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“Of course I’ve got it. And I’ll tell Amy. You know me, honey.”
Yeah, I thought. That’s what I’m afraid of.
* * *
Mason had worried all the way to his place. He’d jogged up the stairs with his heart in his throat, assuring himself that Eric was fine, but something—that same intuition that made him an uncannily successful detective, maybe—was telling him that he wasn’t okay at all. The apartment was the second floor of a two-family house, and the family who owned it rarely used the ground floor but kept it vacant just in case.
More money than brains, maybe, Mason didn’t know. He’d always figured if he held out long enough, they would get sick of keeping it and rent him the whole damn thing.
When he got to the top step his heart was pounding and his mouth was dry. Then he opened the door.
It was like a curtain parting on a nightmare. His brother was on the couch with a .44 Magnum jammed to the side of his head, just above the ear, awkwardly holding the piece with both hands, tears streaming from his reddened eyes. Eyes that shot to Mason’s for an instant, eyes so full of pain Mason could feel it himself.
He lunged and shouted and the gun went off. Earsplitting, that shot in the confines of the small room. The blood spray was like an explosion.
He halted midway to his brother, tripping over himself and falling to his knees in time with Eric falling over sideways on the couch. Rumpling the plastic with which he’d covered it.
“Ahh, God, what the fuck, Eric, whatthefuck...?” He scrambled closer on hands and knees, over more plastic on the floor. There was very little left of his brother’s skull, and he just knelt there with it at eye level, shaking all over, frozen. He was also at eye level with the coffee table, so he saw the note and an odd row of driver’s licenses. And then he started moving again, fumbling for the cell phone in his pocket. Somehow he punched in 911. And then he was talking, giving the address, automatic functions kicking in while his mind reeled, as scrambled as if the bullet had gone into his own brain. Why? Mother. Marie. The boys. Why?
Putting the phone back into his pocket, Mason blinked again at those driver’s licenses.
Then he went still, and so did his reeling brain. Everything stopped. Time froze, a moment drawn out into what felt like eternity. He knew most of those faces. They were the same faces currently pinned up on the bulletin board in his office. All young men, all missing, all presumed dead. No bodies, though. Just empty wallets found in each man’s last known location.
What the hell was Eric doing with these?
Frowning, he looked around the room. Everything was just the way he’d left it this morning, except for the plastic and that duffel bag on the floor, way over by the far wall. He didn’t think that had been there when he’d left. Letter on the table. Eric’s handwriting, always as sloppy and uneven as a third grader’s. Swallowing hard, Mason looked at the note, didn’t touch, just looked.
I am a monster. I kill. Over and over again, I kill. I’m the guy you’re looking for, Mason, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. God, you must be so mad at me right now. But I stopped. I made myself stop. I did the right thing...finally. I know you’ll take care of the boys. It had to be over. Now it is. It’s over. Thank God. Pray I don’t go to hell. It wouldn’t be fair. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t my fault. I just...couldn’t stop.
Eric looked from the note to his brother, lying in a soup of brain matter and blood on the plastic-covered sofa. He thought about Eric’s sons, Josh and Jeremy. Mason loved those two boys like they were his own. Now he was supposed to tell them their dad was...
...a murderer?
...a serial killer?
His mind rejected the notion even though it was right there in blue ink on a white, blood-spattered sheet of printer paper.
And Marie, what about Marie? She was heavily pregnant with a little girl.
And Mother. God, this would kill Mother.
Was he really going to tell them what was in this note?
He looked at the driver’s licenses again. The practical part of his brain said it had to be true. Otherwise, how would Eric have all those IDs? Trophies.
So he would have to tell them.
For what? It’s not like Eric’s going to kill anyone else. The murders will stop now. No more harm will be done. And I don’t have time to sit here debating this.
A minute, maybe two, had ticked past since his 911 call. He only had a few more. Maybe five. Probably five.
He got up, picked up the licenses and the note, moved to the left, where the duffel sat on the floor. Unzipping it, he saw duct tape, coils of rope, a Taser.
Shit.
He fought off his heaving stomach, then stuffed the licenses and the note inside the bag and zipped it up. The blood spatter had mostly gone the other way, and the recoil spray hadn’t made it that far. The duffel was clean, but the coffee table was coated with a fine mist of blood except where the note and licenses had been.
He picked up a bloody sofa pillow by one clean corner, shook it over the clean spots on the table to splatter them with blood, then replaced it where it had been on the sofa. Then he tipped the coffee table onto its side, as he could easily have done when he’d lunged toward his brother. The blood on the surface would run enough to further cover those clean spots. It wasn’t perfect. But it was enough. No one was going to look too closely, anyway. He had the text message, and he’d called it in immediately. There was nothing here to suggest this was anything but exactly what it had been: a suicide. He’d witnessed it. He was a cop. A decorated and respected cop.
Open and shut.
