Blood Men (16 page)

I drive around for about five minutes before deciding I can cover more ground on foot. I grab the beer and get out and lean against the car to open it, but slide right off the wet surface. I hit the ground and scrape my knees and drop the beer and it takes me a minute to find it. I walk among the plots searching for Jodie, even calling out to her after a few minutes. In the end I’m too tired to keep going. I sit down and lean against a grave that’s not as old as the others. The grass is very wet and the water leaches into my pants. There are gaps in the cloud cover letting moonlight through but I can’t see any moon. A light breeze pushes my wet clothes against my skin. I pop open the beer and it fizzes up from the earlier fall. What doesn’t froth out keeps me warm as the night continues to cool around me. I talk to Jodie even though the person beneath me isn’t Jodie, but someone who died a few
months ago in his early twenties, according to the script on the stone, but it doesn’t say anything else about him—maybe nobody cared enough, or maybe people were glad he died.

“I’m so sorry, Jodie,” I say. “For everything. I’m sorry you died. I’m sorry it was my fault. I’m sorry I smashed the plates against the kitchen wall.”

Jodie and the guy beneath me ignore me. The cemetery is deathly quiet but scenic. The sky is clearing, the veil of cloud is pulled back revealing thousands of stars. They light up the night, silhouetting the trees, shining down on the grounds where Death and a few of the friends he’s made over the years are buried all around me. The breeze becomes warm again and strong too, coming from the northwest over the Port Hills, which are lit up with street- and house lights, whipping across acres of tussock and grass and rock before sweeping down into the city. By the time it reaches the cemetery it’s picking up leaves and petals and throwing them about, it blows dirt into my eyes and I have to turn my back to it. Pretty soon the stars dim and I can no longer taste beer. I wake up what ought to be only a few minutes later, but must be several hours since the moon has been replaced by the sun. The bright light hits my eyes so hard it almost knocks a hole in the back of my head. I roll onto my side to bury my head into my pillow but there’s only grass and a cement marker. I rub my eyes and have no idea where I am for about two seconds, then it all rushes back to me. The breeze has died back down. I figure I’m one of many who have fallen asleep with a bottle of something out here with their loved ones cold in the ground. My clothes smell of sweat and vomit and Jodie’s blood.

My body is aching as I stand up, the muscles stiff and sore. I’m not sure where my car is so I pick a direction and walk. Nothing is familiar as everything looks the same. I walk for twenty minutes in an expanding circle before finding it. The keys are still in the ignition. There are already a couple of mourners who throw me suspicious glances, probably because I look like I just crawled out of one of the graves here. The cemetery is in need of a caretaker—the lawns are too long and the gardens are being overrun by a crime wave of weeds. One side of the car is in bright sun, the other has wet leaves stuck to it.

I take the backstreets home instead of the main ones, figuring they’ll be quicker, and figuring wrong. I pass a couple of people building fences, others mowing lawns, summertime activities that seem a world away from the world I live in now. When I finally make it, I race into the bathroom and take a leak doing my best to hit the bowl and not the floor and my feet. I’m pretty sure I’m draining off the only fluids I have in my body.

I stagger through to the kitchen and open the fridge. The milk has expired but it seems to taste okay and I drink half a glass of it before deciding milk is the absolute last thing I want right now. I look at the beer. Strike that—milk ain’t that bad after all.

I lean against the kitchen bench, disoriented and lost, like I don’t belong here, and that makes it harder for me to remember exactly what happened last night. Part of me doesn’t even feel like I’m back home: I’m stuck somewhere, maybe in some purgatory where the milk is always expired and my mouth is dry and my tongue sticks to the roof of it. Even my teeth are sore from grinding them in my sleep. I hang the bloody bank clothes back up before taking a long shower. It revives me a bit, at least physically, but mentally I’m exhausted as the memories of last night trickle back in.

Mostly I’m ashamed by it all.

My heart quickens as I recall pulling the knife up short of cutting Painter. I want to throw up again. I have no idea why in the hell I even went to Gerald Painter’s house. No idea what the plan was. If I’d killed Gerald Painter, would the monster have kept me sober, or abandoned me when that first splash of blood arced up onto the ceiling? What would have happened to his wife and daughter if they’d walked in on me?

