Kitabı oxu: «Sleep with the Lights On»
Through the eyes of a killer…
Rachel de Luca has found incredible success writing self-help books. But her own blindness and the fact that her troubled brother has gone missing have convinced her that positive thinking is nothing but bull.
Her cynicism wavers when a cornea transplant restores her sight. The new eyes seem to give her new life, until they prove too good to be true and she starts seeing terrifying visions of brutal murders—crimes she soon learns are all too real.
Detective Mason Brown’s own brother recently died, leaving behind a horrific secret. In atonement, Mason donated his brother’s organs, though he’s kept the fact quiet. Now he wants to help Rachel find her brother, but when he discovers the shocking connection between her visions and his own brother, he suddenly has to do everything in his power to save her from a predator who is somehow still hunting from beyond the grave.
Praise for the novels of Maggie Shayne
“Shayne crafts a convincing world, tweaking vampire legends just enough to draw fresh blood.”
—Publishers Weekly on Demon’s Kiss
“A tasty, tension-packed read.”
—Publishers Weekly on Thicker Than Water
“Tense…frightening…a page-turner in the best sense.”
—RT Book Reviews on Colder Than Ice
“Mystery and danger abound in Darker Than Midnight, a fast-paced, chilling thrill read that will keep readers turning the pages long after bedtime.… Suspense, mystery, danger and passion—
no one does them better than Maggie Shayne.”
—Romance Reviews Today on Darker Than Midnight [winner of a Perfect 10 award]
“Maggie Shayne is better than chocolate. She satisfies every wicked craving.”
—New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Forster
“Shayne’s haunting tale is intricately woven.… A moving mix of high suspense and romance, this haunting Halloween thriller will propel readers to bolt their doors at night.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Gingerbread Man
“[A] gripping story of small-town secrets. The suspense will keep you guessing. The characters will steal your heart.”
—New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner on The Gingerbread Man
Kiss of the Shadow Man is a “crackerjack novel of romantic suspense.”
—RT Book Reviews
Sleep with the Lights On
Maggie Shayne
www.mirabooks.co.uk
This novel would not have been the book it is without the insight and skill of my editor, Leslie Wainger. Her enthusiasm, support and sheer brilliance make me look good, and I can’t imagine doing this job without her.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Wake to Darkness
Prologue
He watched the body sink in slow motion through the murky green water. Tears blurred his eyes, obstructing his view, but he wiped them away. He liked to watch. It was peaceful, the way the long tendrils of dark seaweed seemed to reach up for the bodies. Like they were waiting, eager to welcome them home. They parted, those tendrils, as the body sank deeper and then closed up again as its descent continued. Like the fingers of a loving hand, embracing them, wrapping them in the liquid softness of death. He liked to think of them resting at the bottom, sinking into the deep, soft mud. Peaceful. Easy. When the seaweed fingers returned to their former positions, reaching toward the surface, waving gently in the currents, it was as if they’d never even been there.
As if he’d never killed them.
When the last ripple faded and the water returned to green stillness, Eric backhanded the new tears from his face and snuffled hard. It was done. Again. But this was it, it was over. This would be the last time.
You say that every time. But you know better.
Yeah, it was true, he’d said it before. Every time, with every lanky, brown-eyed young man he bludgeoned to death with his favorite framing hammer. It wasn’t that he took any pleasure in killing them. It was just that he couldn’t help himself. When he saw them, he got this persistent itch in the back of his brain. And it would get worse and worse. You couldn’t scratch that itch from the outside. It was inside. It scratched and it scratched, a rat on a wall, working until it broke clean through.
That other one inside him. He was the killer. And once he got his rocks off beating them to death, he crawled back into his rat hole, leaving Eric to clean up the mess, to plaster over the hole and cover up the crime, and pretend there were no rats in his house at all.
What rats? I don’t hear any rats. Look at me, I’m just a normal guy. And yeah, my eyes are red, but not because I’ve been sobbing over the poor fucking bastard I just dumped into the lake. It’s probably allergies. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m fine. Normal.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
Nothing could make the scratching stop except killing. And it was getting so the rat demanded to be fed more and more often. It was growing, that rat. It was almost too big to stay behind the wall at all anymore.
But he told himself, as he always did, that was not the case. He was in charge, not the rat. He was patching that hole for the last time. He wouldn’t let the rodent chew through it again. Not again. He was done with this. He was not going to kill any more pretty, lanky young men with brown hair that hung a little too long. He could beat this. He knew he could.
Nodding hard, Eric dipped his oars into the green-brown water and pushed the boat into motion. The sun was rising now over the pine-forested eastern shoreline. It warmed the surface, drawing misty spirals and pillars upward from the water. They twisted higher, heading for the light like the spirits of Eric’s beloved dead. He watched them rising, growing thinner, vanishing altogether, while he rowed in the opposite direction, west, toward the dock, the cabin.
