Blood Men: A Thriller

“Hell of a way to go,” Sheldon says.

“We’ve seen much worse. Would he have survived the injuries from being run over?”

“Left leg completely severed, right leg half severed, half crushed. I’d have rated his chances as somewhere between extremely slim and none.”

Unable to take his partner with him, and worried they could be identified, the shooter had taken steps to try and hide the identity of the dying man by blasting away his face and fingerprints. It didn’t work: the forensics team have already emptied the victim’s pockets, turning up some coins, a cigarette lighter, and a packet of smokes—all of which have clear fingerprints on them. They’ll have a name within the next two hours. Plus they’ve got the car with another whole set of prints to narrow down. He looks over at the bump in the canvas sheet over the body where the severed leg is. The very bottom of it, with a shoe still attached, is sticking out from underneath, the canvas not big enough to hide the blood on the street. It looks like the guy was attacked by a bear.

“Jesus,” Landry says, coming over as Sheldon leaves. “The Hunter family must really be cursed.”

“Where are we on the interviews?”

“Still working on it. Surveillance from the vault doesn’t suggest anything one way or the other. Just shows four panicked people stuffing money into bags,” Landry says.

“Yeah, well, combined with the names we’re going to get from this, I think by the end of the day we’re going to know who all the players are. No sign of the in-laws and daughter?” Schroder asks.

“None. You really think these men have her?”

“Doubtful. I think they’re somewhere completely unaware of the danger they could be in. Anyway, I don’t see any real reason for the robbers to go after Hunter’s daughter. It gets them nothing—all it does is put them at risk.”

“And Hunter?”

“He’s freaked out, but he’s doing okay.”

“He give anything up about Kingsly?”

“Nothing,” Schroder answers.

“You think he did it?”

“The bank robbers sure as hell think so. Both Hunters in one day. We have to find his daughter. Hunter said he’d talk once we got her safe.”

“Every patrol car in the city has a description of them. We’ll have her soon.”

“I hope so,” Schroder says, “for everybody’s sake.”





chapter thirty-six


They wheel me into another room when the stitches are done. Each stitch as it went in made me stronger. There are three other men in here in different states of pain and misery. One has both legs in casts, suspended above him. A man in his seventies is snoring, a bald patch with stitches on the side of his head. The third man is reading a magazine and coughing every fifteen seconds. There are two cops outside the door, either there to protect me or to stop me from fleeing. I think about my dad—he’s in a different ward with cops of his own.

My leg hurts a lot. After an hour, a nurse comes in and holds up a chart with five “happy faces” on it. The first face is yellow and smiling. The last one is purple and has a large frown and an upside-down smile. The three faces between range in color from yellow to purple, their expressions from somewhat happy to pretty much unhappy.

“Point to the one that represents how you feel,” she says.

I look for the happy face of the guy who had his wife murdered last week but he isn’t on there. “Just give me some painkillers,” I say, “and I’ll be fine.”

The nurse, who is overweight with breasts the size of bowling balls, gives me one more chance to get it right. “Point,” she repeats.

I point to the smiley face. “Can I go now?”

“Soon,” she says. “Now take these,” and she hands me a small plastic cup with pills in it. I shake the two pills into my palm and she gives me a cup of water. “Drink,” she says, as if I couldn’t figure out the next step by myself. Then she takes my blood pressure and seems neither pleased nor concerned by the result. I don’t understand the numbers.

“We’ve found your daughter,” Schroder says, coming into the ward, and for the briefest of seconds I’m terrified, absolutely shit-scared because I don’t know how he’s going to finish that sentence. They found her at the park and she was playing on a swing with Mr. Fluff ’n’ Stuff, or they found her covered in blood with her throat cut? Schroder’s pause is so brief, so hardly noticeable, but for me it lasts a lifetime. “They’d gone to the movies. They’re at home now.”

“So . . . so they’re okay?”

“They’re okay. But they thought it might scare her too much to bring her down here to the hospital. We’ve got a man at their house to keep an eye on them until we get there.”

“Just the one?”