Blood Men

by Paul Cleave

“Always from both,” he says. “Always.”

  “I doubt that. I think you cry because you got caught. What do you want?”

  “I wanted to see you. I’ve always wanted to know how you are. I try to keep track as much as I can, which isn’t much. If it hadn’t been for Jodie, I’d never even know you were. .”

  “What?”

  “Married,” he finishes.

  “What do you mean about Jodie?”

  “She told me she’d never tell you, but she came to visit me. Twice.”

  “Don’t you dare lie to me, Dad. You start lying and I’m out of here.”

  “It was eight years ago-the year before you got married. I think twenty-two is pretty young to get married, to be honest, but she didn’t come to see me about marriage advice.”

  “And I don’t need marriage advice from you,” I say. Especially now, I think. “Why did she come to see you?” I ask, my stomach twisting into knots.

  “The first time was to meet me. To see what I was like, maybe to see how life could have gone for you if you hadn’t met somebody like her to keep you happy.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Mum couldn’t make you happy? You make it sound like it was her fault you killed those people, that if she’d been a better wife then. .”

  “That’s not what I mean at all,” he says, holding up his hand to stop me.

  “Then what?”

  “It was a poor choice of words. Son, I never meant any of this to happen.”

  “You didn’t? Thanks, Dad. That’s wonderful to hear. I wish I could repay you for those kind words. Maybe if you ever get out of here we can hang out together, maybe go bowling.”

  “The second time,” he says, ignoring me, “she was pregnant.”

  My stomach tightens. I hate the idea of her sitting out here, facing my father, exposing her deep-down fears, telling him she was scared that the things he did would run in the family. I hate the idea she exposed Sam to this kind of evil. I’m immediately angry at her for that. Angry at her for coming here, angry at her for dying.

  “She was a real nice kid, and I didn’t hold it against her for hating me. I’m not kidding myself, I’ve got no friends in this world, and I’ve done nothing to deserve any, and anything she had to say to me I’d heard before.”

  “What’s your point, Dad?”

  “Dad. I like the way that sounds.”

  “Enjoy it over the next two minutes. You’re never going to hear it again.”

  “I want to meet my granddaughter.”

  “Out of the question. Why did Jodie come to see you the second time?”

  “I have a right to see her. She’s blood.”

  “No. She’s nothing like you and she’s nothing to you. Why did Jodie come back?”

  “She came to tell me you were a good man and I didn’t deserve to have you as a son. She told me I would be a grandfather and would never meet my grandchildren. She told me I had ruined a lot of lives, but yours wasn’t one of them. She said she was fixing the damage inside of you that I’d done. She wanted me to know you were a good man and were going to make a great father. That was her gift to me, Jack. You were one lucky man meeting her, and you did the right thing by getting a ring on her finger as early as you did.” He leans forward. “But you are different. You’re my son, and she sensed it in you.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I really am sorry about what happened to her, son. A waste, such a waste. I have some idea what you’re going through, and it’s hard, son, it really is hard, and no matter how hollow it sounds, it’s true when people tell you that time does help. It doesn’t heal, but it helps. You will move on, and you have Sam, and if she’s anything like Jodie then you’ve got a beautiful little girl to look after.”

  “I know, I know,” I say. “If it weren’t for her. .”

  I trail off, and neither of us fills the silence for a few more seconds until Dad leans forward and looks me right in the eye. “Have you heard it yet?” he asks.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask, leaning back.

  My dad leans back too, imitating me, but then he crosses one leg over the other and taps his fingers on his knee.

  “When you were a kid I used to take you and Belinda to the park. You remember? There was a fort there you’d always play on. Had a tire with chains on it that had been turned into a swing. There was a pole you could slide down. There was bark everywhere, and bars you could climb, ropes and chains you could hang from.”

  “This going anywhere?”

  “There was a merry-go-round there too. You two used to play on that thing so fast that when you came to a stop and stood up, you’d fall over, dizzy as hell, clutching onto the ground as if it were moving, trying to keep it still.”

  “What is this? Some kind of father-son moment that you saw on TV and are trying to emulate?”

  “One day, when you were eight,” he says, “when we were there, there was a man there too, walking his dog. It got off its leash and ran over to the fort where you and Belinda were riding the merry-go-round. You came to a stop and spilled off it, and the dog, it was all excited and tried sniffing Belinda. She got scared and she ran.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “It ran after her and tried to bite her, and she kept running and trying to watch the dog all at the same time, and she got off balance. She ran right into a tree and knocked herself out. Got her forehead grazed up. You remember what you said when we were carrying her back to the car?”

  “Not really.”

  My dad leans forward, and in a lower voice, he tells me. “You said you would kill it.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Six months after that, the dog a few houses down from us that always used to bark, you remember that dog. .?”

  “Not really.”

  “It was the same dog from the park. This big black dog with a lot of bark. That dog got itself killed.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “That’s a long time to be angry at an animal,” Dad says.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You don’t think I noticed the steak was missing?” he asks, his voice low now, and I hadn’t noticed but I’ve leaned in close to him. “I told your mother I’d taken it. She never knew it was you who killed that dog. But I knew. Is that when you first heard it?”

