Текст книги "Blood Men "

Автор книги: Paul Cleave

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

chapter thirty-eight

Schroder’s cuffed arms make it impossible for him to fight his way out, though he seems to think differently. If I were any lighter he’d probably make it too. His head bangs against the bottom of the tub and the water turns a very pale shade of red. I pull more of his body from outside the tub and stuff it under the water. I hold him by the back of his neck, pushing hard, his muscles tightening—it’s like holding down a mechanical bull. His feet thrash against the floor, the tips of his shoes draw black lines across the tiles. Water is splashing all up the walls and I’m already half soaked. The bandage on my hand is waterlogged and starts slipping off. I try to imagine that I’m drowning a dog, not a person—that mangy mutt from twenty years back—and imagining that actually helps, not much, but enough to stop me from letting him up. Schroder slows down. His feet stop hitting the floor. More of him slides into the tub.

“Keep holding him.”

I keep holding him. A couple of bubbles break the surface. Schroder’s legs stop moving but he’s still moving his head, still fighting, still desperate to survive. The seconds keep ticking away. Five more. Another five. The bubbles stop. There is one final shudder and then Schroder no longer struggles. I let go of him and he stays in the water, makes no effort to get up. I turn around. My hands are shaking and I drop to my knees and start to dry-retch.

“No time for this shit,” the man says. “Get me the money.”

I cough like I’m the one with lungs full of water. “Where, where are they? My, my daughter and in-laws?”

“The money,” he says. “Then we talk.”

“The money is here.”

“Where?”

One more cough and I’m done. I slowly get to my feet, holding on to the side of the bath, careful not to touch Schroder. The guy with the gun isn’t wearing a balaclava. He looks like he did this afternoon. He probably hasn’t changed his clothes, or his gun. I doubt he’s used it tonight because it’s too noisy. I bet the policeman outside was killed a different way. I wonder how badly he wants to avoid using it.

“You’ll kill me once you have it.”

“You got this all wrong, boy. I am going to kill you. What you’re doing now is you’re buying your daughter’s life.”

“How do I know you’ll let her go?”

“She doesn’t know who we are. We got no reason to keep her. Now where’s the goddamn money?”

“Living room,” I say.

“Lead the way,” he says, and he backs out of the bathroom.

I lead him down the hallway. We reach the living room. “At the end of the couch,” I say, “against the wall.”

“Grab it.”

I reach down and grab the bag, trying to keep my injured leg as straight as I can. The bag is full of crayons and coloring pencils and some drawing books for Sam and is nowhere near big enough to hold all the money I saw last night. As usual it’s open. I zip it closed, pick it up, and toss it at his feet.

“What the . . . ?” he says, and he looks down at it and . . .

Now. Now! Now!

We step forward, my monster and me, only this time I don’t even need him, I’m so mad. I swing my arm upwards, entering Tattoo Man’s line of sight from below, the pencil pointing straight up. He must see it coming, but he can’t avoid it, can’t even scream. He snaps his head upward as the pencil drives deep through his eye and, like a sneeze, thick, clear residue splashes all over my hand. He stands up as straight as a board. One hand releases the shotgun, which hangs by his other side for a moment before hitting the floor. He stays standing, staring at me, one eye bright and wide, the other a liquid mess with half a pencil behind it and half of that same pencil out in front. He doesn’t fall while I wipe the eye juice and blood off my hand; he saves it until I crouch down and grab the shotgun. He falls the way a dead man falls, without a care in the world, without any conviction or fear, his face hitting the armrest of the couch and driving the pencil home before snapping it off. He ends up on his side, a jagged finger of wood in his eye, looking at me but not watching as I race toward the bathroom.

chapter thirty-nine

What are you doing?

I’m trying to save him.

Why?

I need him alive.

Why?

Shut up.

Only thing you should be doing right now is to enjoying the rush. God, that was a thing of beauty! Come on, Eddie, the way you drove that pencil home—sweet Jesus, that’s a real winner of a memory—a real keeper—much better than Fido. Bet you a hundred to one that’s the way your father felt when he took his knife and . . .

“I said shut up,” I say, then breathe more air into Schroder. His chest rises when I breathe in and drops when I take my mouth away. There is no pulse. His body is limp and heavy. I figure he’s been in the water three minutes tops.

I push at his chest. I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing. The last first-aid course I took was ten years ago and Schroder sure as hell feels a lot different from a dummy made of rubber and steel. I could be saving him, or I could be cracking his ribs and driving them into his lungs.

