Gingerbread Man

face—he looked fifty but was only thirty-eight—popped up beside the text message icon. He clicked through, and the message read: Take care of Marie & the boys.
    What the hell?
    "I gotta go." Mason turned toward the car, moving on autopilot, then stopping. "Shit, I need a car." He couldn’t move his until he got the okay.
    "What’s up?" Rosie unsnapped his key ring from his belt and held it out.
    "Don’t know. Eric’s at my place, showed up in the wee hours and wouldn’t talk to me. He had a fight with Marie or something." He looked at the text again as he took the keys, a cold chill going up his spine. "Thanks, pal."
    "Holler if you need me, Mace."
    Mason gave a nod and headed around the corner to the parking lot behind the Binghamton P.D. Rosie’s yellow Hummer stood out just like its owner, the only black detective in a mostly white police department, so he didn’t have to look for it.
    There was a sick feeling in his stomach as he drove the oversized toolbox out into traffic. He was worried about his brother.
    Nothing new there. Worrying about Eric had become the Brown family pastime. Habit, he guessed. He told himself that there was probably nothing wrong. Maybe Eric was quoting a line from one of those damn grim poems he was always reading, scaring the hell out of Mason for nothing.
    But he didn’t think so.
    * * *
    ERIC CONROY BROWN had gone straight to work after dumping the body, worked the entire day and then headed home late last night just like he always did after the rat had been fed and had crawled back into its hole, leaving him to clean up the mess. It made him feel normal to lie in bed beside his wife and pretend he wasn’t a monster. He knew he was, though. The rat was him. No matter how hard he tried to convince himself it was some other being, some demon possessing him, some evil other personality trying to force its way to the fore, it was him. He was the rat, which was probably why he couldn’t get it to shut up and stay inside, much less kill it.
    This time, however, home had provided no solace.
    Marie had been angry, waiting at the door with one hand at the small of her back and the other on top of her basketball-sized belly. "Why didn’t you come home last night? Honestly, Eric, I told you yesterday morning that the boys would be home from camp and I was making a welcome-home dinner."
    He blinked. The boys. Baseball camp. They’d been gone all summer. Hell. "I’m sorry. I got busy at work and—"
    "You left your cell phone home. Again. I called the garage three times last night."
    "You know the garage phone switches over to the service at five whether we stay late or not. This guy needed his car finished, and the boss asked if I could stay late and get it done. It got so late I just slept on the cot in the store room. I just forgot about the boys is all."
    "You
forgot
?" She’d stared at him for a second there as if she knew. Or suspected. As if she was trying to get a visual of the rat inside him.
    Don’t let her see, don’t let her see, don’t let her see. Spackle. Plaster. Shhh. No scratching!
    "Are they already asleep?" he asked. He’d stayed late. It was hard to face the family too soon after…
    "It’s 2:00 a.m., Eric. What do
you
think?"
    He sighed heavily. Then, unable to bear the way she was looking at him any longer, he went to the boys’ shared bedroom and closed the door behind him. He heard Marie huff and stomp off into the kitchen. He imagined her waddling and stomping at the same time and smiled. She was beautiful when she was pregnant. All the time, really. A blue-eyed blonde just like Mother. But pregnant, she was at her best.
    He didn’t deserve her.
    Joshua was sound asleep. His curly carrot mop had grown longer, and his freckles had undergone a summertime explosion. How did kids change so much over a single season? He hoped sixth grade would be a good one for Josh. He hated sending his kids to school. School had been nothing but hell for him. He’d suggested homeschooling, but Marie had insisted she had no time, and the boys had hated the idea. And really, the more they were out of the house, away from him, the better.
    Besides, the boys weren’t like him. They fit in. They weren’t freaks.
    He’d wondered, back then, if everyone would always be able to see the rat inside him as clearly as the kids in middle school seemed to. Because they saw it. He had no doubt that they saw it. Even when he could keep it mostly silent and sleeping for months