  “You’re delusional.”

  “I think it probably was. You might have heard it earlier but didn’t know what it was. It would have taken a while to build up the courage. I first heard it when I was the same age,” he says. “This voice that was different from me, these thoughts that weren’t mine. They told me to do things that I didn’t want to do. I refused-in the beginning. Then I gave in, hoping it would shut the voice up. Soon the voice was the same as my own, and in the end I couldn’t even tell the difference.”

  “You’re sick,” I say.

  “I know. That’s what I said twenty years ago. Hell, I’m not so unreasonable that I know hearing a voice isn’t right. But right or wrong, I heard it. I don’t blame you for never coming to ask me about it, but. .”

  “I should never have come here.”

  “When you killed that dog, it was because you were hearing a voice of your own.”

  “I didn’t kill any dog.”

  “What happened after that?” he asks. “Did you keep hearing the voice, or did it disappear? Have you been giving in to it all these years? Are there graves out there waiting to be found?”

  “I’m nothing like you.” I begin to stand. He reaches across and grabs me, and before the guard can say anything he lets go. I sit back down.

  “The darkness. That’s what I called it,” he says. “I know you’re listening to it, but you also have to control it. If you can’t, it will take you to places before you’re ready. It doesn’t care if you get caught-it just wants to see blood. You have to rein that voice in, need to come to an understanding with it and, if you’re hearing it now, and I’m sure you are,
then you have to find a way to stop it from overtaking you.”

  “I have no darkness.”

  “It never goes away,” he says. “At night I can hear it whispering, but I have no outlet for it here. It’s faded some over the years, sure, but it’s still there, no denying that.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “To protect you,” he says, “from the same thing that happened to me. Please, son, let me help you.”

  “I call it the monster,” I say, the words out of my mouth before I can stop them, and Dad slowly nods, and for an awful moment I think my dad is going to smile, and say something sickening, perhaps a that’s my boy, but he doesn’t. The warmth goes out of his eyes and he stops nodding.

  “That’s a shame, son. It really is.”

  “I never knew what else to call it. I figured you had a monster, and when you went to jail, it came to live with me. Came to live inside me.”

  “Not my monster,” he says. “You proved that by killing the dog before I went to jail. You have your own darkness. I wish I could help you more, and I would, if I was out there with you. Son, word around here is that the cops have no idea who killed Jodie.”

  I stare at him blankly.

  “She didn’t like me much, but I could see she was a good person. She was a good wife, I bet, and certainly a great mother, and I owe her for what she did for you. What happened to her-that’s a shitty thing. A real shitty thing. Yet if you ask me, the fact the cops haven’t caught anybody, that’s a good thing.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a good thing, son. Think about it.”

  “What are you on about? How the hell can you say that? What are you? What in the hell are you?”

  My dad leans forward in his chair then slowly pushes himself up. Both guards come over. “It was good talking to you, son.” He starts to walk away.

  “Fuck you!”

  “No yelling,” the guard says, and puts a hand on my shoulder and I shrug it off. The Christchurch Carver looks over and watches.

  Dad turns back. “Go home and think about what happened to your wife,” he says. “And take some advice from your old man. .”

  “Save it,” I say.

  “It’s okay to listen to the voice,” he says, then he disappears through the doorway.

  chapter fifteen

  Suction Cup Guy had a real name and Suction Cup Guy was murdered. His name was Arnold Langham and his friends called him Arnie. He was a husband and a dad and his forty-two years on this earth all ended when he was tossed from the apartment building. The suction cups were attached to him, he was stripped and dressed in a trench coat, one of his fingernails found buried in the roof as he tried to fight for survival, the reason for the staging still unknown. Langham no longer lived with his wife-hadn’t lived with her since he’d beaten her up badly enough to spend three years in jail for it. The wife wasn’t a suspect because she’d taken their son and moved north and west enough to hit the next country in line with New Zealand. Other than beating up his wife, Langham doesn’t have any other criminal record-no assaults, no rapes, no breaking and entering. A couple of speeding tickets but that’s all. He worked full time on an assembly line making control boards for motorized wheelchairs. It was an active case, but the urgency had dissipated-it’s the way it was when one case you were working dealt with a wife-beater, and there was another case dealing with a group of bank robbers who killed two people while stealing what turned out to be 2.8 million in cash. It was about priorities-and at the moment the bank robbery was everybody’s priority. Suction Cup Guy would have to wait. It was a shame that for the hundreds of man-hours invested so far, all they had were transcripts of pointless interviews and a burned-out van. They didn’t even have the dye-pack-damaged money. He’d have thought any ruined money would have been dumped with the van and set on fire, but forensics-at least so far-had found no traces of it. No currency-no red ink. All he has are a lot of unanswered questions, two bodies in the ground who deserve to be put to rest, and a wife who was cold to him most of the weekend. The job was interfering with his family life. The last weekend before Christmas and he should have been spending it with his wife and daughter and their new baby boy, and at the rate the investigation is going his son will be in school and his wife will have left him before it’s over. He’s been lucky so far in that he hasn’t missed any Christmases, but he’s certainly missed plenty of other occasions; each one his wife remembers and, in times of arguments, reminds him of. Sometimes she reminds him he’s the reason they’re having children so late, and that he’s the reason they’re going to be in their sixties before the kids are old enough to move out of home.

