Paul Cleave - Blood Men

“There was nothing you could have done,” Schroder says.

“You’re wrong on that. There was everything I could have done. I could have made the appointment for a different time. I could have kept my mouth shut and let that other woman get taken. Maybe they wouldn’t have killed her. I could have fought more, could have insisted they take me instead.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Then why does it feel like it is?”

“We have to focus, Edward, on finding the men who did this.”

“I know. I know.”

“Then it’s time to tell me what happened. Start at the beginning,” he says.

“Okay,” Edward says, tears slowly sliding down his face. Schroder takes out his notebook and writes it all down.

I’m given a lift home. The sun is past its peak and the city seems darker now. The shadows cast by the tired buildings are small but ominous, the people on the streets appear defeated, those caught in half shadows are dazed, the trees and plants and flowers that make up the garden city have all lost their vibrancy-the life is draining out of the world. We pass rundown fruit stalls on the side of the road, FOR SALE signs in front of houses that people want to leave. The blood on my clothes is drying, the color fading from bright red to deep maroon, my body itchy where the stains are stiff and scratchy. With every passing second the distance between me and Jodie stretches, and the hope of getting her back finally turns into the despair it was the moment I saw her gunned down. This is my city, my home, the place I loved but love no more. Now I don’t know what it is. Certainly not my home. Not now. Now it’s the place that killed my wife and took my daughter’s mother away. Now it’s a hellhole and I don’t see any future here.

The officer driving doesn’t say anything. He’s never gotten around to preparing any rhetorical conversation for this exact situation. It’s a thirty-minute drive in busy traffic in which the world goes by and I wonder how I can change it. He’s relieved when he lets me out in my driveway. I’ve taken a car ride away from one reality to a new one. There aren’t any neighbors walking about or working in their gardens. The houses are all dirty, the plants and trees all too dry, the cars old and the sidewalks cracked, the colors everywhere seem so diluted. There are brief moments-less than a second-where I’m distracted and Jodie is still alive, small lifetime moments like putting my key in the door- bang! A distraction-and the world is okay. Then that split second passes and reality floods back in, crushing me.

It’s almost four o’clock and Sam has been picked up from school by Jodie’s parents. One of the detectives arranged it. One of them made the call so I didn’t have to, and I don’t know who broke the news to them first, the detective or the media. From a stranger they learned their daughter had the misfortune of getting herself gunned down this afternoon, had the misfortune of being married to a man who couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and they’d need to pick their granddaughter up from school.

My house has become a museum, everything inside a relic of my past, happy memories all turning to dust. The air-conditioning was switched off this morning so the house is stuffy. Jodie has been dead for three hours and I’m stepping into a different place, the ghost of the house that it was this morning. I wander through it, not really knowing what to do. Jodie’s stuff is everywhere and I can’t see myself ever packing any of it away. Her coffee cup is still on the bench, the bottom 10 percent still there, cold and manky. Toast crumbs form a trail across the kitchen floor. Makeup on the bathroom vanity, her towel, still damp, hanging on the rail. Jodie is missing and she’s here all at the same time, the house waiting for her to walk in, her husband waiting for the same thing. There’s an outfit lying on the bed; she must have been ready to wear one thing, then changed her mind. Jodie is always like that, she’s always one minute deciding to. .

Was. It’s “was” now.

“Jesus,” I whisper, and sit down on the edge of the bed. I pick up her top and hold it against my face and cry into it. What do I do with her clothes? Keep them? Give them away?

I don’t know when I’m supposed to think those kind of things, what kind of person it makes me for realizing it now. Do I do the washing and hang her clothes back up? Do I go to work next week? Do I leave Jodie’s clothes lying about the floor until after the funeral, then pack them up? My bosses at work don’t even know what’s happened. They know I went for lunch and haven’t come back.

I walk up and down the hallway-I just need somebody to tell me what to do.

I take off my clothes and lay them on the bed next to Jodie’s. A more creative man might study the bloodstains and find patterns in them, shapes of animals or boats, but all I see is my wife as she lay on the ground bleeding. They’re ruined. I roll them into a ball, then find myself coming to a complete standstill. I stare at them for a while. The cuffs are the bloodiest, then the arms, then the front. One of the buttons is missing. There isn’t any blood on the back at all. I straighten them out and hang them up.

I take a long shower, blood streaking off my skin, the penguin shower radio quiet as it watches me. I stare in the mirror at the large bruise on my face from the blow I took. The skin is slightly torn up, and one of my eyes doesn’t open fully-which I hadn’t even noticed until now. I don’t want to know this man anymore because this man got his wife killed. I picture it all happening over and over. I think about the bank teller, the way the shooter leveled his gun at her. Then I think about the 4 percent chance I came up with earlier when figuring the odds of Jodie being the volunteer, and realize it’s a false statistic since there wasn’t any probability involved. There would have been, if I hadn’t shouted out. If I’d kept quiet then Jodie would have had as much chance as anybody of living or dying-but I took that chance and turned it into a certainty. And why? Why the hell did I shout out? Schroder said it was to save somebody. Maybe that was it. Maybe I thought I could make a difference. Only thing I know is I was as surprised as everybody else-it didn’t sound like me and wasn’t the kind of thing I thought I’d ever do. Probably not the kind of thing anybody thought I’d ever do-the son of a serial killer trying to save a life. Well, Mission Accomplished. That woman is alive and Jodie is dead-I traded one life for another. This is what it’s like to play God, I suppose-but without the ability to do any good.

When the phone rings it turns out to be a reporter. So does the second call. And the third. Before taking it off the hook I phone Nathaniel and Diana-Jodie’s parents. Nat answers and he’s already crying before I can say much.

“I don’t really know what to say, Eddie,” he says, his voice close to breaking. I’ve never heard him cry before. Nat, this solid, near-retirement-age man who could break a man in half, is weeping into the phone, he sounds like a child. “But we’ve been talking, and we think, we think that both you and Sam might, um, might be best staying with us tonight. Then she can stay with us tomorrow to give you a chance to. . to get things organized.”

“I don’t know. I think I need her here. All I know is that I have to hold her and tell her everything is going to be okay.”

“It’s not going to be okay.”

“What the hell would you have me tell her?” I ask, the emotion on its way, pissed off at Nat now-but of course he doesn’t know what to say or do either, he’s just trying his best. “That our lives are going to fall apart?”