Paul Cleave - Blood Men

He wasn’t even my father.

And somehow here I am, your very own monster.

I speed up the car that used to belong to Oliver Church, a nice trajectory ahead now, and I hit the wall of glass and it showers everywhere, it rakes against the car, the world sounds full of screams and the car bounces up off the framework and bounces back down and I slam on the brakes but not before I’ve wedged two desks hard up against the counter. The alarm is instant. The two front tires burst. The front of the car crumples up and the engine stalls. No air bag goes off, but the seat belts stop us from flying out. I look over at my passenger and there are more tears and more blood and I’m pretty sure both of us know that things for her are about to get worse.

“He’s gone,” Schroder says.

“Maybe. .”

“And he’s killed,” Schroder adds.

“Killed who?” Barlow asks.

Schroder steps back outside. “Do you have an idea where he might go?”

There’s silence on the other end of the phone for a few seconds. “The cemetery. It makes perfect sense. He’ll want to be with his wife. Who did he kill, Detective?”

“I’ll call you back.”

Schroder calls the station. He organizes a patrol car to go to Gerald Painter’s house, to the homes of the bank tellers, to the cemetery, even to Dean Wellington’s house. He calls Landry and fills him in on the situation.

“You think Jack Hunter knew all along which bank teller was involved?”

“Maybe,” Schroder says. “We need to find out.”

The interview Schroder had with the bank teller yesterday was finished off by another detective. Because of all the events last night, nobody had the chance to get around to comparing all the details against each other. Another series of follow-up interviews have taken place over the last six hours, each bank teller difficult to get hold of on Christmas Day, each bank teller reluctant to help out, wanting to spend time with their families instead.

The problem is none of them can remember who loaded the dye packs.

Schroder turns on the sirens and speeds back into town, the houses and cars passing by in a blur. Other police cars come toward him on their way to Hunter’s house. When he reaches the station he runs inside to the interrogation room where, ten minutes earlier, Kelvin Johnson was escorted into.

“You’ve got one chance here to help yourself,” Schroder says, and Johnson, the only crew member of the gang who robbed the bank in custody-and now the only one still alive-doesn’t even look up from the interrogation table.

“You know everybody else is dead, right? We found Zach Everest a few hours ago, and I just came from looking at Doyle’s butchered corpse,” he says, Lance Doyle being the last name on the list. “There was a lot of rage there, Kelvin, a lot of rage.”

Kelvin says nothing.

“And we know somebody inside the bank was involved.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“Actually I do. I know you’re going to jail. I know that you know Jack Hunter has been running around out there killing off your buddies. You know that he’ll be in jail soon too, right alongside you,” Schroder says, which isn’t quite true. “You know Jack Hunter has connections in there-he’s been there twenty years so he knows how the place works. You know his daughter-in-law and granddaughter are dead because of something you did, and you know that makes you a target. I know you’re going to end up in a jail cell real close to him, and I know your days in there are limited. So both you and I know that the only way you’re ever going to live long enough to see the outside world again is if you talk. You tell me who you had on the inside, and you spend your years in jail somewhere you never have to see Jack or Edward Hunter.”

“That’s bullshit,” Johnson says.

“No. What that is is a fact. A one hundred percent fact. So what I’m going to do right now is I’m going to give you thirty seconds to think about it. You’re probably thinking that you’re a tough guy and can handle yourself in jail since you’ve done it before. But what you should be thinking about is the desire of two men in this world who right now want nothing more than to see you dead-men who may not be able to do the job themselves, but at least one of them can afford to pay to have it done. Thirty seconds,” Schroder says. “And counting.”

“Marcy Croft,” Johnson says, with twenty-eight seconds still remaining. “Bracken paid her off. She was an easy mark. She needed the cash and she was new there and the plan all along was to shoot her anyway. Bracken wanted her taken out onto the street but instead we took that other woman, the wife.”

“Marcy Croft,” Schroder says, and he gets a mental picture of the bank teller. She’s the one who had the shotgun leveled at her. The one Jodie Hunter died for.

“Did she know people were going to die?”

“She thought it was a simple thing. We’d go in and get the money and get back out. We told her nobody had to get hurt, and for what it’s worth that’s what I thought too.”

“So why didn’t anybody try to kill her after the robbery?”

“Couldn’t risk it. If we’d touched her after the robbery, you’d have looked into why. You’d have made the connection.”

“You weren’t worried she’d talk to the police?”

“No. Bracken rang her cell phone about ten minutes after the robbery. Told her that if she spoke to the cops he’d kill her and everybody she loves.”

“Did Bracken shoot Jodie Hunter?”

“No. Bracken didn’t even say a word in the bank.”

“Did you shoot her?”

“No. It was Doyle.”

“Okay. That’s good, Kelvin. Real good. You can explain that to Hunter when you see him.”

“What? You said. .”

“I lied.”

“You son of a bitch,” he says, but Schroder hardly hears him as he closes the interrogation door behind him. He checks the messages on his phone. The cemetery was canvassed and no sign of Hunter. No sign of him at the security guard’s house. No sign of him at any of the bank tellers’ homes. No sign of him at Marcy Croft’s house.

He gets in his car and chooses Croft’s house. He calls the detectives who spoke to her earlier today and they say she seemed nervous, but put it down to the events of the last week. There’s a patrol car parked outside her house.

“Nobody home,” the officers say. “Our orders are to wait till she shows up.”

Schroder knocks on the door anyway. When he finds her he knows she isn’t likely to put up a fight or any fuss. If anything she’ll break down in tears and beg for a forgiveness that isn’t his to offer. He tries the door. It’s unlocked. He opens it.

Marcy Croft lives in a small two-bedroom flat with a flat-screen TV and a Christmas tree filling the living room with blood on the carpet and tipped-over furniture.

“He’s got her,” he says into the phone. “The bank teller.”

“Explain it to me,” Barlow says, and Schroder does.

“Does Hunter know the bank teller was in on the robbery?” Barlow asks.

“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s possible. Jack Hunter may have known. He certainly knew other names.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Barlow says. “If Edward knew she was in on the robbery, he would have killed her already. You said he took her from her home?”

“There’s sign of a struggle and blood on the carpet. Not much,” he says.

“Okay. Let’s assume he didn’t kill her. Let’s assume he took her. What for? If he thought this woman was somehow partly responsible for the death of his wife and daughter, he would have killed her already. No reason for him to take her.”

“Well, he has her. No doubt there.”