Wake to Darkness

Once again she smiled because she was supposed to. Her eyes remained stark. Dark circles under them told him she wasn’t sleeping. Her pale skin and sunken cheeks told him she probably wasn’t eating right, either.

How did you know when a grieving wife or son moved from ordinary mourning into a dangerous depression? Where was the line? He was going to have to find out.

The coffee was done, so he took the mugs from her and filled them. “Sit down, Marie. I’m cooking you some breakfast.”

“We already ate.”

“They did. You didn’t. Bacon and eggs, whaddya say?”

She shook her head, but accepted the filled mug and sank into a kitchen chair, holding it between her hands as if she was cold. He spotted Joshua running past the window, red parka, knit hat with a fuzzy ball on top like a character from South Park. He’d taken one of the plastic toboggans from out in the barn. Mason had bought them right after the first snow. Josh was heading up the hill out back with it.

“He loves it here with you,” Marie said. She’d slugged back half the coffee, though it was piping hot.

“I love having him.” Her boots were still on, making puddles under her chair. He frowned. “Are you in a hurry, Marie?”

She followed his gaze and shook her head. “No, just absentminded. I’m sorry about the floor.”

“I’m not worried about the floor. I’m worried about you.”

She met his eyes, but quickly shifted hers away. “Some of my girlfriends are taking me out shopping today. They think it’s time I...got over it. I just don’t know how they think that’s possible.”

“It has to be possible,” he said. “Marie, we all miss Eric, and I know you’re devastated about the baby.”

“Lilly. Her name was Lilly.”

He knew that. It was engraved on the headstone with the little angel above the plot right next to her father’s.

A dozen platitudes came in and out of his mind, things he’d read in Rachel’s books. But he didn’t say any of them, because he thought Marie needed to hold on to her grief a little bit longer. And that was okay. “You have a right to your pain, Marie. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“Thank you for that.”

“When you’re ready to start to heal, though, you put your focus on those boys. They’re just as precious as they were before all the losses you’ve suffered. They need you to come back to them.”

She thinned her lips and nodded as if she was hearing him, but he didn’t think she was. “I appreciate you picking up the slack in the meantime.” Then she pushed away from the table and stood up. “I’ve got to go.”

She headed out the door to her car and took off—a little too fast for the road conditions, in his opinion. He’d had a set of studded snow tires put on for her, though, so she should be all right on the road.

But she wasn’t all right emotionally. He knew that.

He carried his coffee mug through the house to the back, passing Jeremy again on the way. He was as morose as his mother. Poor kid. But Mason kept going into the back room, the coldest room in the little farmhouse, which had no real purpose and would, he thought, make a great woodworking shop if he ever followed his intention to learn how to do that sort of thing. Right now it was a catch-all area for anything he didn’t know what to do with. He passed the piles of junk, opened the back door and hollered out to Josh, “I’m making breakfast. You hungry?”

Joshua was at the bottom of the hill, picking himself up out of the snow and preparing to head up again for another ride. He hollered, “Come out and sled with me!”

“I need food and a shower, and then I’ll sled with you.”

“Awwwwl-riiiight.”

“So you gonna eat?”

“How long?”

“Half hour?”

“Okay.”

“That’s about six more trips down the hill, Josh. Count ’em off and come on in, okay?”

Josh nodded and started back up the hill at a pace that made Mason smile. No question. The kid was going to try to get in ten. At least. Mason headed back into the living room, stopped behind the sofa and put both hands on Jeremy’s shoulders to be sure he had his attention. “I need to take a shower. Ten minutes, tops. Keep an eye on your brother, okay?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t look away from the TV screen.

“Jeremy, that means put the controller down, get up, walk to the window and check on him at least three times while I’m gone.”

“He’s eleven.”

“That’s not an answer. Come on, Jer, help me out here.”

“All right, I’ll check on him. Jeeze.”

Mason closed his eyes and prayed for patience. The kid had lost his father, his baby sister and, for all intents and purposes, his mother, he reminded himself. Add to that the typical brooding of a seventeen-year-old male, and you had a recipe for frustration that couldn’t be beat.

