Blood Men

chapter twenty-one

“What the hell are you doing here, Edward?” he asks, and part of him, a small part, already knows. Or suspects. The warning Benson Barlow gave him has been stuck in his head all day, a warning that hasn’t been easy to dismiss-especially since Edward visited his father today and now he’s parked only two houses away from the security guard injured during the robbery.

“Who. . who’s that?” Edward asks, and he lifts his hand up to shield his eyes even though there’s no real light.

“Come on, I’m giving you a lift home.”

“What?”

“Get out and move into the passenger seat,” he says, and opens the door for him. “And hurry up. I’m getting drenched out here.”

Edward gets out. He gasps in a lungful of air which pains him, he doubles over, then he gets onto his hands and starts gagging. A puddle of vomit appears. The rain is coming down hard and from nowhere-certainly nobody in the weather forecasting world predicted it. The back of Edward’s shirt is already soaked through. He waits a bit while Edward coughs, and when it seems like the man is never going to get back up, he reaches down and grabs his shoulder. “Come on, we have to go.”

He helps Edward to his feet, careful not to step in any vomit. Edward twists his body so he can see up the street. There is a patrol car parked about twenty meters away. Schroder leads him around to the passenger side where there are more rain-washed puddles of vomit.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Schroder asks.

“I was sleeping.”

“Are they the same clothes you were wearing at the bank?”

“Maybe.”

“They’re covered in your wife’s blood.”

“Are they?”

“Get in,” Schroder says, unamused. Edward gets in the passenger side and Schroder races around and gets in behind the wheel. An hour ago all he had to do was move and he broke out in a sweat. Now he’s shivering. The inside of the car fogs up and he turns on the air-conditioning to clear the windscreen. The car that brought him here follows. He turns on the wipers. Already the rain is easing up, and by the time he’s driven a couple of blocks it’s almost completely stopped.

“Look, Edward,” he says, his tone softer now, “I know you want answers, but coming here isn’t the place where you’ll find them.”

“I know.”

“Then why’d you come?”

“I don’t know.”

“Uh-huh. Gerald Painter had nothing to do with the robbery. He’s a victim as much as anybody.”

“Not as much as Jodie,” Edward answers, and Schroder knows it’s a good point.

“Look, I know it’s hard, and the situation is shit, but you gotta man up. You’ve got a little girl that’s depending on you.”

“I know that,” Edward says. “People don’t need to remind me. You think my wife getting killed makes me forget about Sam?”

“Of course not. Problem is you do need reminding. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here right now. You wouldn’t be drunk and one step away from killing yourself in a car accident.”

“Why’d you come here?” Edward asks.

“Gerald Painter’s wife called us. She said you came to visit him tonight, and according to her it wasn’t exactly a social call. Why’d you show up?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“She doesn’t know, and Gerald Painter isn’t saying much, but I have to tell you, Edward, I don’t like your being here. And you’re drunk and you’re wearing the clothes with your wife’s blood on them. Mrs. Painter isn’t the only one who called you in-another neighbor saw you stumbling to your car and pissing on the lawn. The constables in the patrol car back there, they came here to take you away. Me being here, this is a favor, Edward. I’m here to take you home and keep you out of jail for the night. I’m here to stop you from making any further mistakes.”

“You want my thanks now? How about you earn it by finding the men who killed Jodie?”

“Why did you come here?” Schroder asks.

“I don’t know.”

“I think you know.”

Edward shrugs.

“I think you blame Painter for not doing enough to save your wife. I think you wanted to make him hurt for what happened, and then you got here and found he already was hurting and that none of this was his fault. I think if you hadn’t made that realization then right now I wouldn’t be doing you any favors. We’d be having a very different conversation.”

Edward says nothing, just stares out the window at the night. Schroder stays quiet for a bit, thinking about Benson Barlow and the shrink’s warning.

“I have a friend,” Schroder says, “that you remind me of in a way. He looked into something he shouldn’t have, and it cost him. Same thing happened to him that’s happening to you. He thought drinking was the answer, but it screwed him up, screwed with his judgment. He went out one night in his car and ran into a woman, almost killed her. That shit will happen to you if you don’t get a grip on things. My friend, he was a cop once who knew better. You’ll end up falling into an abyss right alongside him, and his abyss now has him in jail. He’s locked away for six months for what he did. That what you want? To leave your little girl for six months?”

Edward doesn’t answer him.

“Or it’ll be worse. You’ll head out driving and you’ll have your daughter with you. You’ll drag her into that abyss and get her killed.”

Still nothing.

“Look, Edward, we’ll get the men who did this. These people, they always get caught. Always.”

“And you always let them go,” Edward says. “Isn’t that it? You’ll find these guys and you’ll find you’ve dealt with them before, locked them away before, and let them right out.”

“It’s not like that,” he says.

“Isn’t it? How about you explain it to me.”

“We kept your father locked away.”

“But he’s the only one, right? Everybody else gets tossed back out onto the street to do whatever it is they want to do.”

“You think I don’t know that? You think it’s easy being a cop in this city? What would. .,” he trails off. “Look, what’s the alternative? That we don’t try? You know how many cops we’re losing every year because nobody wants to try anymore? The last year, Edward, the last year has been damn hard. With all that’s happened-hell, even I have days where I want to give up. It’s what this city does. It produces these people. It catches them, takes them into its prisons, then churns them back out harder and rougher than they were going in. But we’re trying, Edward, and we’re making progress. Things will change. We’re doing the best we can with what we have, and I promise you, we’ll get the men who killed your wife. And I promise you they will pay.”

“People think I’m the same as him,” I say.

“What?”

“My father. They think I’m the same as him. People recognize me from the news and think I’m going to be the next big serial killer.”

“No one recognizes you from the news, Edward,” he says, remembering what Barlow said. “That was twenty years ago. And you weren’t to blame for anything then.”

“People are ready to convict me, they want to send me away for life. They’re frightened of me. But these men, why aren’t we frightened of them enough to keep them locked away forever? When you find them, Detective, and lock them away, what then? How long until you have to find them again for killing somebody else’s wife? Three years? Five?”

“I promise they’ll pay, Edward,” he says.

They reach the house and Schroder pulls into the driveway and they both climb out. The car following pulls up to the curb, its tires scraping against it. The wheels have splashed rain and dirt off the road onto the bottom half of the car.

They walk to the front door and Schroder unlocks it.

“What happened to your friend?” Edward asks.

“Huh?”

“The friend you were telling me about. He was looking into something. He ever sober up and find it?”

“Yeah. He found it, and people died because of it.”

“He lose his family to bank robbers?”

“I’ll keep these tonight,” Schroder says, and he rattles the keys. “You can pick them up from the station in the morning. Where are the spares?”

“I don’t have any.”

“Everybody has spare keys.”

“Not me ’cause I never lose them.”

“Okay, Edward. Go and get some sleep,” he says. “Don’t do anything else stupid tonight. Don’t make me regret helping you out.” He closes the door and heads to the other car and drives away.