A loon sang its heartbroken song. Tall black trees rose up out of the water without a leaf or a limb. Weak and rotting. Lily pads clustered thicker the closer he got to the shore, until it was as if he was rowing through a lake made of the waxy green leaves. There were lotus blossoms, too, mostly white, a few bright pink ones, just starting to open up as the sunbeams reached them. Bullfrogs croaked, and the birds in the forests surrounding the lake chorused louder and louder. Their morning choir. All around him, as the sun climbed higher, the Adirondack Mountains changed their character entirely. By night they were a dark world that seemed perfect for someone like him. A place where death and decay were just a normal part of the whole process, and where killing was everywhere. It was accepted. It was normal.
But when the sun took over, the mountains changed. The lake water that had been murky and green, sparkled and danced in the morning light. The forest came to life, no longer deep and foreboding, but green and lush, the ground beneath the trees, dappled in light and shadow.
He no longer fit, he with his rat-infested walls. And by the light of day it was always clear that he never really had.
He rowed the boat up to the long wooden dock. Today he hadn’t even taken a life preserver or any fishing gear, the way he usually did, figuring that would make him look normal if he were noticed by some fish-and-game officer. Not that he ever had been. The lake was isolated. He’d never seen anyone when he’d been out doing his grim work. This time he hadn’t even bothered to take those precautions. He’d just been eager to get it over with. To be done with it. That was how determined he was to stop killing. That was how sure he was that this would be the last time he would row out across Stillwater Lake in the predawn chill to lay a young man to rest at the bottom.
Looping the rope around a post, he climbed out of the boat, pulled himself up onto the old wooden dock, and realized that it was getting harder. He’d been putting on weight. His joints ached. Thirty-eight. He shouldn’t feel this bad at thirty-eight.
He walked toward the cabin, past the tire swing that dangled from the giant maple tree at the water’s edge. He and his kid brother used to swing out on that tire and try to see who could land farther out in the lake. He smiled as he remembered. They’d had a lot of fun here as kids. His own boys played the same game. Or used to. He hadn’t had the heart to bring them up here in a long, long time.
He’d polluted the water with the blood of his victims. He should have found a different place to put them to rest. Hell, he should have done a lot of things differently. But he was broken, and he didn’t know why. He only knew that he had to find a way to fix himself. To keep the rat sealed behind the wall, keep it there until this time it starved to death.
He walked past the cabin, not going inside. His pickup was parked in front. The hammer, already washed and dried, was hanging back in its spot in the toolshed. There was nothing more to do. And if he could just hold on to his willpower, there never would be. He got into his white F-150 and drove. He needed to be home with his family and to forget about this morning’s task. Forget, if he could, about all of those pretty, pretty boys.
1
If the bullshit I wrote was true, I wouldn’t have been standing in the middle of a beehive where all the bees were cops—not one worker bee in the hive, either— trying to get someone interested in finding out what had happened to my brother.
Then again, if the bullshit I wrote was true, I wouldn’t be holding a white-tipped cane in my hand, either. But the bullshit I wrote was just that. Bullshit.
Solid-gold bullshit, though. Which was, after all, why I kept writing it.
“Look, I’m going to need to talk to someone else,” I said to the queen bee behind the tall counter. My fingertips rested on the front edge, which was up to my chest. Smooth wood, with that slightly tacky feel from being none too clean. I took my fingers away, but the sticky residue remained. Ick.
“And just who else would you like to talk to?” the queen bee asked.
“Are you getting sarcastic with me now?” I leaned nearer. “How about I talk to your boss, then?”
“Ma’am, that attitude of yours is not going to help. I told you, your case is getting the same attention any other missing persons case would get from this office.”
“The same attention as any other missing homeless heroin-addict case, you mean?”
“We do not discriminate here.”
“Not on the basis of intelligence, anyway.”
When her voice came again, it came from way closer. She was, I surmised, leaning over her tall counter. I could smell her chewing gum. Dentyne Ice. “Never thought I’d be so tempted to smack a blind woman upside her head,” she muttered. It was probably supposed to be under her breath, but I had hearing like a freakin’ bat. I heard everything. Every nuance. So I knew she meant it.
“Want to try it now?” I asked. “Because I promise you, I will—”
“Miss de Luca? Is it really you?”
That woman’s voice wasn’t angry. It was adoring, and coming from about seven o’clock. That was how I found things. A clock inside my head where I was always the center. You know, the pin that held the hands in place so they could spin all around me while I stood still. It was an accurate illustration in more ways than one.
I closed my eyes behind my sunglasses, shut my mouth, pasted a fake smile on my face and turned. Sometimes not being able to look in the mirror and see how far I missed the mark from the expression I thought I was making was a blessing, and I suspected this was one of those times.
“Rachel de Luca? The author, right?” The woman was moving toward me as she spoke. I waited until she got just two and a half steps from me before extending my hand. Any farther, you looked like an idiot. Any closer... Any closer was too damn close. I liked three feet of space around me at all times. It was one of a whole collection of quirks I held dearly.
“Last time I checked,” I said, pouring sugar into the words, using my “famous author” voice. “And you are?”
“Oh, gosh, this is such a thrill!” She gripped my hand. Cool and small. She smelled like sunblock, sweat and sneakers. Tinny, nearly inaudible music wafted from somewhere near her neck, and I could hear her pulse beat behind her words. No, seriously, I could. I told you, I hear everything. My brain snapped an immediate mental photo. She was too thin, an exercise nut, five-one or so, probably blonde. Her earbuds were dangling, iPod still playing, heart still hammering from a recent run. She probably didn’t even hear it. Hearing loss due to cramming speakers into one’s ear holes and cranking the volume. Joggers were the worst offenders. Sighted people didn’t appreciate how valuable their hearing was.
