Paul Cleave - Blood Men

I switch on the computer which offers more light, then I go through the drawers. There are too many files to go through so I pile them onto the desk. The computer loads up and by the time a desktop appears I’m too nervous to hang around. I consider tearing the computer apart and taking the hard drive, but the files are probably on a server somewhere. The alarm is still shrieking and the Blu-Tack in my ears doesn’t seem to be helping.

There’s a gym bag behind the desk. I unzip it and dump the clothes on the floor. I’m packing everything I pulled out of the drawers into the bag when a patrol car pulls up outside.

As I reach the door to the foyer and elevators, the alarm goes quiet. The rest of the lights come on and I duck behind a desk. There are footsteps in the foyer, and voices. I can’t quite hear what they’re saying, but the words I’m looking for stick out from the rest-“blood,” “elevator,” and “top floor.” The police out there know they have a lot of ground to cover, but they’ve noticed that the elevator with blood leading up to it has been sent to the top. A radio squawks, and one of them speaks into it. “Backup.” The word is clear.

Another door opens, and then there are footsteps in the stairwell. Thirty seconds later the elevator doors open and close. The accountant and the monster think things through. We figure there are two cops here already and more coming soon, so I need to act now. We figure one of them is probably at the third or fourth floor now. He’s laboring his way to the top floor while his partner rides up in comfort.

Another patrol car pulls up outside.

I untie the shirt from my foot and pull it back on. I open the door and run into the foyer, the gym bag in one hand, a stapler in the other, ready to hurl it hard in case somebody is still down here-but there’s no one. I turn toward the main door. There are two police constables walking toward it, a man and a woman. They stop dead and stare at me and I do the same, me on one side of the door, them on the other, then they race forward and one of them grabs the door.

His head has cleared in the hour or so since he died, and he likes to think that the fuckups in that time were brought about by that experience, likes to think they’re not the kind of mistakes he’d make on any other day.

Getting out of the house was easy. All Schroder had to do was caterpillar his way to the front door, get to his feet, twist his body so he could reach the door handle, and run like hell-or in this case bounce. It took him a couple of tiring minutes to reach a house that had lights on. He used his nose to ring the doorbell. It was a young couple whose kids had gone to bed; they were wrapping presents and had shared half a bottle of wine and seemed to look at Schroder with as much suspicion as anything, but he was thankful they took him in and cut the ties that held his feet. Nat’s cell phone was still in his pocket, and he used it to phone the station, and then he phoned his wife. He told her he was running late, told her it was going to be a long night, told her he was sorry, and didn’t tell her that a short time ago she was technically a widow. She told him she was disappointed but she understood, and he should get home when he could. It was the best-case scenario-and her first Christmas present to him.

By the time the first patrol car arrived, Edward was long gone. The responding officers removed Schroder’s handcuffs.

“So where’s he gone now?” Landry asks. They’re standing in Bracken’s living room, a photographer and a couple of other officers hanging out in the corner. Others are out canvassing the neighborhood, hoping to narrow down Hunter’s destination.

“I don’t know. But Jesus, Bill, everything that’s happened-everything that Hunter did to Bracken, he was right in the end. Bracken was part of the robbery. He had somebody take Hunter’s daughter, and now we’ve got nothing.”

“Not nothing,” Landry says. “We’ve got a couple of names. That gives us a bunch of known accomplices.”

“Yeah, but in time to save Hunter’s daughter?”

“He shouldn’t have killed Bracken. He could have helped us.”

“He says he didn’t do it. Says the woman did it.”

“You believe him?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not much of an answer, Carl. Sounds more like you want to believe him but don’t.”

“Whether he did it or not, he’s gone somewhere. Something here must have tipped him off.”

“Maybe he found a name or an address.”

“Yeah, and took it with him.”

“Well, if we’re lucky, maybe he’ll succeed. Maybe he’ll get his daughter back and take another couple of bad guys off the street.”

“I don’t see it working out that way,” Schroder says.

“Sure. Would be good, though, right?”

A few more detectives arrive on the scene and join them in searching the house.

“It’s official,” Landry says, finishing up a phone call. “Our two victims today are also Bracken’s cons.”

“Like Kingsly.”

“Yeah. That’s three for three.”

“So Bracken put the crew together,” Schroder says. “I’ll go to his office. Check his files. Maybe it’s even where Hunter is heading.”

“Maybe,” Landry answers, and ten minutes later it turns out he’s right.

“Shit,” the officer says, because the automatic doors are locked and don’t open for him. He fumbles with the keys but I don’t hang around to watch. I limp past the elevators, past the busted door and the footprints of blood toward the back entrance. I burst out behind the building into the alleyway. I reach my car, the shotgun still on the passenger seat. The woman cop is running down the alleyway toward me. I turn the shotgun toward her and she comes to a complete stop. She raises her hands the same way the bank manager did.

Kill her.

There’s no need.

There’s always a need. There always has been.

“Please,” she says. She’s a few years younger than me, and about as scared as I probably looked when six men came bursting through the bank doors. She takes a couple of steps away.

I prime the shotgun. She takes another step backward. Jodie was killed as a distraction and it worked. It commanded a huge police force and effort at the bank while they sped away. A shotgun blast here would do the same thing. It would give me more time to find my daughter.

Do it.

“Please, I have a family,” she says.

“Move over there,” I say, and I point the shotgun toward the door I just came out of. She reaches it and I move around to the driver’s side of the car and climb in. I put the gun standing up from the footwell onto the passenger seat and the cop stays still. I reverse quickly back toward the road. A third patrol car shows up and covers the exit. I push hard on the accelerator and the back of my car hits the side of the patrol car right in the middle of the front wheel. The crash jolts me back and forward and the Blu-Tack falls out of my ears. The patrol car is pushed away from the side of the road. My car stalls and I restart it and jam my foot on the accelerator again and swerve out onto the road. The back of the car produces a rattling sound that gets louder the further I drive. The patrol car comes after me but manages all of five meters before taking a sharp right-hand turn, the axle probably broken. I slow down at the intersection, and when I push my foot back down the engine revs but doesn’t grip and the car rolls without any acceleration. I try changing gears but it doesn’t make a difference.

One of the other patrol cars comes away from the curb. I pull over and jump out, slinging bags over my shoulders, the money much heavier than the files. The patrol car is about a hundred and fifty meters away when I point the shotgun at the tattoo-covered bouncer at the strip club door and make my way inside.