Blood Men: A Thriller

“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.





chapter six


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.