Brown and de Luca Collection, Volume 1

by Maggie Shayne

  Mason walked across the driveway, but I don’t know how he didn’t fall, because he was watching me the whole time. He finally stopped and pointed into the woods off to the right. “Toss it out that way.”

  I tossed it, feeling like it was the most important throw of my life. It landed with a rustling of underbrush. “What do I do with the bag?”

  “Burn it.”

  “And the sink?”

  “Bleach. But for crying out loud, rinse it really, really well afterward. Crime scene guys smell bleach, they get suspicious. Wear rubber gloves to clean it, and then burn the gloves, too.”

  I swallowed hard, thinking the guy knew a little too much about covering up crimes. But no, he was a cop, that was all.

  I got another plastic bag and put the bloody one I’d used for a glove inside it. I’d add whatever rag I used to clean the sink, and the gloves I used.

  He was staring at me. Looking me up and down.

  “I’m not a murderer,” I told him, and I held his eyes when I said it, knowing he had the same ability to sense a lie as I did. He could see the truth in my eyes.

  “I believe you.”

  Good. God, the relief that rushed through me at those words was beyond any kind of reason, especially now that I knew the huge secret he’d been keeping from me. Now to push my luck. “Mason, I think part of your brother is still alive. I think it’s inside me somehow. And I think it was inside Terry Skullbones when he killed that guy, and I think it’s in whoever killed Mott and planted that hammer here.”

  He pressed his lips together. “I think that’s probably the least likely of the half-dozen scenarios that could explain all this.” Then he tipped his head and shrugged. “But let’s play with it a little. Where’s the bleach?”

  I blinked, because the change of subject threw me, but I caught up quickly and walked to the far side of the garage where the washer and dryer were tucked out of the way in a corner. I grabbed the bleach and a pair of rubber gloves from the shelf, and headed back.

  He took everything from me, turned on the water, pulled on the gloves and began cleaning the sink. I’d expected him to let me do that, but I wasn’t going to argue.

  “So you think Mott’s killer is also an organ recipient?” he asked.

  “That would make sense.”

  He nodded. “I agree with you that my brother’s organs seem to be the connection between these crimes. I don’t believe it’s because he’s somehow still killing from beyond the grave, but I do think he’s the connection. Either way, the next step is the same.”

  “And what is the next step, Mason?”

  “We find the recipients.”

  “All of them?”

  “The ones local enough to be involved.”

  “How do we do that? The list is confidential. Can you get a court order or something?”

  “I don’t have anything solid to base one on. But I do have other resources. I hope to have the list before the weekend is out, and then I can start ruling them out one by one.”

  “I can help you do that.” He started to say no, but I held up a hand. “This guy took my brother and my best friend. And my life is on the line here. You know I can read people just as well as you can, maybe better.”

  He didn’t even argue with me as he rinsed and rinsed and rinsed the sink. I took the bleach back to its shelf, and returned to see him dropping the used gloves into the plastic bag. “Make sure it burns. Every trace of it.”

  The idea of burning plastic in my fireplace didn’t appeal, but then I remembered the barbecue pit out back and thought that might be a better option. “I will.”

  “It’ll be daylight soon.”

  “And my poor dog is still in the car. Do you have to sit here until morning?”

  “I’m not supposed to leave the house until my relief gets here in the morning—to keep you from removing evidence until we have a search warrant.” He said it with an ironic look at the bag in my hand.

  “When will you have that?”

  “After they compare the tire tread I took from your car with the one taken from your driveway last night, and the judge has time to review the rest of the case. And that’ll happen in the morning, when I can get back to the station.”

  I heaved a sigh. “Well, if you’re staying, then I’m staying. You want to come in?”

  “We’re not supposed to be in the house.”

  “So we’ll get out before anyone knows the difference.”

  He shook his head.

  “I’m tired. My dog is tired. We’ve already broken every freaking rule in your cop-shop handbook. And I’ve got a serial fucking killer after me. I’m going inside. You wanna come, then come. Because my feeling is that this sicko is watching my every move, and I would like to be out of his sight. Or do you disagree that he’s after me?”

  “He’s after you. I just don’t know if he wants to kill you or frame you for his crimes.”

  “Well, I’d just as soon not be alone when I find out.” I went to the car and let Myrt jump out. As we headed to my front door, I picked up the bag full of evidence. “Besides, you can help me burn this stuff.”

  * * *

  He made me burn it in the fireplace. Said the bastard might be watching and would catch on if we burned it outside. No shit, and he might have seen us plant that hammer just now too, I thought, but didn’t say it. He was the cop. I was just the killer’s latest victim.

  So I sat staring into the flames of my gas fireplace as he wrapped the plastic up in newspaper and tossed it on top of the fake logs to burn. Some of the plastic residue dripped, but soon enough it burned, too.

  “I hate this,” I said, after a long time.

  “Feeling watched, set up, all that?”

  “Having your brother’s corneas. I keep thinking, they saw my brother die. These eyes in my head saw my brother die.”