Taking the duffel bag, he walked out of the apartment and down the stairs. He put the bag into the back of Rosie’s Hummer, then took a quick look inside his brother’s pickup, as the other detectives would do in a little while, but he didn’t see anything else tying Eric to the missing men. Not on first glance, anyway, and there was no time for a more thorough examination. His colleagues would be here any second now. So he sank to the curb and tried to keep it together as he heard sirens wailing in the distance, coming closer.
He’d made a snap decision to cover up the answer to the biggest case of his career. And he would lose everything if it was ever found out. But dammit, he couldn’t put his family through the truth.
He couldn’t.
He told himself he’d done the right thing.
And then the cavalry arrived, ambulance first, cops on its bumper.
He just pointed at the stairs. “My brother shot himself.”
The medics reacted, raced up the stairs. Rosie arrived and hunkered down beside him. “Lemme see your phone, partner.”
Nodding, Mason handed it over.
Rosie looked for Eric’s text message, found it, nodded. “You should’a taken me with you.”
“I didn’t think he meant that. Hell, maybe I did, but I didn’t think he’d really do it.”
A burst of activity on the stairs. Urgent shouts that seemed uncalled for, given that his brother was obviously dead. Mason looked up fast. Had he missed something? Did they know? And am I going to be wondering that every day for the rest of my life? God, what the hell did I do here?
And then a gurney came bumping down the stairs, Eric strapped to it, mask on his face, someone pumping a rubber balloon.
“He still has a pulse!”
Lightning jolted Mason to his feet. “How can he...how can that...his head...”
“Hold on, partner,” Rosie said, grabbing his shoulders when he started to go to his brother.
Mason honestly didn’t know in that moment, whether he meant to go help Eric or yank the bag away and let him suffocate.
Two EMTs jostled Eric into the back of the ambulance. In seconds it went screaming away and left Mason staring after it with his guts tied up in knots.
“You’d better go,” Rosie said. “Go on now. Be with your brother. Call your family. I’ve got this.”
Nodding, Mason looked Rosie square in the eye, knowing he had to initiate the lies now, before he lost his resolve. It was the only thing to do. “I can give you the gist first, though. You need to know. He showed up last night, asking to sleep over. About 3:00 a.m., give or take. I was half-asleep, and we didn’t talk. This morning I left before he got up. Then I got that text. When I opened the apartment door he was sitting on the couch with the gun to his head.” He had to stop and swallow hard to get his throat to open up again.
“Damn,” Rosie said softly. “You don’t have to do this now, partner.”
“It was a .44 Magnum. Never saw it before. Have no idea where he got it, or if it’s legal. He had the barrel here.” He put a finger on his skull. “His right. My left. I yelled and sort of jumped toward him. He pulled the trigger at the same time. I landed short, knocked over the coffee table. Then I called 911 on my cell, came down here and waited. I couldn’t look at him like that. That’s all. That’s everything.”
“Good enough. Good enough for now, Mason. Maybe I’d better drive you. They don’t need me here.”
Mason looked at his partner; he hated lying to him. “I’d feel better if you’d stay here while they process the place, see they do it right, respectfully, you know? I mean, it’s my place. I don’t want it all torn up.” He shook his head. “Shit, that sounds shallow.”
“Sounds like someone who’s seen what happens when a home becomes a crime scene. Don’t you worry.”
“I still need the Hummer, Rosie.”
“I’ll pick it up at the hospital once we finish here.”
“The station. I’ll leave it at the station.” Mason looked down at his hands. “I need to change...before the hospital.”
“Go to the station, then. You got a change of clothes in your locker?” Mason nodded. “You can park the Hummer there, then. Your wheels are already back in the lot. The blind writer didn’t so much as ding it. It’s all good.”
But it wasn’t all good. And Mason pretty much figured it was never going to be all good again. He wanted to crawl into a dark corner and stay there for a while. A long while. But he had to keep moving, and somehow he did.
He headed to the station. As Rosie had promised, his beloved black ’74 Monte Carlo was in the lot in back. And also just as promised, the blind chick hadn’t even put a dent in the bumper. They didn’t make cars the way they used to. A new one would have crumpled. He tossed his brother’s duffel into the trunk and made damn sure no one had seen him do it.
He locked Rosie’s Hummer, took the keys inside and left them in his partner’s locker, avoiding everyone he saw on the way. No one stopped him. Easy. Then he took a quick shower and changed into the spare clothes he kept on hand, a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved pullover in two-tone gray. Then he went back out to his own car and drove to the hospital, racking his brain on the way. Had he missed anything?
He undoubtedly had some of Eric’s blood on his clothes. He’d crawled across that plastic, after all. That was fine. He wouldn’t even wash them until he was sure his colleagues didn’t want to run them through the lab. They would count on his cooperation. He had to give them exactly what they expected an innocent cop to offer. Full cooperation.
He might have left microscopic traces of blood on the steering wheel and driver’s door of Rosie’s Hummer. But that would be expected, too. If he cleaned that up, it would look as if he had something to hide. If anyone even bothered to check, which they had no reason to do. Looking as if he had something to hide would be the quickest way to revealing the truth, though, so he hadn’t cleaned off the steering wheel or front seat.
