Blood Men (35 page)

My thoughts turn to Schroder when his car pulls in to the motel parking lot. Two patrol cars pull up alongside him, but Schroder is the only one who gets out. A fourth car, a dark station wagon, also pulls in. I watch Schroder go to the office; he disappears inside for about sixty seconds, then comes back out. It’s Christmas Day and I figure he’d rather be anywhere else but here, and I’m the same—except there are still a few places worse than this, for me. Jail is one of them. The slaughterhouse is another.

He walks past my window and glances in and sees me but doesn’t stop. He heads right to the door and knocks on it.

“Come on, Eddie,” he says, going with Eddie instead of Edward, and I figure he thinks it makes him sound friendly. “Open up.”

“Leave us alone,” I say.

“Eddie . . .”

“It’s Christmas.”

“You can’t keep her here.”

“What?”

“You can’t keep your daughter here. It isn’t right.”

“There are plenty of things that aren’t right.”

“I know that, Eddie.”

“You were wrong.”

“About what?”

“About a lot of things,” I say. “Mostly about this city being on a precipice. It’s already fallen, don’t you see that?”

“Open the door, Eddie.”

I get up and open the door. There’s nowhere to run, and no need to. It’s all over. I have my daughter back and the police can deal with the rest, they can find my dad, they can find the men who killed my wife. Schroder doesn’t look as if he’s slept. He steps inside, carrying a brown paper bag.

“Don’t take her yet,” I say.

“Eddie . . .”

“Please, it’s Christmas.”

“I know. It’s not fair. It’s . . . it’s just the way it is.”

I take a step back. Schroder looks over at the other cars and the station wagon turns around and backs toward the room. Schroder comes in and looks down at Sam, who isn’t even aware of his presence.

“Such a beautiful little girl,” he says.

“I know.”

“I have a daughter of my own,” he says. “And a son.”

“And?”

“And I don’t know, I guess I wanted you to know. Maybe what you said about this city, maybe I should take your advice and get out of here.”

“Then who will protect it?”

Two men step out of the station wagon and open the back of it. They lift out a gurney and a sheet.

“Let me take her,” I say.

“It’s not how it’s done.”

“Please . . .”

“I’m sorry, Eddie, I’m really, really sorry.”

At first I stand back as the two men come inside, and then Schroder has to hold me back as they lay Sam on the stretcher. They unfold a sheet and drape it over her, then carry her away. Schroder opens the paper bag in his hand and pulls out Mr. Fluff ’n’ Stuff. He lifts the sheet and tucks it between Sam’s arm and her body.

“We’ll take good care of her,” he says.

I try to say something but can’t. It feels like Schroder has extended his fist right down my throat. I cry, and right then Schroder embraces me and I let it all out, crying on his shoulder as the two men take my dead daughter out of the motel room and out of my life.

Edward sits in the passenger seat saying nothing on the way to the police station. When they arrive, Schroder leads him into an interrogation room and heads back out to grab a couple of coffees and to let Hunter compose himself. The police station is busier than it’s ever been on a Christmas day; the task force to find Jack Hunter is operating at full speed, as are the people searching for the final two bank robbers. It’s only a matter of time now—but of course everything is always just a matter of time.

Seeing the little dead girl was hard. Once again he imagined it was his own daughter, and once again it brought him close to tears, and when he hugged Edward and held him he had no idea he was about to do it before it happened, and no idea of the impact it would have on him. Hunter sobbed into his shoulder, his entire body convulsing, and they stayed that way for what seemed like ages before Hunter pulled himself away.

It was almost seven o’clock in the morning by the time Schroder
got home. His family was awake. They hadn’t waited up for him—his daughter had woken early because that’s what Christmas was all about, at least for the kids. His wife had let her open just one present; she was waiting for him to get home before opening the rest. He managed to stay awake for another hour before going to bed, and had got almost four hours’ sleep before his wife came in to wake him. She handed him his cell phone. He didn’t want to answer it but he had to. Witnesses had spotted Edward Hunter that morning at the cemetery where his wife was buried. They’d phoned the police because Edward was carrying his daughter around and his daughter obviously wasn’t just sleeping. Before the phone call was over, there was more news—another body had been found.

