Schroder’s chest is burning and it’s tight and he swears there’s still water in there. Still, all things considered, he’s much better off now than he was twenty minutes ago. When he gets more time he’ll think about those moments between when he stopped breathing and when he started up again. He’s never been a religious person, but that hasn’t stopped him from hoping there’s something when all of this is over, maybe not a heaven in the traditional sense, but something close to it. If there is, he didn’t get to see it, or even glimpse it. For him there was nothing. No memory—not even a memory of darkness. Or a memory of nothing. That’s all there was. Drowning, and then not drowning anymore. Whoever said drowning was a peaceful death had no idea what they were talking about.
He follows Edward to the car. He can’t stop coughing. He walks slightly off balance like a man with an inner-ear infection—or like a man who has been brought back from the dead.
Edward’s car is still parked outside, and they take it since it doesn’t resemble an unmarked police cruiser. But first Edward grabs the paper bag out of Schroder’s car. Inside it are two sets of car keys and a wallet and another cell phone. They go past the patrol car with the dead officer inside. Partly it’s his fault what happened; Edward was right about that—if he’d pressed those in charge to get more people watching Edward’s daughter, maybe this could have been avoided. His notebook is wet but he’s able to get the probation officer’s name out of it, along with an address.
Edward drives because Schroder isn’t up to it. The only thing he really wants to do is curl up in the backseat and fall asleep. Nat gave him his cell phone, and he uses it to call Landry. He explains as much of the situation as he feels like explaining—not telling him where they’re heading—and listens as Landry updates him.
“Theodore Tate has been trying to get hold of you,” Landry says. “Where’s your cell?”
“Lost it. He leave a number?”
“He said he’d keep calling back every twenty minutes. Warden gave him permission to use the phone. He can reach you on the number you’re calling from?”
“Okay. Text me the number for the warden’s office and I’ll call.” He hangs up.
“You going to call the bank manager?” Edward asks.
“No.”
“You said before that—”
“I know what I said, and that was only to keep your in-laws happy. There’s no point in calling the bank. They won’t play ball. If I thought there was any chance at all that they’d help—no matter how small—I’d call them. Shit, this is a goddamn mess,” he says, more to himself than to Edward. “And I’m doing the wrong thing right now.”
“You’re doing the right thing,” Edward says. “Anything else and my daughter is dead. We’re doing what it takes to get her back.”
“Within reason,” he says.
Edward doesn’t answer.
“They matched the prints from the car,” Schroder says. “We got
two names—and I’m pretty sure they’ll match the two dead men you’ve left behind.”
“You know who they work with?”
“They’ve worked with lots of people. We’re making progress. It’s only a matter of time until we have more names.”
“A matter of time. How much time? Five minutes? Five hours? Five days?”
The cell phone beeps. Landry’s text has come through with the number for the warden’s office. “Look, Edward, if I didn’t get your point I wouldn’t be here right now.”
He dials the number and it rings a couple of times before it’s answered by the warden. The warden doesn’t seem thrilled by the fact he’s still at the prison when he should be at home, but he doesn’t give Schroder too much grief about it.
“He’s here,” the warden says, and Schroder can hear the phone being put down on the desk and then picked back up.
“Roger Harwick,” Tate says, getting right to the point.
“Roger . . . Hardwick?”
“Harwick. No ‘d.’ ”
“How do I know that name?”
“Everybody knows that name. You couldn’t have missed it. He was all over the news this year. He was a small-time newspaper columnist convicted of molesting teenage boys.”
“Oh yeah,” he says, remembering how much joy it gave the media, ripping one of their own apart.
“He’s served three months of a ten-year stretch. He’s been nothing but a sperm bank for everybody around him since he got his teeth knocked out his first night in the joint. I think he got offered protection to kill Hunter.”
“Any ideas who ordered the attempt?”
“I can keep asking around.”
“Yeah. I appreciate it,” he says, and hangs up.
“That was the prison you just rang, right?” Edward asks. “That about my father?”
“Yeah. We got a name.”
“That Harwick guy?”
“Yeah.”