Mason headed upstairs for a shower that would compete with his record for brevity. When he came back down, hair wet, pulling on a long-sleeved green thermal shirt with a big black bear on the front, he heard voices. Female voices. He popped his head through the collar and pulled the shirt down over his belly.

Rachel was standing in the living room, eyes glued to the chest he’d just covered up and making him want to pull the shirt right back off again.

* * *

I had known from the second I woke up this morning that I had to tell Mason about the dream, because I knew damned well it wasn’t a dream. I was pretty certain it was, instead, a murder. A real one. Maybe the murder of the woman he’d said was missing. I was shaken and trying not to show it to Misty, but she didn’t miss much. Still, she was happy to go along to meet my friend Detective Brown. She was even a little excited. She knew that Mason and I had worked together to solve a string of serial killings, though she didn’t know about my personal connection, that I had the damn killer’s eyes in my head. And she knew Mason’s nephew had saved my life by shooting the killer.

We pulled into Mason’s driveway, and I saw an unfamiliar green Jeep parked beside his classic Monte Carlo. Since he had mentioned that his nephews would be with him for the weekend, I’d stopped at Mickey D’s for a gigantic breakfast order and brought it along. No use showing up empty-handed, right? When we got out of the car, and headed up onto the porch, Myrtle walking with her side touching my calf, my stomach went all queasy. Seeing Mason again was a big deal and not only because I was pretty sure I knew the fate of his missing person.

Joshua came running from somewhere out back and pounded up the porch steps, and I could have sworn he was going to hug me, but he skidded to his knees and hugged Myrtle instead. His smile was huge and aimed up at me, though. “Hey, Rachel! Where you been? It’s been like ages.”

I went soft inside at the enthusiastic welcome. “I’ve been busy jetting around being a famous author. I would so much rather be hanging out with you. But I brought food so you’d forgive me.” I held up the bags and nodded at Misty, right behind me, who was carrying two more. “This is Misty, my niece.”

“Hi, Josh,” she said.

Josh said hi, getting to his feet but keeping one hand on Myrtle’s head, scratching while she wriggled in delight. “If there’s hash browns, you’re my favorite writer,” he said and, Myrtle at his side now, he opened the door and we all trooped inside.

“There are indeed hash browns,” I promised.

“Yeah, and at least two sandwiches for each of you,” Misty added.

At that moment Mason came down the stairs pulling a green shirt over his head, his chest and abs bare. My stupid stomach clenched up into a hard little knot, and I was still staring at his chest like my bulldog would stare at a steak—well, if she could see it—when his head popped into view. Misty elbowed me in the rib cage, and I dragged my focus from his chest to his face.

“Rachel.” Mason seemed surprised and maybe a little flustered, but his smile was genuine. “What are you doing here?”

“I needed to talk to you about something.” I tore my eyes away from him, glimpsing Jeremy, who was gaming and hadn’t even said hello. “The gorgeous blonde bearing additional food is my niece Misty.”

Just as I had intended, that got Jeremy’s attention. He looked our way, and then he paused the game and got to his feet. “Hey, Rachel.”

“Hello, Jeremy,” I replied. Then I turned to Misty and said, “This is the young man who saved my life.”

Misty smiled. And there had not been a teenage boy born who didn’t turn to mush at that smile. It was bright and white and made her vivid blue eyes, fake tan and white-blond hair even more attractive. “So you’re the one. Thanks for saving my aunt.”

Jeremy shrugged and looked at his sneakers. At least he was on his feet now.

Mason clapped his hands together and said, “Well, let’s eat. Fast food is best served piping hot, right?”

The kitchen table only seated four. Mason and I unloaded the bags and stacked the food in piles on paper plates. McMuffins on one, hash browns on another, French Toast Sticks on a third. The younger crew helped themselves and headed back into the living room, where Josh served as the ice-breaker, getting the conversation going while plying Myrtle with way too many treats. Pretty soon it was noisy in there, which was good, because it gave me an opportunity to say what I’d come here to say.

But Mason spoke up before I had the chance. “Look at Jeremy,” he said in a stage whisper.

I glanced through into the living room, where the kids were all on the couch, wolfing junk food, playing with Myrtle and yacking, the Xbox still paused and possibly forgotten.

“I haven’t heard him say more than two words at a time since October,” Mason marveled.

