Blood Men

by Paul Cleave

  Do it.

  “Please, I have a family,” she says.

  “Move over there,” I say, and I point the shotgun toward the door I just came out of. She reaches it and I move around to the driver’s side of the car and climb in. I put the gun standing up from the footwell onto the passenger seat and the cop stays still. I reverse quickly back toward the road. A third patrol car shows up and covers the exit. I push hard on the accelerator and the back of my car hits the side of the patrol car right in the middle of the front wheel. The crash jolts me back and forward and the Blu-Tack falls out of my ears. The patrol car is pushed away from the side of the road. My car stalls and I restart it and jam my foot on the accelerator again and swerve out onto the road. The back of the car produces a rattling sound that gets louder the further I drive. The patrol car comes after me but manages all of five meters before taking a sharp right-hand turn, the axle probably broken. I slow down at the intersection, and when I push my foot back down the engine revs but doesn’t grip and the car rolls without any acceleration. I try changing gears but it doesn’t make a difference.

  One of the other patrol cars comes away from the curb. I pull over and jump out, slinging bags over my shoulders, the money much heavier than the files. The patrol car is about a hundred and fifty meters away when I point the shotgun at the tattoo-covered bouncer at the strip club door and make my way inside.

  The club is dark and there’s cigarette smoke hanging in the air; it’s like a fog rolled in, bringing with it the dregs of modern man. Girls in nothing but underwear, with breasts of all different sizes, are walking between the tables, some carrying drinks, others leading a patron by the hand toward a three-minute lap dance. The music is loud and aimed at the generation most of these girls seem to be in-one that’s about ten years younger than mine. There are maybe fifteen or twenty patrons in the club, mostly men sitting by themselves, a group of six in front of the stage. I keep the shotgun by my side, pointing down, and nobody seems to notice it. Most of the lighting is aimed at the stage, where a girl in a nurse outfit who looks nothing like the nurse who showed me the happy face chart earlier today is spinning around a pole. The look on her face reminds me of the waitress on the day Jodie died, the look of the damned-it was a lifetime ago now.

  I take a corridor that leads past the toilets to a fire-exit door. The police haven’t hit the club yet. The toilets smell of disinfectant and the floor outside is wet. I hit the fire-exit door hard but the damn thing opens only about thirty centimeters, then bounces back, a chain flexing against the handles with a padlock securing it in place. I point the shotgun at the lock and people in the club scream when they hear it go off. The music keeps going and people are no longer watching the stage. The chain falls away and I take it with me outside. I jam the doors closed behind me and wrap the chain around the handles.

  The alleyway is similar to the last one I was in, except this one runs at a different angle, along the back of clubs and shops instead of up between them. I turn right, passing more back entrances; from some come loud music, from others nothing. I stick with the direction and run for about sixty seconds, taking most of the weight on my left leg, hobbling more than running. I can hear sirens patrolling the streets. I climb a fence and drop into an open parking lot with bad lighting and about two cars. On the opposite side I take thirty seconds to catch my breath and begin to transfer the files out of the gym bag and stuff them in with the money. I tuck my arms through it and strap it onto my back and leave the empty bag behind and carry on moving.

  The parking lot comes out a driveway on Manchester Street. There are cars that don’t have sirens on them driving past, hookers standing on corners, run-of-the-mill people staggering down the street, some wearing Santa hats. I run across Manchester and head further from the central city, down Gloucester Street toward a one-way system where there is less lighting. A patrol car comes into the street and I duck in behind a row of bushes lining a tile shop and the car drives past. I move again, getting further away, the hookers becoming less frequent and harder-looking, like they’ll do far more for far less. I cross Madras Street and keep heading east. The sirens aren’t as loud now. I get another block before turning north, back toward home, slowing down as more blood runs out of my leg. I need somewhere I can read the files. Somewhere I can bandage myself back up.

  I’m a good six or seven blocks away when the cell phone I took from Kingsly rings. I flip it open.

  “Hello?”

  “What the hell, Edward? You’re making this a whole lot worse than it needs to be,” Schroder says.

  “I’m finding my daughter.”

  “No you’re not. You’re killing her. Look, we have some names, we’re banging on some doors right now. We’re going to find her.”

  “You can guarantee that?”

  “I can guarantee we’re doing our best.”

  “What about the person who visited Roger Harwick in jail?”

  “Who?”

  “Somebody had to visit Harwick before my dad got stabbed, right? Somebody from the outside.”

  “It’s a good thought,” he says, “except nobody came to see Harwick today, or yesterday. In fact nobody has been to see him since the bank robbery.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I say. “Somebody had to talk to him.”

  “And somebody did. It means another inmate was visited and got told to pass the message along.”

  “Who?”

  “We’re looking into it. Problem is there are so many opportunities for Harwick to interact with another inmate. Could be there were other links in the chain. Somebody comes to see Inmate A, who speaks to Inmate B, who talks to Inmate C. Or maybe one of the guards organized it.”

  “So it’s a dead end,” I say.

  “I’m doing what I can, Eddie.”

