Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller

by John A. Daly

  Sean could have sold off the assets and shut down the business, but he felt that carrying on the company was not only an opportunity for him to move forward in his life but also a way to honor his uncle, whom he deeply missed. Zed Hansen was a good man, like a father to Sean, whose real father abandoned him when he was a child. Even though Sean didn’t always have faith in himself, his uncle had always had confidence in Sean. Zed kept him on his payroll, even during the dark days when Sean struggled with alcohol and his inner demons. Sean’s reputation as a town drunk who engaged in the occasional public fistfight had cost Zed potential business, but his uncle had always stood by his side. He was a loyal supporter.

  Sean’s demons from those days hadn’t all left, but he managed to keep them at bay. He hadn’t had a drink since Zed’s funeral. It wasn’t always easy to stay on the wagon, but he hadn’t fallen off yet.

  What he didn’t know at the time of his inheritance was that Hansen Security hadn’t been doing as well as he had believed. Profits were razor-thin and his uncle owed the bank a good amount of money. Sean’s name was a detriment to the business. In a small town, reputation and associations were magnified. Several loyal customers just didn’t trust him, and with good reason. He was the black sheep of his hometown of Winston, Colorado, a small, rural community deep within the Rocky Mountains. It was more than just his label “town drunk.” People knew Sean to be a mean-spirited bully, an unreliable lush with a security badge, a man who couldn’t “keep his shit together.”

  It didn’t help matters that he was also the brother-in-law of Winston’s Chief of Police, Gary Lumbergh. Because of that, the standards were set higher for Sean than for most residents.

  While his uncle had managed to earn the respect of just about everyone he had ever met, few people respected Sean Coleman. Longtime clients went elsewhere for their security needs.

  When 9/11 hit and the economy tanked, the situation had only worsened.

  Still, Sean managed to generate some work since Zed’s death, usually in spurts, but he often had to travel farther than he liked for jobs. On lucky days, he’d pick up stints in Lakeland—a thriving gambling town that sat about seven miles north of Winston; that’s where he was now. Most jobs, however, were way outside of Winston. He knew he couldn’t afford to hire extra help, so he filled all duties himself, a laboring task even for a company as small as his. Diana, his sister, helped when she could. She did the accounting work for free when she wasn’t playing the role of caregiver for their mother.

  Their mother was another area of Sean’s life where he had dropped the ball. At the time of her stroke, he was deemed too incompetent by the rest of family to look after her. Diana and Gary uprooted their lives in Chicago and moved to Winston to pick up the slack. Sean was grateful for what his sister and her husband had done, though he had never actually told them that. It was a bigger sacrifice for Gary than anyone. He gave up a prestigious career as a big-city police lieutenant to become a small-town police chief. Sean suspected that Diana secretly enjoyed living the slower-paced, Winston lifestyle that she’d grown up in, but her days were about to get much busier in the upcoming months. Thus, Sean was thankful for whatever bookkeeping help she could lend him in the meantime.

  When the sound of his name grabbed his attention, he stood and made his way through the maze of occupied, interlocked seats and entered the long familiar hallway. At the end of the bright corridor hung a long, vertical mirror, which he interpreted each time as a cruel joke, a way of forcing people to take a thorough, pensive look at themselves before it was their turn to take the needle.

  He couldn’t help but notice that the man staring back at him looked different than he used to—healthier. He had lost some weight in recent months. His once protruding gut had shrunk and the outline of his body no longer looked like he was wearing a spare tire around his waist. His pants were now looser and he even had to wear a belt. Had he realized sooner how much weight his habitual drinking added to the scale over the years, he might have given up beer earlier.

  At least, that’s what he tried to convince himself. He knew it probably wasn’t true.

  He had recently given his dark hair a short buzz cut, which gave him a leaner appearance. At the age of thirty-eight, he was almost satisfied—for the first time in a long time—with how he looked, though he noted how bloodshot his tired hazel eyes were.

  He rounded the next corner and entered a large room. In it were roughly thirty reclined beds. Almost all were occupied by people. The beds lined broad walls in the shape of a rectangle. Sean’s eyes met those of a young, blond man with a thin frame and pointy shoulders. Clad in a white lab coat that looked a size too large, he used a nodding motion to direct Sean over to an open bed in a back corner.

  Sean took a seat on the vinyl-upholstered recliner, then sprawled out along it until his wide back sank in comfortably. His boots dangled over the edge of the raised footrest.

  A half-dozen, twenty-inch television screens hovered just below the ceiling at moderate angles, letting the room’s occupants enjoy a movie that Sean couldn’t identify. It was something with Will Smith. The volume was muted, as it always was, and the people watching it wore earphones to listen. Sean rarely chose to listen to whatever was playing. He never liked the feeling of wires wrapped around his neck or face. Too constrictive. Too unnatural.

