A Blood Thing

by James Hankins

  The camera swung back to the computer monitor and the frozen image of the killer, wearing Tyler’s clothes, standing over Sally Graham’s bloody corpse.

  Molly took a moment just to breathe. It was something she’d learned in the army. Before you momentarily expose yourself to return fire; or begin your sprint across open, deadly terrain; or step through a doorway without knowing whether there was someone on the other side waiting to kill you . . . just breathe. Finally, she said, “How do I know you’ll give us the recording?”

  “I don’t care about your brother,” the caller said, his robotic voice still offscreen. “I care only about Gabriel Torrance. There’s no way to know from the video who really killed Sally Graham, so I’m not at risk of suspicion. So I’m better off giving you guys the video and hoping you’ll be content to leave me alone than I am screwing you guys over and ensuring you’ll never stop trying to prove Tyler’s innocence and, at the same time, looking for me. Sound reasonable?”

  She mulled that over. It made sense. Besides, what choice did they have? Tyler was their brother.

  “I’ll tell Andrew you’re legit.”

  “Did he authorize you to make a deal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “He’ll do it.”

  “In exchange for the video you saw and the rest of the evidence I have against your brother Tyler, he’ll grant clemency to Gabriel Torrance, get him out of prison?”

  “He will.”

  “No halfway house, either. Totally free.”

  “He knows that,” Molly said.

  “When will it happen?”

  “When you give us the video and the evidence.”

  A burst of something like static erupted from the phone’s speaker, but Molly realized it was the caller laughing, a hideous metallic cackle. “I don’t think so,” he said. “First, Gabriel goes free; then I’ll send the stuff wherever you want. How about your house? I know where you live.”

  Molly ignored the implied threat. “Give us the stuff first.”

  That horrible cackle again. “No. We’ll do it my way. I’ll send the evidence to your house as soon as Gabriel walks out of prison.” Without waiting for a reply, he said. “Now, how soon will that be?”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t know. As soon as he can, I guess. He told me it could take a little while.”

  “He has one week.”

  “The timing’s up to him.”

  “That’s fine. Tell him to take his time. But in exactly one week from this moment, if Torrance still hasn’t joined the rest of free society, I’ll start—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Threat received. I’ll pass it along. And while we’re at it, I have one for you. If you screw us over and I ever come face-to-face with you, I’m gonna kill you really, really hard. You can count on it.”

  “You already said that, but I appreciate the warning.”

  “It’s not a warning. It’s a threat. Bye, asshole.”

  She punched the “Disconnect” button on the phone, then tugged a bud from one of the ears of the guy holding it and said, “Bye, asshole” to him, too.

  She was behind the wheel again, pulling out of the lot, when an image of Sally Graham being stabbed rose in her mind like a wraith. She turned on the radio to drown out Sally’s pained whispers and the slippery sounds of the killer’s knife.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Andrew pushed the speakerphone button on the cordless handset sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, ending the call with Molly. He looked across the table at Henry, who nodded almost imperceptibly, then across the room at Rebecca, who was leaning against the granite counter, a mug of hot tea in her hand. As soon as his gaze met hers, she dropped her eyes. Andrew shifted his eyes quickly back to Henry’s, wondering if he’d seen that. He had. Andrew could see it on his face.

  Henry stood up from the table. “It’s late. I’m gonna head home.”

  Andrew stood, too. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

  He followed Henry out of the kitchen and down the hall to the front door, where his brother turned and said, “You’re gonna do it?”

  He didn’t want to. Almost every instinct warned him not to. And he was certainly aware of the distinct possibility that, like many blackmailers, this one wouldn’t let him go even after he’d done what the man asked. Still, Andrew shrugged. “I have to, right? For Tyler.” He thought about his youngest brother, asleep in his room upstairs, completely unaware of the machinations taking place all around him.

  “I know this isn’t easy for you,” Henry said, “but people do way worse than this all the time and somehow find a way to live with themselves.”

