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  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.

  As Mason pulled into the parking lot behind Binghamton General and looked for an empty spot, the shaking set in.

  My brother’s dead. But not quite. No, dead. He’s dead. No
one could live like that. It’s a glitch in the works, some reflex trying to hold on. But he’s gone. I saw it, felt it. I know.

  My brother was a murderer. All those guys. How many licenses? Gonna have to go through them later. And that bag. God, I don’t want to go through that bag. Got to, though. And then hide it. Where it’ll never ever be found.

  I need to find the bodies. What the hell did he do with the bodies? Those families...

  Gotta call Mom. And ohmyfuckinggod, Marie. I gotta call Marie. How do I break this to the boys? It’s gonna destroy them.

  Yeah. I did the right thing. This is bad enough without...that note. That bag. Those IDs. Those faces. It’s bad enough. I did the right thing, God forgive me.

  But what if he lives?

  “Sir? Sir, can I help you?”

  He’d managed to walk into the E.R. without even realizing it, that was how far gone he was. He needed to pull it together here. He focused on the woman—a nurse wearing scrubs with big pink flowers all over them. She was behind a curved desk looking at him through an open glass partition. “Detective Mason Brown, Binghamton P.D. I’m here for my brother.”

  “I can help you with that. His name?” she was already tapping keys.

  “Eric Conroy Brown.”

  “Eric.” Tap-tap-tap. “Brown.” Taptaptaptap-big tap. She actually backed up from the computer screen a little, and the bright smile vanished. “He’s in the ICU. That’s up—”

  “I know where it is.” He was a cop. He knew his way around Binghamton General. He was gone while she was still talking. Wishing him luck or something equally useless. Elevators, buttons to push. Autopilot.

  What if he lives?

  He still had all the evidence. If his brother lived and was anything more than a bedridden vegetable, Mason was going to have to turn it in and take the consequences for removing it from the scene. It would be the end of his job. Which was nothing compared to the possibility of his brother going on killing.

  Eric. Killing. God, he couldn’t even imagine it.

  Yes, you can. You know damn well you can.

  How the hell had it happened? What had driven him to this? They’d had the same childhood. Not perfect, but no trauma. No abuse. What had made his older brother become a monster?

  He’s never been right and you know it. And what about all those cats, huh? Why was it we could never keep a cat? They all disappeared. And when they were gone, the neighbors’ cats started vanishing. Remember how everyone thought there must be a wild animal in the area, preying on house cats? Coyotes. They blamed coyotes. And when I asked for a dog, Dad said absolutely not, and there was this look in his eyes, remember that? This look like the thought of a dog was horrifying somehow. Maybe he knew....

  The elevator stopped, the doors slid open. He stepped out into the white hallway. It smelled so clean he didn’t think a germ would dare try to invade. Spotting the nurses’ desk, he went over and repeated his brother’s name to the guy sitting there.

  “Are you family?”

  Mason hated male nurses. Didn’t know why, it just chafed him. They always seemed, to him at least, to be full of themselves. People who see men in scrubs automatically assume they’re doctors, and privately, he thought most male nurses got a huge ego boost out of that and almost never corrected the misassumption.

  “I’m his brother.”

  “I’d better take you in. Your brother is—”

  “I was there when he pulled the trigger. You don’t need to prepare me. Just point me to the room, okay?”

  The chubby Justin Bieber–haired blond came around the desk, anyway. “It’s right over here. He’s on a ventilator, but—”

  Mason walked into the room, right up to the bed. Eric lay there. His entire head was bandaged and padded underneath, so it wasn’t as obvious that a lot of it was missing. Someone had washed most of the blood away and put him in a hospital gown. His eyes were closed, sunken unnaturally back into his head.

  “Have you called his—your—family?” the nurse asked.

  “I was just about to.”

  “Good. The doctor will want to talk to them as soon as possible.”

  “Why?” Mason took his eyes off his brother to look at the nurse.

  “I really have to let the doctor be the one—”

  “Come on, kid. Do you really think it matters who tells it? Cut me some slack here. I just watched my brother blow his own head off. Just tell me what you have to say already.”

  The nurse lowered his head. “He’s brain dead. The machine is pumping air through his lungs, and forcing his heart to keep pushing oxygenated blood through his body. But he’s not coming back.”

  Mason nodded and exhaled long and slow. No vegetable brother wasting away slow for the next twenty years. No recovering murderer brother having to face the consequences of his crimes. No being forced to testify against his own sibling or reveal the nightmare to his mother or sister-in-law or nephews. No being driven out of the job he loved.