Traces of blood in the cargo areas in the back of the Hummer, or on the cargo hatch door, however, would be unexpected. They would be out of place. But no one was going to look for traces of blood in the back of Rosie’s Hummer. No one had any reason to. Unless Eric somehow pulled through, of course. Or said something in a state of delirium. If that happened, he would deal with it. He couldn’t do anything about it now.
As Mason pulled into the parking lot behind Binghamton General and looked for an empty spot, the shaking set in.
My brother’s dead. But not quite. No, dead. He’s dead. No one could live like that. It’s a glitch in the works, some reflex trying to hold on. But he’s gone. I saw it, felt it. I know.
My brother was a murderer. All those guys. How many licenses? Gonna have to go through them later. And that bag. God, I don’t want to go through that bag. Got to, though. And then hide it. Where it’ll never ever be found.
I need to find the bodies. What the hell did he do with the bodies? Those families...
Gotta call Mom. And ohmyfuckinggod, Marie. I gotta call Marie. How do I break this to the boys? It’s gonna destroy them.
Yeah. I did the right thing. This is bad enough without...that note. That bag. Those IDs. Those faces. It’s bad enough. I did the right thing, God forgive me.
But what if he lives?
“Sir? Sir, can I help you?”
He’d managed to walk into the E.R. without even realizing it, that was how far gone he was. He needed to pull it together here. He focused on the woman—a nurse wearing scrubs with big pink flowers all over them. She was behind a curved desk looking at him through an open glass partition. “Detective Mason Brown, Binghamton P.D. I’m here for my brother.”
“I can help you with that. His name?” she was already tapping keys.
“Eric Conroy Brown.”
“Eric.” Tap-tap-tap. “Brown.” Taptaptaptap-big tap. She actually backed up from the computer screen a little, and the bright smile vanished. “He’s in the ICU. That’s up—”
“I know where it is.” He was a cop. He knew his way around Binghamton General. He was gone while she was still talking. Wishing him luck or something equally useless. Elevators, buttons to push. Autopilot.
What if he lives?
He still had all the evidence. If his brother lived and was anything more than a bedridden vegetable, Mason was going to have to turn it in and take the consequences for removing it from the scene. It would be the end of his job. Which was nothing compared to the possibility of his brother going on killing.
Eric. Killing. God, he couldn’t even imagine it.
Yes, you can. You know damn well you can.
How the hell had it happened? What had driven him to this? They’d had the same childhood. Not perfect, but no trauma. No abuse. What had made his older brother become a monster?
He’s never been right and you know it. And what about all those cats, huh? Why was it we could never keep a cat? They all disappeared. And when they were gone, the neighbors’ cats started vanishing. Remember how everyone thought there must be a wild animal in the area, preying on house cats? Coyotes. They blamed coyotes. And when I asked for a dog, Dad said absolutely not, and there was this look in his eyes, remember that? This look like the thought of a dog was horrifying somehow. Maybe he knew....
The elevator stopped, the doors slid open. He stepped out into the white hallway. It smelled so clean he didn’t think a germ would dare try to invade. Spotting the nurses’ desk, he went over and repeated his brother’s name to the guy sitting there.
“Are you family?”
Mason hated male nurses. Didn’t know why, it just chafed him. They always seemed, to him at least, to be full of themselves. People who see men in scrubs automatically assume they’re doctors, and privately, he thought most male nurses got a huge ego boost out of that and almost never corrected the misassumption.
“I’m his brother.”
“I’d better take you in. Your brother is—”
“I was there when he pulled the trigger. You don’t need to prepare me. Just point me to the room, okay?”
The chubby Justin Bieber–haired blond came around the desk, anyway. “It’s right over here. He’s on a ventilator, but—”
Mason walked into the room, right up to the bed. Eric lay there. His entire head was bandaged and padded underneath, so it wasn’t as obvious that a lot of it was missing. Someone had washed most of the blood away and put him in a hospital gown. His eyes were closed, sunken unnaturally back into his head.
“Have you called his—your—family?” the nurse asked.
“I was just about to.”
“Good. The doctor will want to talk to them as soon as possible.”
“Why?” Mason took his eyes off his brother to look at the nurse.
“I really have to let the doctor be the one—”
“Come on, kid. Do you really think it matters who tells it? Cut me some slack here. I just watched my brother blow his own head off. Just tell me what you have to say already.”
The nurse lowered his head. “He’s brain dead. The machine is pumping air through his lungs, and forcing his heart to keep pushing oxygenated blood through his body. But he’s not coming back.”
Mason nodded and exhaled long and slow. No vegetable brother wasting away slow for the next twenty years. No recovering murderer brother having to face the consequences of his crimes. No being forced to testify against his own sibling or reveal the nightmare to his mother or sister-in-law or nephews. No being driven out of the job he loved.