  Despite knowing Henry since the day his brother was born, something in his brother’s eyes made Andrew wonder for a brief moment if Henry might be one of those people.

  “It may not be easy, Andy. It may be damn hard. But they manage. You will, too. That probably doesn’t help you very much right now, but it’s true.”

  Henry was right. It didn’t help much . . . not when Andrew was discovering that he wasn’t quite the man he’d thought he was. Not long ago, he never would have imagined he’d be for sale. It turned out, though, that it had been largely a question of price.

  “Listen, Henry,” he said, “we have to keep tabs on Torrance. We have to have him watched, and the minute it looks like he’s going to hurt someone, he has to be stopped. Otherwise, I can’t let him out and Tyler will very likely go down for murder.”

  “Nothing in Torrance’s history suggests violence. Nothing. I don’t think this is about anything like that. More likely it’s about stolen goods. Maybe drugs. Anyway, he’s gonna have eyes on him around the clock. I’ll take care of that. We can afford it. He won’t get the chance to hurt anyone, if that’s even his intention, which I highly doubt.”

  Andrew nodded, mostly to himself.

  “And I’m gonna keep working this, Andy, until I find the guy behind this, which I don’t doubt at all.”

  “Any chance you’ll find him in the next couple of days, before I irrevocably compromise my integrity?”

  “Ummm . . .”

  “Good night, Henry.”

  Andrew and Rebecca waited at the house until Molly came home safe and sound, then left, with Andrew’s ever-present security detail in the black SUV behind them. He spent his first ten minutes behind the wheel wondering whether he should break the awkward, stifling silence that had followed them from the house. He wondered whether he even wanted to. What was there to say?

  The black cell phone vibrated in his pocket, rendering the question moot. Driving as he was, he didn’t bother trying to record the conversation with his personal phone.

  By way of answering the call, he asked, “What do you want now?”

  “It sounds like you’re in a car,” the harsh metallic voice said. “Are you driving, Governor? If so, and I’m not on speakerphone, you’re committing a moving violation. You could get in trouble.”

  “I’ll ask again: What do you want?”

  “I just wanted to thank you for your cooperation. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”

  Andrew was well aware that the caller could be recording this conversation. In every call so far, he had agreed to nothing. But there was something he needed to know.

  “When will . . . this be over?” he asked carefully.

  “When will you have what you want? When I have what I want. That’s when. Oh, and when Gabriel’s out, I don’t want you guys watching him. No following him around. You leave him alone.”

  “That wasn’t part of the deal, damn it,” Andrew said, forgetting to be circumspect.

  “It was always part of the deal, Andy. You just didn’t know it.”

  Andrew snapped the flip phone shut, ending the call.

  Rebecca stared out at the road, giving him a few moments, then asked, “How soon will you do it?”

  “As soon as I can. The guy on the phone wants him out in a week. That will be damn dif
ficult. I’ll have to put pressure on some people to make that happen. But I want this to be over for Tyler. I don’t want more evidence piling up against him, evidence that would just make it harder for people to accept his innocence, even in the face of a video proving it.”

  She fell silent. Two miles later, he said, “I know you’re disappointed in me.” He paused, very briefly, in case she wanted to give him a surprise and contradict him. She didn’t, so he went on. “I’m disappointed in me, too, Becca. Believe me. But I don’t feel like I have a choice.”

  “Of course you have a choice,” she said, suddenly animated. “You can choose to trust the system you were part of for years.”

  She was wrong. He couldn’t do that. He wished he could, but he couldn’t. “He’s my brother.”

  She looked out at the darkness beyond the passenger window for a few minutes, then turned toward him, the sadness in her eyes plain to see in the dim blue light of the dashboard.

  “You’ve always been the most honest man I’ve ever known. No matter what you were doing, or with whom you were dealing, you floated above everyone. Your integrity has always been your defining trait. It’s hard to see you . . .” She trailed off.