“My niece has that effect on many of the male species.”

“You should bring her around more often.”

“I will.”

He looked at me, our eyes locked and I stammered, “You know what I mean. If it would help Jeremy.” Damn, Rache, idiot much?

“It would.” He held my eyes a beat too long, and I looked away to pick out a breakfast sandwich.

“I, um, noticed the Jeep. Yours?”

“Yeah. I finally broke down and bought something more suited to winter driving. The Black Beast is going into the barn for a well-deserved winter nap soon.”

I smiled. “I did the same.”

He glanced out the kitchen window at my new Subaru and nodded. “Nice.”

“Thanks. I, um, didn’t get coffee, ’cause I figured—”

“Right, I’ve got a fresh pot right here. Marie made it when she dropped the boys off.” He got up, got mugs, poured, served.

“How is she doing?”

He shook his head. “Not good. She looked like hell this morning.”

“I’m sorry, Mason. Your family’s a mess, and here I am horning in on you with—”

“It’s good you’re here. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what to do for Marie and the boys, how to help, if it’s normal grieving or if it’s gone beyond that. I was just thinking I’d like to talk to you about it.”

I nodded, lowered my head and took a bite of my sandwich, which was already cooling and would soon reach that inevitable stage of inedible.

“But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”

I lifted my brows at him, slugged a little coffee down to clear my mouth. “What do you mean?”

“I can see you’ve got something on your mind.”

How could I have forgotten, even for a minute, that he was every bit as good at reading people as I was? Especially me.

I lowered my voice. “I had a dream.”

His eyes widened. “About the case I was telling you about? The missing soccer mom?”

“I don’t know. But if it was, she’s dead.” I looked toward the living room, then back at him. “I was inside her head, Mason. I was there with her while she was murdered.”

He looked horrified, then glanced toward the living room just like I had done. “How?”

“She was paralyzed. Drugged, I think. It was impossible for her to move. And the killer cut into her and ripped something out.”

He stared at me. “And you felt it? You experienced it like before?”

I averted my eyes, nodded. I put my hands over my rib cage, poking the soft area where she—I—had been stabbed. “The knife went in here and ripped left, then right. God, the pain was just...” I’d started breathing hard and had to stop myself, rein it in.

“Dammit, Rachel.” He put his hands on my shoulders. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I’m okay.”

“I thought you said you weren’t having the dreams anymore, that your brain was startling you awake every time one started?”

I nodded. “I took a sleeping pill. Figured I had to know what it was my brain didn’t want to let me see. Now I know.”

He shook his head slowly and started to say something, but his cell phone rang. He picked it up, spoke briefly, but mostly listened. When he put it down again he looked at me. “They found a body.”

I closed my eyes. “Was it...?”

“No details, but Rosie said it wasn’t pretty. I have to go.”

“I’ll stay with the boys.” I blurted it without even thinking first, then realized I was effectively shooting our agreement not to see each other right in the foot. He noticed it, too; I could tell by the way he was looking at me, his eyes all questiony. “I’ve missed those two more than I thought, and Myrtle’s in seventh heaven with Josh. We’ll hang out. Go take care of this. I’ll see you later.”

“Thanks, Rachel.” He put a hand on my cheek, then took it away, suddenly awkward, like he didn’t know why he’d put it there to begin with. “Thanks.”

He walked away, into the living room to tell the boys what was up, then up the stairs to grab his things. Then he came back down, shoving his wallet into his back pocket, his shoulder holster over his button-down shirt, gun in easy reach. And I was still sitting there with my half-eaten sandwich and my coffee, wondering how I’d gone from “We should stay apart” to “I’ll spend the day in your house with your nephews, awaiting your return.”

He came through the kitchen, looked me in the eye, and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. I ought to say something. Clarify things. Right?

“I’ll get back as soon as I can.”

“Do what you need to. I’m not going anywhere.”

He nodded, like that was enough. For now. It would have to be, because I didn’t know what else to say. If I was having visions and people were dying and the two were connected, then we didn’t have much choice but to be together until we got to the bottom of things.

I could have thought the freaking universe wouldn’t take no for an answer. You know, if I believed in that sort of shit.

