Sleep With The Lights On (17 page)

He was still watching my face. I took a deep breath and let it out, nodding. “I had to tell you. Now I have.”

“Why do you think you’re having dreams like this?”

I shook my head slowly. “I don’t know.”

“After all that, Rachel, why are you lying to me now?”

I blinked, caught red-handed. “You’re good.”

“Not as good as you are. But good enough. So tell me, why do you think you’re seeing this kind of thing in your sleep?”

“I think you know the answer to that better than I do.”

He held my gaze and didn’t flinch, not even a little. I couldn’t see any falsehood in his eyes as he waited for me to answer his question.

“All right, fine. I think it’s because I’m connected somehow to this killer. And I think
that’s
because your brother must have been connected to him, too.”

He stood up fast. “Come on, Rachel, we’re back to that again? It’s ridiculous.”

And then I could see it. Now
he
was the one
lying.

“Think about it, Mason. I had the first nightmare right after I got my sight back. It was a murder just like this one, and I kept having nightmares just like it. And then I had that...vision right outside your place, when I saw the guy in the T-shirt getting into that car—
right as it was really happening
. Then I heard the gunshot and felt what your brother must’ve felt when he blew his brains out the minute I set foot in your apartment. And now this. Nothing like this ever happened to me before I got your brother’s corneas. So what the hell else could it be?”

He shook his head, pacing away. “You’re reaching. A million things could explain it. Hell, sensory overload, first and foremost. Your brain must be dealing with a million times more input than it’s used to. Every sight, every color—every photon of light, for God’s sake. Your mind’s overwhelmed. This is stress, nothing else.”

I stood up slowly. He’d walked over to the fireplace and was standing there with his back to me, staring at the flames. Myrtle was still snoring away by his feet. “Why is it you can’t look me in the eye when you’re spouting this bullshit, Mason?”

His head came up and he turned. “Come on, Rachel, you’ve gotta admit, this is all pretty far-fetched.”

“You know something you’re not telling me,” I said, reading him like an open book. “I know you do, I smell it on you. What is it, Mason? Was your brother some kind of psychic after all? Was he the reason you solved so many crimes, earned so many commendations, before his death and have been floundering ever since? Was he your secret weapon?”

Everything in him relaxed. His shoulders eased, his chin lowered a notch, and his jaw unclenched. Oh, he was trying to hide it, and his reactions were subtle, but the ones I couldn’t see were more powerful than the ones I could. His soft exhale, the prickly defenses I’d felt as clearly as an electric charge, now blinking out one by one.

He was relieved, hugely relieved, that I’d said
psychic
and not some other word. The question was, what other word?

“No,” he said, and the hard, tight undertone was gone from his voice. It was soft, almost comforting. “No, to my knowledge, Eric was never in possession of any sixth sense or ESP or anything like that. I don’t think he even believed in it.”

I lowered my eyes, no longer willing to let him see into my soul. “So what, then? Why am I having visions of murder that feel just as if I’m seeing them through the eyes of the killer? And that he can see me back? What else could possibly explain—”

“Stress. That’s all. Come on, sit down, let
me
talk for a minute, all right?”

He came closer, hands on my shoulders, gentle, his face near mine. “Sit. Try eating something again.”

I nodded, the movement jerky, and sat so he would take his hands off me and back up out of my space. He was a liar, and I had to find out why, see through his masks, figure out what he was hiding, all the while without revealing my own thoughts to him. Especially not the one where I was sure he was lying to me.

I ate a bite of the donut, drank some more of my now cooling coffee, and nodded at him to go on.

“Look, you just got your eyesight back after twenty years. You just learned that your missing brother is probably dead, mostly likely the victim of either a serial killer or a copycat. You—”

“Copycat? You think there’s a copycat?”

He shrugged. “It’s one possibility we’re looking at. But you have to let me finish.”

“Why? Why a copycat?” I studied him, watched his face. “Was there a difference in the most recent abduction that you haven’t told anyone about?”

He shook his head, then was interrupted when his phone buzzed. He pulled it out, glancing down. Then he looked at me again. “There is now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I got up and leaned closer, looking down at the phone in his hand and reading the text message that had just changed his mind.

Body found. The W screwed up. 210 Orange.

“What’s the W?” I whispered, a beat late on the uptake. “The Wraith?”

He looked sideways at me. “Yeah.” He texted
On my way
and pocketed the phone. “I’ve gotta go.”

“I’m going with you.” I walked to the door on shaking legs, and grabbed my jacket and keys.

He came behind me, laying a heavy hand on my shoulder. “I can’t take you with me.”

“I didn’t ask you to. I’m driving myself. I already have the address.”

“Rachel, you could cost me my job.”

“I’m an author. A self-help author. Researching for my next book on....oh, hell, let’s say the nature of evil. I heard the address on my scanner.”

He looked around my living room. “You have a scanner?”

“No, but my sister does. Her husband’s a volunteer fireman. But I can have it here by the time anyone comes to check, should it be necessary. So let’s get going already.”

He sighed heavily, and I ran back to my sleeping bulldog, crouched low and rubbed her ears. “I’ll be back soon, Myrt. Hold down the fort, ’kay?”

She sighed, opened one eye and went back to snoring. I interpreted her commentary as
Bring me back a treat or you’re on my shit list
.

* * *

When Mason arrived on the scene, he saw the flashing lights of two police cruisers bathing everything in red and blue strobes. Uniforms were already there, talking to a weeping, bathrobe-clad woman on a sidewalk lined with orange carnations. Neat little saltbox house, more flowers along the front. The front door was open, but one of the uniforms was standing nearby with the yellow tape ready.

