Gingerbread Man (44 page)

Putting the phone back in 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
un
expected. 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.