3

Saturday, December 16

The body had been found in a wooded area off I-81, a few miles north of the Binghamton area. Traffic was being detoured for a mile-long stretch, so the highway was eerily quiet.

Mason skirted the detour sign and drove right up to the cop whose car was enforcing it, bubble gum light flashing. He lowered his window, slowed down and flashed his badge, and the officer waved him by.

The scene was already swarming. The state police forensics team was already there, and Rosie was waiting for him on the shoulder, hunching into his police-issue overcoat and wearing a completely non-regulation furry hat with earflaps pulled down. Yeah, it wasn’t a warm day. The sun was shining, and the official temp was allegedly thirty-five, but it felt like single digits the way the wind was blowing. It was a cold wind, too. Icy.

Mason parked his new-to-him Jeep and got out, then walked onto the shoulder to stand beside his partner, the oversized and ready-to-retire, shaven-headed Roosevelt Jones. He followed Rosie’s gaze down the steep slope to the bottom, where a New York state trooper supervised while two forensics guys worked. One was taking pictures, the other, measurements. The body was still there, bent and twisted unnaturally. “Looks like they just tossed her and let her roll down and stay the way she landed,” he said.

Rosie nodded. “Looks like. Snow’s covered up any evidence on the bank here.”

“Tire tracks?”

“First responders ruined ’em.” Rosie shrugged as he looked toward the ambulance and police cruiser parked a few feet ahead on the shoulder. Their tire tracks were fresh in the soft ground, right where whoever dumped the body would probably have parked.

Mason shielded his eyes as he watched the men below. “Who called it in?”

“College student. Had a flat, pulled over a few yards back to change it and saw her lying down there. I got his statement and contact info, then let him go.”

“All right.” Mason turned up his collar. His coat was lined denim, but he hadn’t grabbed a hat and his ears were already freezing. “Ready to head down there, then?”

“I’ll wait up here,” Rosie said, eyeing the steep climb warily. “Man my size gonna trip and roll right down on top of her. I don’t wanna contaminate the scene.”

Mason shook his head. “Creative way to get out of climbing back up, but I’ll let you off the hook.”

“You better.”

Mason headed down, taking a route a few yards from the one the body had probably taken. The state cop on the scene was Bill Piedmont, a man Mason knew and liked. He didn’t know the two forensics guys, but then, they tended to move around a lot.

“Hey, Bill. What’s your take?”

“Mason.” Piedmont gave him a nod from beneath his wide-brimmed gray Stetson. Trooper standard issue. “Looks like she’s been here a while. Body’s frozen to the ground. Probably was hidden by the snow until the wind came up and blew it clear enough so she could be spotted from the road. Ground underneath her is bare.”

Mason was looking at the woman. She wore a blue dress, torn nylons, one shoe. The other was probably around somewhere. Most likely flew off her as she tumbled down the hill. She’d landed on her left side, left leg bent unnaturally beneath her, the right one folded up. Right arm extended, left one in front of her body. She had a wedding ring on her finger. Her hair was frozen to her skull. Red, he thought.

“So she was dumped before that first snowfall. What was that, a week ago?”

“Six days,” Piedmont said.

“Look like she was dead before she was dumped?”

Piedmont nodded and walked around the body, giving it a wide berth so as not to disturb evidence. Not that there would be any. Mason was already certain the killer had stayed up on the road and never set foot down here. Still...

“Oh, shit.” He could see the front of her now. The dress was torn from the hem up to her neck, flapping up and down in the frigid wind. She was cut all to hell and gone—gutted, it looked like. Then he looked again. Someone had cut two sides of a triangle into her skin, with its topmost point dead center just below her breasts, then peeled it back so the flap was lying folded over on her belly. He could see the edges of her rib cage and a gaping, frozen, deep red void he would rather not have seen.

It fit perfectly with what Rachel had described.

“Not another mark on her,” Piedmont said. “A fucking odd way to commit a murder.”

“She have any ID on her?”

“No, but we knew you had a missing woman matching her description, right down to the blue dress. So...”

Mason knelt and looked at the woman’s hands. There wasn’t so much as a broken nail. No bruising on her, none that was visible, anyway. “No signs of a struggle, no defensive injuries?”

