Gingerbread Man

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
un
expected. 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