Gingerbread Man

by Maggie Shayne

  “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 and 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. Ear-splitting, 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 in his pocket, Mason blinked again at those driver’s licenses.

  Then he went still, and so did his reeling brain. Everything stopped. Time froze, a moment drawn out into what felt like eternity. He knew most of those faces. They were the same faces currently pinned up on the bulletin board in his office. All young men, all missing, all presumed dead. No bodies, though. Just empty wallets found in each man’s last known location.

  What the hell was Eric doing with these?

  Frowning, he looked around the room. Everything was just the way he’d left it this morning, except for the plastic and that duffel bag on the floor, way over by the far wall. He didn’t think that had been there when he’d left. Letter on the table. Eric’s handwriting, always as sloppy and uneven as a third-grader’s. Swallowing hard, Mason looked at the note, didn’t touch, just looked.

  * * *

  I AM A MONSTER. I kill. Over and over again, I kill. I’m the guy you’re looking for, Mason, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. God, you must be so mad at me right now. But I stopped. I made myself stop. I did the right thing…finally. I know you’ll take care of the boys. It had to be over. Now it is. It’s over. Thank God. Pray I don’t go to hell. It wouldn’t be fair. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t my fault. I just…couldn’t stop.

  Eric looked from the note to his brother, lying in a soup of brain matter and blood on the plastic-covered sofa. He thought about Eric’s sons, Josh and Jeremy. Mason loved those two boys like they were his own. Now he was supposed to tell them their dad was…

  …a murderer?

  …a serial killer?

  His mind rejected the notion even though it was right there in blue ink on a white, blood-spattered sheet of printer paper.

  And Marie, what about Marie? She was heavily pregnant with a little girl.

  And Mother. God, this would kill Mother.

  Was he really going to tell them what was in this note?

  He looked at the driver’s licenses again. The practical part of his brain said it had to be true. Otherwise, how would Eric have all those IDs? Trophies.

  So he would have to tell them.

  For what? It’s not like Eric’s going to kill anyone else. The murders will stop now. No more harm will be done. And I don’t have time to sit here debating this.

  A minute, maybe two, had ticked past since his 911 call. He only had a few more. Maybe five. Probably five.

  He got up, picked up the licenses and the note, moved to the left, where the duffel sat on the floor. Unzipping it, he saw duct tape, coils of rope, a Taser.

  Shit.

  He fought off his heaving stomach, then stuffed the licenses and the note inside the bag and zipped it up. The blood spatter had mostly gone the other way, and the recoil spray hadn’t made it that far. The duffel was clean, but the coffee table was coated with a fine mist of blood except where the note and licenses had been.

  He picked up a bloody sofa pillow by one clean corner, shook it over the clean spots on the table to splatter them with blood, then replaced it where it had been on the sofa. Then he tipped the coffee table onto its side, as he could easily have done when he’d lunged toward his brother. The blood on the surface would run enough to further cover those clean spots. It wasn’t perfect. But it was enough. No one was going to look too closely, anyway. He had the text message, and he’d called it in immediately. There was nothing here to suggest this was anything but exactly what it had been: a suicide. He’d witnessed it. He was a cop. A decorated and respected cop.

  Open and shut.

  Taking the duffel bag, he walked out of the apartment and down the stairs. He put the bag into the back of Rosie’s Hummer, then took a quick look inside his brother’s pickup, as the other detectives would do in a little while, but he didn’t see anything else tying Eric to the missing men. Not on first glance, anyway, and there was no time for a more thorough examination. His colleagues would be here any second now. So he sank to the curb and tried to keep it together as he heard sirens wailing in the distance, coming closer.

  He’d made a snap decision to cover up the answer to the biggest case of his career. And he would lose everything if it was ever found out. But dammit, he couldn’t put his family through the truth.

  He couldn’t.

  He told himself he’d done the right thing.

  And then the cavalry arrived, ambulance first, cops on its bumper.

  He just pointed at the stairs. “My brother shot himself.”

  The medics reacted, raced up the stairs. Rosie arrived and hunkered down beside him. “Lemme see your phone, partner.”

  Nodding, Mason handed it over.

  Rosie looked for Eric’s text message, found it, nodded. “You should’a taken me with you.”

  “I didn’t think he meant that. Hell, maybe I did, but I didn’t think he’d really do it.”

