Gingerbread Man

his brother’s skull, and he just knelt there with it at eye level, shaking all over, frozen. He was also at eye level with the coffee table, so he saw the note and an odd row of driver’s licenses. And then he started moving again, fumbling for the cell phone in his pocket. Somehow he punched in 911. And then he was talking, giving the address, automatic functions kicking in while his mind reeled, as scrambled as if the bullet had gone into his own brain.
Why? Mother. Marie. The boys. Why?
    Putting the phone back in his pocket, Mason blinked again at those driver’s licenses.
    Then he went still, and so did his reeling brain. Everything stopped. Time froze, a moment drawn out into what felt like eternity. He knew most of those faces. They were the same faces currently pinned up on the bulletin board in his office. All young men, all missing, all presumed dead. No bodies, though. Just empty wallets found in each man’s last known location.
    What the hell was Eric doing with these?
    Frowning, he looked around the room. Everything was just the way he’d left it this morning, except for the plastic and that duffel bag on the floor, way over by the far wall. He didn’t think that had been there when he’d left. Letter on the table. Eric’s handwriting, always as sloppy and uneven as a third-grader’s. Swallowing hard, Mason looked at the note, didn’t touch, just looked.
    * * *
    I AM A MONSTER. I kill. Over and over again, I kill. I’m the guy you’re looking for, Mason, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. God, you must be so mad at me right now. But I stopped. I made myself stop. I did the right thing…finally. I know you’ll take care of the boys. It had to be over. Now it is. It’s over. Thank God. Pray I don’t go to hell. It wouldn’t be fair. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t my fault. I just…couldn’t stop.

    Mason looked from the note to his brother, lying in a soup of brain matter and blood on the plastic-covered sofa. He thought about Eric’s sons, Josh and Jeremy. Mason loved those two boys like they were his own. Now he was supposed to tell them their dad was…
    …a murderer?
    …
a
serial killer?
    His mind rejected the notion even though it was right there in blue ink on a white, blood-spattered sheet of printer paper.
    And Marie, what about Marie? She was heavily pregnant with a little girl.
    And Mother. God, this would kill Mother.
    Was he really going to tell them what was in this note?
    He looked at the driver’s licenses again. The practical part of his brain said it had to be true. Otherwise, how would Eric have all those IDs? Trophies.
    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.