Sleep With The Lights On

by Maggie Shayne

  “I hate mushrooms.”

  “So do we.”

  I smiled a little bit. “Then you’re on. I’ll see you in a little while.”

  “Rachel?”

  “Yes?”

  “Apply some of the positive Pollyanna crap from your books to the cops outside. It’ll go a long way. Crank that smile up to high beam, okay?”

  I sighed, but said, “See you later,” and ended the call. Then I opened my front door. “All right, sorry about that.” I extended a hand to the guy in the suit who seemed to be in charge and put on the same persona I used for all my talk show appearances. “Come on in.”

  The cop’s face registered surprise, but then he composed himself to all business again and shook my hand. “Chief Subrinsky, ma’am. I know this is uncomfortable for you, but—”

  “Actually, I don’t mind at all, and I apologize for my reluctance earlier. To be honest, Chief, I’m scared to death. I don’t know how I’ve attracted the attention of a serial killer—maybe because of my persistence in trying to find out what happened to my brother. But now that I have, I’m terrified I might be next on his list.”

  He frowned a little, but nodded. “We’re going to do our best to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  I stepped back. “Please come in. Search all you want. I hope you don’t mind but I would rather not be here while you do. Would you lock up when you leave?”

  “Of course.”

  “What about my car? Am I allowed to take it now?”

  “Not yet, I’m afraid.”

  That pissed me off. I bit back my knee-jerk reply and offered a calmer one. “It’s a collector’s car, as you can tell. Please don’t damage it.”

  “We will treat your possessions as carefully as we would our own, ma’am,” the chief said.

  Then a more familiar voice said, “I promise, Ms. de Luca, everything will be handled with care.” I smiled when I saw that Mason’s partner was among the cops filing into my domain, and nodded my thanks to Rosie, then turned. “Myrtle? Where are you girl?”

  I heard movement from beyond the sofa, and then Myrt dragged her butt into sight, shuffling and hanging her head, eyes only half open.

  “You want to go for a ride in the car?”

  Her head came up and tilted all the way to one side, ears perking.

  “Well, go get your stuff then.”

  Turning, she trotted away, and came back with her tinted goggles and pretty yellow scarf in her mouth. The cops all laughed, and several of them bent to pat her as she moved past them, stopping at my feet.

  “Come on, dog.” I squatted and gathered her up into my arms, then carried her past the half-dozen men and out to my nieces’ car, which was mine for the day, according to Sandra, though I wasn’t sure Misty or Christy had approved that arrangement.

  Nor was I sure they would appreciate the bulldog ass sitting on the plush front seat, but that was the least of my worries just then.

  * * *

  I showed up at Mason’s with pizza and wings in the backseat, wafting their deliciousness through the car like some kind of ingenious torture device. Halfway there, I’d had another call from Mason to say the local pizza place didn’t deliver, so he wondered if I would mind picking up their order on the way. He’d even reassured me that he’d paid for it over the phone.

  And the truth is, I wouldn’t have minded if manners hadn’t dictated that I not pull off onto the shoulder and wolf down a slice or two without them.

  As it was, the ten minutes from the little bar-slash-pizza place to Mason’s house were brutal. Myrtle thought so, too. The measure of her discomfort and yearning for a taste was in direct proportion to the length of the drool strand extending from her left lip and about to drop off onto the seat of the twins’ car. I willed it to hang steady as we bounced over the driveway and up to the house. Then the three Y-Chromers were spilling onto the porch and I was too distracted to pay attention.

  The older boy was taller than his uncle by a couple of inches, with long arms and wide shoulders, but otherwise skinny. He had a neck like Ichabod Crane with an Adam’s apple I swear was the size of an actual apple. I wouldn’t have known if he was sixteen or twenty-three, to be honest. He had brown hair that was apparently being grown out. It was at that awkward stage where it flipped a little at the ends.

  The younger boy was cute as hell. His hair was reddish-brown, shorter, swept all forward into uneven bangs, and he had freckles.