  A burst of activity on the stairs. Urgent shouts that seemed uncalled for, given that his brother was obviously dead. Mason looked up fast. Had he missed something? Did they know? And am I going to be wondering that every day for the rest of my life? God, what the hell did I do here?

  And then a gurney came bumping down the stairs, Eric strapped to it, mask on his face, someone pumping a rubber balloon.

  “He still has a pulse!”

  Lightning jolted Mason to his feet. “How can he…how can that…his head…”

  “Hold on, partner,” Rosie said, grabbing his shoulders when he started to go to his brother.

  Mason honestly didn’t know in that moment, whether he meant to go help Eric or yank the bag away and let him suffocate.

  Two EMTs jostled Eric into the back of the ambulance. In seconds it went screaming away and left Mason staring after it with his guts tied up in knots.

  “You’d better go,” Rosie said. “Go on now. Be with your brother. Call your family. I’ve got this.”

  Nodding, Mason looked Rosie square in the eye, knowing he had to initiate the lies now, before he lost his resolve. It was the only thing to do. “I can give you the gist first, though. You need to know. He showed up last night, asking to sleep over. About 3:00 a.m., give or take. I was half asleep, and we didn’t talk. This morning I left before he got up. Then I got that text. When I opened the apartment door he was sitting on the couch with the gun to his head.” He had to stop and swallow hard to get his throat to open up again.

  “Damn,” Rosie said softly. “You don’t have to do this now, partner.”

  “It was a .44 Magnum. Never saw it before. Have no idea where he got it, or if it’s legal. He had the barrel here.” He put a finger on his skull. “His right. My left. I yelled and sort of jumped toward him. He pulled the trigger at the same time. I landed short, knocked over the coffee table. Then I called 911 on my cell, came down here and waited. I couldn’t look at him like that. That’s all. That’s everything.”

  “Good enough. Good enough for now, Mason. Maybe I’d better drive you. They don’t need me here.”

  Mason looked at his partner; he hated lying to him. “I’d feel better if you’d stay here while they process the place, see they do it right, respectfully, you know? I mean, it’s my place. I don’t want it all torn up.” He shook his head. “Shit, that sounds shallow.”

  “Sounds like someone who’s seen what happens when a home becomes a crime scene. Don’t you worry.”

  “I still need the Hummer,
Rosie.”

  “I’ll pick it up at the hospital once we finish here.”

  “The station. I’ll leave it at the station.” Mason looked down at his hands. “I need to change…before the hospital.”

  “Go to the station, then. You got a change of clothes in your locker?” Mason nodded. “You can park the Hummer there, then. Your wheels are already back in the lot. The blind writer didn’t so much as ding it. It’s all good.”

  But it wasn’t all good. And Mason pretty much figured it was never going to be all good again. He wanted to crawl into a dark corner and stay there for a while. A long while. But he had to keep moving, and somehow he did.

  He headed to the station. As Rosie had promised, his beloved black ‘74 Monte Carlo was in the lot in back. And also just as promised, the blind chick hadn’t even put a dent in the bumper. They didn’t make cars the way they used to. A new one would have crumpled. He tossed his brother’s duffel into the trunk and made damn sure no one had seen him do it.

  He locked Rosie’s Hummer, took the keys inside and left them in his partner’s locker, avoiding everyone he saw on the way. No one stopped him. Easy. Then he took a quick shower and changed into the spare clothes he kept on hand, a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved pullover in two-tone gray. Then he went back out to his own car and drove to the hospital, racking his brain on the way. Had he missed anything?

  He undoubtedly had some of Eric’s blood on his clothes. He’d crawled across that plastic, after all. That was fine. He wouldn’t even wash them until he was sure his colleagues didn’t want to run them through the lab. They would count on his cooperation. He had to give them exactly what they expected an innocent cop to offer. Full cooperation.

  He might have left microscopic traces of blood on the steering wheel and driver’s door of Rosie’s Hummer. But that would be expected, too. If he cleaned that up, it would look as if he had something to hide. If anyone even bothered to check, which they had no reason to do. Looking as if he had something to hide would be the quickest way to revealing the truth, though, so he hadn’t cleaned off the steering wheel or front seat.

  Traces of blood in the cargo areas in the back of the Hummer, or on the cargo hatch door, however, would be unexpected. They would be out of place. But no one was going to look for traces of blood in the back of Rosie’s Hummer. No one had any reason to. Unless Eric somehow pulled through, of course. Or said something in a state of delirium. If that happened, he would deal with it. He couldn’t do anything about it now.