  He wasn’t much of a reader either, so he typically elected to people-watch. He’d convinced himself that it was good trade practice, a way of honing his instincts as a security guard. He often studied people and worked on reading their mannerisms, predicting how they might react under different situations.

  He also found the practice mildly entertaining on a personal level. He enjoyed speculating on people’s origins, backgrounds, and occupations.

  As he began pumping his fist to build up a vein and let the blood in his arm flow more freely, he chose his first target. It was a short, stubby man dressed all in black, sitting directly across from him in another recliner.

  Though some faces in the room looked familiar from past visits, this man’s did not. He was mostly bald up top with a few long strands of brown but graying hair that had been combed over his head in a futile attempt to conceal his scalp. He wore tinted glasses with round frames and looked to be in his fifties. There was a paperback book propped up in front of him. He held it with his free hand while blood was drawn from his other arm.

  Like everyone else in the room, the man’s blood was pumped through a long, clear tube and into a centrifuge machine that sat on a cart beside him. The machine had a spinning component inside that helped separate out the plasma from blood. The contraptions always emitted a dull humming noise, and Sean could hear several of them murmuring around the room.

  A semi-clear, cylinder-shaped container hooked in front of the machine was nearly filled to the top with the man’s juice. It was the color of light rust. The quantity meant he was nearly finished.

  Sean closely studied the man’s appearance. His eyes traced the contour of his reclined body, taking note of his monolithic outfit choice. His short-sleeved dress shirt, pleated pants, and shoes were all black. The only variation was in the color of his socks, which were a dark burgundy. At first, it looked like the man was wearing dress shoes, but upon closer scrutiny, Sean determined them to be conservative tennis shoes. The man wore
no wedding ring. The book he was reading was called Turn the Tables, but Sean couldn’t make out the picture or artwork featured below the cover’s title. The man’s fingers covered all of it.

  The gears in Sean’s head began to grind away.

  Though the man was wearing tennis shoes, he purposely had chosen a pair that was entirely black and would have appeared to be dress shoes to the casual observer. This suggested that the man was going for a professional-looking appearance. He possibly spent a lot of time on his feet and wanted to wear comfortable shoes.

  His ensemble resembled that of a uniform, not an official government uniform by any means, but rather that of a company dress code. Whatever the man’s line of work was, he most likely dealt directly with the public.

  His plasma was a bit darker than most people’s; usually it was the color of straw. This was a possible indicator of dehydration. In conjunction with his tinted glasses, he possibly worked outside. But it was wintertime, and in the winter, dehydration would more likely come from overactivity or the consumption of alcohol.

  The most interesting clue was the book he was reading: Turn the Tables.

  Sean cupped his chin in his palm and glared at the man so intensely that if he had happened to look up and meet the larger man’s stare, he probably would have feared for his life.

  Puzzle pieces bounced off the walls inside Sean’s skull for a minute or two before they all began to fall into place. A sly smile developed at his lips and he crossed his arms in front of him with confidence.

  “I’ve got your number, bub,” he muttered.

  “Sean Coleman,” an emotionless female voice called out from a clipboard a few feet away.

  “Yeah.” He transferred his gaze over to a woman dressed in light-blue scrubs that he had come to know only as Jessica, according to her name tag. She was one of the regular blood drawers that stuck needles in people’s arms and fired up the machines next to them to start the extraction process.

  Jessica appeared to be in her mid-thirties and was thin, with a light complexion and long red hair that had a natural wave to it. The shade of her hair had always intrigued Sean. It was deep in color, as if dyed, yet there was stark pureness to it. It was unique. Though she never wore makeup, she was attractive. She had a firmly contoured face with high cheekbones, and he imagined that she would probably have a pretty smile, though he had never actually seen it.

  There was always an aura of sadness surrounding Jessica, at least as long as he had been coming to the plasma bank. Her shoulders drooped and her eyes never lit up. She rarely engaged in small talk with her colleagues and was mostly all business when it came to dealing with donors.

  He wondered at times if she had lost someone on 9/11 or perhaps had a husband stationed in the Middle East. There was no ring on her finger, though.

  Despite her standoffishness, he sensed her to be a kind person inside. She had a gentle, nurturing touch. She was attentive, and when her warm hands slid the metal into Sean’s arm, he never felt the prick of needlepoint.

  She wrote something across a clipboard before hooking it alongside his bed. She then reached over him to snatch a Velcro blood-pressure cuff that dangled from a horizontal bar mounted to the wall behind him. He watched her as she leaned in close, her long red hair nearly brushing against his forehead. He subtly inhaled, seeking her scent, searching for a hint of perfume. He found none.

  Seconds later, the cuff was tight around his dense bicep as the machine inflated it.

  Like her, he wasn’t much for small talk, but he felt a nagging urge to share his impromptu forensic analysis with someone. Maybe he’d even be able to impress her and get her to notice him a bit more.

