Blood Men: A Thriller

I listen to the lunchtime news on the way home. The guy who shoved and killed the woman in the parking lot is claiming he was on “P,” the fashionable drug with the fashionable defense for murder—meaning he’ll either get six months in jail or nine months in rehab since it really wasn’t his fault, but the drug’s fault, or the addiction’s fault, or everybody else’s fault for not reaching out and helping him sooner. Most of the sheep have been caught but four are still on the run. Maybe they’ll team up and make more sheep between them and go about robbing farms. There is more news: a security guard was killed last night and found naked in town, a primary school was burned down but nobody was hurt, then there’s sport and weather and nobody mentions the bank robbery anymore.

I get caught behind a slow-moving truck, adding about twenty minutes to my drive, the amount of exhaust fumes coming from the back of it bringing global warming twenty minutes closer to a final conclusion. I’m still angry when I get home. Angry at the news, at the police, at the monster inside me, at the world for moving on when it should be pausing, when it should be taking a time-out to mourn my wife and to ask the big question, “Why?” over and over, why did this have to happen, why is society the way it is, why isn’t anybody doing anything about it?

I’m still angry at my dad. With twenty years between the last time I saw him and this time there should have been more to say. And why did he get me out there only to tell me it’s a good thing that the police haven’t caught the men who did this?

Don’t kid yourself, you know exactly why.

“No,” I say, and I grab a beer from the fridge.

Mostly I’m angry at myself. I didn’t go out there to share anything with him. I don’t really know why I went—certainly it wasn’t to tell him about the monster, but those words came out as if they had a life of their own. And in a way I guess that’s exactly what the monster is—a life of its own. I’ve kept hearing it over the last twenty years, small suggestions whispered to me that I’ve ignored, ideas on how to get rid of animals or people that I don’t like.

My wife has been dead four days and in the ground for less than twenty-four hours and I’m losing my mind. I sit outside and let the sun burn my face and eyes before turning away, the bright shadows and shapes moving across my vision. I go through my wallet for the business card I slid in there on Friday, and when I find it I can’t read the number on it and have to wait for a minute for my vision to settle.

“Detective Schroder,” the detective says, answering his phone.

“Hi. It’s, ah, Edward Hunter. I’m, ah, ringing to see—”

“I was just about to call you,” he says.

“Yeah? You have something?” I ask, walking outside with the phone. “You’ve caught the men who killed Jodie?”

“No. Not yet, but trust me, Edward, we’re following up some strong leads,” he says, but he doesn’t even sound like he could convince himself. “You have to be patient.”

“I have been patient.”

“I promise you, it’s still my top priority.”

“In three days it will have been a week,” I point out.

“I understand your frustration,” he says.

“I’m not so sure you do. How much did they get?”

“What?”

“How much money did they take from the bank?”

“I can’t discuss that with you.”

“Jodie was killed because of that money. Give me a break, Detective, I think I have more than a right to know how much my wife’s life was worth.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, because two people died,” I say, and the accountant in me is doing the arithmetic, “so divide that number by two and that’s how much she was worth. I want to know if she died for more or less than the price of a new car, more or less than the price of a house? Of course it depends on the house, on the car, but—”

“Look, Edward, I promise you we’re doing our best. We really are. We have everybody we can spare searching for those men.”

“Searching, not chasing,” I say. “Maybe I should do your job for you,” I say, and the words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, having come from nowhere, certainly not from me, and I realize they’re not my words at all, but somebody else’s. No, not somebody—something.

“What does that mean?” Schroder asks.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” I say. “I’m angry, that’s all.”

“I hear you went to visit your father today.”

“What?”

“First time since he got put away. Why’d you do that?”

I slow down and think about his question, aware he’s talking to me now in a different capacity—he’s talking to me the way a cop talks to a suspect. He’s fishing for information. “He rang me. Told me he wanted to see me.”

“And you dropped everything to go.”

“He’s my father. He wanted to share his condolences. He wanted to know what the police were doing to get the men who killed my wife.”

“Is that all?”

“Of course that’s all. My wife got murdered, Detective. What father wouldn’t want to try to console his son?”

“Have you been seeing anybody since the shooting? For help? A counselor, or a psychiatrist?”

“Why would I do that?” One of my neighbors starts up a lawn mower and I head back inside so I can hear Schroder clearly.

“To help you come to terms with what happened.”

“I can come to terms in my own way.”

“I hope that doesn’t involve doing anything stupid.”

“Like what?”

“Like trying to do my job.”

“One of us has to try,” I say, “because it seems to me nothing is getting done.”