Paul Cleave - Blood Men

I can feel the gurney moving but there’s no reference point in the sky so I can’t tell how fast we’re going, and the sensation is like dropping through the air on a roller coaster. The ambulance comes into view and I’m hoisted inside. An IV is punctured into my arm and more pressure is applied to the wound and people go to work. I close my eyes. The ambulance doors close and the sirens don’t come on.

Next time I open my eyes I’m in the hospital with the hallway lights whizzing by. There are two new faces above me. I’m wheeled into ER and stabbed a few times with needles and then my leg goes completely numb. My shoes are removed and my pants cut away. The blood is wiped off, revealing a deep gash, but the fact blood isn’t spraying out hopefully means no major arteries have been cut.

“Not as bad as it looks,” a doctor says, filling up a syringe. “We’ll have you up and about in no time. You’re not going to feel a thing,” he says, but he’s wrong. I mean, I can’t feel the needle and sutures pushing through my flesh, but I feel anger and fear and. . and something else.

Excitement.

No. I don’t think it’s that.

Yes it is. Stop lying to yourself. You’re excited because you took down one more man. Only five to go now. Put your hand up and be proud.

“Proud of what?” I mutter.

“What?” the doctor asks.

“Nothing.”

There’s no time to be proud.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the doctor asks, when I try to get up.

“I have to get out of here.”

“The hell you do,” he says. “Mate, I haven’t even begun sewing you back together here.”

“I need to. .”

“Lay back down or you’re going to keep bleeding, and if you don’t bleed out you’ll get infected, and then you’ll lose your leg. That what you want?”

It isn’t what I want. He goes back to work, and is about halfway done when Schroder walks into the room.

“You don’t remember who loaded the dye pack?”

Because they weren’t officially treating any of the bank staff as suspects, Landry and two other detectives were interviewing the other three people who went back to the vault, while Schroder dealt with the fourth-William Steiner. They were doing the interviews at the suspects’ houses-this gave the detectives a better chance to get a sense of who they were talking to; whether or not they looked like they could use a few extra hundred grand. Maybe they’d spot a bag full of money somewhere too.

Steiner was a man in his midthirties with a pale complexion that helped highlight the acne scars around his neck. He didn’t seem nervous, and before he could answer only the third question Schroder had time to ask-the one about who loaded the dye pack-Schroder’s cell phone started ringing.

“Excuse me a moment,” he said. He stood up from the living-room couch, stepped into the hallway, and opened the phone. He barely managed to get out two words before the information came racing in. Edward Hunter. A shoot-out. A dead man.

That had been ten minutes ago. The drive into town was quicker than the last few days, most people having finished their shopping by now.

“Quite some mess, Edward,” he says, stepping around the doctor and looking down at the leg.

“It’ll heal.”

“I’m not talking about the leg. I’m talking about the scene you left behind.”

Hunter is nervous. His hands are shaking and his eyes are big and he looks like he’s wired on amphetamines. “I had to leave it behind,” he answers. “If I hadn’t got out of there I’d be dead right now.”

Schroder nods. It’s what he’d heard, and it’s what the evidence supports. His next trip from here will be to the scene. “A lot of people watched you running for your life,” he says. “A lot of witnesses.”

“Any of them feel the urge to help?” Edward asks.

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re here when you should be out there, looking for Jodie’s killers.”

Schroder ignores the remark. “I think you’re lucky you’re still alive,” he says, “and that luck will run out if you don’t tell me the truth.”

“I want to see my daughter.”

“Sure, Edward, no problem. As soon as you’re done telling me what happened.”

“I want to see her now.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s with her grandparents. I don’t know where they are.”

“Where are they supposed to be?” Schroder asks. Is there a chance the men who went after Edward would also go after his daughter? No. . surely not. .

“I don’t know. At their house.”

Schroder’s stomach sinks. He tightens his features and tries to hide his concern. “And you haven’t heard from them?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

He takes his cell phone out and heads a few meters away. While it rings, he watches the doctor, who so far has said nothing since he arrived, just kept on stitching. He’s probably heard similar stories a hundred times already. Schroder passes the information about Sam on to the detectives at the scene then goes back to Edward.

“Okay, we’re going to send somebody to bring her in here,” he says, trying not to sound concerned. “In the meantime, tell me what happened.”

Edward tells him what happened from the moment Schroder dropped him off to fleeing the scene in the stolen car, running over one of his attackers on the way.

“Okay, okay, that’s good, Edward. What I really need you to do now is tell me what happened last night. Don’t make me wait for the blood results. We don’t have the luxury of time anymore, especially now that these people are coming for you.”

“I don’t know anything, except two men were trying to kill me. With all the people that called the cops, and the gunfire, and the blood and chaos, nobody got there in time to arrest the second guy, am I right?”

“Look, Edward, the car is going to show up all sorts of prints. The dead man wasn’t wearing gloves, so the shooter probably wasn’t either. Their plan would have been to wipe the car down or burn it. We’ll find him, and that will lead to the others. All of them. What’s the verdict?” he asks, turning toward the doctor.

“Nothing major. It’s a deep laceration and he’s lost some blood,” the doctor says. “We’ll bandage it up and keep him on a drip for a few more hours-but no reason we can’t release him tonight. However, he’ll have to stay off his feet for a couple of days.”

“Come on, Edward,” Schroder says as the doctor leaves them, “you’re in some deep shit here. You absolutely have to tell me what happened last night with Greensly.”

“You mean Kingsly,” Edward finishes, and the look of horror at his mistake appears immediately.

Schroder slowly shakes his head back and forth a couple of times. In some weird way he feels betrayed. He really wanted to believe Hunter was innocent.

“Kingsly,” Schroder says, and he hangs on the word for a few seconds. “That’s right, Edward. Not Greensly, but Kingsly. I never told you his name and the media don’t know it yet. There’s only one way you could have known that name, Edward, and that’s if your father gave it to you.”

“He gave me the name, but I never went there.”

Schroder knows he did. He knows he went there and maybe he didn’t intend to kill him, or maybe he did-either way the result was the same, and no matter how you look at it it’s completely unfair. Right now Edward Hunter should be celebrating Christmas Eve with his wife and daughter. Easiest thing to do now is to get Hunter to confess, then take him into custody.

“Look, Edward,” he says, keeping his voice low, “here’s the thing-the last two years have been hell. Too many goddamn psychopaths running around. Two long years, and I’m tired, real tired of this shit. I look at this city and I want to believe it’s a good city, and it is, it really is, there’s still a lot of good here, Edward, a lot worth defending. So many people, they think this city has turned to shit, but it hasn’t. It’s my city, I love this city-but, like I keep telling you, it’s on a precipice. Thing is, it doesn’t have to fall. We can save this city, it can be returned to the way it was. Looking back, there are things I wish I’d done differently. Things that could have-expedited investigations. Things that could have saved lives. If I could do it all over, there are rules I would’ve broken. Sometimes the ends can justify the means, you know? Sometimes you have to do bad things for the greater good. Bad things to save the city.