“So you can spare resources to spend time at the jail, but you couldn’t spare them to look after my daughter? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“We’re going to find her,” Schroder says. “And no, we’ve got somebody on the inside working the angles.”
“What, you mean your friend you were telling me about who got arrested for drinking and driving? The ex-cop?”
“He’s reliable.”
“Who is he?”
“It doesn’t matter who he is,” Schroder says, “what’s important is what he learned.”
“I heard you talking with the warden this afternoon. I heard you mention a name. Tate. I recognized it. And the detective you spoke to a few minutes ago, I heard him mention it. He’s the guy you’ve been telling me about, right? Your buddy? Theodore Tate? The guy who got drunk and hurt somebody? Got people killed? He was in the news a lot last year. This the guy?”
“It doesn’t matter who it is,” Schroder says, dismissing the line of questioning.
“So why’d Harwick do it?”
“He was offered protection to do it. A murder like that this early on, Harwick would only get time served concurrently, maybe an extra year, but it increased his chances of living.”
The probation officer’s name is Austin Bracken. When they reach his house Schroder tells Edward to park up the driveway, but instead Edward pulls up two houses past.
“What the hell?”
“Just being cautious,” Edward answers, grabbing the shotgun.
“You won’t need that,” Schroder says, thinking that Edward looks more hopeful than cautious.
“You don’t know that.”
“We don’t know if he stole the money, and even if he did, this isn’t somebody looking for you. We question him, see what he knows, and if he has the money we take it. Then we do things both your way and my way—you get to deliver the money, but we
call it in and get backup first—it’s safer for both you and your daughter.”
“He isn’t going to give up the money if he has it. What the hell are you expecting? Knock on the door and he’ll hand it over to you?”
“Something like that,” Schroder says fully aware that he doesn’t sound convincing. They’ll talk to Bracken, and if he gets a bad vibe he’ll call for backup. He’s not taking any more chances tonight.
“He deals with scumbags every day of his life,” Edward says. “You think you can break a person like that just by talking to him on his doorstep?”
“And you think pulling a shotgun on an innocent man will help? Let’s get a read on him first and take it from there.”
When they walk up to the front door, Schroder is still out of it, like he’s walking through a world slightly out of sync. He knocks on the door and there’s movement and voices and Schroder knocks again to hurry them up. A few seconds later a man answers the door, his shirt open and the large belt buckle on his pants hanging loose. He’s around Schroder’s age, but bigger. He has that slab look about him, the not-quite-fat-and-not-quite-muscle look. He has a handlebar mustache that’s about a hundred years out of date.
“What the hell?” he asks, as soon as he sees them.
Schroder holds up his ID. The badge has dried out but the wallet is still wet. Bracken doesn’t look at it, just stares at Schroder, and then at Edward, and Schroder is pretty sure he knows who each of them is.
“We have a couple of questions,” Schroder says.
“At this time of night?”
“You’re lucky we didn’t show up at two in the morning.”
“Questions about what?”
“Some routine stuff about Shane Kingsly.”
“Like what?”
“Background.”
“And you had to come to my house at this time of the night?”
“We’re chasing some leads.”
“With him?” he asks, and nods at Edward.
“Can we come in?” Schroder asks.
“I’m busy.”
“It’s important.”
“It’s Christmas Eve,” he says. “I don’t care if it’s important or not.”
“Actually . . . ,” Schroder begins, but Edward interrupts him.
“Shit,” Edward says. Both men look at him. “My phone,” he says, patting down his pockets. “It’s in the car. I know how to solve this.”
“What?” Bracken says.
“Edward . . . ,” Schroder says.
“Just a second,” Edward says.
“Edward, wait,” Schroder says.
“It’s important,” Edward answers, and Schroder watches him walk away for a few seconds before turning back to Bracken. His head is muggy and his thoughts are muddled, and he knows he’s probably making a mistake right now but he can’t seem to focus exactly on what that is. Edward saved his life before; and that aside, Schroder knows if he’d been better at his job, then Edward’s daughter never would have been taken tonight. Whatever happens to her will be on his conscience. So yeah, maybe he does owe Hunter some slack. He knows he does—it’s why he’s here. It’s why he hasn’t turned on Edward and tried to handcuff him.
