Paul Cleave - Blood Men

The club is dark and there’s cigarette smoke hanging in the air; it’s like a fog rolled in, bringing with it the dregs of modern man. Girls in nothing but underwear, with breasts of all different sizes, are walking between the tables, some carrying drinks, others leading a patron by the hand toward a three-minute lap dance. The music is loud and aimed at the generation most of these girls seem to be in-one that’s about ten years younger than mine. There are maybe fifteen or twenty patrons in the club, mostly men sitting by themselves, a group of six in front of the stage. I keep the shotgun by my side, pointing down, and nobody seems to notice it. Most of the lighting is aimed at the stage, where a girl in a nurse outfit who looks nothing like the nurse who showed me the happy face chart earlier today is spinning around a pole. The look on her face reminds me of the waitress on the day Jodie died, the look of the damned-it was a lifetime ago now.

I take a corridor that leads past the toilets to a fire-exit door. The police haven’t hit the club yet. The toilets smell of disinfectant and the floor outside is wet. I hit the fire-exit door hard but the damn thing opens only about thirty centimeters, then bounces back, a chain flexing against the handles with a padlock securing it in place. I point the shotgun at the lock and people in the club scream when they hear it go off. The music keeps going and people are no longer watching the stage. The chain falls away and I take it with me outside. I jam the doors closed behind me and wrap the chain around the handles.

The alleyway is similar to the last one I was in, except this one runs at a different angle, along the back of clubs and shops instead of up between them. I turn right, passing more back entrances; from some come loud music, from others nothing. I stick with the direction and run for about sixty seconds, taking most of the weight on my left leg, hobbling more than running. I can hear sirens patrolling the streets. I climb a fence and drop into an open parking lot with bad lighting and about two cars. On the opposite side I take thirty seconds to catch my breath and begin to transfer the files out of the gym bag and stuff them in with the money. I tuck my arms through it and strap it onto my back and leave the empty bag behind and carry on moving.

The parking lot comes out a driveway on Manchester Street. There are cars that don’t have sirens on them driving past, hookers standing on corners, run-of-the-mill people staggering down the street, some wearing Santa hats. I run across Manchester and head further from the central city, down Gloucester Street toward a one-way system where there is less lighting. A patrol car comes into the street and I duck in behind a row of bushes lining a tile shop and the car drives past. I move again, getting further away, the hookers becoming less frequent and harder-looking, like they’ll do far more for far less. I cross Madras Street and keep heading east. The sirens aren’t as loud now. I get another block before turning north, back toward home, slowing down as more blood runs out of my leg. I need somewhere I can read the files. Somewhere I can bandage myself back up.

I’m a good six or seven blocks away when the cell phone I took from Kingsly rings. I flip it open.

“Hello?”

“What the hell, Edward? You’re making this a whole lot worse than it needs to be,” Schroder says.

“I’m finding my daughter.”

“No you’re not. You’re killing her. Look, we have some names, we’re banging on some doors right now. We’re going to find her.”

“You can guarantee that?”

“I can guarantee we’re doing our best.”

“What about the person who visited Roger Harwick in jail?”

“Who?”

“Somebody had to visit Harwick before my dad got stabbed, right? Somebody from the outside.”

“It’s a good thought,” he says, “except nobody came to see Harwick today, or yesterday. In fact nobody has been to see him since the bank robbery.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I say. “Somebody had to talk to him.”

“And somebody did. It means another inmate was visited and got told to pass the message along.”

“Who?”

“We’re looking into it. Problem is there are so many opportunities for Harwick to interact with another inmate. Could be there were other links in the chain. Somebody comes to see Inmate A, who speaks to Inmate B, who talks to Inmate C. Or maybe one of the guards organized it.”

“So it’s a dead end,” I say.

“I’m doing what I can, Eddie.”

“It’s just never enough.”

“Where are you?”

“I have to go.”

“What did you find? Another name? An address? Edward, listen to me, if you know where your daughter is, you have to let me help you.”

“I don’t know where she is. Not yet.”

“You’re armed and running around the city, Edward. The word has come in-you’re a threat. A Armed Offenders Unit unit is coming for you. They see you with that shotgun, they’re going to open fire. There won’t be any dialogue. You hear what I’m saying?”

“I hear it,” I say, and hang up, then I try calling Nat but the phone just rings and rings.

What I need is transport and somewhere to read over the files. I find somewhere secure to hide the shotgun before heading back onto the road to flag down a taxi. The first three go by, passengers already inside them; the fourth pulls over, the driver sees the blood on my leg, shakes his head, and drives off. Another taxi pulls up a few minutes later, and this time I keep the gym bag covering my leg. The blood on my shirt from where I wore it over my foot is all on the back, so the driver doesn’t notice it. He just seems to be happy that I’m not carrying a shotgun, but struggles to express his gratitude in clear English. I tell him to take me back toward town, which doesn’t please him because he was hoping for a bigger fare. There are a dozen patrol cars circling the streets, but their search patterns don’t extend to taxis. They’re out there dressed in black, carrying assault weapons and itching to take down Eddie the Hunter, the man they always knew would turn into a killer.

There is blood leading from the kicked-in door to the elevators. It’s how Hunter fooled the first two cops on the scene into thinking he’d gone upstairs. With all the mistakes Hunter has been making, Schroder knows there’s at least something in that mind of his that’s working. He wonders if he’d be doing the same thing if it was his daughter who’d been taken, and decides that he would. He’d do what it takes-which makes it hard to know the Armed Offenders Unit is out there gunning for Hunter, ready to take him down.

Schroder has never had any reason to come down to the probation offices before, and he knows there’s every chance after tonight he’ll never come here again. The building is fairly nondescript and the offices inside about as impersonal as you can get, with rubber plants either side of the reception desk and a sunset picture hanging on the wall the only signs of excitement. He imagines it’d be hard to work in a place like this, getting to know people on a return basis as they’re released every few years for the same crimes, addictions to drugs, taking other people’s money, taking other people’s lives, all in endless circles. At least, being a cop, your job is to put criminals away; these guys have to reintroduce criminals into the outside world, over and over and over again.

It’s too early to tell if Edward had time to find anything here. After talking to him he got the impression Hunter was still winging it with no idea where to go next. That made him dangerous.

The IT woman, Geri Shepard, is currently going through Bracken’s computer. Shepard-in her late twenties and with a body other women would kill for-is about as put out by being here as she is attractive.