I breathe into him. Compress his chest ten times. Should it be ten? Twelve? Breathe into him again. How long do I give this? He’s been dead close to four minutes. What’s the cutoff before there’s a serious risk of brain damage? Isn’t it around four minutes? Only thing I can remember about the first-aid course was the instructor. She kept looking at me as though I were the reason the dummy wasn’t breathing anymore.

Schroder convulses under me and a low roaring comes from his lungs. He begins coughing, his body almost doubling up. I roll him onto his side and he coughs out mouthful after mouthful of bathwater. Then he collapses onto his front, his forehead on his arm, breathing heavily into the floor, his body rising and falling seemingly more than need be as though he’s putting on a show. Other than the show, he doesn’t do anything else. Doesn’t jump up to see if he’s still in danger. Nothing. I’ve removed the handcuffs from one wrist, but they’re still dangling from the other.

“Hessus,” he mutters, but can’t add anything else.

“I’m—”

“Hessus woo . . . ,” he says, and raises a hand up to his face and cups his eyes. He coughs again, then tries to sit himself up and lean against the bath but can’t make it.

“Come on,” I say, and help him. He pulls his knees up against his chest and rests his head on them. The bandage on my hand is loose. I pull it off and dump it on the floor.

“Wash,” he says, and doesn’t elaborate for a few seconds, until “Wash hash,” and then he begins coughing again.

“Wait here,” I say, and I leave him.

I check the bedrooms. It’s a three-bedroom house, built in the peak of the townhouse era and painted in showroom colors that are as boring as hell but managed to stay in style longer because of it. The first bedroom, the smallest of the three, has been set up for Sam. There’s a single bed and kit-set furniture and toys and posters and nobody fought for their life in there. The next bedroom has been turned into an office, with a desk and computer against one wall and a treadmill adjacent to the other.

It leaves one room unchecked, and I walk into it praying that it’ll be empty. I open the door. The air is warm and stale and feels like the room has been unearthed from the back of a very deep cave. Nat and Diana are both lying on the floor, their eyes wide open, staring right at me. I move over to them and crouch down and Nat lifts his head but can’t do much more because he’s been hog-tied, and so has Diana. I rush back down to the kitchen and grab a knife and a moment later they’re free and rubbing their wrists.

“Jesus, Eddie, what’s going on?” Nat asks. “Where’s Sam?”

“I don’t know. I think they have her.”

“They have her? Who? Who has her?”

“I don’t know. The men from the bank, I think.”

“The ones who killed Jodie? Why the hell would they take Sam?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” he repeats, getting louder now. “You don’t know? What the hell does that mean? You must know! You have to know!”

“I’m going to get her back.”

“Oh, I know you will. For your sake. I’m pretty convinced you brought these men into our house. What have you done, Eddie?”

“I haven’t done a goddamn thing,” I say.

“They think you did,” Diana is sobbing now. “And now they’ve taken our little Sam.”

“If you’ve caused this, Eddie, if something happens to her,” Nat says, “I swear I’ll kill you. I will goddamn kill you.”

I go back into the bathroom. Schroder doesn’t have the strength to be angry or thankful. “You drowned me,” he says.

“I saved you.”

“You drowned me.”

“I had no choice. If I hadn’t, he’d have shot you. We’d both be dead. Now, listen, you—”

“You drowned me,” he repeats.

With Nat’s help, we get him to his feet, lead him into the dining room, and sit him down. My leg is bleeding and I try taking the weight off it as we walk. “You need to focus here,” I say on the way. “This isn’t about you. It’s about my daughter.”

“What?”

“You owe me, okay? You owe me your goddamn life. Tell me you understand that. Don’t make me throw you back in the water. You owe me because if you’d done your job and caught the people responsible none of this would have happened. If you’d put more than one goddamn man on duty my daughter would still be here.”

“Where is he? The man with the gun?”

“I took care of him.”

“Same way you’ve been taking care of everybody else?”

“Not quite,” I say. “The guy I ran over, that was an accident.”

“Jesus, Eddie, what’s going on?” Nat asks. “Do you know where Sam is?”

“And Kingsly?” Schroder asks. “Was he an accident too?”

“I was never there.”

“He said you had Kingsly’s cell phone. Plus you knew his name.”

“There was a cell phone in the stolen car,” I say, feeling nothing at how seamless the lies are coming now. “One of the paramedics must have thought it was mine and put it with my stuff. I didn’t even know it was there.”

He nods. “Okay, Edward, fine, we’ll go with that for now.”

“Maybe the man who tried killing us is the one who killed Kingsly.”

“I’m not following any of this,” Nat says. “Where’s Sam?”

“Yeah, maybe. But he’d have taken the money with him, right?” Schroder answers.

