Paul Cleave - Blood Men

“And you think pulling a shotgun on an innocent man will help? Let’s get a read on him first and take it from there.”

When they walk up to the front door, Schroder is still out of it, like he’s walking through a world slightly out of sync. He knocks on the door and there’s movement and voices and Schroder knocks again to hurry them up. A few seconds later a man answers the door, his shirt open and the large belt buckle on his pants hanging loose. He’s around Schroder’s age, but bigger. He has that slab look about him, the not-quite-fat-and-not-quite-muscle look. He has a handlebar mustache that’s about a hundred years out of date.

“What the hell?” he asks, as soon as he sees them.

Schroder holds up his ID. The badge has dried out but the wallet is still wet. Bracken doesn’t look at it, just stares at Schroder, and then at Edward, and Schroder is pretty sure he knows who each of them is.

“We have a couple of questions,” Schroder says.

“At this time of night?”

“You’re lucky we didn’t show up at two in the morning.”

“Questions about what?”

“Some routine stuff about Shane Kingsly.”

“Like what?”

“Background.”

“And you had to come to my house at this time of the night?”

“We’re chasing some leads.”

“With him?” he asks, and nods at Edward.

“Can we come in?” Schroder asks.

“I’m busy.”

“It’s important.”

“It’s Christmas Eve,” he says. “I don’t care if it’s important or not.”

“Actually. .,” Schroder begins, but Edward interrupts him.

“Shit,” Edward says. Both men look at him. “My phone,” he says, patting down his pockets. “It’s in the car. I know how to solve this.”

“What?” Bracken says.

“Edward. .,” Schroder says.

“Just a second,” Edward says.

“Edward, wait,” Schroder says.

“It’s important,” Edward answers, and Schroder watches him walk away for a few seconds before turning back to Bracken. His head is muggy and his thoughts are muddled, and he knows he’s probably making a mistake right now but he can’t seem to focus exactly on what that is. Edward saved his life before; and that aside, Schroder knows if he’d been better at his job, then Edward’s daughter never would have been taken tonight. Whatever happens to her will be on his conscience. So yeah, maybe he does owe Hunter some slack. He knows he does-it’s why he’s here. It’s why he hasn’t turned on Edward and tried to handcuff him.

Question is, how much slack is he prepared to give him?

Austin Bracken lives in a neighborhood the virus hasn’t hit yet. The houses are modern and well looked after and don’t have front yards made up from rusting mechanical parts. The dashboard clock on the car says we’re closing in on 10:30; it seems like the day has been about forty hours long. Most of the houses still have lights on inside them, people probably closing in on bedtime, watching the tail end of prime-time TV, waiting for the kids to have been asleep long enough so they can play Santa’s role and put the presents under the tree. It’s what I should be doing with Jodie. It’s such a magical moment and I don’t know if there’ll ever be any more.

I could tell in two seconds Bracken had the money. I didn’t even need the monster to help me out on that one. But Schroder couldn’t even get his foot in the door. I grab the shotgun because we don’t have time to play nice. We’re meeting the people who have my daughter in about forty minutes and I have nothing to exchange for her. I carry the gun behind my back, nice and easy, the same way I’d hide a bouquet of flowers. I bring it into view and Bracken’s eyes widen and Schroder sees his reaction and turns to face me, but he doesn’t turn quick enough to avoid what happens. I crash the butt of the shotgun into Schroder’s head, not as hard as the security guard got hit, but hard enough to make it count. His head rocks to the side and his eyes roll back and he drops real fast.

Bracken takes a few steps back as I take a few steps forward. Schroder stays slumped on the ground, doing what Schroder seems to be doing best lately.

“What do you want?” Bracken asks.

“The money.”

“What?”

“The money you stole. I’m here for it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

We get into the hallway and I kick back and close the door. It’s a pretty nice house with a wide hall and modern furniture, and the outside looks nice, nice plants, nice paint job, garden gnomes in the garden and a policeman planted on the doorstep, not a Christmas decoration in sight. Bracken keeps moving down the hallway. I keep following.

“You stole money from Kingsly,” I say. “Probably around four hundred thousand dollars,” I say. “Maybe more, maybe less.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes. You did.”

“What are you on about? If he had money, why’d you think I’d take it? And how’d you even know what he had unless. .” His expression changes, as if he’s figuring it out, but it changes too much, as if it’s an act. Something here isn’t quite right but I don’t know what.

“You killed him,” he says, and something in the way he says it makes me think he already knew that. Not just thought it, or suspected it, but actually knew it, like he was there.

“The money,” I say. “Take me to it.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“The people that money belongs to have my daughter. They’re going to kill her unless I get it back for them.”

“Like I said, I don’t have any money.”

Listen to him-he’s lying. If he was truly sorry he’d tell you where that money is. He’d act more sympathetic. He’d tell you that if he could help, he would.

“I think it’s time you left,” Bracken says.

“They’re going to kill her.”

“And I’m sorry about that, I truly am.”

He truly isn’t.

“Somebody else must have taken it,” he carries on. “Somebody either before or after, I don’t know, all I know is I don’t have it.”

He’s lying.

“You’re lying.”

“It’s the truth.”

He’s lying.

“Okay, then,” I say. “Any ideas who?”

“What?”

“You were his probation officer. Who else did he work with?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to check.”

“The police didn’t ask you this already?”

“I don’t know. Yeah, I guess so.”

“And?”

“And what? I gave them a bunch of names they already knew and it was a waste of time.”

“Okay. Okay. Who else is here?”

“What?”

“In this house. Who else is here?”

“I don’t know. Just some woman.”

“Show me.”

He leads me to a bedroom where a woman with large breasts and very big hair is finishing off getting dressed.

“I promise you this is the last goddamn time, you son of a bitch,” she says, straightening up her skirt which is torn up the side. When Bracken doesn’t answer, she looks up and sees first me and then the shotgun, and the anger washes out of her face, just like that, in about half a second, and gets replaced with a big amount of fear. Her eyes are puffy and mascara has run down her face, making her look like a Goth.

“What the. .,” she says, but she runs out of words.

“Shut up,” Bracken says to her, and then I make him do exactly that by banging him on the head with the gun as hard as I hit Schroder. He goes down about as hard and looks like he’ll be staying down for about as long.

“Please, don’t hurt me,” the woman begs. “I didn’t even want to be here.”

She’s wearing a really short skirt and high-heel shoes and must keep her yearly calorie intake at under a thousand. “You wanna earn some cash?” I ask.