Also, she had a beaky little nose and bad teeth.
Don’t ask. I have no freaking idea how I get my mental snapshots of people. I just do. I don’t know if they’re anywhere near accurate, either. Never bothered to ask anyone or feel any faces. (Give me a break, people, it’s just disgusting to go around pawing strangers like that.)
And she’d been talking while I’d been sketching her on my brain easel. Sally something. Big fan. Read all my books. Changed her life. The usual.
“Glad to hear my methods are working for you,” I said. “And it’s great to meet you, but I have—”
“I’m so glad I came in to check on my missing poodle,” she said. “I think she was dog-napped. But I’m staying positive. You know, I used to lose my temper all the time,” she went on. “I’d fight with my husband, my teenage daughter—and don’t even get me started on my mother-in-law. But then I started writing your words on index cards and taping them all over my house.”
“That’s really—” fucking pathetic “—nice to hear. But like I said, I—”
“‘If you get up in the morning and stub your toe, go back to bed and start over,’” she quoted. “I love that one. Such a metaphor for everything in life, really. Oh, oh, and ‘When you’re spitting venom onto others, you’re only poisoning yourself.’ That’s one of my favorites.”
The woman behind the counter snorted derisively and muttered, “Oughtta be droppin’ dead any minute now, then,” just loud enough for me to hear. If I had been the metaphorical cobra in my metaphorical affirmation, I would have spun around and spat a healthy dose of venom into her eye to keep her from costing me a reader.
“Sally,” I said, struggling for patience. No, that’s not true at all. My patience was long gone. I was struggling to hang on to the illusion of it, though. “Like I said—” twice now “—it’s nice to meet you, but I actually have something important I need to do here.” This is a police station after all. I mean, do you really think I’m here for shits and giggles, lady?
“Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry.” She put her hand on my shoulder. Familiar. Like we were friends now.
I almost cringed. People think they can touch you when you’re blind. I have no idea why. I hear pregnant women complain about the same thing, but of course I’ve never seen it.
“I hope everything’s all right. Not that I’m asking, of course.”
Yes she was.
“I’ll go.” Two steps, but then the parting shot. I was ready for it, even guessing which one it would be. “Remember, Rachel,” she called back, her overly happy tone making me restrain a gag. “‘What you be is what you see’!”
She left as I tried to remember which of my books had contained that particular piece of crapola. Her sneakers squeaked as she trotted away, until the sound got lost amid the buzz of the drones.
I turned back to the woman at the counter. Her image in my mind was short, hefty, with melon-sized boobs and long shiny ringlets.
“Where were we?”
“I believe you were about to threaten to kick my ass,” she said. “Or maybe you were gettin’ ready to dole out one of those Susie-sunshine lines you’re apparently known for.” She paused, leaned back in her chair—I heard the movement—and slurped coffee that smelled stale. “So are you famous or something? ’Cause I never heard of you.”
I placed my hands flat on the tacky countertop and leaned forward. “My brother is missing. I reported it three days ago, and I haven’t heard one word from you people since.”
“‘You people’?”
“You cop people. I want action. I want my brother found. I at least want some indication that you’re looking for him. Can you give me that?”
“I already gave you that. I told you, we’re doing everything we can. I’ll have an officer call you later in the day. I already have your number.”
Oh, brilliant double entendre there. Apparently I was dealing with a genius.
“Thanks a million.”
I turned and waved my cane back and forth, half hoping I’d whack someone in the shins on my way out. But no. Apparently the bees were parting like the Red Sea. I was not amused that my identity had been revealed in the cop shop. My agent would lop off my head for being a bitch in public at all, much less being recognized while I was at it.
What the hell did I care? I’d deny it. My legions of followers would believe me. I mean, as long as it didn’t happen too often or in front of someone’s cell-cam and wind up on YouTube, I was golden. And even if it did, they’d forgive me for losing it if I let them know why.
My brother was missing, for God’s sake. A saint would be on her last nerve.
I tapped across the room and out the door, feeling the space around me widen as I moved through it. I turned left down the hall to the main entrance. Lots of doors there. I picked the quietest one and went through it and then down the broad stone steps to the sidewalk. I intended to cross the street to the coffee shop, grab a Mucho-Mocha with extra caffeine, and phone my assistant to come and pick my ass up. My mind wasn’t on what I was doing, though. I was flashing back to the last time I’d seen anything.
It had been Tommy’s face.
I was twelve and knew I was going blind. I had a corneal dystrophy, a rare one. At that point I could still see, but it was pretty bad. Blurry, dull. Worse and worse. I’d been having a nightmare, dreamed of being completely blind, and woke up screaming.
It was Tommy who came to my bedroom, sat on the edge of my mattress, hugged me close, told me it was all gonna be okay. That he’d be with me, no matter what. And he was, before the addictions took him away. He went from coke to crack, from the oxy-twins—contin and codone—to heroin, his standards lowering with his resources, until he was broke and homeless and taking anything he could find that was stronger than aspirin. Anyway, before all that, when he was a freshly showered fourteen-year-old kid with a future, he hugged me, conceded to my demand that he leave the light on and told me stories until I fell back asleep.
