Blood Men: A Thriller

“We will.”


“Thank you,” he says, but I’m not so sure he means it.





chapter nineteen


I head for outside, my hands shaking, the bag in one hand, the knife tucked away inside it. In the end I didn’t use any of the other supplies. Next time I’ll travel lighter.

I’m still in the doorway when a car pulls into the driveway. It’s similar to the one already parked there—same color, a bit smaller, equally as foreign. The passenger door opens and a little girl climbs out, and at first I can’t make sense of it. The headlights have blinded me, it’s dark out, so in that moment I think the little girl is Sam. No real reason for that—I’m at a stranger’s house, Sam is at her grandparents’, Sam will be in bed with Mr. Fluff ’n’ Stuff, curled up and asleep and dreaming of her mother. But the thought comes anyway, this little girl runs up to me and yells, “Daddy,” before she comes to a dead stop, staring up at me and then staring at the cartoon character bag in my hand.

The headlights turn off and the engine dies and the driver’s door opens. A woman steps out—Painter’s wife—and has noticed I’m standing here, but hasn’t taken a good enough look to realize I’m not her husband.

“I thought maybe once we get her to bed, we might want to take a . . .,” she says, approaching me, and then, like her daughter, she comes to a complete stop.

“Who are you?” she asks, her eyes narrowing.

“I was just leaving,” I say.

“Oh my God,” she says, and the recognition is there now. “Oh my God, is that blood on your shirt? What have you done to Gerald?”

I don’t answer her.

She picks her daughter up and cradles her. I take a few steps toward the driveway and she backs toward the car.

“Gerald!” she yells.

He doesn’t answer.

“What have you done with my husband?”

“Nothing,” I say.

“What did you do to him?” she repeats. Her body pushes against the car and she jumps as if she forgot it was there.

I circle around her and she turns, watching me the entire time. The night is cooling off and clouding over. “Nothing,” I repeat.

“It’s okay, honey,” Gerald says, coming to the door. “He didn’t do anything to me.”

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yeah. About as okay as I’ll ever be.”

“Are you crying?” she asks him, then she turns to me. “The blood on your clothes . . .,” she says, and trails off.

“It’s my wife’s blood,” I say and slowly begin negotiating a path toward my car.

“I know who you are,” she says. “It wasn’t his fault!”

“Honey, it’s okay,” Gerald says. “It’s really okay.”

“I know it wasn’t,” I say, and these words are mine now, clear and sober, they come from me, and when I get past the wife she puts her daughter on the ground, and the little girl runs over to her daddy and hugs him fiercely.

“Who’s that strange man?” she asks.

“It’s why I came here. To tell him I know it wasn’t his fault,” I say. I turn toward Gerald who’s holding his daughter tightly. “It wasn’t. I know that now.”

I turn back to the wife. Some of her anger drains away, but she says nothing. Gerald keeps crying. Sobbing heavily now, tearful, deep sobs that make me angry, remorseful, and a whole lot of wanting to leave. I tighten my grip on the bag and continue toward the street. I hold it tightly to make sure it isn’t going to spill open like before.

The woman stays against the car but keeps watching me. “It wasn’t his fault,” she says.

“I know.”

“You know that now,” she says, “after being here,” she says, her eyes going to the bag for a quick second. “But what about before you got here? Did you know that then?”

I don’t answer.

“We’re moving,” she says. “The house goes on the market next week, but I don’t think we can wait until it sells. My sister was murdered last year, she came home from the picture theater one night and this madman broke into her house and killed her. My sister spent her life in a goddamn wheelchair, and this city’s version of karma gets her raped and killed. A colleague from work disappeared a few months ago and got found a month later, cut up into a dozen pieces by a lawn mower. We have to leave. What happened to Gerald, I thank God it wasn’t worse. It was for you, I know that, but my husband, he’s ruined now. I still love him and will always be with him, but what those men did, he’s a victim too. They killed him and left him alive. My husband is a broken man.”

“It’s a broken city,” I say, and I turn my back on her and walk away.





chapter twenty


You goddamn *!

“He had nothing to do with it.”

He let your wife die.

“It wasn’t his fault.”

You know what—stop with the bullshit. You’re nothing like your father.

“I don’t want to be.”

Well, you need to be if you want vengeance for Jodie. Or does that not matter anymore?

“Of course it does.”