  “You see that guy over there?” he asked with a confident head jerk.

  “What?” she replied, as if his words awoke her from a daydream. Her focus narrowed on him and she leaned in to meet his gaze.

  Sean’s heart nearly skipped a beat once her pretty green eyes found his. “The guy lying on the bed across from me. Do you see him?”

  She nearly recoiled in confusion. She stole a quick glance at the man in black before her eyes swept back to Sean. “Yes,” she said hesitantly. “Is something wrong?”

  “No. Nothing’s wrong. I’m just . . . I’m curious if you know what he does for a living. Is that information on his chart?”

  Wrinkles formed on her forehead as she glared at him in bewilderment. “Are you serious? Are you trying to make a joke or something?”

  “No. I’m not making a joke. Are you not allowed to tell me what his job is, due to confidentiality?”

  Her jaw dropped open. She looked as though she wanted to say something but couldn’t immediately find the words. A few seconds later, they finally came out. “Mr. Coleman, of course I know what his job is. Are you trying to be—?”

  “Wait!” he said in a little louder voice than he intended, causing her to flinch. “Don’t tell me!”

  Her eyes went to the ceiling. She clearly had little tolerance for whatever game she felt Sean was playing.

  Still, he was certain he was about to draw her in with a stellar display of deductive reasoning. “He’s a card dealer at one of the casinos, isn’t he?”

  Her face twisted into what he interpreted as a wince. She shook her head dismissively before removing the deflated band from his arm. She recorded a number on her clipboard.

  “Am I wrong?” he asked with a blank expression.

  She ignored his question, her sharp movements suggesting that she had lost all patience with him. Either that, or she believed he was teasing her.

  With a cotton swab, she rubbed iodine in a circular motion along the crevice between his forearm and bicep. It felt colder on his skin than it normally did, just like her demeanor. She removed a thick needle from a sealed bag, attached it to a long, thin, plastic line and shoved the needle into his flesh without a warning.

  His body tensed, and he grimaced. This time, the needle hurt.

  “What’s your problem?” he asked as she quickly pressed a few buttons on the centrifuge machine.

  She didn’t answer him, instead writing another number or two down on a clipboard before storming off.

  As dark-red blood began to creep its way up through the line secured to his arm, he watched her disappear into a small room in the corner. It had several large windows, so he could see her sit down in front of the computer. She began entering data.

  He didn’t understand her reaction at all. He struggled to dissect what he had said that offended her.

  A series of high-pitched beeps from across the hallway suddenly grabbed his attention. The man in black was finished with his extraction. When another assistant approached the man to begin unfastening the needle from his arm, the man laid his book down on his lap.

  It was then that Sean realized how completely wrong he had been in his estimation. With the book no longer obscuring his view, a white clerical collar at the top of the man in black’s shirt revealed itself. Sean’s stomach dropped.

  “Ah, shit!” he snarled loudly enough that the man’s head lifted.

  He scowled at Sean in disapproval.

  “Sorry, Father.�
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  It suddenly made sense to Sean why Jessica acted as she did. She hadn’t taken into account that Sean’s low position in his bed kept him from seeing the man’s collar. To her, it was quite visible and quite obvious. She probably thought Sean was making some tasteless joke at the expense of a man of God.

  He had come across like a creep.

  When the man in black stood up, Sean peered at the cover of the book he held. Below the title, Turn the Tables, was an artist’s rendition of the famous Cleansing of the Temple narrative where Jesus had overturned the tables of the money changers in the synagogue. Sean shook his head.

  In her trips in and out of the backroom over the next hour or so, Jessica didn’t make eye contact with Sean. Not once. If she had, he would have signaled her over and settled the misunderstanding. He wasn’t sure himself why it was so important that he set the record straight. The old Sean Coleman wouldn’t have cared about offending anyone or saying something unpopular. The old Sean Coleman would have blown off her attitude. Today’s Sean Coleman cared.

  Maybe it had something to do with his failed relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Lisa. The two had met each other under turbulent circumstances six months earlier, and their unconventional romance had never quite found its legs. She lived two states away in Las Vegas, and with phone conversation being their primary means of communication, their partnership was perhaps doomed from the start.

  He had never been a man of great verbal eloquence. Words often left his mouth differently than the way he intended. All parts of his life suffered from it. It didn’t help that Lisa was a recent widow who needed more comfort and compassion than could be given over a phone. His awkward pauses and long minutes of silence had perhaps been interpreted by her as indifference.

  When the plasma extraction was complete and Sean’s machine let off its own series of beeps, a young man in scrubs attended to him. In just a matter of minutes, the needle was free from Sean’s arm and the puncture covered with cotton and gauze. A lot of beds were empty by then. The larger one’s body mass was, the longer the process took, so several people who’d come in to donate after Sean had already been wrapped up and sent on their way.