When I woke up, I thought he’d lied to me. I thought he’d turned the light off after swearing he wouldn’t. But he hadn’t. Turned out my nightmare was a premonition. I was totally blind.
I shook off the memory about the same time I heard squealing tires and a blasting horn, and realized about a second too late that I’d stepped off the curb and into the street without checking first. Sure as shit, the car hit me. I couldn’t even believe it. One step, a loud horn, and bam. I flew fast and landed hard, hip bone, then shoulder, then head, in that order. And then I just lay perfectly still while pain blasted through every part of me.
Damn. I’d thought this day couldn’t get any worse.
* * *
Detective Mason Brown had a series of rapid-fire impressions; leggy brunette. Dark sunglasses. White cane. Blind? OhfuckI’mgonnahither! He jerked the wheel and slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. The thump made his stomach heave. The car slid sideways, but only a few feet—hell, it was city traffic, he hadn’t been moving very fast to begin with—and came to a stop. He opened the door and lunged out before he’d even finished processing what had happened. And then he was bending over the felled female in the middle of the street outside the station, hoping to hell she wasn’t seriously hurt. Hands on her shoulders. That was autopilot. Then the brain kicked in. Don’t move her. Spinal cord and all that. Hell, her eyes are closed.
And then they opened and looked slightly past his left shoulder. They were sky-blue eyes, and they were completely blank.
“I’m okay, I’m okay.” She was trying to sit up while she talked.
“Hang on. Hold still a second, just in case.”
She was lying on her side, propped up by one bent elbow on the pavement. Short skirt. A brand-new run in her stockings. Long brown hair, kind of wavy. She patted the blacktop with her free hand. “Am I in the road? Get me the hell out of the road.” Her questing hand found her big sunglasses and she quickly jammed them onto her face. They were crooked, but he didn’t think she knew. “Do you see my bag?”
Since she was apparently getting up with him or without him, he helped onto her feet, then kept hold of one upper arm. “It’s over by the curb. Can you walk?”
“Yeah.” To prove it, she started limping back the way she’d come. It was closer, though how she knew which direction to go, he couldn’t figure. A couple of his colleagues had jumped into action by then, blocking traffic, directing it around his still sideways unmarked car. His partner, Roosevelt Jones, was standing by the hood, shaking his shaved head and smiling so hard his face actually had wrinkles. He was a hundred and six—okay, fifty-seven—and still only had wrinkles when he smiled.
“Quit your damn grinning and move the car, Rosie.”
“Nossir. We’re gonna need photos and whatnot.” He scooped up the handbag and cane just as Mason got her back on the sidewalk. Rosie held her things out to her. “Here’s your stuff, miss. You sure you’re all right?”
She turned her head toward him and, with a precision that surprised Mason, reached out and took her handbag, then her cane, from Rosie’s outstretched hands. “I think so.”
“Do you hurt anywhere?” Mason asked.
“All over, but—”
“Best let the medics have a look at you in the E.R.,” Rosie said. “Just to be sure. Damn, Mason, I knew you were desperate for a woman, but I didn’t think you’d run one down in the street.” Then he laughed like a seal barking.
The woman’s head snapped toward Mason again. “You were the one who hit me?”
“Damn straight he was,” Rosie said and turned to Mason. “What’s wrong with you, running down celebrities in the street?” Rosie smiled at her. “I’m Detective Roosevelt Jones. My partner—who talked me into letting him drive due to my alleged aging reflexes—is Mason Brown. And might I just add that it’s a privilege to meet you, ma’am? My wife quotes you to me on a daily basis.” He elbowed Mason. “Rachel de Luca. The author.”
He said it, Mason thought, like that ought to mean something to him. He shrugged at Rosie, but said, “Great to meet you.” Like he knew who the hell she was. He’d never even heard of her. “And I’m really sorry.”
“I’m fine.” As soon as she said it her knees bent a little, and he had to snap an arm around her waist to keep her upright.
“Whoa. Okay, that’s it, you’re going to the E.R.”
“I really don’t have time, I—”
“Ambulance is already here,” Mason said.
“Like I said, I don’t have time.”
He gave the paramedics a wave. “Over here, boys.” Then he turned to her again. “Just go get checked out. I won’t be able to work all day if I don’t know you made sure you’re okay.”
“Oh, well, I wouldn’t want to mess up your day. And mine’s pretty much fucked, anyway.” She clapped a hand over her mouth, and he saw those blue eyes widen behind the crooked glasses.
The lady had a temper.
Just as quickly, he saw her face change. It was like she put on a Halloween mask. Only backward. In this case, the wicked witch was the one behind the disguise.
“So you’re a detective?” she asked, as if she’d only just heard that part of his partner’s spiel. Her voice was a half octave higher, softer, her attitude polite instead of pissed, as if she wasn’t really just aching to kick him in the balls for hitting her.
“Yeah.” And I see right through you, he thought. You wouldn’t give a damn what you said to me if you didn’t know I was a cop. And that makes me wonder why it matters. “Here come the paramedics. Hey, Reno.”