  He sighed, lowered his head. “It’s just tissue. It hasn’t got a mind or a soul.”

  “I had the first nightmare the first night after I got home. I saw him—me, only I knew it wasn’t really me—standing over the body of a man who’d been bludgeoned to death with a hammer.”

  He handed me a glass of wine, and sank onto the sofa beside me. “Good wine,” he said after a sip.

  “I only buy good wine.”

  “So do you remember details? Of the dream?”

  I took a sip, too, and tried to think back. “It was like I was a passenger in his head, looking out through his eyes. I could see his arms, his hands, a little bit of the front of him if he looked down. He wore overalls, you know, like a uniform, with a patch on the left side, his left, the kind that usually has a name on it, but I wasn’t looking at it dead on, so I couldn’t read the name.”

  “What about his hands?”

  “Gloves.”

  “And the hammer?”

  “Red handle with a black rubber grip. Smooth nose, not grilled like the second one.”

  He nodded.

  “I could feel how much he’d gotten off on the killing. But then, right after, there was this awful sense of grief. Heartbreak. It was like two different people. And I remember him thinking how much he hated cleaning up afterward.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.” I blinked at him. “Could your brother have had multiple personalities or something?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  He sighed and leaned back on the sofa.

  “Do you think he’ll try to kill me, Mason?”

  He looked at me like he was going to give me some bullshit reassurance that he didn’t believe, but when he met my eyes, he gave up on that and offered me honesty instead. “I don’t know, Rachel. I’m gonna try to find him before he has the chance.”

  I nodded. “
Can’t ask for more than that.” I got some clean clothes, even though I’d been told earlier that I couldn’t take anything from the house. I knew he figured that bridge had been burned by now. Still, I didn’t want to cause him more trouble, so I was careful to leave everything exactly the way it had been the night before. Even rinsed the wineglasses and put them away.

  When I joined him on the couch again, he reached for the remote, flicked on the television set and slid a little closer to me. I don’t know when he put his arm around me and I leaned my head over on his shoulder, but that was the way we were when I woke up to the sun streaming in through the windows and my sister yelling at me through the front door. I was stunned when I went outside to find David Heart standing there beside her.

  “Where did you go, Rachel? I was worried sick when I woke up and found you gone!” That was Sandra.

  David was talking at the same time. “Why are there police here? And who the hell is that guy?”

  I looked past him. Sure enough, a cop car was pulling into the drive. Thankfully Mason’s partner, Rosie, was the one behind the wheel, and he was alone.

  “Don’t act all proprietary with me, David. We’ve had three dates.” I called Myrt, and she jumped into action for once, joining me outside the door but carefully skirting the spot where Mott had been lying. Just like Mason and I did.

  Mason pulled the door closed behind us, and we all moved down the steps and onto the lawn.

  “Was he here all night?” David was yelling now.

  Sandra blinked and turned to him. “Did you not get the part about the three dates? And shouldn’t you be more concerned about what happened last night that warranted an overnight with a cop?”

  “What’s going on, Rachel?” David said, after a dismissive look at my sister that effectively ended our relationship. Not that there had ever been one.

  I took his arm, moved him aside and said, “David, what the fuck are you doing at my front door at this hour of the morning? No, wait never mind. It doesn’t matter. I have a lot going on here. It was fun going out with you, but I think it’s safe to say we’re not compatible. I’ll see you at group, okay?”

  He blinked as if I was speaking in tongues or something. “You’re breaking up with me?”

  “We’re not going steady, David. We had three dates. I’m just saying there won’t be a fourth.”

  “Is it because of him?”

  I gaped, then clamped my jaw. “Go home, David. I’ve got my hands full here.”

  He stared at me, first hurt, then angry. Angry enough to send a chill down my spine. But he finally turned and stomped to his car, then spun the tires and left. I shook my head and wondered if the cops should maybe get a cast of those tire tracks, then I glanced toward Mason.

  He met my eyes and nodded just once. Flawless communication. It would be done. I smiled my thanks and went to deal with my sister.

  * * *

  Mason’s relief showed up right behind Rosie, while Rachel was arguing with her sister and just after the jerk she’d been dating had left in an angry hurry. Fortunately they were both outside by then, trying to look like they’d never been otherwise.

  He said his goodbyes and headed in to drop off the tire tread rubbing.

  Dammit, he liked the woman. He liked her spunk, her sarcasm, her wit, and he found her sexy as the devil. There had been some serious chemistry going on last night on that sofa. Hell, there’d been serious chemistry going on since they’d met, but he knew following up on it was a bad idea. More than bad. Idiotic. Suicidal. She was a suspect, though she was going to be cleared, if only because he’d helped her cover up the evidence. Oddly he felt less guilty about that than he did about hiding his brother’s ugly truth. Maybe because he knew Rachel was innocent. Didn’t doubt it. Hadn’t in a while now.

  And now he had the weekend off, and he had the boys coming over to help him unpack, and spend the night. He’d invited Rachel and she was going to come over, too, unless all this chaos had changed her plans. The search warrant for her house would either come through in his absence or it wouldn’t. He needed this downtime. He needed it badly.