He watched Rachel de Luca pull in behind him as he parked a block up, because he wanted her bright yellow convertible out of sight. The thing was like a neon sign announcing the fact that he’d brought a civilian to a crime scene. Since she knew the address, trying to shake her would have been a waste of time, but no way was he bringing her in his car as if he’d invited her.

This had to be a copycat. Had to be. It was a relief that there was such a marked difference in this murder. Leaving the body to be found had definitely not been Eric’s M.O.

Rachel hurried to join him on the sidewalk. She’d thrown on a jacket and a baseball cap, but her hair was still wet and sticking out the back, ponytail-style. No makeup. She didn’t look like a celebrity tonight.

She looked scared.

They speed-walked past the side-by-side houses. Not real nice ones. Sagging porches loaded down with crap, like something out of
Hoarders,
shingle siding with missing patches, dogs on chains with about four square feet of worn-bare dirt to stand on.

Rosie was already there, standing in front of one of the nicest places on the block. Small, but neat. Well kept. He spotted them coming and came to meet them halfway.

“Mason, hey.” He sent him a questioning look as he nodded at Rachel.

“I was with her when I got the call. She wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Mason explained.

“I do have a vested interest,” she snapped. Then she directed a phony but potent smile at Rosie. “Besides, I’m researching the nature of evil for my next book. It’s my way of dealing with what happened to my brother. I have to be here.”

Rosie went soft, like he was chocolate and her sunny beam was melting him. “I understand, Miss de Luca.”

She reached out and touched his arm. “Rachel. You can call me Rachel.”

Hell, Mason thought. If she was this good with the chief, they would be clearing out office space for her at the station in no time. How was it no one saw through her but him?

Fuck it, it wasn’t important. “What have we got, Rosie?”

“Uniforms responded to a suicide. Found the SOB hanging in his bedroom. Bloody footprints in the hallway outside his room led ’em to check out the basement, where they found the body of our latest missing person. Come on, this way.” He stopped on the front porch to pull on paper shoe covers and a pair of latex gloves, then handed a set to Rachel.

Mason snatched them just as she reached for them and put them on as he said, “No. Look, you can’t go in there, I’d get my ass handed to me. Just wait outside, and for God’s sake, don’t talk to anybody.” He looked at the uniform standing at the door with the tape. “No one else comes inside unless it’s the chief or forensics. Got it?”

He sent Rachel a final warning glance.

She was pissed, but he could tell she was a little bit relieved, too. That fear in her eyes had noticeably eased. It wouldn’t have, he thought a minute later, if she had followed him inside.

The house was small and simple. You entered straight into the living room, furniture there all draped in flowery throws and way too many pillows. Eat-in kitchen on the right. No dining room. Then a hallway, with a bedroom on either side. One was smaller and had a bathroom beside it. The other was bigger, and farther down the hall. He noticed the bloody boot prints that led from a doorway at the far end of the hall—basement?—to the bigger bedroom. When he got close enough to see past Rosie, into the bedroom, he saw a man dangling from a rope tied to a ceiling light fixture.

“Couldn’t somebody have cut the poor bastard dow—”

Suddenly the fixture tore free of the ceiling and the dead man hit the floor, the light bashing onto his head with an explosion of dust and plaster, and a spark or two as the wires came apart. Rosie jumped backward so fast he flattened Mason to the wall.

“Easy, partner. He’s already dead.”

“Jesus, Joseph and Mary.” Rosie crossed himself as Mason squeezed out from behind him, then moved past him into the room.

“His wife know what he was depressed about?”

“It’s his mother,” Rosie said. “But we didn’t ask. It’s pretty clear. Follow me. We’ll come back to this.”

Nodding, Mason moved back into the hallway, stepping over the bloody prints rather than on them, and followed Rosie to the last door. It was already open, revealing a set of stairs going down into a basement with the lights on. Blood on those, too.

At the bottom there was a pile of bloody clothing in the corner. Wait...no, there wasn’t. It was a body. He realized that as soon as he spotted an arm and a small patch of the bright blue T-shirt that wasn’t soaked in red. The victim’s head had been smashed in.

“There’s a pretty likely murder weapon right there,” Rosie said, pointing.

Mason turned in that direction and saw the hammer. Blue metal with a black rubber grip. He moved closer, crouched low and tried to get a look at the head. Even though it was packed full of hair and blood and bone, he could see the checkerboard pattern.

Just like Rachel had said.

He closed his eyes, lowered his head, stood up again. The forensics guys were there. He could hear them chattering upstairs.

“Looks like all those murders finally caught up with him,” Rosie said. “At least it’s over now.”

“Looks like,” he lied. Because this guy was not the Wraith. The Wraith—
his own brother,
he thought—had always made his victims disappear. Until he’d made
himself
disappear, that was. Eric was dead. This was a copycat, and not a very good one.

If he was smart, Mason thought, he would plant all those driver’s licenses somewhere in this house before the team finished up. But no, he was too honest for that. Why put that poor woman outside through any more grief?

How the hell had Rachel known about this?

Voices floated down from upstairs, one of them female and all-too-familiar, clearly coming from inside the house. “I don’t care, I need to talk to Mason
now
.” And then, “Oh, my God.”

He met Rosie’s eyes briefly, then turned to jog up the stairs. In the hall he saw Rachel standing outside the dead guy’s bedroom door, her hands to her mouth and her eyes wide as she stared in at the tangle of dead man and light fixture.

“That’s why I told you to stay outside, Rache,” he said. He took her by the shoulders, turning her so she was looking at him instead of the body. “It’s hard, this kind of thing. You’re not used to it. It’s—”