I tidy the kitchen, opening up and draining the remaining beer and wine down the sink. I remember what else Schroder said last night, then more importantly I remember what I said to him, and those memories seem to collide in a nice little way that jumbles everything up, and suddenly what my dad said to me as he walked away makes sense—
It’s okay to listen to the voice.

I’m still a bit drunk, and I might be over the limit, but the world doesn’t sway around much as I drive through it. I find a park near
the police station. My keys are waiting for me in the foyer behind the reception desk. They don’t ask me any questions about last night. All they do is ask for ID to make sure the keys belong to me. Schroder isn’t around. He’s probably at the beach somewhere or getting the last of his shopping done while Jodie lies cold in the ground. I realize I haven’t got Sam anything yet either for Christmas—me and Jodie always left that kind of thing till the last few days. There’s a guy out in front of the station with a sandwich board over his shoulders, he’s holding up a Bible and preaching his views in an abusive tone and I wonder if he knows Henry the homeless guy.

I drive out to the prison, passing a couple of malls on the way where traffic is spilling out from the parking lot onto the road, Christmas shopping in full bloom now, people pushing carts full of groceries. There’s a billboard twice the size of a bus staked into the ground on the edge of the city advertising a brand-new subdivision, calling it the suburb of the future. I wonder what that means. I wonder if the billboard means Christchurch is stuck in the past, or that the new subdivision will resemble something out of
The Jetsons
. There is smoke drifting up from the fields, farmers burning off waste. Large irrigation units are watering crops under the hot sun.

Sam’s bag is still packed in the backseat, full of goodies of death that I have to return to their rightful place. If Curious Schroder had taken a peek, things might have turned out very different.

I don’t phone ahead this time. I park the car in the same spot and the same woman I spoke to yesterday is here today, the same smile—a smile that could make beached whales roll back into the water—falters when she recognizes me.

“I’m here to see my father,” I say, as if there could be any one of a hundred reasons.

“He’s been waiting for you,” she says.

“But . . . I didn’t phone ahead.”

“Must be a miracle,” she says, but she’s wrong. I don’t know what to think about my dad figuring that I’d show back up. Mostly it pisses me off that he’s arrogant enough to think it, and I suspect perhaps arrogance is the wrong word since he was right.

“You listened to the voice,” he says, once the guard has escorted
me down to the visitors’ room. It was the same guard from yesterday and he gave me the same rules as yesterday, reinforcing the no-yelling one twice. There are fewer people in the visitors’ room, which should make it seem bigger, but somehow it has the opposite effect. Fewer people makes it colder, stagnant, far more depressing, it makes it seem the walls are closing in and I can only imagine what the cells must be like. The Carver isn’t anywhere to be seen. Nobody pays me any interest.

I sit opposite him. He’s different from yesterday. Younger, if that’s possible—as though all this is rejuvenating him.

“Let me ask you something,” he says. “You think being an accountant gives you the credentials to know what the entire sum of a man is?”

“What?”

“See, twenty years in here, I have them. A man is made up of many parts,” he says. “There are things within his core. They are shaped by his family, his friends, shaped by the blood that runs through him. Of course the events shape a man too. Those in the past, and those unfolding in front of him. I am the sum of many things,” he says. “You, your sister, your mother, they were part of me, as well as my own family, growing up. But it wasn’t enough to make me complete. I thought it might be, I mean, when I first met your mother and when our family began, I thought it might be enough. But it wasn’t. You and me, we’re made up from the same components.”

“You’re full of shit,” I say.

“You’re my son,” he says. “You can’t deny much of what is inside me is inside you too.”

“You’re wrong. I can deny that because it isn’t true. You, me, we’re nothing alike.”

“Why’d you become an accountant?” he asks.

I lean back, unsure of his point. “I don’t know,” I say, shrugging.

“Want to know what I think?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re going to hear—after all, it’s why you came out here.”

“Then why ask,” I say, shaking my head. “Just spit it out.”

