Sleep With The Lights On (11 page)

“Oh.” I blinked twice, thinking back and guessing that I must have been trying to reposition my Pollyanna mask. As I recalled I’d been a little bitchy when he’d first peeled me off the pavement. “Well, maybe so, but I don’t think even I could have suspected
this
was the reason. That I’d inherit your brother’s corneas.”

“Well, you
couldn’t
have
suspected that—unless you’re psychic.”

“Right. And for the record, I’m not,” I said. And then I took the plunge and blurted, “Was he?”

Mason gave me a quick but very deep frown. I liked his eyebrows. They were thick and dark and screamed
I have lots of testosterone.
It was appealing to my female parts, which tingled a little.
Bad idea, Rache. Really,
really
bad.

“Was he what?” Mason asked.

“Psychic.” I watched his face. He didn’t give away a thing.

“No, he wasn’t psychic. That’s a strange question. Why do you ask?”

I shrugged and looked past him at the water, glittering in the sun. It was blue today, and the little ripples were gold flashes sending Morse code greetings back to the sun. Mason Brown was telling the truth. I felt it. He was hiding something, but not that his brother had been his secret weapon in solving crimes. It would have been a cool scenario. His brother sees crimes through ESP, then Mason solves them without letting on where he got his insider info. I inherit the “gift” along with the corneas, and we team up to fight crime. Hell, maybe I should write fiction.

Wait, I already did.

Mason was waiting, looking at me. I guess it was my turn to talk. “I’ve been feeling like I want to know more about him. Your brother. Who he was. What he was about, who his family are, that sort of thing.”

Myrtle tugged her leash, and I looked down to see her straining close enough to hit his shin with her paw.
Pet me, stupid. What do you think those hands are for?

He bent to obey her, and she smiled. I’d learned to recognize her smile—when her bottom fangs stuck out, up and over her upper lip, that was a bulldog smile. And she was smiling to beat the band just now.

“I don’t know how much of that can happen, really,” he said. He wasn’t looking up at me. I was standing, he was crouching, his eyes on the dog, his face hidden. Like he didn’t want me to read too much in it.

I did better reading what I couldn’t see, though, so he was doing me a favor.

“My mother’s...she’s still in too fragile a state, and the others—” He bit his words off there, apparently to keep himself from telling me anything about the rest of his family. Or maybe to keep himself from telling my anything. Everything about him was closed. He couldn’t have been more obvious if he’d been wearing a sandwich board that said KEEP OUT on one side and Trespassers Will Be Shot on the other.

“I don’t need to
meet
them. Maybe you can just...tell me about him.”

“Not much to tell. Eric was...” He stopped there, and I almost heard the “oops.”

“So his name was Eric.” I smiled, and not only because he’d let the name slip out unintentionally, but also because knowing the name of the guy who gave me back my eyesight meant something to me, I guess. I know, saccharine, right?
Gag.

“He was just an ordinary guy. Quiet. Kept to himself.” Still crouching, head down, pretending to keep his attention on the dog but actually focusing on not saying too much.

“Sounds like what the neighbors always say about the guy who goes postal and murders a bunch of coworkers.”

He snapped his head up so fast he probably pulled something in his neck. His eyes were wide, probing mine. I felt the tension in his body coil so tight it must have hurt. I’d said something wrong. He was alarmed, defensive, maybe even hostile.

I looked away because he was skewering me with his eyes as if he was digging inside my brain. I stared at the water. He wasn’t going to tell me anything, was already covering up the reaction, and I didn’t want him all defensive. So I would pretend I hadn’t noticed the telltale response. “The dog’s name is Myrtle, by the way.”

A beat passed. Then he said, “That’s the perfect name for her.”

“She’s blind and needed a home. My assistant figured she could guilt-trip me into taking her.”

“Looks like it worked.”

“She’s still on probation,” I said.

I felt him relax, heard him exhale deeply and fully, felt him uncoil a little, and I faced him again as he straightened.

“What
did
you mean?” he asked me. “When you said the accident might have happened for a reason?”

I frowned as I realized we’d circled back around to an earlier spot in the conversation. And that he was basically changing the subject entirely, even though I hadn’t learned a single thing about my organ donor, other than his name and that his brother wanted to keep him buried.

I moved to the park bench and sat down. Myrtle took the opportunity to plop flat out on the ground. She lay on her belly, short legs straight out behind her like a big furry frog, chin between her forepaws. She started snoring before she even closed her eyes.

“I’m really sorry about your brother,” I said, leaning back on the bench, opening the flap of my handbag and digging inside. “I should have said that first. I know how it feels. I was at the police station that day because of my own.”

He didn’t come and sit beside me. Just stood there waiting—impatient, I thought, to have this meeting come to an end. “Your own?” he asked.

“Brother,” I said. “And since I didn’t get much help from your colleagues at the Binghamton P.D., I thought maybe a detective racked with guilt for running me down like a dog in the street—sorry, Myrtle—would be a good asset to have.”

“Your brother is...?”

“Missing.” I found my brand-new iPhone, and flipped through my recently added photo collection—thank you, Amy—until I found a recent shot of Tommy, and then I got stuck on it. I hadn’t
seen
him since he was fourteen. The photo Amy had gotten from Sandra looked nothing like the Tommy I’d known back then. I’d never seen it, but I’d sensed it. You could feel a person fading away—well, I could, anyway. But the sight of him was still a shocker. Skinny, with a gray cast to his skin, teeth stained and crooked, one missing right in front. That stupid tattoo on his neck that I’d heard about but never seen—a climbing tiger. Even drug-ravaged, he looked younger than his age. Closer to twenty-four than thirty-four. He’d always kept his teenage looks, Sandra said. His soft brown eyes, his long brown hair. I wished I could see him again and nag him to get it cut.