“I don’t have any money. If I did I’d have given it to him to get my daughter back.”

“Now that I really do believe.”

Nat helps me check through the rest of the house in case Sam’s hidden here somewhere, in a cupboard or under a bed. He takes one look at the dead guy on the floor and doesn’t say a word. I check the playhouse outside—it’s empty. It’s what the men have been telling me—they have her, and I have to pay to get her back.

In the living room Diana is taking care of Schroder. She’s brought him some dry clothes and probably offered to make him coffee in the way that anybody over sixty always has to offer something, no matter what the situation. Schroder’s taken the other cuff off his wrist.

“We have to go,” I say.

“We need to call for backup.”

“We have to get the hell out of here first.” I grab him by the collar and help him to his feet. “They have Sam. We have to do what it takes to get her back. Come on, you’ve got to help me.”

“You all need to get out of here,” Schroder says to my in-laws.

“To hell with what you want,” Nat says, “we’re helping you find Sam.”

“No, no you’re not,” I say. “You’ll only get in the way.”

“Settle down,” Schroder says. “Nobody is doing anything here except me. I’m calling for backup, and you’re going to let the police take care of it.”

“The same way you’ve taken care of finding the men who killed my daughter?” Diana asks.

“Look, we’re doing—”

“What you can,” Nat finishes. “To hell with that.”

“So what, you and your wife are going to come along, is that what you think?”

“I’d like to,” Nat says, “but I know my limitations. That’s important in a man; and one thing we’ve learned since Jodie got shot is your limitations, Detective. This is why you’re taking Eddie. He got us into this mess, and he knows what it takes to get us out of it. Like it or not, Detective, he’s certainly done more to find these men than you ever have, and if he’s responsible for what happened here, then I’ll deal with him when this is over. But right now I have more faith in him finding my granddaughter than you. Call for backup. We’ll deal with whoever you send here and help in any way we can, but right now you and Eddie need to get your asses out there and find Sam.”

“You know he’s right,” I say, looking away from Nat to Schroder.

“Okay, okay, fine. Where’s the man who did this?”

I lead him into the living room. A pool of blood has formed around the guy’s head. He’s ended up lying on top of the bag of pencils and crayons.

Nat and Diana stand in the doorway. “That’s one of them,” Nat says.

“And the other?” Schroder asks.

“The other one took Sam,” Nat says. “Not much more I can tell you. I mean, he looked kind of like this one. Shaved head, tattoos—we can try to describe him. I’m pretty sure, if things had gone differently, he was going to kill us. I don’t know why he hadn’t already.”

“We’ll get some mug shots for you to go through,” Schroder says. He steps closer to the body and I roll it so he can see it better. For a moment I wonder how many dead bodies this man has seen. Plenty, I guess. Certainly many more than my father ever saw.

“Oh my God,” Diana says, when she sees the stub of the pencil. “Eddie . . . I didn’t think you could, that you were . . . capable . . . ,” her voice tails off.

“These bastards took my daughter!” I say, glaring at her. “You’d rather I let him shoot me? You’d rather have let him drown Schroder, then come down and shoot you and Nat? Let Sam die too?”

Nobody answers. Nat nods once, understanding, maybe for the first time seeing I’m doing what I can to get us through this alive. All of us.

“You recognize him?” I ask Schroder.

“No, I . . . wait.” He crouches down over the body, then reaches for my hand when he wobbles. He coughs again, trace amounts of bathwater spattering on the dead guy. “He doesn’t look familiar,” he says when he’s composed himself.

“He has to.”

“He doesn’t. I’ll call it in. The fingerprints, we’ll have a hit on them by now.”

“Then what? You compile a list of names and spend a week making a case? We need to act tonight.”

“I know, I know,” he says. “Look, let me think, just give me a minute.”

“We don’t have time.”

“Who phoned you?” he asks, “when we were outside?”

“They did.”

“And they told you to take my phone off me.”

“They said they’d hurt Sam if I didn’t.”

He looks down at the dead man.

“Call them back. Tell them you’ll give it to them in exchange for Sam.”

“What?”

“He was asking you for money you don’t have. The rest of the crew are waiting for him to show up with it. But he’s not going to. What value does your daughter have then?”

“And tell them what?”

“Tell them you have it.”

It doesn’t seem the best of ideas, but it’s the only one. I go through the cell phone menu and find the recent calls. My fingers are shaking as I select the number then press CALL. It rings a couple of times, and then someone picks up.

chapter forty

“I have the money,” I say, my grip tight on the phone.

“Where’s my man?”

“He had an accident.”

“So you think now you can buy your daughter back by dealing directly with me?”

