Blood Men: A Thriller

Sam is given a thousand hugs, almost all of them ending with the other person crying. Sam becomes numb to the tears. She’s adorable in her little black dress and makes me want to cry every time I see her. She knows what’s going on, but at the same time she doesn’t know. She’s been told Mummy has gone to Heaven, but a few times she’s asked if Mummy will be coming home over Christmas to visit. I wish I could cancel Christmas. I hate that the rest of the city gets something to enjoy.

Jodie’s coffin is covered in flowers. Most of the church is. The accountant in me is wondering how much all of this is costing, and thinking how death must be the most profitable business in the world since we all get around to doing it sooner or later. The father inside of me holds Sam’s hand tightly the entire time, drawing strength from her. The man inside me hurts, he’s screaming inside, he’s dying inside, he’s confused, and he doesn’t know what his future holds. The service lasts an hour. People come out of it saying it was “nice,” but it’s not the word I’d use. I don’t know what it is. Certainly not nice. “Devastating,” might be better. “Confusing” would work too. “Nice” seems to trivialize it.

Six people carry Jodie’s coffin outside. Her dad, her two brothers, and three friends. Their faces are strained but I don’t think it’s from the coffin being heavy. Her brothers had to fly in from different parts of the country and tomorrow will fly back out. I keep a firm grip on Sam’s hand as we walk behind them. Sam keeps a tight grip on her teddy bear with the other hand. The coffin is shiny and new and sure won’t be that way in a few hours from now. I wonder how heavy it is, what kind of percentage of the weight is from my wife.

We reach the hearse. It’s shiny and black, while death is dull and black. The rear door is open, waiting for her, waiting for the men to slide my wife inside as if they were furniture movers. The door closes, then we all seem to stand around for a minute or two, not really sure what to do next until we all kind of figure it out, and the hearse leaves and we follow it. We all drive in a row, our headlights on, Jodie leading the way. It’s about a kilometer of winding road between the church and Jodie’s new home so the drive is short and I’m not sure why no one walked. We find the missing occupants of the media vans about thirty meters from the grave, some with cameras set up on tripods, others on shoulder mounts. These people don’t have any respect for Jodie, or for Sam or for myself, and none at all for the situation. They don’t care about our loss, they care only about ratings, and the thing I know for certain in this world is that one day these people will become victims to their own stories. One day somebody, maybe some other son of a serial killer, will pick these vultures off one by one. But that day is in the future, and today Sam is the granddaughter of a serial killer, daughter of a murder victim, and the media are already speculating about her too. They call her cute and adorable, they call her loss a tragic one, and they wonder what kind of woman she will turn into—her life has this dark blemish now, and combined with her genes . . . they want to know what she will become.

The same men who loaded Jodie in the hearse go about unloading her. My wife has become cargo, her final voyage about to begin. They carry her from the hearse to the grave, lowering her onto some weird scaffolding erected over the top of it. Father Jacob thinks of more he wants to add, then, at exactly 3:27 on a Monday afternoon, the scaffolding moves and my wife is lowered into the ground, the six men who carried her standing silent among the crowd, hurting, while the six men who did this to her spend their money in the streets of Christchurch, enjoying the beautiful summer’s day.





chapter eleven


The bank manager is buried on the same day at a different cemetery. We don’t combine the events and hold one giant two-for-one funeral party to save money, or to make it easier on the media so they can save gas.

We pick up handfuls of dirt and throw it onto the coffin. It’s a tradition I’ve never really understood. I’ve done it four times in the past: my mother, my sister, both my grandparents. Now my wife. I don’t ever want to have to do it again.

The rest of the dirt is underneath a grass-colored piece of canvas, hidden away, and it’s another tradition I don’t understand. Are they worried the dirt will cement the reality that my blood-covered wife, funeral arrangements, and coffin could not? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the traditions that get people through the day.

Sam picks up a small handful of dirt and sprinkles it onto the coffin. She doesn’t ask why. In fact she hasn’t asked anything at all today—she’s done what she’s been told, quietly following me since we woke up this morning.