Question is, how much slack is he prepared to give him?
Austin Bracken lives in a neighborhood the virus hasn’t hit yet. The houses are modern and well looked after and don’t have front yards made up from rusting mechanical parts. The dashboard clock on the car says we’re closing in on 10:30; it seems like the day has been about forty hours long. Most of the houses still have lights on inside them, people probably closing in on bedtime, watching the tail end of prime-time TV, waiting for the kids to have been asleep long enough so they can play Santa’s role and put the presents under the tree. It’s what I should be doing with Jodie. It’s such a magical moment and I don’t know if there’ll ever be any more.
I could tell in two seconds Bracken had the money. I didn’t even need the monster to help me out on that one. But Schroder couldn’t even get his foot in the door. I grab the shotgun because we don’t have time to play nice. We’re meeting the people who have my daughter in about forty minutes and I have nothing to exchange for her. I carry the gun behind my back, nice and easy, the same
way I’d hide a bouquet of flowers. I bring it into view and Bracken’s eyes widen and Schroder sees his reaction and turns to face me, but he doesn’t turn quick enough to avoid what happens. I crash the butt of the shotgun into Schroder’s head, not as hard as the security guard got hit, but hard enough to make it count. His head rocks to the side and his eyes roll back and he drops real fast.
Bracken takes a few steps back as I take a few steps forward. Schroder stays slumped on the ground, doing what Schroder seems to be doing best lately.
“What do you want?” Bracken asks.
“The money.”
“What?”
“The money you stole. I’m here for it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
We get into the hallway and I kick back and close the door. It’s a pretty nice house with a wide hall and modern furniture, and the outside looks nice, nice plants, nice paint job, garden gnomes in the garden and a policeman planted on the doorstep, not a Christmas decoration in sight. Bracken keeps moving down the hallway. I keep following.
“You stole money from Kingsly,” I say. “Probably around four hundred thousand dollars,” I say. “Maybe more, maybe less.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes. You did.”
“What are you on about? If he had money, why’d you think I’d take it? And how’d you even know what he had unless . . .” His expression changes, as if he’s figuring it out, but it changes too much, as if it’s an act. Something here isn’t quite right but I don’t know what.
“You killed him,” he says, and something in the way he says it makes me think he already knew that. Not just thought it, or suspected it, but actually knew it, like he was there.
“The money,” I say. “Take me to it.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“The people that money belongs to have my daughter. They’re going to kill her unless I get it back for them.”
“Like I said, I don’t have any money.”
Listen to him—he’s lying. If he was truly sorry he’d tell you where that money is. He’d act more sympathetic. He’d tell you that if he could help, he would.
“I think it’s time you left,” Bracken says.
“They’re going to kill her.”
“And I’m sorry about that, I truly am.”
He truly isn’t.
“Somebody else must have taken it,” he carries on. “Somebody either before or after, I don’t know, all I know is I don’t have it.”
He’s lying.
“You’re lying.”
“It’s the truth.”
He’s lying.
“Okay, then,” I say. “Any ideas who?”
“What?”
“You were his probation officer. Who else did he work with?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to check.”
“The police didn’t ask you this already?”
“I don’t know. Yeah, I guess so.”
“And?”
“And what? I gave them a bunch of names they already knew and it was a waste of time.”
“Okay. Okay. Who else is here?”
“What?”
“In this house. Who else is here?”
“I don’t know. Just some woman.”
“Show me.”
He leads me to a bedroom where a woman with large breasts and very big hair is finishing off getting dressed.
“I promise you this is the last goddamn time, you son of a bitch,” she says, straightening up her skirt which is torn up the side. When Bracken doesn’t answer, she looks up and sees first me and then the shotgun, and the anger washes out of her face, just like that, in about half a second, and gets replaced with a big amount of fear. Her eyes are puffy and mascara has run down her face, making her look like a Goth.