  Both boys were smiling, and I was glad to see it, reminding myself that they’d lost their father not long ago.

  Their father. A serial killer. God, it was hard to reconcile that with the two ordinary-looking kids in front of me. Going by their smiles, Mason must be doing a good job of keeping their minds off their recent tragedy.

  I got out and went around to open the passenger door for Myrtle. She jumped down immediately, the way she always did.

  “Oh, man! Is that your dog?” said the younger boy, and he came running, and dropped right down onto the ground in front of Myrt, rubbing her head and ears. Her bottom teeth emerged and she started to wiggle her butt, a sure sign of delight.

  “What a cool dog.”

  “Her name’s Myrtle.” I bent down to take off her goggles and scarf. She always wore them in the car, even if it was dark. Habit.

  “Myrtle!” The boy laughed, and I snapped a leash on her collar, then handed him the other end. “You’re Josh, right?” I asked.

  He nodded and took the leash from me.

  “Well, Josh, I’m Rachel. Myrtle is old and she’s blind, so you have to lead her wherever she goes.”

  “She’s blind? Awww, poor doggy.” He petted her some more, looking sadly at her eyes.

  “No, she’s a very happy, very lucky dog. She barely notices that she can’t see. All her other senses make up for it by being much sharper. At home she finds her way around fine. But this is a new place, so she’ll need a guide.”

  “I’ll show you around, Myrtle.” Josh stood up, proudly holding the leash. “Come on, come with me.”

  Myrt turned her head in my direction. “Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll be right behind you with that pizza you’ve been drooling over.” Oh, yeah, right, drool. I glanced through the still open door and saw the splotch of it on the seat, then yanked a napkin from the stack I’d stuffed in my pocket and wiped it up.

  Then I opened the back door to get the pizzas, but by that point Mason and the tall skinny boy were there, and Mason reached past me to pick up the food.

  “I’ve got it. Rachel, this is Jeremy. And you’ve already met Josh.”

  “Yeah, I think I might have trouble prying my dog away from him, to be honest. Look at that.”

  The two followed my gaze. Joshua was picking Myrt’s front paws up one at a time and setting them on the first step, talking to her as he went. I grinned, and my heart went a little soft. Kids and dogs, right? They’ll do it every time. I turned my grin on Jeremy. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Same here.” He looked at Mason. “So are you two, like...dating or something?”

  “No!”

  We both said it at the same time, with the same horrified inflection and extra volume. I shook my head, then looked at Mason, wondering just what he had told the boys about who I was. I was pretty sure it wasn’t that I was the person who’d wound up wearing their father’s eyes.

  Mason started for the house, and Jeremy and I fell into step on either side of him. We caught up to Josh on the front porch as he was easing Myrtle through the door. She didn’t need anywhere near the amount of help he was providing, but she didn’t seem to be minding all the attention.

  “Rachel’s had some weird stuff happening out at her place. The police are looking into it,” Mason said. “That’s how we met.”

  “That’s not how we met,” I countered. We went inside, and Mason set the pizzas on the table. Jeremy was already dealing paper plates like a round of poker, and Mason headed to the fridge to pull out a two-liter bottle o
f root beer as Josh escorted Myrtle into the room. So I sat down, as eager as they apparently were. “We met for the first time when your uncle hit me with his car.”

  The boys both stopped what they were doing to stare at me. “No way!” Josh said.

  “Yeah, but it was my fault. I walked out in front of him. He probably didn’t tell you, but I used to be blind.”

  “Just like Myrtle?” Joshua asked.

  “Uh-huh. But I had an operation, and now I’m not.”

  “Wow.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  Jeremy sat down and opened one of the pizza boxes. Then Josh grabbed the first slice, put it on a paper plate and laid it on the floor in front of Myrtle. I opened my mouth to object, then closed it again. Who was I to argue with a gift like that?

  Mason, bringing glasses filled with ice to the table, sent me an Is that okay? look, and I shrugged back an Of course it is reply.

  Myrtle sniffed for about a half second, then went to town, and even Jeremy was smiling and shaking his head.