“Hey, Mason.” Reno, an EMT Mason had known for three years, took her other arm and led her to the back of the ambulance. She handed Reno her bag and her stick, gripped the rail, found the step without a single miss, and pulled herself up and in as Mason watched her, thinking she was really good at being blind. And then thinking what a dumb-ass thought that was.
No wonder she was on the bitchy side. He would probably be a bear if he were in her shoes.
“Look, I’ll see how you’re doing later, okay?” He wasn’t quite able to walk away just yet. “I need to take care of things here, get that car out of the road, free up the traffic, climb the paperwork mountain. But I’ll check in on you.”
“No need. I’m not going to sue you.”
That’s what they all say, he thought. Right before they call a lawyer. That was one headache he didn’t need. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
She settled onto the gurney, still sitting up. “All right. Actually, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about, anyway.” Sweet smile, flung at him without warning. He hadn’t been expecting it, so its impact was stronger than it should have been. “Maybe...maybe this little accident was supposed to happen.”
Huh? What the hell did that mean?
He stood there puzzling on that after the ambulance doors closed, until Rosie came over and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “She’s way better-looking in person than on her book jackets, isn’t she?”
“I wouldn’t know, having never seen one. Who the hell is she, anyway?” They started back toward Mason’s car. There were uniforms out in the street taking photos, another one stopping traffic to let the ambulance pull out.
“Self-help author. Big celeb. On TV a lot. Preaches nonviolence, happy happy joy joy shit. You know, like Marlayna’s so into. Positive energy. Love your enemy and raise your vibe. What you get in life is always your own doing and all that. How can you not have heard of her?”
“Like you would have if not for your better half, pal? We’re not exactly vibing on her level, are we now?”
Rosie grinned. “Guess not, bein’ as we been up to our necks in bloodless crime scenes and MPDs lately.”
Missing, presumed dead. Twelve so far. Not a single body yet, though. But back to the blind chick. “Did you hear what she said to me, just before they closed the doors, Rosie?” Rosie shook his head. “She said maybe this accident was supposed to happen. What do you think she meant by that?”
“Shoot, I don’t know. I said I know who she is, not that I’m a true believer. I’ll ask Marlayna, though. She might have an idea.”
“Yeah, you do that.”
Mason’s phone chirped just then, and he pulled it out and looked at the screen.
His big brother Eric’s face—he looked fifty but was only thirty-eight—popped up beside the text message icon. He clicked through, and the message read: Take care of Marie & the boys.
What the hell?
“I gotta go.” Mason turned toward the car, moving on autopilot, then stopping. “Shit, I need a car.” He couldn’t move his until he got the okay.
“What’s up?” Rosie unsnapped his key ring from his belt and held it out.
“Don’t know. Eric’s at my place, showed up in the wee hours and wouldn’t talk to me. He had a fight with Marie or something.” He looked at the text again as he took the keys, a cold chill going up his spine. “Thanks, pal.”
“Holler if you need me, Mace.”
Mason gave a nod and headed around the corner to the parking lot behind the Binghamton P.D. Rosie’s yellow Hummer stood out just like its owner, the only black detective in a mostly white police department, so he didn’t have to look for it.
There was a sick feeling in his stomach as he drove the oversize toolbox out into traffic. He was worried about his brother.
Nothing new there. Worrying about Eric had become the Brown family pastime. Habit, he guessed. He told himself that there was probably nothing wrong. Maybe Eric was quoting a line from one of those damn grim poems he was always reading, scaring the hell out of Mason for nothing.
But he didn’t think so.
* * *
Eric Conroy Brown had gone straight to work after dumping the body, worked the entire day and then headed home late last night just like he always did after the rat had been fed and had crawled back into its hole, leaving him to clean up the mess. It made him feel normal to lie in bed beside his wife and pretend he wasn’t a monster. He knew he was, though. The rat was him. No matter how hard he tried to convince himself it was some other being, some demon possessing him, some evil other personality trying to force its way to the fore, it was him. He was the rat, which was probably why he couldn’t get it to shut up and stay inside, much less kill it.
This time, however, home had provided no solace.
Marie had been angry, waiting at the door with one hand at the small of her back and the other on top of her basketball-sized belly. “Why didn’t you come home last night? Honestly, Eric, I told you yesterday morning that the boys would be home from camp and I was making a welcome-home dinner.”
He blinked. The boys. Baseball camp. They’d been gone all summer. Hell. “I’m sorry. I got busy at work and—”
“You left your cell phone home. Again. I called the garage three times last night.”
“You know the garage phone switches over to the service at five whether we stay late or not. This guy needed his car finished, and the boss asked if I could stay late and get it done. It got so late I just slept on the cot in the storeroom. I just forgot about the boys is all.”
“You forgot?” She’d stared at him for a second there as if she knew. Or suspected. As if she was trying to get a visual of the rat inside him.
Don’t let her see, don’t let her see, don’t let her see. Spackle. Plaster. Shhh. No scratching!
“Are they already asleep?” he asked. He’d stayed late. It was hard to face the family too soon after...
“It’s 2:00 a.m., Eric. What do you think?”