  “Without it?” he finished for her.

  She looked out the window again.

  She wasn’t being mean. She didn’t intend to hurt him. But her words bit deep, hitting bone. He understood, though. He wasn’t exactly the man she thought she’d married. He was pretty close but not quite the same. He was having trouble accepting that about himself, so why shouldn’t he expect her to have the same difficulty?

  “I’m not all that different than I was, Becca,” he said. “I still have the same heart. And it’s breaking for my brother.” And over the way this is making you look at me, he almost added. “And I know for a fact that I still have the same conscience, because it’s torturing me over this.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m also still the governor, still in position to do a lot of good. And once this is all behind us, I can focus on everything I want to accomplish for the people of Vermont. And I’ll do so with the integrity you expect of me. And that I expect of myself.”

  She nodded, then said, “What if he hurts someone when he gets out?”

  “He won’t,” he said with just a bit more confidence than he felt. “Like Henry said, he was never a violent man. And besides, we’re gonna have him watched 24–7, at least until we figure out what he’s up to.”

  She nodded again but said nothing.

  “Still love me?” he asked.

  She turned to him, and the look in her eyes erased any doubt he might have been having about that. There were many unseen weights pressing on his shoulders, but one of them disappeared in a blink. “Don’t be an idiot.” She took his right hand off the steering wheel and held it tight between hers. “I know he’s your brother, Andy, and you know how much I love him, but to allow this . . . to let yourself be . . .”

  “He’s my little brother, Becca. He’s family. I’d do anything for him. And Molly and Henry, too. You may not understand this, but . . . it’s a blood thing.”

  Her grip on his hand loosened slightly. “And what about me? I’m not blood?”

  “I’d do anything for you, too. You know that.”

  “What if I asked you not to do this, to just let the court system do its job?”

  “Are you asking that of me?”

  She hesitated. “No.”

  “Good.” He was glad she didn’t press him to answer her hypothetical question, because she wouldn’t have liked his response. “It’s a blood thing,” he repeated. “That’s all there is to it.”

  But that wasn’t really all. That was a great deal of it, absolutely. But there was more. And it was finally time he told his wife about it, though it was something he’d never said out loud to anyone.

  “Tyler is the way he is because of me,” he said quietly.

  “What?”

  “The accident that made him who he is . . . was my fault.”

  “How?”

  He took a breath, said a silent prayer that Rebecca truly loved him as much as she seemed to, then began. “Tyler and Molly were seven at the time, and Henry was nine. I was twelve. Dad was at work, and we were home with my mom, only she had to run to the store for milk. Mrs. Gallagher was off that day. I’ll always remember that it was milk she needed. Anyway, she left me in charge. She was gone less than an hour.” He was quiet a moment, remembering. Rebecca waited in patient silence. “I had a friend. Danny Hatcher. Lived two streets over. He knocked on my door and said he’d just seen my mom leave. He opened his jacket and showed me something he’d brought with him, a Playboy he’d found in his dad’s nightstand. I’d never seen anything like it before. It was . . . exhilarating. So I told the other kids not to get into trouble and left them playing a game. Hungry Hungry Hippos. I’ll always remember that, too.”

  He slid into silence and let a mile of road play out behind them. He kept his eyes on the road. He had to.

  “Danny and I snuck off to the basement to look at naked ladies. The next thing I know, I heard footsteps pounding through the house above us, and Molly yelling for me. I ran up the stairs and followed her out the back door and found Tyler in the yard, near the house, lying in a heap. He had a bedsheet twisted around him.”

  “Oh, Andy . . .” Rebecca said.