  It was a good time, scarfing down pizza and wings and root beer with Mason and his nephews. But I kept thinking, So these are the sons of Mason’s brother the serial killer. Hard to believe. They were normal. They were great kids, actually. I mean, animals know these things, right? Myrtle was practically claiming Joshua as her own puppy before the meal had ended, and I didn’t think it was entirely because he’d plied her with pizza.

  After lunch she stuck to him like glue while the three of them showed me around the place, and then we argued good-naturedly about the placement of the living room furniture, all of it brand-new. Some pieces still had bits of plastic clinging to them. And that reminded me that Mason’s brother—the boys’ father—had shot himself on Mason’s old couch.

  Okay, all right, I got it. I got why he couldn’t tell them the truth. I got why he hid the suicide note. I met his eyes, and saw him wondering, and I gave just the slightest nod to tell him that yeah, I understood now.

  You couldn’t tell a kid like Joshua that his dad had been a murderer. Who could do something like that? And Jeremy’s head would melt if he ever knew. Being a teenager was hard enough.

  Yeah, Mason had done the right thing. He’d done the only thing he could have. I really believed that. The only thing he could possibly have done. I couldn’t be angry at him for that.

  We unpacked for hours. I mean hours, and I put myself in charge of the list of must-haves as we went along. Top thing on it was curtains. He had maybe three sets from his apartment, and they were not only ugly but too small for any of the windows. Besides which, he had a lot more windows to cover now.

  We worked until almost ten, and I was shocked when I saw the time on my cell phone, then added “Clocks” to the list.

  “I’m starved,” Jeremy said.

  “You’re always starved,” Mason replied.

  “I’m starved, too. We totally worked through dinner.” I sank onto the new sofa, green and colonial-style, which made it look both out of date and a perfect fit for the house. “How about we finish off the leftovers?”

  “And watch a movie?” Mason asked. He and Jeremy had managed to anchor a flat-screen TV to the wall, making it the most modern-looking thing in the entire house, though there was no cable hooked up yet—if it was even available this far out of town, which I doubted.

  “How are we going to watch a movie?” I didn’t see a DVD player, just a game system I assumed was for the boys’ entertainment.

  “We’ll stream one through the Xbox,” Mason said.

  I lifted my brows, impressed. “I had no idea those things could do anything more than play games.”

  “You’ve got so much to learn,” Mason said, then he crooked a brow at me. “Have you ever even played a video game?”

  I pointed at my eyes. “Blind for twenty years, remember?”

  He smiled slowly, as if he was up to something. “Screw the movie, then. Did you guys see which box had the games?”

  Jeremy crossed the living room, picked up a backpack, brought it to the coffee table and dumped it. “No, but Josh brought every game we own. I kept telling him we were only staying overnight.”

  “I wanted us to have a wide selection,” Joshua said, sounding important.

  “Pick an easy one, okay? I don’t want to look like too much of an idiot.”

  They grinned at me, probably knowing that wasn’t possible. But Joshua fished out an innocuous-looking copy of Super Mario Bros., and it was on.

  I don’t think I ever laughed so hard in my entire life.

  And then everything stopped. Everything.

  I dropped my controller, because I couldn’t see the TV screen anymore. Everything went dark, and for a horrifying instant, I thought my eyesight had blinked out. Turned off. Like a light. But then I realized the volume of the noise around me had turned itself down, too. It was there, but muffled, dull. Maybe Mason was saying my name. I’m not sure. But I was seeing...something. Bushes. Branches. Trees. Brush. All blocking my vision. And then my hand—no, not my hand. That’s not my hand at all—came up. Black glove. Big hand, male hand. And it moved some of the branches aside. And there was a house.

  My house.

  The killer is in the brush watching my house.

  17

  “Rachel, hey, come on.” Mason took her by the shoulders, shook her a little. She’d gone weird all of a sudden, dropping her controller and just sitting there staring straight ahead, seeing God only knew what. Not the here and now, that was for sure.

  Another vision?

  “Rachel?” he said again.

