Paul Cleave - Blood Men

“Please.”

She comes back with a thick white sheet. I bunch up a corner of it into as good a pillow as I can make and prop it under Jodie’s head. I spread the rest over her. I step back and can’t pull myself away from the shape beneath it. I can still taste the lunch in my mouth, can still feel her hand in my hand as we walked to the bank.

“We’ll take care of her,” the woman says, and she puts her hands on my arm. “Please, it’s time to come inside,” she says, and I let her lead me, my wife left outside, my wife an item now, a piece of evidence, and I crouch over and throw up before stepping back into the bank.

Where there is room, the cars pull over for him, his siren warning of the urgency. The problem is there isn’t always room and he gets caught up at intersections, boxed in by traffic that on Friday afternoons takes on a life of its own. Cars that try to pull over for him end up blocking the way, people panicking and almost causing accidents. Schroder’s already heard the bank robbers made a clean exit. Heard about the victims. There are plenty of armed officers on the scene but it’s all too late.

The entire block is cordoned off. Suction Cup Guy is out of Schroder’s mind as he parks outside the barriers, ducks under the police tape, and walks into the carnage. There’s a body in the middle of the street with a sheet over it. The woman. There are hundreds of onlookers and dozens of media and he figures, as bad as this is for the people who were in the bank, as bad as it is for the dead woman in the street, today is turning out to be a great day for the media and sightseers. A bad day for the cops is gold for the six o’clock news. A couple of street performers are hanging out behind everybody else, juggling bright-colored objects and trying to cash in on the gathering crowd.

Inside the bank people are pale, they’re lost and confused and there is streaked makeup from tears and swollen eyes. He’s the third detective on the scene, and he’s quickly given updates from the other two. There’s a body lying outside an office, this one exposed. He gives an instruction to cover it, hoping it will go some way to calming the witnesses.

The husband of the woman killed is sitting in another office.

“Edward Hunter,” one of the detectives says, pointing toward him.

“Hunter?”

“Yeah. Why? You recognize him?”

“I think so, but the name doesn’t line up. Anybody spoken to him yet?” Schroder asks.

“He only just came inside. We almost had to pull him away from his wife.”

The office has new furniture and a rubber plant in the corner with leaves coated in dust. Schroder steps inside and closes the door and Edward Hunter looks up from the desk and watches him with eyes that are bloodshot.

“It’s colder in here than before,” Edward says, then pulls his shirt away from his body. It’s covered in blood and sticking against him.

Outside the office more people are arriving, other detectives to take statements. Men in white nylon suits are scouring the scene for evidence-the problem is the scene has been trampled over by too many people already.

“My name is Carl Schroder,” he says, sitting down opposite Edward and not offering to shake hands, “and I know this is difficult, I know answering questions is the last thing you want to do right now, but you. .”

“Not difficult,” Edward answers. “Impossible.”

“You’re right. It is impossible.” He pauses, taking in the impossibility of the situation. He isn’t the one who woke up today and lost his wife.

“Are you married?” Edward asks.

“Please, we need to focus. .”

“You imagine what it’d be like if that was your wife out there?”

“I’d want the men who did this caught.”

“You mean you haven’t found them yet?”

“We’re working on it, Edward. It is Edward, right? Not Jack?”

“I didn’t give you my name.”

“I know.”

“Jack’s my father’s name, not mine, not anymore. Which means you recognize me. Everybody recognizes me.”

“Well, I don’t know about that.”

“It’s true. You recognized me. You didn’t know whether to call me Jack or Edward, so you knew. Everybody knows.”

“I recognized you because I was there the day your dad was arrested.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he answers. It was his first year on the force. He hadn’t spoken to Jack Hunter Sr., or really been anywhere near him. He’d been one of the constables who’d come along for the ride. He got a real good look at Jack Hunter Junior, the young boy, full of tears and pain.

“I remember you,” Jack-now Edward-says. “But not from then. From the year after. You were the one who came when Mum died.”

“I know,” Schroder answers. That was his second year on the force. He and his partner had gone inside and found the woman in the bathtub. He can still recall exactly how she looked, how the bathroom felt, can picture the emptiness in her eyes. Edward and his sister were sitting on the bathroom floor, the sister with her arm around Edward, both of them leaning against the wall, Edward unable to take his eyes from the floor. Schroder and his partner had gone in and taken the children out before examining the body. The sister had told them what had happened. Edward never said a word.

“You’re always there when my family is hurting,” Edward says, and Schroder can see the little boy all those years ago in this man now. “And you’ve never made it any better. Am I a suspect in this, now that you know who I am?” his voice getting louder. Angrier.

“Of course not. Why would you think that?”

“People always think weird shit like that. I’ve grown up with it.”

“What I need from you is to focus, Edward. I know this is hard,” he says, “but this is the time where you can help the most.”

“They just, they just came into the bank,” Edward says, shaking his head as he talks and turning his palms up, “you know? Just came in like they owned the place. The way they shot the manager, they didn’t care. They didn’t have to kill anybody. They were getting their money and. . I mean, why do that? Why take the time to do that? Even when it was all done, they took Jodie with them. Why would they do that?”

“We’ve heard from other witnesses the men said they wanted a volunteer.”

“I tried to get them to take me.”

“I know you did. They also said you saved one of the tellers from being taken, maybe even saving her life.”

“What?”

“They say you called out. They say the men were going to take her, and you stopped them. That was a brave thing,” he says, trying to prompt Edward. “A brave thing, risking your life.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t my life I risked in the end, was it? They were going to take her and they took Jodie instead.”

“You couldn’t have known that.”

“You think?”

“It’s a fact. It’s a bad situation, Edward, a bad situation and people died, and you’re the only one in that bank who had the balls to try and do something about it, to try and save somebody’s life, and that woman is alive thanks to you.”

“It’s a shitty flip side, right? She’s alive because of me and my wife is dead for the same reason. It’s no different from me pulling the trigger myself.”

“It’s very different,” he says.

“All the people in here and they took her. They didn’t need to take anybody.”

Schroder knows exactly why they took her. They wanted somebody dead out on the road. They wanted to use up more police resources. It creates confusion and panic and gives them more of a lead time. It shuts down traffic into the street, creates congestion, slows down the roads in and out of town, the cars that had stopped outside the bank are still out there, blocked in. He doesn’t tell Edward any of this. Doesn’t tell him that his wife was a tool, a device they used to help them escape.