  “Molly told me he had parachuted off the roof. Henry was suddenly behind me asking if Tyler was dead. And I thought he might have been. He wasn’t moving. I ran inside and called 911, then told Henry and Molly to wait on the front porch and bring the paramedics around back when they arrived while I stayed with Tyler. I didn’t think they needed to keep looking at him just lying there.” He paused. “The ambulance got there at the same time my mom came home. I remember her racing around the side of the house, ahead of the EMTs. I can still see her face when she looked at Tyler . . . then at me.” He took a deep breath. “Another thing I’ll always remember.”

  Rebecca sniffed. Andrew wondered if she was crying. He didn’t want to look, though. He didn’t want to know.

  “He woke up three days later,” he said. “When he did, he wasn’t the same. And he never will be.”

  Rebecca’s voice was soft. “You were just a kid.”

  “I was almost a teenager. I had a responsibility, and I knew it. But I chose to look at a girlie magazine.”

  “I’m sure Tyler doesn’t blame you.”

  “Of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t even remember how it happened. And even if he did, he probably wouldn’t blame me, because he’s the best person I know. But everyone else in the family did.”

  “They told you that?”

  “No, they never said it to me.”

  “You overheard them talking to each other, blaming you?”

  “I didn’t have to.”

  “So you never actually heard them blaming you? Any of them? Not your brothers or your sister? Not even your parents?”

  “No,” he said, “but how could they not? It was obviously my fault.”

  She squeezed his hand tight. “Oh, Andy. You’ve been carrying this around since you were twelve years old? Hon, I’m betting nobody ever blamed you. If your mother blamed anyone, it was probably herself for leaving the four of you alone in the house that day. Your dad probably blamed her, too. And Molly and the boys? They know you were all just kids. Nobody ever thought it was your fault. I promise you.”

  He stared out through the windshield for a long moment. What she said had never occurred to him. None of it. “It doesn’t matter either way, I guess, because I blame myself. And that’s enough. Tyler’s my responsibility.”

  “Andy—”

  “And anyway, like I told you before, it’s more than that. A lot more. He’s my blood, Becca, and his life is on the line here. It’s like someone has a gun to his head and is telling me he’ll pull the trigger if I don’t let some guy out of prison. Can you picture that, Becca? Can you try to see it that w
ay for a second? Let someone out of prison, or I blow you brother’s brains out. Wouldn’t I have to free that prisoner in those circumstances?”

  “This isn’t like that.”

  “It’s close enough. If I don’t do what he wants, Tyler’s life is over. End of story. I won’t let that happen.”

  Rebecca fell silent. Finally, he looked over at her.

  “I’ll do whatever I can to protect him, Becks. And Molly and Henry, too. I don’t think I ever realized how strongly I felt about that until this happened. Until just now, in fact. You understand, don’t you?”

  She shrugged and gently let go of his hand. “Sure. It’s a blood thing,” she said, echoing his words.

  The rest of their ride home passed in silence.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The following day, Andrew sat at his desk on the fifth floor of the Pavilion, reading through the file he’d asked his assistant to retrieve for him. It was full of pardon and clemency petitions submitted to his office since the beginning of the calendar year. There were a couple of dozen or so, each stamped with the date on which it had been received. He read through a few. Prisoners who believed they had been rehabilitated even though the parole board disagreed. Prisoners who simply thought they had served enough time. Prisoners who didn’t claim innocence but who opined that their sentences had been too harsh. Andrew had probably seen each one of these letters when they had first crossed his desk, probably even read them, but he couldn’t remember a single one, which ignited a tiny spark of guilt.

  Historically, in a country with so many registered voters wanting their government to be tough on crime, the decision to pardon prisoners was not popular with almost anyone other than the pardoned prisoners and their immediate families. That was why so many chief executives waited until the twilight of their terms in office to grant pardons. Without giving it much thought, Andrew had always believed that when his time as governor was drawing to a close, he would do the same. Now that he was being forced to consider the subject, he wondered why he should wait. If a petition had merit, it had merit, and whether the voting public would be displeased shouldn’t factor into the calculus. He resolved to go through this folder again carefully and with an open mind when all of this was over.