are already matching."
"That's efficient."
"Gets better. Or worse, depending on your perspective." He leaned against my workstation, practically vibrating with morbid excitement. "The ME found evidence of—" he lowered his voice conspiratorially "—sexual assault. Pre-mortem. This Hicks guy wasn't just killing them. He was..."
"I get the picture, Vince."
"Right. Sorry." He had the decency to look slightly abashed. "It's just—you spend years working cases like this, you think you've seen everything. Then some choirmaster turns out to have a personal cemetery and suddenly the bar gets lower."
"Evil surprises us. That's part of what makes it evil."
Masuka nodded sagely, as if I'd said something profound. "Deep, man. Very deep." He wandered off, already pulling out his phone to spread the news further.
I turned back to my work. Blood samples from an unrelated domestic dispute, telling their own small story of violence and pain. Ordinary darkness. The kind that didn't make headlines.
The Hicks story would dominate the news cycle for a few days—longer if they identified more victims or found evidence pointing to additional crimes. Then it would fade, replaced by the next atrocity, the next monster pulled blinking into the light.
And Roger Hicks himself? The man, not the headlines?
He'd never be found. The Gulf Stream was thorough.
[SYSTEM UPDATE: OPERATION CLOSURE VERIFIED] [PUBLIC NARRATIVE: SUSPECT FLED/SUICIDE] [HEAT ASSESSMENT: NO CONNECTION TO HOST] [CLASSIFICATION: SUCCESS]
The Dark Passenger stirred briefly—not hunger, just satisfaction. A job well done. A monster removed. The system working exactly as designed.
This is what we do, Harry's voice murmured. This is what we're for.
[DEBRA'S APARTMENT — 7:45 PM]
She'd asked me to come over after her shift. Family liaison duty—sitting with the Chens, the Williams family, the Ruizes as they learned their sons had been found. Years of not knowing, finally ended.
Debra sat on her couch with a glass of wine she wasn't drinking, staring at nothing.
"It's the mothers," she said finally. "That's the part that gets me. They knew. All those years, they knew their boys were dead. But knowing and having proof are different things."
"Closure matters."
"Does it?" She turned to look at me, eyes red-rimmed. "Mrs. Chen thanked me today. Thanked me. For telling her that her son was murdered and buried in a field like garbage. Like that was somehow a gift."
"It was. The not-knowing is worse."
"Is it, though?" Debra's voice cracked. "At least when you don't know, you can pretend. You can imagine they ran away, started a new life somewhere. Stupid, but... possible. Now? Now there's nothing left but bones and a grave and the knowledge that someone they trusted did that to them."
I sat down beside her. Put my hand on her shoulder.
"The families can grieve now," I said. "They can bury their sons properly. Say goodbye. That matters, Deb. That's not nothing."
She leaned into me, the way she had in the weeks after Brian. Seeking comfort from the brother she thought she knew.
"How did they find them?" she asked. "The burial site, I mean. Anonymous tip, they said, but who knew? Hicks kept this secret for years. Who finally figured it out?"
"Maybe someone saw something. A neighbor, a parishioner. Someone who couldn't live with what they suspected."
"Yeah. Maybe." She finished her wine in one long swallow. "I hope whoever it was knows what they did. Giving those families answers. That's worth something."
I know, I thought. I know exactly what I did.
"It's worth everything," I said.
[RITA'S HOUSE — DECEMBER 2006]
The weeks between the Hicks discovery and Christmas passed in a blur of routine and ritual.
Work continued. Cases came and went. The burial site yielded two more victims—five total, all young men, all former choir members, all killed over a span of twelve years. Roger Hicks became a cautionary tale, a boogeyman for parents warning their children about strangers who seemed trustworthy.
The investigation into his disappearance went nowhere. No credit card activity. No sightings at airports or bus stations. No body, despite searches of his home and property. The prevailing theory was suicide—a man who knew the walls were closing in, choosing to end things on his own terms.
I let them believe that.
Now I stood in Rita's living room, untangling a string of Christmas lights that had somehow become a Gordian knot since last year's holiday season.
"Pull the green one," Cody instructed from his position on the couch. "No, the other green one."
"They're all green, buddy."
"The lighter green."
I pulled. The knot tightened.
"This is why some people buy artificial trees with pre-strung lights," I muttered.
"Where's the fun in that?" Rita appeared from the kitchen carrying mugs of hot chocolate—real cocoa, not the powdered kind, with actual marshmallows bobbing on the surface. "Christmas is supposed to be work. That's what makes it meaningful."
"Is that in the Bible somewhere?"
"Book of Rita, chapt er twelve." She handed me a mug, kissed my cheek. "The part about suffering building character."
Astor emerged from her bedroom, phone in hand, the permanent expression of teenage annoyance softening slightly at the sight of hot chocolate. "Is Dexter staying for dinner?"
"If he wants to," Rita said, glancing at me. "You're always welcome, you know that."
I looked around the living room—the half-decorated tree, the children drinking cocoa, the woman who'd invited me into her home despite all the ways I could hurt her. Normal life. Human life. The mask I wore, becoming less of a mask with every passing day.
"I'd like that," I said. "Let me just conquer these lights first."
Cody giggled. "You're losing to Christmas decorations."
"Christmas decorations are my nemesis."
I got back to work on the knot, and for a moment—just a moment—I understood why people built lives like this. Why they gathered in warm rooms and strung lights and pretended the darkness outside didn't exist.
Because sometimes pretending was the only way to survive.
"Dexter?" Cody's voice pulled me back from wherever I'd drifted. "Is Santa real?"
The lights came free in my hands, finally untangled. Small victory.
"What do you think?" I asked, buying time.
"Mom says he's real. But Tyler at school says it's just parents pretending."
I considered the question. A child asking about belief. About the stories we tell ourselves to make the world bearable.
"I think," I said carefully, "that some things are worth believing in. Even if we're not sure they're real."
Cody's brow furrowed. "That doesn't make sense."
"It will," I said. "When you're older."
Rita caught my eye across the room and smiled—grateful, I think, for the diplomatic answer. For not destroying her son's innocence with cold rationality.
Some things are worth believing in.
Like justice. Like the Code. Like the idea that monsters could be stopped, even when the system failed.
I hung the lights on the tree and pretended to be human.
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