  “It’s just never enough.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I have to go.”

  “What did you find? Another name? An address? Edward, listen to me, if you know where your daughter is, you have to let me help you.”

  “I don’t know where she is. Not yet.”

  “You’re armed and running around the city, Edward. The word has come in-you’re a threat. A Armed Offenders Unit unit is coming for you. They see you with that shotgun, they’re going to open fire. There won’t be any dialogue. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “I hear it,” I say, and hang up, then I try calling Nat but the phone just rings and rings.

  What I need is transport and somewhere to read over the files. I find somewhere secure to hide the shotgun before heading back onto the road to flag down a taxi. The first three go by, passengers already inside them; the fourth pulls over, the driver sees the blood on my leg, shakes his head, and drives off. Another taxi pulls up a few minutes later, and this time I keep the gym bag covering my leg. The blood on my shirt from where I wore it over my foot is all on the back, so the driver doesn’t notice it. He just seems to be happy that I’m not carrying a shotgun, but struggles to express his gratitude in clear English. I tell him to take me back toward town, which doesn’t please him because he was hoping for a bigger fare. There are a dozen patrol cars circling the streets, but their search patterns don’t extend to taxis. They’re out there dressed in black, carrying assault weapons and itching to take down Eddie the Hunter, the man they always knew would turn into a killer.

  chapter forty-eight

  There is blood leading from the kicked-in door to the elevators. It’s how Hunter fooled the first two cops on the scene into thinking he’d gone upstairs. With all the mistakes Hunter has been making, Schroder knows there’s at least something in that mind of his that’s working. He wonders if he’d be doing the same thing if it was his daughter who’d been taken, and decides that he would. He’d do what it takes-which makes it hard to know the Armed Offenders Unit is out there gunning for Hunter, ready to take him down.

  Schroder has never had any reason to come down to the probation offices before, and he
knows there’s every chance after tonight he’ll never come here again. The building is fairly nondescript and the offices inside about as impersonal as you can get, with rubber plants either side of the reception desk and a sunset picture hanging on the wall the only signs of excitement. He imagines it’d be hard to work in a place like this, getting to know people on a return basis as they’re released every few years for the same crimes, addictions to drugs, taking other people’s money, taking other people’s lives, all in endless circles. At least, being a cop, your job is to put criminals away; these guys have to reintroduce criminals into the outside world, over and over and over again.

  It’s too early to tell if Edward had time to find anything here. After talking to him he got the impression Hunter was still winging it with no idea where to go next. That made him dangerous.

  The IT woman, Geri Shepard, is currently going through Bracken’s computer. Shepard-in her late twenties and with a body other women would kill for-is about as put out by being here as she is attractive.

  “This couldn’t wait?” she asks for the third time already. “You’re real sure on that?”

  “You found anything yet?” Schroder asks.

  “Possibly. See here? We’ve got a list of files he accessed going back as far as you want. I still don’t see why you can’t tell me what you think Austin has done-it might make me be able to speed things up.”

  “Search for Shane Kingsly,” he says, ignoring her. “When did Bracken access that file?”

  She clicks away at the keyboard. “Today. The twenty-fourth. Though I guess it’s the twenty-fifth now, right?”

  Today would fall in line with what Bracken told them this morning. His client didn’t show up, so he went to his house looking for him. Makes sense he’d have pulled the file.

  “Is it standard practice for probation officers to immediately go to somebody’s house if they’ve missed an appointment?”

  “It depends on the probation officer, and it depends on the person who missed their appointment. It’s not common, no, but it’s not unheard of. Seems he accessed the guy’s records yesterday too.”

  “Was there an appointment scheduled?”

  “Hmm. . that’s weird. According to his planner, he wasn’t due to see Kingsly for another week.”

  “What about Adam Sinclair?” Schroder asks. Sinclair is the man Edward hit with his car.

  “Let me check. Um, November first.”

  “How often was he seeing Sinclair?”

  “Ah. . according to this, he wasn’t.”

  “He wasn’t?”

  “No. Not according to this.”

  “Then why’d he pull his file?” he asks.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe it was in relation to somebody else he was dealing with.”

  “Ryan Hann?” he says, Hann being the man Edward stabbed with a pencil.

  “Um. . same. November first. This is weird-Hann is also no longer under probation.”

  “Okay. Good. This is good. Can you find any other files he’d have no need to pull up that he accessed around that time period?”

  “Hang on,” she says, and works at the keyboard for another minute. “Here, we got five more names of people no longer under probation. Wait-make that four-one of these men just died,” she says, and she twists the monitor so Schroder can take another look.

  He scrolls down the list. It’s a short list and it only takes a second for Arnold Langham’s name to show up. Suction Cup Guy. “Jesus,” he whispers. “He was part of it.”

  “What?”

  Arnold Langham only had a criminal record for beating up his wife-but that in no way meant beating up his wife was the only criminal thing he had done. There were two possibilities he could see. Langham was involved with these other men, meaning there must be other things he was good at. He was recruited into the gang, then, leading up to the robbery, there must have been something about him the others didn’t like or couldn’t trust, and he became a liability. Shooting him or stabbing him could have brought the investigation closer to the bank robbers, but dressing him up like a pervert and throwing him off the top of a building, that pushed the investigation into a completely different direction.

