Blood Men: A Thriller

At the back of the building, there are two doors about ten meters apart from each other. The accountant inside me works the numbers. The police are busy. It’s been a long day for them, and even now they’re at Bracken’s house and at my in-laws’ house and they’re dealing with dead bodies, and Schroder is trying to round up the rest of the men who robbed the bank and find my daughter while the rest of the force are at home, taking the night off. That means if an alarm goes off I probably have a minute or two longer than usual. A place like this, it’s more likely a patrol car will show up than a security firm. And in a city like this, maybe nobody will show up for an hour. Of course there’s only one statistic that matters—my daughter. I will do whatever it takes to get her back.

Bracken’s keys have a keycard hanging from them. One of the doors is the good old-fashioned lock and key, but the other door has a pad on the side of it. I swipe the card and there’s a click; I try the door and it opens. I step inside and a fluorescent light blinks on overhead, blinding at first. There’s a second door; this one with a numeric keypad. I lean back and kick near the handle. It takes five strong kicks because I have to use my left leg, and even then it jars through to my right, the door breaking at the same time as some of the stitches in my leg. An alarm beeps somewhere.

I’m in a corridor that has every fourth light going, which is enough to see by. It winds around to the front entrance where there’s a foyer and two elevators and a flight of stairs. There’s a directory by the lift: it turns out the probation offices are on the ground floor. I’ve left bloody footprints between the door I kicked down and the elevators. I press the elevator button and wait for the doors to open and step inside. I take off my shirt and wrap it over my foot while the elevator goes nowhere. Then I open the doors and step out. I press the button and send the elevator, empty, to the top floor.

I head to the probation office, no blood trail behind me, and use Bracken’s swipe card to gain entry. The alarm keeps beeping, but still hasn’t gone off. I enter a large waiting room with a series of offices scattered around the sides and back. None of the office doors have names on them. There’s a giant reception desk in the middle of the room. I have no idea which office belongs to Bracken. The layout of the floor reminds me of my own office, which makes me think of a simple solution: I go into each office and look for family photos and drawings done by children, with the idea of eliminating the offices that do have them since Bracken doesn’t; but the idea is a bust because there aren’t any pictures anywhere. I guess probation offices aren’t the kind of place where employees want to share their personal lives with the public. It’s the type of place where one day they have a photo of their nine-year-old daughter up on the wall, and the next day they’re taking that photo to Missing Persons. I try to think about what else could make Bracken’s office stand out from any other.

Sixty seconds have passed since I entered the offices. A moment later a high-pitched scream shrieks from every corner of the building. I grab some Blu-Tack from the reception desk and ball it into my ears.

I take out Bracken’s business card and the cell phone. There are three numbers on the card, an office line, his direct line, and his cell phone number. I dial the direct line but can’t hear anything over the alarm. I head from office to office and barely manage to hear a phone ringing in the fourth one I try. There is a narrow angle of sight from the desk, past the reception area to a window leading outside. I glance at the view every few seconds, waiting for when it changes from parking meters and bike stands to patrol cars.

I switch on the computer which offers more light, then I go through the drawers. There are too many files to go through so I pile them onto the desk. The computer loads up and by the time a desktop appears I’m too nervous to hang around. I consider tearing the computer apart and taking the hard drive, but the files are probably on a server somewhere. The alarm is still shrieking and the Blu-Tack in my ears doesn’t seem to be helping.

There’s a gym bag behind the desk. I unzip it and dump the clothes on the floor. I’m packing everything I pulled out of the drawers into the bag when a patrol car pulls up outside.

As I reach the door to the foyer and elevators, the alarm goes quiet. The rest of the lights come on and I duck behind a desk. There are footsteps in the foyer, and voices. I can’t quite hear what they’re saying, but the words I’m looking for stick out from the rest—“blood,” “elevator,” and “top floor.” The police out there know they have a lot of ground to cover, but they’ve noticed that the elevator with blood leading up to it has been sent to the top. A radio squawks, and one of them speaks into it. “Backup.” The word is clear.

Another door opens, and then there are footsteps in the stairwell. Thirty seconds later the elevator doors open and close. The accountant and the monster think things through. We figure there are two cops here already and more coming soon, so I need to act now. We figure one of them is probably at the third or fourth floor now. He’s laboring his way to the top floor while his partner rides up in comfort.