A week ago Hunter had everything—a wife, a child, a job, he had dreams, the family had Christmas, they all had a future. It makes Schroder sick to know that on any given day your entire future can change.

He makes his way back toward the interrogation room and has his hand on the door handle, the two cups of coffee balanced in his other hand, when his cell phone rings. He steps back from the door and almost drops both coffees while fumbling for the phone.

“Schroder,” he says.

“Hey, Carl. I hear it’s been a long night,” Tate says.

“You got something for me?”

“Yeah. I know who put Roger Harwick up to stabbing Jack Hunter.”

“Who?”

“You’re not going to believe it,” Tate says, but he’s wrong, because Schroder does. After all—the last twenty-four hours have been nothing but believable.

I knew Sam was dead from the moment I saw her in the slaughter-house. I knew it before I had even stepped fully into the room. Felt it, even, if that makes sense. Knew it, felt it, saw it—and then ignored it. Just pushed it out of my mind for as long as I could until somebody—and it took Schroder to do it—came along and shoved the reality back into my face.

Dad’s tears weren’t tears of joy when he saw her, they were tears of pain. Sam was more like her mother than ever because Mummy’s a ghost, and so is Sam now. It was Christmas morning and I took my dead little girl out to the cemetery to see her dead mother while those around me stared and watched, not understanding, wondering what was happening.

Schroder doesn’t make me wait long in the interrogation room—maybe five minutes in total, which I figure is pretty good of him. He comes in with a folder tucked under his arm and a couple of coffees in his hand, supported by a small cardboard tray. He sits
down opposite me and slides one of the coffees over.

“You need it,” he says.

“What I need is to be with Sam.”

“Look, Eddie, this is tough—God knows you’ve gone through more than anybody deserves, but . . .”

He runs out of words. Just like that, like somebody wound him up ten minutes ago and the spring keeping him going has come to a stop.

“I want to be with Sam.”

“I know. I know you do.”

“Please.”

“Soon. Okay? Just—we just need to go over a few things first. Then I can take you to her. Okay?”

I nod.

“Tell me what happened. Do you know where your father is?”

“No idea at all,” I say, and then I fill him in on the details. I tell him about the slaughterhouse and how he can find Oliver Church out there, how Dad killed him, how I have no idea where Dad is now.

“Look, Eddie, we already know about the slaughterhouse. You got out there not long before we got there. Truth is you could be facing some serious jail time. We’ve got bodies stacking up and you’re at the center of it all.”

“I didn’t kill anybody,” I say, “except for the guy who made me drown you, and the guy I ran over—but that was an accident. I didn’t even kill Bracken. It was the woman.”

“We know. We checked the prints on the knife. There was blood on them. Location of the prints beneath the blood showed she was the one holding them when it got used. You’re sitting okay as far as that one goes, and maybe for Church too, if you can prove self-defense,” he says, “if you hear what I’m saying. You or your dad had to defend against him. But Jesus, Eddie, you helped a serial killer escape. We can’t write that one off.”

“When she killed Bracken she took away our chance of finding Sam alive.”

“Then we need to find her before your father does,” Schroder
says. “There’s another thing, Eddie. Your father. It turns out he’s the one who put Harwick up to stabbing him.”

“What? What are you saying?”

“It was all a setup. He got Harwick to stab him, to hurt him enough to require hospital treatment but not enough so he’d need a morgue. He knew you’d come and get him. He played everybody. He completely played you.”

I wonder at what point Dad decided to use his daughter-in-law’s death to his advantage; whether the man knew immediately he could use the tragedy to escape. I wonder if he even cared about what happened to Jodie. I’d like to think it at least took him a few days to think it through, but for some reason I don’t think it did. For some reason I think the moment the news was broken to him about the bank robbery he knew in an instant he was going to manipulate me; that he would tell me about the darkness and the monster and would get me to become like him; that the only thing standing between him and freedom was an innocent stabbing of the kind where every major organ was missed, where he could spend the night in a hospital so understaffed that only a single nurse was seen.

“I’m sorry, Eddie.”

“You got the rest of the bank robbers?”

“We got the names. One of them we have in custody, one of them we’re still looking for.”

