Blood Men: A Thriller

A dark four-door sedan is parked in front of the building. We split up; Dad heads toward the back and I head toward the car. We work well together, not having to talk, only a minimum of hand gestures, as if we’ve done this before. I can tell my dad is enjoying it and I hate him for that. I reach the car and take a look inside before moving on.

The slaughterhouse walls are mostly made up of concrete blocks, with some sections of corrugated iron. The base of it is lined in mold that grows up the walls, darker near the bottom where it grows the thickest, and there are plenty of weeds growing up through the cracks in the sidewalk. I reach a window but can’t see a damn thing inside. The side door leading into an office area is lying on the ground, the top hinge busted, the bottom hinge still attached but twisted ninety degrees. The temperature drops when I step through. I stand still and listen before turning on the flashlight. There’s no furniture anywhere, nothing hanging on the walls, nothing on the concrete floor. The room has been completely stripped. The door to the corridor has been removed. I head through, and another empty doorway later and I’m in the slaughterhouse, a huge, cavernous room that smells of rot. The air is graveyard cold, and the darkness seems to suck at the back of my eyeballs. The flashlight doesn’t even break the dark, just lights up a thin beam of it and is lost. I can sense large hooks hanging from the ceiling ahead of me somewhere, but can’t see them. There’s machinery left here to rust—the tools of the trade that started the animals down the path from living, breathing entities to supermarket specials and hamburgers. No wonder a young boy, tied up and left alone out here, died.

I turn back into the corridor. There’s a bend in it, and once around it I can see a light coming from beneath a door not too far ahead—one of the few doors remaining. It’s a heavy wooden door, the bottom of it lined with vertical scratches, probably from rats. I reach it and put my face against it and listen but can’t hear a thing.

I suck in a couple of deep breaths, tighten my grip on the shotgun, and swing the door open.





chapter fifty-four


The second name on the list, Zach Everest, is a bust. The Armed Offenders Unit ended up breaking into a house that Everest hadn’t set foot in for about two years, and the new residents weren’t thrilled at the intrusion—let alone the kids who, having heard the commotion, were horribly disappointed to see six men in black storming into their home instead of one man dressed in red. There are no other known addresses for Everest, but Schroder knows it’s only a matter of time now—probably less than a day, he guesses—before they have him in custody.

Reports have already come in about the gunshot victim half an hour ago. Tyler Layton was tied to a chair and executed. Witnesses woken by the noise reported two men fleeing the scene in a four-door sedan that certainly doesn’t belong to Edward Hunter, because Hunter’s car got busted up in town, but which might have been his wife’s. At this point there’s nothing to connect Hunter and his dad to the killing, and nothing to connect Tyler Layton to any of the men responsible for the bank robbery or the abduction of Sam Hunter—but Schroder is confident there will be a link somewhere. Layton has a criminal record long enough to pretty much guarantee some interaction with Jack Hunter or the bank robbers—and the way the night is going, Jack Sr. seems to be the catalyst for all the violence around here.

At the moment Oliver Church is the far more urgent target. Church kidnapped and killed a boy, for which he only served six years. Schroder knows Church’s involvement ups the danger factor for Sam Hunter. Bracken didn’t choose somebody who would just stash the kid away for a few hours and free her somewhere, but somebody capable of ending the life of someone so young.

He redirects the assault team to Church’s address, and twenty minutes later it’s all for nothing. The address is current—there’s mail inside addressed to Church, there’s fresh food in the fridge and a half-empty packet of cigarettes on the table, but no sign of Church.

More detectives arrive, among them Detective Watts, who has Church’s criminal record with him.

“A model prisoner,” Watts says. “According to the file he made every meeting with his probation officer.”

“There has to be another address.”

“Only other thing listed here is his parents,” Watts says.

“And we’ve already sent people there. He’s probably somewhere with the girl, somewhere he’s stashed her away with nobody else around.”

“That could be any one of a thousand places,” Watts says.

“That’s not real helpful,” Schroder snaps at him. “Look, there can’t be too many possibilities. It’s probably somewhere he knows, right?” He looks back down at the file. “Last time he took the kid to the North City Slaughterhouse.”

“You think he’s taken her there?”