He sighed heavily. Then, unable to bear the way she was looking at him any longer, he went to the boys’ shared bedroom and closed the door behind him. He heard Marie huff and stomp off into the kitchen. He imagined her waddling and stomping at the same time and smiled. She was beautiful when she was pregnant. All the time, really. A blue-eyed blonde just like Mother. But pregnant, she was at her best.
He didn’t deserve her.
Joshua was sound asleep. His curly carrot mop had grown longer, and his freckles had undergone a summertime explosion. How did kids change so much over a single season? He hoped sixth grade would be a good one for Josh. He hated sending his kids to school. School had been nothing but hell for him. He’d suggested homeschooling, but Marie had insisted she had no time, and the boys had hated the idea. And really, the more they were out of the house, away from him, the better.
Besides, the boys weren’t like him. They fit in. They weren’t freaks.
He’d wondered, back then, if everyone would always be able to see the rat inside him as clearly as the kids in middle school seemed to. Because they saw it. He had no doubt that they saw it. Even when he could keep it mostly silent and sleeping for months at a time, and only had to feed it a neighbor’s cat here and there, they saw it. Kids homed in on shit like that and tried to kill it. You know, like a litter of healthy animals, mom and all, will push the one sick one right out of the nest and leave it to die? He’d seen it on the Discovery Channel. Lions did it. Wolves did it. Birds did it. Kids were just like that. A weak one, a different one, a broken one, or even an especially gifted one—anything different—was to be shunned, banished, destroyed. It was probably a matter of self-preservation left over from the caveman days. You didn’t want anyone evolving faster than the norm or they’d be unfair competition. And you didn’t want anyone evolving slower than the norm, or they’d drag you down with them. And you sure as shit didn’t want predators—the kind who would prey on their own—because they’d eat you.
Kids always knew. Adults, not so much. Adults were mostly blind. Not his mother, though. His real one. She must have taken one look at him and seen that he was broken.
Eric smoothed Josh’s hair and turned toward Jeremy’s bed, then stopped where he was, shocked by how much more of the bed Jeremy took up. He couldn’t possibly have grown that much taller since May. Could he?
He moved closer, surprised when Jeremy rolled over and opened his eyes. They were brown and accusing. “You forgot, didn’t you?”
But it wasn’t his words that made Eric’s blood chill in his veins. It was his look. He didn’t look like a kid anymore. He looked like a young man. Tall, lean, lanky, with brown hair he’d let grow all summer long, and deep brown eyes with heavy brows and thick eyelashes.
He looks just like they all look.
And that hot scratching began deep inside Eric’s brain.
“No,” he whispered. “No.”
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
“No? Well then, where were you?”
Eric backed away from his son.
Jeremy rolled his eyes and gave an exaggerated sigh. “Come on, Dad, can’t you even talk to me?”
But he couldn’t. The rat was coming out. He felt it scratching, clawing, gnawing. The plaster hadn’t even had time to dry, and already the rat was breaking through. Its twitching nose was sniffing through the first tiny hole.
Eric backed out and closed the bedroom door. The digging intensified. That scratching rat inside his brain had caught the scent, and it was demanding to be fed. And the meal it wanted this time was Eric’s own son.
He couldn’t stay at the house. Not once that feeling had begun. It never went away once it started. Nothing would stop it, nothing but killing.
He heard Marie banging pans in the kitchen, warming up leftovers for him. She was always worrying about what he ate, his cholesterol, his weight, shit like that, shit that didn’t even matter. His body wasn’t diseased, his brain was.
He walked quietly back through the house. It wasn’t a bad house. Small, only three bedrooms. The boys each had their own, but Josh had given his up to be a nursery, so they were sharing now. The living room was a mess. The boys’ sneakers scattered randomly all across the rug, jackets flung over chairs, backpacks spilling out onto the floor. He looked at the clutter, at the out-of-place sofa pillows and the TV, turned on, volume muted, running an infomercial about an electronic gadget you plugged into the wall to drive away pests. Mice and ants and spiders...
Not rats, though. Once you’ve got a rat, you’ve got a rat, that’s all there is to that that that.
He went out the front door, barely making a sound. He knew how to move in silence. He was a predator, after all. A hunter.
He got into his ’03 F-150, and drove back the way he’d come, over the bridge onto 81, and twenty minutes south to Binghamton. To his brother’s apartment. Mason let him in, groggy, only a little curious, but too tired to stay up long enough to grill him. Just pointed at the couch and scuffed back to his bedroom. A minute later he brought out a pillow and a blanket. “You need to talk, bro?”
“No. Maybe tomorrow.”
“All right. Get some sleep, okay?” Mason handed him the bedding, and went back to his room.
Eric hadn’t slept, though. He’d thought. All night long, he’d paced and he’d thought.
He guessed he’d probably been hoping to stumble onto another solution. A different answer. But he knew down deep that there wasn’t one.
And now it was morning. He’d pretended to be asleep while Mason was getting ready to go to work, knowing his brother wouldn’t wake him. Better that way. If he spoke to Mason first, his detective instincts would tell him something was wrong. So he faked sleep and waited until Mason left.