“Yes.”

“It’s too late,” he says. “Your daughter is about to have an accident too.”

He hangs up. Nat is standing with his arm around Diana. They’re both looking lost, like they don’t recognize me, don’t recognize the house. Schroder is changing his shirt. “What happened?” he asks.

I don’t answer him. I stare at the phone as the rage inside me builds. I don’t even know what I just heard.

“Eddie? What the hell did he say?” Nat asks.

“He . . . he said it was, was too late,” I say.

Diana gasps and Nat tightens his grip on her. Without even being aware I’m about to do it, I kick the dead guy on the floor, over and over.

“Edward, calm down, just calm down a moment,” Schroder says, putting his arms out in a consoling gesture, one arm threaded through a sleeve, the other one bare. “These men are professionals. They know what they’re doing. They know if they kill her there’s no money in it for them. Give them a minute. They’ll call back.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“Give it a minute,” he says.

“A minute, maybe two,” Nat says. “They’ll call back. They always call back,” he says, but Nat has no point of reference other than what he’s seen on TV; he’s trying to convince himself as much as the rest of us.

I kick the dead guy once more. His head rolls left and right, the pencil wedged in so tight it doesn’t even wobble.

“I’m going to be sick,” Diana says and rushes off to the bathroom. Nat stays in the living room for about five seconds before following her.

A minute goes by. Then another.

“You were wrong,” I say.

“Give it time.”

“I’m going to kill these people,” I say, and that’s true too. Schroder doesn’t respond. He’s probably thinking it’s time to try and get some handcuffs on me. But he’s also thinking that these guys tried to kill him, and he knows he owes me one.

“Look, Edward, you have to stop kidding yourself here. This isn’t something you can deal with.”

“I’m doing okay so far.”

“Yeah? Tell that to your in-laws. Tell that to the dead officer outside. After everything you’ve said about being nothing like your father, you’ve got blood on your hands now.”

We’re blood men—that’s what Dad said.

“I didn’t do a damn thing,” I say, but he’s right. I got my wife killed by speaking out. The police officer outside is dead because of me. All this blood on my hands, some of it innocent, and I know I’m still not done.

The cell phone rings. My in-laws appear as if they’d been waiting around the corner. I answer it.

“I killed a cop for you,” I say, before the caller has a chance to say a word. “I’ve killed two of your men already. This can all end. I’ll bring you the money and you give me back my daughter.”

There’s a pause on the line. “She’s still alive. For now,” the man says. “An even trade. One hour. Come alone. If we see anybody else we’ll kill her.”

“Where?”

“I’ll call you at the time. Don’t want you having a chance to set something up.”

He hangs up and I explain it to Schroder, who is about as happy as Nat and Diana—who look like the world has fallen apart around them.

“You can’t do this alone, Edward. We need backup,” Schroder says.

“They’ll kill her if you make that call. I’m playing this safe, and that means paying for her. You owe me.”

“He’s right,” Nat says to Schroder. “Give them the money and we get Sam back. It’s like Eddie said, it’s that simple.”

“Except it’s not that simple,” I say, “because there is no money.”

“What?”

“This money they’re asking about, I don’t have it. If I was there, if I had the money, I’d be using it to get my daughter back. Can the police department raise the cash?” I ask Schroder.

“The department wouldn’t go for it,” he says.

“Even if it meant saving Sam’s life?”

“It doesn’t work that way. If it did, people would be getting kidnapped all the time. We’d be throwing cash at every criminal in the city.”

“What about the damn bank?” Nat asks. “This is all happening because of what happened there. Surely they’d give us the money. They have to! They owe us—they bloody well owe us!”

“I’ll make a couple of calls and see what I can do.”

“If Eddie doesn’t have the money, then who does?” Nat asks.

“Maybe there wasn’t any money,” Schroder says, and I think of the bricks of cash lying on Kingsly’s bed.

“There has to be,” I say. “It’s too much effort for them to go to if there wasn’t.”

“So who took it?” Schroder asks.

“What about the probation officer? You said he found the body, right?” I say.

“Yeah, he found the body, but you’re making a dangerous assumption here. He’s not a suspect in the killing. He has no motive to kill his client.”

“That’s my point. He wasn’t a suspect, but he could have taken the money.”

“No, the killer would have taken the money.”

“Maybe Kingsly was killed for an entirely different reason. Maybe the killer didn’t see the money.”

“Something you want to share, Edward?”

“We can spend the next hour here making guesses,” I say, “but at the moment the probation officer is the only thing we have.” I reach down and pick up the dead man’s shotgun. “Let’s take a drive.”