  There are plenty of criminals on the street who occasionally do a favor for the cops in return for some minor charges being overlooked. But this time there’s nothing. The men responsible have involved nobody else. The cash, if not damaged, hasn’t been circulating anywhere. Whoever did this knew what they were doing. They got out of the bank almost two minutes before the police arrived. Reading criminal records has led to hundreds of possibilities, but linking enough names together to form the gang that robbed the bank has been impossible. They’ve conducted almost two hundred interviews already and he wonders if any of the men who actually stormed into the bank have been spoken to. Probably. Hard to know.

  Schroder is sipping at a cup of cooling coffee and has just hung up from a phone call from the prison. Turns out Edward Hunter went to see his father today. He wonders what would prompt him to do that after all these years.

  There’s a knock at his office door. “Somebody here to see you,” an officer says.

  “Who?”

  “He says he has some information about the robbery.”

  “Another psychic?” Schroder asks. Whenever there is enough media coverage of a tragic event, the psychics come out of the woodwork. Jonas Jones, an ex-used-car dealer turned “renowned” psychic investigator who appears on TV giving “serious criminal insights” to cases the police have been unable to get a handle on, has already left over a dozen messages and has been banned from going any farther than the foyer in the police station.

  “Worse. A shrink.”

  “Jesus.”

  “You want me to send him in?”

  The thing about shrinks is that sometimes they can be worse than psychics. At least the psychics will put on a show. They’ll light a few candles and pretend they’re talking to the spirit world or tuning in to some kind of vision.

  “Not really, but go ahead.”

  Benson Barlow is mostly bald with a serious comb-over, and Schroder wonders what other psychiatrists would say about it. In his midfifties and with a beard, the only thing missing from the shrink are elbow patches on his jacket and a pipe-but maybe that stuff he leaves in the office. After shaking hands, Schroder offers him a seat.

  “The officer said you have some information about the robbery?”

  “Well, in a way.”

  “What exactly does ‘in a way’ mean?”

  “It means I don’t actually know anything about the robbery itself, not in those kind of terms.”

  Schroder wonders if everybody who has a first and last name starting with the same letter is going to be a thorn in his side. Benson Barlow. Jonas Jones. Theodore Tate. “Then why are you here? To offer a profile?”

  “Not exactly,” Barlow says, leaning forward. “Twenty years ago I was the psychiatrist who examined Jack Hunter.”

  “Which one?”

  “Well, both, actually.”

  “And which one are you here to talk to me about? Jack Jr.?”

  “Mostly, though he’s Edward now. It was one of the first things he did when he was eighteen-legally change his name, though since the age of nine he wouldn’t answer to anything other than Edward. Jack Sr. suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. He heard voices and he believed he was being controlled by them. Or it. It was only the one voice, and he called it the darkness.”

  “Come on, that was a line of BS
they tried feeding to the jury. Nobody bought it.”

  “It wasn’t bullshit, Detective. It’s a real mental illness that people genuinely suffer from. It makes them think delusional thoughts. It can make you think you’re being followed, chosen by God for a quest, it can make you think you’re being watched by your neighbor or by the media. It can make you believe you’re being controlled by an external source.”

  “And Jack Hunter thought he was on a quest for God?”

  “Well, no. He thought there was a real darkness living inside him that needed to see blood to stay happy.”

  “Then he thought right. I don’t see what this has to do with the robbery.”

  “Paranoid schizophrenia is a hereditary condition, Detective. What Jack Sr. has, there’s a chance that Edward might be struggling with the same illness-perhaps only to a minor degree, something that can be treated with medication. But considering the numerous traumas the boy went through at an early age, his current loss may compound the situation into something more serious. All those years ago when he was my patient, he told me things-things that make me worry about him. I fear for him, and for what he’s capable of.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “I can’t tell you what he said. Those sessions were private.”

  “So you’ve come here to tell me you can’t tell me anything?”

  “No. I’ve come here to tell you that Edward Hunter is potentially a danger to himself, possibly to others. Genetically, he’s like his dad. Emotionally, I think they’re the same. Edward stopped being my patient when he turned eighteen and I haven’t seen him since, but from what I’ve learned over the last few days it’s obvious he was living a very stable life in an environment he was comfortable with. But now things have changed. The death of his wife is a trigger, Detective. It’s a huge red flag and I’m telling you, there’s serious potential there for him to be a dangerous man, perhaps even as dangerous as his father.”

  Schroder picks up a pencil and rolls it between his fingers. “So what is it you want me to do? I can’t go and lock him up to satisfy your suspicion of him. Why don’t you get him in for some sessions?”