Blood Men: A Thriller

She clicks away at the keyboard. “Today. The twenty-fourth. Though I guess it’s the twenty-fifth now, right?”


Today would fall in line with what Bracken told them this morning. His client didn’t show up, so he went to his house looking for him. Makes sense he’d have pulled the file.

“Is it standard practice for probation officers to immediately go to somebody’s house if they’ve missed an appointment?”

“It depends on the probation officer, and it depends on the person who missed their appointment. It’s not common, no, but it’s not unheard of. Seems he accessed the guy’s records yesterday too.”

“Was there an appointment scheduled?”

“Hmm . . . that’s weird. According to his planner, he wasn’t due to see Kingsly for another week.”

“What about Adam Sinclair?” Schroder asks. Sinclair is the man Edward hit with his car.

“Let me check. Um, November first.”

“How often was he seeing Sinclair?”

“Ah . . . according to this, he wasn’t.”

“He wasn’t?”

“No. Not according to this.”

“Then why’d he pull his file?” he asks.

“I’m not sure. Maybe it was in relation to somebody else he was dealing with.”

“Ryan Hann?” he says, Hann being the man Edward stabbed with a pencil.

“Um . . . same. November first. This is weird—Hann is also no longer under probation.”

“Okay. Good. This is good. Can you find any other files he’d have no need to pull up that he accessed around that time period?”

“Hang on,” she says, and works at the keyboard for another minute. “Here, we got five more names of people no longer under probation. Wait—make that four—one of these men just died,” she says, and she twists the monitor so Schroder can take another look.

He scrolls down the list. It’s a short list and it only takes a second for Arnold Langham’s name to show up. Suction Cup Guy. “Jesus,” he whispers. “He was part of it.”

“What?”

Arnold Langham only had a criminal record for beating up his wife—but that in no way meant beating up his wife was the only criminal thing he had done. There were two possibilities he could see. Langham was involved with these other men, meaning there must be other things he was good at. He was recruited into the gang, then, leading up to the robbery, there must have been something about him the others didn’t like or couldn’t trust, and he became a liability. Shooting him or stabbing him could have brought the investigation closer to the bank robbers, but dressing him up like a pervert and throwing him off the top of a building, that pushed the investigation into a completely different direction.

The second possibility was Langham wasn’t involved, but learned of the robbery and became a liability. Schroder is more inclined to go with the first possibility—it would suggest the gang was suddenly one man short, which would explain why Bracken chose Kingsly.

Either way, it still left Schroder with a list of four names, each belonging to a man whom Bracken recruited to steal $2.8 million in cash.





chapter forty-nine


When the taxi driver drops me off he smiles with relief, as he probably does every time he drops somebody off without getting stabbed. His English is perfect when he tells me how much the fare is, but not so good when figuring out the change. Gas price increases have pushed taxi fares up astronomically over the last few years—it’s no wonder more and more people are drinking and driving. I tell him to keep the change.

I’m right next to the parking building where Jodie’s car has been for the last week. My keys are still hanging in my car, but the spare keys have been in my pocket all day. I make my way upstairs. Jodie’s car is a four-door Toyota about six years old. It starts on the first turn of the key and I let it warm up for thirty seconds. There’s a modern stereo in the center console and a GPS on top of the dashboard that both seem to be defying the law of gravity, since they haven’t fallen in some passerby’s possession. I find Jodie’s swipe card in the glove box and use it to exit the building.

I drive back the way I came and find the shotgun exactly where I’d left it. I try calling Nat and Diana again and get the same result. I drive a few minutes out of the city and pull over.

I stack up the files and go through them. The names and faces stare out at me, but none of them stand out. Twenty files, all of random people who have nothing to do with the case. After ten minutes it seems it’s all been for nothing—whatever contact Bracken had with the men who killed my wife isn’t to be found in these pages. There’s no way I can make it back into the offices to check for more. I pack the files away and get moving.