“Not that I could see. You?”

Mason shook his head, then looked at the area around her. “There are a lot of weeds and brush down here. Enough to conceal her a little until someone got close enough to notice.”

The guy snapping pictures stopped snapping. “I think I’ve got all we need. The ME’s here. You can let him take her.”

“Bag her hands, just in case,” Mason said. She was pretty—or had been once. She’d died with her eyes open, but there was nothing in them now. No expression, not of horror, not of peace. Nothing. They were lifeless and shrunken, no longer even resembling human eyes, more like a pair of cloudy grapes long past their prime.

A team came down the hillside with a gurney and a body bag. Mason lowered his head. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Marissa. If you are Marissa, and I think you are. We’re gonna get whoever did this. I promise you that.”

Then he straightened and picked his way back up the steep embankment, moving at an angle to get better footing in the fresh snow. As he walked, he was tapping keys on his cell phone, keying in “location of the human pancreas” in the search bar. Then he clicked on Images, and saw that the pancreas was between the left and right sides of the rib cage and partially behind, tucked up against the liver.

That was where she’d been cut, where there was a gaping hole. Right where Rachel had dreamed of being cut, of having something torn from her body while she was still alive.

He hadn’t told Rachel which of his brother’s organs his missing soccer mom had received. He’d deliberately left that part out because he didn’t want to influence her visions. It would be like contaminating a crime scene, leaving traces around that might later be mistaken for actual clues.

Marissa Siorse, his missing person, had been a pancreas recipient. The ME would tell him for sure, but he was pretty certain that body down there was missing its pancreas. And if she was Marissa, that organ had originally belonged to his dead brother.

He didn’t want to think that Eric had come back from the dead to reclaim his parts from beyond the grave. But he hadn’t wanted to think that his brother had found a way to continue his serial killings from beyond the grave, either, and he’d been wrong. Eric’s crimes had been repeated by two of his organ recipients, men who, as far as Mason could tell, had been perfectly normal, law-abiding citizens prior to their transplants.

It’s not the same. This organ recipient is the victim, not the killer.

He told himself that, but the icy dread in the pit of his stomach was colder than the December wind freezing his ears.

* * *

Joshua teased me to come out sledding with him until I finally gave in. It looked as if Jeremy and Misty were hitting it off just fine, but being teenagers, they were unwilling to bundle up and take him out themselves. I told them I thought they were both assholes—I said it lovingly, don’t judge me—then dressed as warmly as possible, borrowing some gloves from Mason’s closet, and took Josh out there myself. Well, me and Myrtle, that is. She was almost as eager as Josh was. Besides, I needed something to wipe the nightmare, which I knew in my gut was more than just a bad dream, out of my mind.

The air was cold, sunshine bright, snow pristine. I could see my breath in big clouds every time I exhaled. It was good. Clean. Just the prescription I needed. I hadn’t seen much snow since my vision had been restored. It had only snowed once or twice so far this winter, and of course I’d been blind for the previous twenty. So I was taking it all in and loving it, like I did every new visual experience. And yeah, that made it tough to maintain my inner cynic, but I figured a few months of childlike wonder was to be expected and would pass soon enough, you know, like a bad bout of food poisoning.

Sighted people don’t appreciate their eyesight nearly enough, in my opinion. Those who’ve always had it, I mean.

We trooped up the hill, dragging a pair of red plastic toboggans behind us, Josh talking a mile a minute about the karate lessons he wanted to sign up for and all the things on his Christmas wish list, while Myrtle trudged right beside him, paying such close attention it was as if she understood his every word. She adored the kid.

We reached the top. Josh situated his sled, then turned to Myrtle and said, “You want to ride, Myrt?”

“Josh, she won’t sit still. She’ll wipe you out for sure.”

“I’ll hold her,” he said. He didn’t precede it with “Duh,” but he might as well have. “Come on, Myrt. Get on here with me.”

“She won’t like it, Josh,” I said, as Myrtle responded to his voice and plodded right over to him. She sniffed the sled thoroughly, then lifted her paws and stepped on board in front of him. “She’s blind. She’ll be scared.” If someone had said that about me, I would have punched them in the eye. I was being overprotective, and I knew it.