“It was to make me proud. You wanted to be an accountant like your dad.”

“Wait . . .”

“What for? So you can deny it.”

“Wait . . . you were an accountant?”

“You were nine years old when I was taken away. Don’t try pretending you have no idea what I used to do for a living. You’re just like your old man,” he says.

I don’t answer him. I don’t even want to think about it.

“And the voice confirms it. My darkness and your monster—they’re as similar as we are.”

“This is crazy,” I say. “You’re crazy. I don’t know why I came along. I hate myself for showing up yesterday. I’m going to go,” I say, but don’t make any motion.

“You came here to learn,” he says, “not to dismiss everything I say.”

“No. I came here because . . . ,” I trail off, suddenly unsure.

“Because you want answers. Everything that’s happened over the last week . . . You’re hearing the voice, aren’t you, Jack? It’s come back.”

My dad smiles. It’s the same smile I remember when I was a kid, and part of me, one small part of what makes up the whole of who I am—at least according to my dad—wants to hug him, wants to cry against his chest and ask him to make everything better.

“You’re here to ask for my help,” he adds.

I lean forward and the guard seems about to say something, but stops when he sees I’m not leaning forward for a hug or punch. I lower my voice. “You said it was a good thing the cops had no idea who killed Jodie. What did you mean by that?”

My dad glances up at the guard, who is openly staring at us, then my dad leans in too, and suddenly we’re pals, we’re whispering secrets—let the good times roll.

“It means what you think it means.”

“I think it means that you’re insane. That you couldn’t care less about what happened to my family. Or even to your family.”

“No you don’t,” he says. “It means what it means.”

“Which is?”

“It means those men are still out there, awaiting justice, and there isn’t any reason it has to be police justice.”

“Except for the law,” I say.

“Did the law step in to save your wife?” he asks. “Does the law warm up the other side of your bed at night? Does it give your daughter somebody to look up to? Make her school lunches and tuck her in at night and tell her to have sweet dreams? Is the law there to hold your life together, is it there to hold your daughter’s hand and tell her everything is going to be all right? Was it there to stop the blood dripping out of Jodie’s body when she hit the road?”

“Shut up,” I say. “I don’t want you talking about her like that.”

“Twenty years ago, son, you weren’t ready to kill that dog, but the darkness, your monster, made you do it. You killed that dog and the police came sniffing around with their questions. The darkness tries to make you impulsive, son, and twenty years ago your darkness got me arrested.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“It was that damn dog. You killed it, and you invited the police into our neighborhood. Do you remember you wrapped the steak in a plastic bag? You did, and when you gave the steak to the dog you dropped the plastic bag. The bag was from home, son, and it had my fingerprints on it. They matched the prints found with the prostitutes. The police got warrants to search houses in the street because they knew a killer lived there. They came with their questions and then they came back with more. They searched the garage, son. They looked for the mix of sharp things you put into that steak, and they found them. But they found other things too. Other . . . mementos.”

“You kept things from the victims?”

“Small things. Earrings, mostly. Sometimes a necklace. I couldn’t help myself. They came looking for fishhooks and nails and they found souvenirs of my women.”

“You were . . . wait, you were caught because of me?” I ask.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says.

“Honestly, I don’t know if I care whether it was my fault or not,” I say. And it’s true. Am I glad my father was caught and could no longer kill? Yes. Am I upset he was taken away? Absolutely. I think about what it means. On one hand I’m a hero. I saved future victims. On the other hand I betrayed my family. If I hadn’t listened to the voice, if I hadn’t killed that dog, my sister, my mother, they’d still be alive. I killed them as surely as I killed that dog. Last week I sacrificed Jodie to save a bank teller. Twenty years ago I sacrificed my family to save other prostitutes. What does that make me? Does it make me a trader in death?

“Son, I’m not blaming you. You couldn’t know, and you were too young to control the darkness. Since that dog you killed, how many times have you heard it?”

“Why are you telling me any of this?”

“The men who did this, they have something inside them too, not a voice like we have, but something that makes them different. Each of them must have some criminal history,” he says. “Think about it, it’s obvious.”