Sighing, I turned the phone toward Mason Brown. “Of course, you had to go and assuage your guilt by giving me back my vision. So I don’t suppose I have any leverage left to get your help on this.”

He was staring at my phone. Staring
hard.
“How long...has he been missing?”

Wow. Something had changed in him. I lowered my head so I could close my eyes without being obvious.

He knows something.
I turned my senses up to full alert.

“He disappeared a week before our accident,” I said. “As near as anyone can figure, anyway. That was the last time anyone who knew him saw him. But it’s impossible to say for sure how long he’s been gone.”

“Why’s that?”

His voice was softer, his energy all broken up and uneven. Like the water when you do a cannonball off the tire swing.

Now that was an odd thought. I’ve never done a cannonball off a tire swing in my life.

“You can probably tell by the photo, can’t you?” I asked, looking up again.

“He’s an addict.” He turned the phone toward me and handed it back.

“And a transient.” Polite-speak for bum. Street person. Homeless. “I imagine that’s why the police didn’t take me very seriously, which was why I went stomping into the street that day without paying attention, which is why you hit me with your car, which is why, I would hazard to guess, I got your brother’s corneas.”

He nodded as if that all made sense.

“It’s almost as if the stuff in my books really
does
have some merit,” I muttered, only because the thought had just then occurred to me and it was a little bit mind-blowing.

“I’m sorry?” He was inside himself, barely listening to me.

I looked up fast. “Nah. Nothing. Nothing worth repeating, anyway.” But I filed it away under “synchronistic coincidence,” knowing it would get an entire chapter in my next bullshit book. It made just enough sense to be believable and fit perfectly with my “everything happens for a reason” line, which was starting to get stale.

“Listen, I know you’ve done more than enough for me already,
way
more. I shouldn’t ask for anything else from you, but I still think we met for a reason. Not so I could get your brother’s eyes, but so you could help me find Tommy. So what do you say? Will you do it? Will you help me find my brother?”

I watched the way his Adam’s apple bulged and then sank again, like a whale breaking the surface and then receding into the depths. “I’ll do everything I can.”

Shit. That’s what they all said. And with that exact same inflection and attitude that revealed the rest of the sentence, the part they didn’t say.
I’ll do everything I can, which is absolutely nothing.
I sighed, then nodded and tried to hide my disappointment. “Great. That’s just great. I filed a missing persons report, so they’ll have all the info you need.”

He nodded. “Height, weight, hair and eye color...?”

“Tall, skinny, brown and brown. Thomas Anthony de Luca. Like I said, it’s all in the report.”

“Okay. I’ll look into it.”

Maybe he would. Barely. He had something else on his mind, though. Something heavy. I could hear it weighing down his voice like a lead weight. I was quiet for a few ticks, not knowing what else to say. And then it occurred to me what I hadn’t yet said, so I said it. “Thank you. Your brother’s gift changed my entire life. Mainly that’s what I wanted to come here and say. I hope you’ll pass my gratitude on to your family for me.”

“I will.”

“But I’d still like to know more about him.”

He stared into my eyes for a long moment. Not in a sexual way, and not in an adoring fan way, either. This was like he was looking for something in them. And I knew what. His brother. His brother, Eric, whose eyes were inside my head. You know, sort of.

Damn, the guy must have really loved his brother.

“I actually have somewhere I have to be,” he said, looking away. “I meant to reschedule it and completely forgot. I’m sorry I don’t have more time.”

“Oh.” It was bullshit. He was feeling uncomfortable as hell for some reason, so he wanted to end this. Nothing I could do about that. “All right, then.”

“I’ll call you, though, if I find anything on your brother.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, and gave him my number, which he entered into his own phone.

“I’d still like to know more about Eric,” I told him. Again. “Maybe...some other time?”

“Sure,” he said. “Some other time.” Then he gave me a stiff smile, a stiffer nod and walked away, taking the path in the opposite direction from the way I had to go. I watched—so did Myrtle, whining twice—until he was out of sight, around the bend in the path, moving fast, as if he couldn’t get away from me fast enough.

I scratched Myrtle right in front of her ear where she loved it best. “You ready to head back, old lady?”

She lifted her “eyebrows” as if to say,
Are you fucking kidding me?

And yet she got up, heaving a long-suffering sigh.

Something about this meeting had gone wrong, I thought, but I was damned if I knew what. We turned and headed back along the walking path, onto the road and toward home. We went slowly, for Myrtle’s sake, and I replayed my every word, trying to figure out where the hell I’d messed up. Something I said had shaken that big detective right to his toes. And I didn’t think he was the type who would shake all that easily.

* * *

Mason pulled into the driveway of his apartment, the place where his brother had died, and sat behind the wheel working up the resolve to go inside. He’d only been back once since Eric’s suicide. Just once. Long enough to clean up and pack some of his things. He’d hauled the sofa to the curb, along with all the plastic that had been over it, the end tables, the coffee table, a couple of lamps and the area rug.

His considerate big bro had covered that in plastic, too, but he knew how blood was. It always got through. He’d had a compulsive need to get every trace of his brother
out.

But even with that, he couldn’t stay there. He’d been using a guest room at his mother’s house while looking for a new home. That had worked pretty well at first, because his mother needed the company. But after a couple of weeks he’d started using a local motel instead.

Eric’s duffel was still in the trunk of Mason’s car. It made no sense to leave it there. It was ridiculously
risky
to leave it there. Hell, maybe he’d been hoping someone would find it and force him to spill. He’d been intending to go through it, burn everything burnable, bury the rest, but he just hadn’t been able to work up the will to do it yet. And yes, he knew it had been six weeks. The truth was, he didn’t know if he would
ever
be able to face what was in that bag.