  Suddenly Joshua threw a glass of water into her face—just grabbed his glass and splashed it on her. Just like that.

  She blinked and scrunched up her face, turning away in reaction. Then she wiped her cheeks with one hand.

  “Joshua, what the hell?” Jeremy asked.

  Joshua shrugged. “It’s what they always do on TV.”

  “TV isn’t real life, dork.”

  “Well, it worked, didn’t it?” Josh yanked a couple of paper towels from the roll they’d been using in lieu of napkins and handed them to her. “You okay now, Rachel?” he asked, all innocence.

  She blinked a few times and wiped her face with the towels. “Yeah, I’m okay. Thanks, Josh.”

  “Anytime,” he said. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.” But she sent Mason a look that said she did.

  Mason said, “Why don’t you guys play a round without us? We need to clean up this mess, and then we all need to hit the hay. It’s after midnight.”

  “Okay, Uncle Mason.” Josh picked up the controller that Rachel had dropped, her lapse forgotten. Jeremy wasn’t so easy to brush aside. He was looking at her oddly and, Mason figured, trying to guess what had just happened. He wasn’t going to guess right.

  “It’s all right, Jer. Go ahead, finish up the level and don’t forget to save our game so we can pick up where we left off next time.”

  “You sure I can’t help?”

  “I’m good, Jeremy,” Rachel said. “But you’re a great guy to offer. Thanks.”

  Jeremy shrugged and returned to his game. But Mason knew that wasn’t the end of it. There was never an end to anything where Jeremy was concerned. He observed everything, remembered everything and was curious about everything.

  Rachel got to her feet, seemed to take a second to make sure she was steady, then picked up the empty pizza box and wing container, all but overflowing with saucy bones. She headed for the kitchen. Mason grabbed the paper plates, empty glasses and wadded-up napkins, and followed.

  When they were out of earshot, he looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to speak. She shoved the refuse into the wastebasket, folding the pizza box in half to make it fit. Then she turned to face him, leaned back against the counter, crossed her arms over her chest and said, “He’s at my house.”

  It hit him like a mallet between the eyes. “What?”

  “The ki
ller is at my house. He’s standing in the bushes, right near where we threw...what we threw. He’s watching the place.”

  Mason didn’t know if he believed her or not, but he didn’t see the need to waste any time. He pulled his cell phone out and started to text Rosie.

  Rachel moved closer and put a hand over his. “You can’t do that.”

  He lifted his head, met her eyes.

  “What will they think if you call them and tell them to go out there and look in the brushy woods near the edge of my driveway, and then, when they do, they find...the hammer?” She barely whispered the final two words. “That’s gonna look suspicious as hell, Mason.”

  “If he’s there, they can catch him.”

  “And how are you going to say you knew?”

  “Rosie’s on surveillance tonight. I trust my partner,” Mason said. “He won’t sell me out without asking me how I knew first, and he’ll come up with an explanation. I promise.” He finished the text. Make excuse to check woods near edge of drive, opposite garage. He clicked Send.

  Seconds ticked past before the reply came. One letter. K.

  Then nothing. Minutes ticked past, and still only silence.

  Finally his phone rang. He looked at Rosie’s face on the screen, then grabbed Rachel’s arm and moved them out to the front porch before putting the call on speaker. “I’m here, Rosie. What did you find?”

  Rachel was pale, as nervous as he’d ever seen her. As nervous as she had ever let him see her, he amended. He was pretty sure she, like any sane person, was terrified over everything that had been going on, but unlike most people, she didn’t like showing vulnerability. Weakness. She had a tough shell, but inside she was afraid. Shaken to the core.

  “How did you know, buddy?” Rosie asked.

  “What did you find?”

  “Someone was out there. Not long ago, either. Footprints were fresh. And I repeat, how did you know?”

  “Anonymous tip. I can’t tell you more than that. Can you cover for me?”

  Rosie hesitated, then, “Yeah. I’ll say I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I called for backup, and they’re close. If he was on foot, we’ll get him.”