  It was better this way. Was that selfish? Okay, yeah, a little, but not entirely. It was better for everyone this way.

  “So the doctor wants us all here to tell him to pull the plug.” It wasn’t a question.

  “And to ask you about organ donation, though technically his wife has to make those decisions,” the nurse said with a nod in the direction of Eric’s left hand. “Most families make it together.”

  Organ donation. That hadn’t even occurred to him. He let his eyes travel up and down his brother’s body, completely intact except for his head.

  “The ventilator keeps the organs oxygenated until the decision is made,” Nurse Bieber went on.

  “I see. So he’s...”

  “He’s already gone, Detective Brown. I’m really sorry.”

  Mason nodded. “Seems like it would be a shame to just waste them, doesn’t it?” he asked. “The way he wasted the rest of himself.”

  “Yeah. It does. There’s someone right now praying they’ll stay alive long enough to get a heart, a liver, a kidney, a lung. Even his corneas are still good. He could make a blind person see again. Maybe for the first time.”

  A blind person see again.

  Maybe this accident happened for a reason.

  Mason turned and looked at the nurse, revising his opinion of him. “They should have you talk to all the families in this situation. You’re good at it.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to...?”

  “Yeah, I’ll convince the family. Marie...she listens to me. But don’t worry, I’ll let the doctor think he talked me into it. Now, about those corneas—can we pick someone to get those? A specific person? If they’re the same tissue type or whatever?”

  “Of course you can. Tissue typing isn’t even necessary for corneas anymore. The latest studies, blah blah blah.”

  The nurse’s words faded into the background noise inside Mason’s head, where the gunshot was ringing and echoing endlessly. He was staring at his brother, remembering when they were kids, playing on the tire swing that hung from the giant maple up at the lake, seeing who could swing out farther, dropping into the icy cold water.

  How do you go from a laughing ten-year-old to a cold-blooded killer?

  “Detective Brown?”

  He nodded to let the nurse know he hadn’t lost him. “Can you, uh, give me a minute alone with him?”

  “Sure. And then you’ll call the family?”

  Mason nodded.

  The kid left and closed the door behind him, leaving Mason alone with Eric. He moved closer to the bed. “I don’t know what to say to you, brother.” He swallowed to loosen up the constriction in his throat. “Hell, I don’t even know if you can hear me, but...what the fuck, Eric? What were you thinking? You—” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You killed all those boys, you sonofabitch. And then dumped it all on me? What the fuck, man?”

  He sighed, backed away. “Okay, so you win. You’re badass. You make the messes, and I clean ’em up. Just like always, big bro. A
nd now I’ve gotta go call Mother and Marie, and break their hearts. And they’re gonna cry and mourn for a piece of shit who never deserved either of them. Much less the boys. Damn you, Eric, how could you do this to your family?”

  He got up, started to leave, then turned back. “Why the fuck did you have to wait for me to get there, make me watch you do that? That’s never gonna get out of my head, you know.”

  He left the room, closed the door, lowered his head way down because his eyes were burning with tears, and then, finally, he called his sister-in-law.

  * * *

  By noon my room was full of balloons, flowers and various idiotic stuffed animals. And people, let’s not forget people. My BBF—best blind friend—Mott Killian was at my bedside, strumming his guitar and singing away, doing his usual half-a-song-then-switch thing. Mott taught American history over at Cortland State. Amy, my irritatingly twentysomething personal assistant, had confiscated my tray table for her laptop. She was clicking away, tweeting and posting hourly updates to my fifty-thousand-and-some-odd followers, and manning her ever-present iPhone to tell reporters no to every interview request. I have no idea about social media. She does it all for me. My agent, Barracuda Woman, was keeping tabs via Skype from her Manhattan office. And my sister was riding herd on the hospital staff and ordering takeout. Her twins were texting nonstop—I could hear the tapping, soft as it was—and sucking down vitamin water. I could smell it. Misty had Berry Blast, and Christy had Mango Peach. They were trying not to let me know that their social lives were positively wasting away while they were doing time at their blind aunt’s bedside, but their frequent sighs were audible, and their impatience wafted from their pores like B.O.

  When a nurse tried to object to all the activity in the room, Sandra laid down the law. “Do you know how many times my sister has been on TV?” she asked. “She’s important. She needs her people around her.”

  My people. My entourage. And every one of them so devoted they would take a bullet for me. Well, except for Misty and Christy, who would take a slap for me, max. Maybe. As long as it wasn’t in the face.