Sleep with the Lights On

“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.