Blood Men: A Thriller

“He killed a lot of women,” I say.

“And people have had twenty years to try and kill him in jail. Why now? Why the day after you visit him for the second time?”

I shrug.

“See, the timing is pretty suggestive, Edward. Your dad knows as much as anybody that prisons are good places for bad people to meet. I think your dad figured he could do some detective work of his own. We checked criminal records and came up with names and we’re still working that angle, and the ball’s rolling now and we’ve got some real good leads, but your dad worked it quicker from the inside. Who was he working for? Does he want those names to give to you? Or to us?”

“I have no—”

“See, Edward, it gets me thinking. It makes me think he gave you a name. And our victim last night had a stab wound in his hand, a big dirty wound similar to the one that’s on yours.”

“The only person who knows what my father was doing is my father,” I say. “And he stopped being my father twenty years ago.”

“For you, maybe. Not for him.”

“Well, maybe you can ask him when he wakes up.”

“Don’t worry, we will. First we’ll go through his cell.”

“Well, until then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to spend a minute with him. Alone.”

The detectives step away. I draw the curtain behind me for some privacy and then face my dad. It’s the third time in three days. My wife murdered last week, my father almost killed this week—what will happen next week? People say that things happen in threes. The accountant in me has always known that’s bullshit—but what if it’s true?

I try to imagine how I’d be feeling if the knife had gone in differently, ten millimeters deeper or to the left, hitting whatever it is that it missed—whether I’d be happy or sad or indifferent. I reach for my father’s hand but don’t quite make it there. I don’t want to touch him. This man isn’t even my father. He used to be, once. Then he became something else. I may have called him “Dad” over the last few days, but he wasn’t really that, not anymore. I don’t really know what he is. All those years—add up the sum of a man, and his total, a serial killer. A demon. There isn’t a single one of us who doesn’t think he got what he deserved. Including me.





chapter twenty-nine


There are two things separating my dad from the morgue. The first is two hospital floors of concrete and steel. The second is ten millimeters of good luck. Schroder and Landry take me down into the basement of the hospital and I don’t question it. I go along for the ride—which is a straight drop in an elevator that opens up into a corridor about a quarter of the temperature of the ones upstairs. We walk in the same order as before, with me in the middle. The corridor reminds me of the prison, concrete block with no Christmas fanfare, a painted line on the floor to follow. There’s an office door and then there’s a large set of double doors. We go through the double doors and the air gets even colder.

I’ve never been to the morgue before. Never seen for real what I’ve seen in dozens of variations of crime shows and movies over the years, the stark white tiles and dull-bladed instruments, saws with archaic designs even though they’re modern, sharp edges with only one purpose in mind. Then you have to factor in the morgue guys—people sympathetic, people who seem to take each death personally, people making jokes while munching through sandwiches and pointing out the “this and that” of anatomy.

A man in his early to mid fifties walks over, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. He sighs deeply. “Been a long day,” he says, and I can’t help but glance at my watch and note that it’s not even two o’clock yet. “You here to see our newest entry?”

“That him over there?” Schroder asks, and he nods toward a body on a gurney, naked and grey and looking nothing like I remember him looking last night.

“That’s him. Haven’t got to him yet. I’m running behind, what with all the Christmas suicides beginning earlier every year. I swear as soon as malls put up their trees and tinsel, people start jumping from bridges.”

“’Tis the season,” Landry says.

“We’ll only be a few minutes,” Schroder says.

“Take your time,” he answers, then wanders off to an office, slowly shaking his head.

We walk over to the body. For a few moments it’s hard to believe it’s the same man. The tattoos seem diluted against his skin. His eyes are closed and the wound in his hand is open. It’s ugly and raw and runs from the center of his palm right out the side. It would have hurt a hell of a lot if he’d lived. The edges of it have blackened.

“Is this the man you think I killed?” I ask.

“Nobody said we think you killed him,” Landry says.

“You can cut the bullshit,” I say. “So why are we here?”

“We were in the neighborhood,” Schroder answers. “And I thought it would be good for you.”

“In what way?”