  The second possibility was Langham wasn’t involved, but learned of the robbery and became a liability. Schroder is more inclined to go with the first possibility-it would suggest the gang was suddenly one man short, which would explain why Bracken chose Kingsly.

  Either way, it still left Schroder with a list of four names, each belonging to a man whom Bracken recruited to steal $2.8 million in cash.

  chapter forty-nine

  When the taxi driver drops me off he smiles with relief, as he probably does every time he drops somebody off without getting stabbed. His English is perfect when he tells me how much the fare is, but not so good when figuring out the change. Gas price increases have pushed taxi fares up astronomically over the last few years-it’s no wonder more and more people are drinking and driving. I tell him to keep the change.

  I’m right next to the parking building where Jodie’s car has been for the last week. My keys are still hanging in my car, but the spare keys have been in my pocket all day. I make my way upstairs. Jodie’s car is a four-door Toyota about six years old. It starts on the first turn of the key and I let it warm up for thirty seconds. There’s a modern stereo in the center console and a GPS on top of the dashboard that both seem to be defying the law of gravity, since they haven’t fallen in some passerby’s possession. I find Jodie’s swipe card in the glove box and use it to exit the building.

  I drive back the way I came and find the shotgun exactly where I’d left it. I try calling Nat and Diana again and get the same result. I drive a few minutes out of the city and pull over.

  I stack up the files and go through them. The names and faces stare out at me, but none of them stand out. Twenty files, all of random people who have nothing to do with the case. After ten minutes it seems it’s all been for nothing-whatever contact Bracken had with the men who killed my wife isn’t to be found in these pages. There’s no way I can make it back into the offices to check for more. I pack the files away and get moving.

  There are even fewer cars in the hospital parking lot when I get there than there were earlier tonight-mine doubles the number; the other is a van with a bunch of guys a few years younger than me leaning against it drinking. I wrap the weapon in a jacket Jodie left in the back of her car.

  Visiting hours are over and have been for probably six or seven hours. I walk in looking like somebody who knows where they’re going and nobody says anything because there’s nobody around. Not a single person in this part of the ground floor-everybody is either at home for Christmas or working in the emergency room. I make my way down the corridor to the elevators, not leaving any bloody footprints behind because my shoe has dried up. I go up to the fifth floor and step past a nurses’ station that doesn’t have any nurses. Only about half the lights are on that were on this afternoon and it’s only about half the temperature. I reach the ward where my father is and there aren’t any police officers outside like there were this afternoon-which the accountant in me puts down to simple supply and demand. Tonight the city is demanding the most from its guardians, and the police are supplying every man who’s prepared to work overtime and ignore their family-which isn’t many, it seems.

  Still, this isn’t going to be a walk in the park. There aren’t any officers here, but there is a security guard sitting in a chair reading a magazine, doing what he can to stay awake. I help him out there by showing him the shotgun. He’s in a similar situation to the one Gerald Painter was in last week-he’s sitting here earning a minimum wage, armed with nothing useful. He doesn’t even make it out of his chair. He wants to-he gets about halfway up before realizing there’s no point in moving any further. He doesn’t sit back down either-just stays suspended between the two actions.

  “Don’t say a word,” I say.

  “I won’t.”

  �
�Stand up.”

  “Okay.”

  “Is there anybody else here?”

  “Like who?”

  “Police. Other security guards.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Any nurses in there?” I ask, nodding toward the ward.

  “There’s one somewhere but I haven’t seen her in about half an hour.”

  “Okay. You know who I am?”

  He shrugs. “Am I supposed to?”

  “That’s my father in there you’re looking after.”

  “Oh shit,” he says. “Please, please, don’t kill me.”

  “Then pay close attention.”

  I direct him into the ward. There are six men all sleeping in the room, a combination of snoring and farting coming from every corner: if somebody lit a match the air would ignite. The curtain is no longer pulled around my father’s bed. He turns his head toward us.

  “The curtain,” he says, and nods toward it.

  I reach up and pull the curtain around us. The security guard stands on the opposite side of the bed. My dad has his left arm free, but his right is still cuffed to the bed railing.

  “I hear you’ve had a busy day, son,” he says.

  “They have Sam.”

  “What?” he asks, and his face looks pained.

  “The men who killed Jodie. They took Sam tonight. They’re going to kill her, Dad, they’re going to kill her unless I can get her back.”

  The security guard doesn’t seem sure what to do. He takes a small step back and ends up sitting down, most likely thinking he doesn’t get paid enough for this.

  “I had no idea,” Dad says.

  “I need names.”

  “I’ve given you a name.”

  “It didn’t pan out. Dad, I wouldn’t be here if there were any other choices. You must have something else.”

  “Hand me that water, son.”

  There’s a glass of water on the stand next to the bed. I grab it for him. He takes a long slow sip before handing it back.