And now he was alone, and he was ready. Everything was done. He’d showered, and he’d gone down to his pickup to get his stuff out of the locked toolbox where he kept it. A man’s toolbox was sacred. Like a woman’s purse, according to Marie. People didn’t snoop in a man’s toolbox. Not without a damn good reason, anyway, and he’d always been careful never to provide one.
So he was ready. His duffel bag was on the floor, up against the wall on the far side of the room. He’d returned the blanket and pillow to Mason’s bedroom, and unrolled a sheet of plastic on the sofa and out across the floor for several feet all around it, because this was his brother’s place, after all. He didn’t want to ruin it entirely. And he always had plastic in his truck. For moving them. His letter was written, and though it was short, that had taken the longest, ’cause what could you say, really? Sorry? Sorry didn’t even begin...
Didn’t matter.
The long line of driver’s licenses was on the coffee table, one neat straight row. He’d texted Mason. Mason would know what to do. He would take care of everything. He always did.
So...it was time.
He picked up the gun in his right hand. It was heavy. He’d rarely used the thing, kept it just in case. He’d avoided the question, in case of what? It wasn’t really his gun. It belonged to the rat. But he was going to use it now.
He was shaking hard as he pressed the barrel to his temple. It worried him how hard he was shaking. He didn’t want to mess this up. He didn’t want to suffer. He didn’t want to feel it. Barrel in the mouth didn’t always work. He’d read that somewhere, hadn’t he? So, to the temple. And it wasn’t like he had to be too precise, anyway. The gun was a .44. He wrapped his left hand around the barrel to keep it from bucking with the recoil and just blowing off the top of his head. And yeah, it would burn his hand—that barrel would be hot. But he didn’t think he’d feel it for more than a second or two, and it was better than letting the gun buck and not getting the job done. That wouldn’t be pleasant. He might survive that.
Gotta do what must be done, burn my hand on the red-hot gun.
God, I’m scared.
He had to do it. Mason would be here soon. It had to be done before Mason got here to stop him.
Is there really a hell? God, what if there is?
He took a deep breath. Then another.
It’s gonna hurt. I know it’s gonna hurt.
He heard footsteps outside. Hell, Mason was already here.
Just do it. It’ll only hurt for a second. Just do it already. For Jeremy.
“Yes, for Jeremy.”
The rat was scratching frantically now. Its claws had broken through. It was ripping away the plaster. If it got out, it wouldn’t let him go through with it. He knew that.
Do it do it do it!
Mason’s heavy steps came to a stop just outside the door. Then the door opened and his brother’s eyes found him sitting there. They went wide with horror as Mason lurched forward, reaching out with both hands, yelling, “No, no, no!”
Eric squeezed the trigger, felt his brain explode in one all-consuming white-hot mixture of deafening noise and blinding pain. And then as blackness descended, he felt the rat squeeze through the hole in the wall and plop onto the floor. Or was that a handful of his brain?
He never did feel the hot barrel burning his hand.
2
A cop came to the hospital to take my statement. It wasn’t Detective Brown, though.
My imagination and sixth sense had joined forces and decided to visualize Mason Brown as gorgeous, buff and sexy as hell. He probably had a wide, strong jaw and a corded neck. No long rock-star hair, though. Not on a cop.
Another cop, a short fat one, I guessed, was sitting in a chair by my bed writing down my answers to his questions. He wore glasses. I could hear him adjusting them over and over, up on his head, then down on his nose again. Up when he was addressing me, down when his pen went scritching across the notepad.
“You should just give in and get bifocals,” I said.
He looked up, or that was what I guessed by the sound: movement, then stillness.
I loved this. Shocking people by showing off. It was almost like I was a magician doing parlor tricks for the crowd. Some of the blind—okay, visually impaired is the PC term, but I’m not visually impaired, I’m fucking blind—hated being underestimated by the sighted. I enjoyed letting them think I was some kind of wonder kid. It was good PR and amused me to boot. And amusing myself was hard when I was in the hospital and therefore in public, and therefore forced to play my Positive Polly role to the hilt. No slips allowed. BW would have my head.
BW, by the way, was my agent. Belinda Waubach, aka Barracuda Woman.
“Those are store-bought glasses, right? You got them off a rack at a Walmart or a CVS, didn’t you?”
“Price Chopper. I only need them for close-up stuff.”
“It’s the corneas. You need a transplant to fix it. Sadly, they save them all for people like me—not me specifically, of course. My body hates foreign corneas. Rejects them almost before the surgery’s over.” I smelled sweet pea and jasmine. “Are we about finished? My sister’s here to see me.”
“You—” He stopped, and I heard him shift positions, probably to look behind him at the doorway where Sandra stood.
“Is she messing with your head, Officer?” she asked.
“She’s amazing,” the cop said, thereby taking off ten pounds in my mental image-maker. Hell, he’d earned it. He still had bad acne scars and a hint of rosacea, though.
“Amazing my ass, she smelled my body wash.” Sandra came close, leaned over, we hugged, yada yada. “One of these days I’ll switch brands and screw you up royally, Rache,” she threatened.
“It’s not bad enough you pick a fragrance worn by a third of the women who shop at Bath & Body Works?”