“And the third?”

“The third was found a few hours ago. He was cut up so badly we were lucky to identify him. We found your father’s prints at the scene.”

I stare at him without saying a word. My dad got one of the men who killed Jodie. I don’t know how I feel about this. I don’t know how I feel about anything. I’m numb, too numb, all I have now is all this hurt from Sam not being here.

“Did you tell your dad to kill these men?”

“No.”

“But you’re glad he’s made a start, right?”

“Yes.”

“How’d he get the name?”

“I . . . I don’t know. Maybe from Church. Maybe he had it all along.”

“Maybe.”

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“For now? Nothing. We can’t link you to any premeditated killings. The blood results came in and have cleared you with Kingsly. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you earlier—it’s just that, well, I was certain you’d killed him.”

“The blood cleared me?”

“We ran it against your father’s and none of the markers matched, it’s a completely different blood type, so whoever killed Kingsly isn’t related to your father.”

“It didn’t match,” I say.

“You sound surprised.”

“What? No. No, of course not,” I say, my mind racing. What does this mean? What does this mean?

“You set your father free, and for that we should be keeping you in custody, Edward, but things having gone the way they have, those who make these kinds of decisions have agreed that you can go home instead. For now anyway. You’ll have to answer for it—and not to me, but to a judge. If your dad doesn’t hurt anybody innocent and we get him back real soon, I’ll do what I can to help you. Of course there are other factors to consider, like . . .”

He keeps talking but I’m no longer listening. All I can think about is the blood type. My blood type doesn’t match my father’s blood type. If Schroder took blood from me now and compared it to the blood found at Kingsly’s house, it would match, only he’s got no reason to do that. He’s got no reason because he doesn’t suspect me anymore. He’s got no reason to run the blood found at Bracken’s office because he knows it’s mine. If he took blood from me now and compared it to my father . . .

It wouldn’t match,
the monster says, so maybe it hasn’t gone quiet at all.

How is that possible?

Come on, Eddie. You can figure it out. And Jack—he has no idea. Poor, poor Jack. You and your father are nothing alike and that makes me your
very own creation.

“Edward? Hey, Edward? You listening to me?”

“Huh?” I focus back on Schroder. “What?”

“I’m telling you there are other things to consider here. Nat and Diana know the full story. They know you didn’t start this . . . war. But . . . Edward, this is hard, but they don’t want you to see them again. Other than the . . . funeral, they want you out of their lives. Forever.”

“Am I free to go now?”

“I guess.”

“Then I want to see Sam,” I say, and Schroder drives me to the morgue.

“This is all very unusual,” he says.

“It’s an unusual situation.”

“Well, yes, I suppose it is, but it’s Christmas Day, Detective, and on Christmas Day I don’t want to see patients. I want to spend it with my children. My ex-wife had them last Christmas, and this year it’s my turn.”

“This won’t take long,” Schroder says.

Benson Barlow sighs. “Then you’d better come in,” he says.

The house suggests that psychiatry pays well. There have to be four or five bedrooms in the place, it’s two years old at the most, and if Barlow lives here alone except for when he’s allowed the children, then it must be a very lonely place to live in. Barlow leads him through to a study where there are books arranged by size and color, and there’s a view of a gated swimming pool beyond the bay window that people with emotional hang-ups paid for. The sun is shining down hard on it. He can hear a couple of children laughing from
somewhere in the house, and a TV going. Barlow looks different from the other day, he’s more like a real person and not a parody. He’s wearing shorts with about a dozen pockets and a polo shirt, and his limbs and scalp have reddened from the sun.

“Take a seat,” Barlow says, and Schroder notices the study is laid out the same way he imagines Barlow’s office in town must be laid out. Barlow takes a seat behind the desk and leans back in his leather office chair. He picks up a pad and a pen, seems to realize his mistake, and puts them back down. He interlocks his fingers and rests his hands on his knees. Schroder sits opposite him in another leather office chair—thankfully not a couch. There are a couple of diplomas on the wall and some expensive-looking art. There’s a manual typewriter in the middle of an oak desk, both of which are perhaps from the fifties. There’s a closed laptop up on a shelf behind Barlow and a small cactus plant next to it.