  And the boys needed him.

  Before he left, he managed to pull Rachel aside long enough to tell her not to let herself be alone for a while. Not until they got to the bottom of this whole thing. She made a face, and he knew she wasn’t loving the idea. “Fiercely independent” was a term people threw around a lot, but in her case it fit. Especially the fierce part.

  He went to the station to clock out twenty hours after his shift had begun, mentally counted up the overtime pay and drove back to his new home in Castle Creek.

  He drove his aging big black beast along the rutted dirt driveway, past the weed patch of a lawn and right up to the lonely little farmhouse, fantasizing about adding a four-wheel drive vehicle to the “family” and turning that big barn out back into Taj Ma Garage. The hills that surrounded the place were lined in deep green pines with patches of hardwoods here and there, mostly bare now, but they’d been vivid only a few days ago. Beyond the trees, the sun was climbing into a blue sky. But the peace that usually settled over him when he arrived here was lacking this morning. He was worried. His secret wasn’t a secret anymore. Rachel knew the truth about his brother, about the evidence he’d hidden. And while he didn’t think she would tell, he didn’t really know her well enough to be sure of that, did he?

  So why was he more worried about her than about the damage she could do to his life?

  Didn’t make sense, but there it was. He was worried about her.

  This being his case, he probably should have taken her in already for questioning, whether as a suspect or simply because a body had landed literally on her doorstep. It was probably going to look fishy if he didn’t do it soon.

  He knew she didn’t have anything to do with the murders, but he had yet to come up with an explanation for what she knew and how she knew it.

  He glanced down at the book on the seat. He’d read the entire thing nearly twice through, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that there might be some truth to it. Maybe it was time to give Dr. Vosberg another call.

  He shut off the engine and headed into the barn to move his brother’s truck. The boys would be over later, and there was no point having it in plain sight and reminding them of their loss. He drove it into the garage-slash-shed attached to the house, red and white like the barn, all of it peeling, and closed the double doors. Then he headed into the house and tried to distract himself by starting to do some unpacking. Within an hour Marie showed up to drop the boys off. If he hadn’t heard her car, the sound of cattle stampeding over the front porch would have been a dead giveaway.

  Joshua barreled through the front door first and plowed into him for a hug, almost taking him down in the process. “This is such a cool place, Uncle Mason! The barn is awesome. Can we explore in there?”

  “Sure you can,” Marie said without asking him first. She was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, one hand on her baby bump. Jeremy was a few steps ahead of her, dwarfing the kitchen with his height. He had to be six-two already. He’d really grown over the summer. “Jeremy, take your brother out to the barn.”

  Jeremy rolled his eyes. “I came to help Uncle Mason move in, not babysit.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter! I’m almost twelve, for cripe’s sake.”

  “Easy, boys. I’ll go with you. I haven’t explored the whole thing myself, so I don’t know for sure how safe it is yet.”

  Marie lifted her brows. “I should have asked first. Sorry, Mason.”

  “It’s fine. You boys can check out the rest of the house if you want,” Mason said, and Joshua was gone like a shot. Jeremy shrugged and went after his kid brother, long lazy strides on great big feet that didn’t try to step lightly.

  �
�Thanks for bringing them,” Mason said.

  “Thanks for having them.” She looked around the kitchen as she straightened and stepped farther inside, eyeing the red-and-white floor tiles. “It’s nice. Needs some new appliances and a woman’s touch, though.”

  “That’s what I’ve got you and Mother for. Any ideas?”

  She shrugged, walking through the little kitchen. It was old-fashioned, with white painted cupboards and tan Formica countertops, a double stainless-steel sink with a window behind it, and a giant of a refrigerator from the 1960s that looked and ran like new, according to the Realtor. The range was newer, and he hated it and hoped to find a vintage model to fit in its spot. No dishwasher, no island, nothing fancy. And he liked it that way.

  “You going to modernize or go retro? Looks like you could swing either way.”

  “Retro, I think. Really old-fashioned.”

  “Classic, like your car.” She nodded. “That’s one thing you and your brother had in common, that love of old cars.”

  “That we did.”

  The sadness came back into her eyes. It rarely went away these days. “I know I said I’d help, but…”

  “You go enjoy your weekend,” he said. “I can handle the boys from here. You need some downtime. A little mental health break.”

  “Actually, I was thinking about a day at the salon. I just don’t want to saddle you with—”

  “There’s no saddling happening here. I’ve been looking forward to spending time with the boys,” he said. “We’ll have a guys’ day, you know?”

  “They need it,” she said softly. “And you’re a good man to realize it.”

  “I love them, Marie.”

  “They love you, too.” She sighed. “Okay, I’m going. Might even get a massage while I’m at it. Walk me out? The lazy bums left their backpacks in the car.”

  He nodded and then followed her out the door and over to the minivan, opened the sliding side door and pulled out the two backpacks he found there. “Is that it?”