She straightened, and I pasted a smile on my face and hoped my eyes weren’t doing anything stupid. Sandra and others had assured me that they didn’t, but I didn’t believe them, which is why I am rarely seen without sunglasses. I mean, why tell me, right? It’s not like I could check in the mirror and prove them liars.
“How are you, sis?” she asked softly.
My sister, Sandra, was my only claim to normal. She was a soccer mom in the best sense of the word. She had twin teenage daughters bearing the ridiculous names of Christy and Misty—no, I am not kidding—and a husband named Jim who worshipped at her feet. And why is it every great husband I know is named Jim? Anyway, this particular Jim was a pharmacist. Sandra was a real estate agent. Independent. Office in her basement and doing pretty damn well for herself. She and her family were so perfect, it was amazing I didn’t have to check my blood sugar around them.
“Bruised rib and a concussion,” I said. “Nothing big, but they want me overnight and they took my fu—” Oops. Cop’s still sitting there. “They took my darn glasses.”
“Did you give them hell?”
“Only a little,” I lied.
“We need to get you home before you destroy your career.”
“You’re right. I’m not even gonna argue. I was going to go hunt the glasses down myself as soon as Officer Bob here finishes with me.” I tilted my head his way. “That was your cue,” I whispered.
He laughed a nervous laugh. “Okay, I have all I need. And, uh—here.” He moved again, getting up, and then a plastic bag rattled. “It says personal effects, and I see some sunglasses in the bottom of the bag.”
I took it from him, and felt my glasses in the bottom. “Hey, thanks. I guess I should have asked you to begin with.” I fished them out fast and pushed them onto my face. My relief was so intense I felt like I melted in the bed a little.
“I hope you recover fast, Ms. de Luca.” Sincere and mildly amused. He thought I was cute. I hated being thought of as cute.
“Oh, I know I will,” I told him. “I’ll just raise my vibe until my body has to rise up to match it.” Oh, my agent would have kissed me for that one. Funny how no one ever responded with the obvious question: “Why the hell are you blind, then?” Maybe they did, behind my back. Who knew? I didn’t care, as long as they kept buying the books. And the affirmation cards, and the annual calendar.
The cop should have left then. He really should have.
But instead he said, “If there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to call.”
“I need my brother found, Officer. I think I’ve told you that already.”
“I know, I know. Look, it’s not my case, but I’ll see who I can nudge, all right?”
“No. It’s nowhere near all right.”
My sister swung her hip sideways, bumping my bed hard enough to shake it.
“But it’ll do for now,” I added. “Thanks, Officer.”
“You’re welcome, Ms. de Luca.”
I waited until I knew he was gone. It’s funny how you can feel a person’s presence or absence. Human beings give off some kind of...I don’t know, energy or force field or something. You can sense it clearly and easily if you aren’t too busy looking for them with your eyes. At least, that was my explanation for it. I didn’t remember noticing it until I’d gone blind. Then again, who remembered details like that prior to age twelve?
“So?” Sandra took the cop’s former chair. “What happened?”
I told her what she already knew from my phone call. “Got run over by a cop. Not that one, though. A much better-looking one, according to my built-in TV. A detective, even.”
“You should sue,” she said. She reached out to take my glasses from my face, then put them back a second later. “Crooked,” she said. “You’d get a zillion.”
“I already have a zillion. You know, give or take. Besides, it was my fault, so—”
“You weren’t in the crosswalk?”
“I speed-walked into the crosswalk without even pausing. The guy couldn’t stop. I was pissed. About Tommy.”
“I know.”
“Besides, how is the ‘make peace with the pain’ guru going to look in a big messy lawsuit? It would cost me more than I’d gain.”
She sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”
“So I’m here for the night.”
“Yeah, well, you’d better stow the attitude, then. People talk.” And then she was leaning over the bed, apparently forgetting the part where I’d mentioned that I had a bruised rib, and hugging me again. “God, when I think what could’ve happened... We don’t know where Tommy is. Mom and Dad have been gone ten years now. I don’t want to lose you, too.”
“Mom and Dad went the way they would’ve wanted to. Together and on vacation.” Cruise ship capsized. It was all over the news. “And we almost never know where Tommy is, so we should be used to it by now.”
“I know.”
“You won’t lose me, too. I promise.” I grunted, because she was still hugging me and the rib was still bruised. “I’m fine. And I’ll stay that way if you’ll quit trying to break the rest of my ribs.”
Warmth on my face. Tears. Hers, not mine. I didn’t believe in them. They didn’t serve a hell of a lot of purpose except to rinse the eyes, and I could do that with Visine, thanks.
“So they’re letting you go tomorrow, then?” she asked, sniffling, unbending, releasing me from her killer hug.
“Probably tomorrow, they said.”
“Why only probably?”
“I don’t know.”
“I want to talk to the doctor.”
“Well, you can’t, big sis, because I’m of age, and that health-care proxy I gave you doesn’t kick in unless I’m incapacitated. So you’re going to have to take my word on this. I’m fine.”
“Hell.”
“I’m fine,” I repeated. “And the last thing I want is a fan club vigil in the waiting room or, God forbid, the press showing up. So keep this to yourself and tell my right-hand Goth to do the same. Got it?”
“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.
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.
