“I was ten years old when the trial began. It was a circus. My mum was still alive, but my sister and me were struggling. Kids would tease us at school. At home, Mum was always yelling at us when she was sober, and crying when she was drunk, and whatever of those two states she was in, you always wished it was the other. Soon the pills and the booze took their toll, but not as quick as she wanted, and when they couldn’t finish the job she used a razor blade. I don’t know how long it took for her to bleed out. She might still even have been alive when we found her. I held my sister’s hand and we watched her pale body, the yelling and the crying gone now.”
The woman is conscious enough to cry, the tears mingling with the blood. There’s a lot of blood but not a lot of damage. It’s all from a head wound. The thing about head wounds is they bleed. A lot. Blood has soaked into the seat, and the woman has wet herself, making it seem like there is much more blood in the footwell than there really is. I tell her about Belinda, about how my sister became a drug addict and died when she was nineteen.
“I was the last of my family,” I say. “Dad’s monster took them all away.”
I keep the car at a constant speed, obeying the law; Edward Hunter was a law-abiding citizen who never did anything wrong in the past and who is now about to correct his future. We reach the center of town. Last time I was here I was running from the police.
“There are people who think that I’m destined to be a man of blood too,” I say, “that the same blood runs through both of us. They’re wrong,” I say.
He wasn’t even my father.
And somehow here I am, your very own monster.
I speed up the car that used to belong to Oliver Church, a nice trajectory ahead now, and I hit the wall of glass and it showers everywhere, it rakes against the car, the world sounds full of screams and the car bounces up off the framework and bounces back down
and I slam on the brakes but not before I’ve wedged two desks hard up against the counter. The alarm is instant. The two front tires burst. The front of the car crumples up and the engine stalls. No air bag goes off, but the seat belts stop us from flying out. I look over at my passenger and there are more tears and more blood and I’m pretty sure both of us know that things for her are about to get worse.
“He’s gone,” Schroder says.
“Maybe . . .”
“And he’s killed,” Schroder adds.
“Killed who?” Barlow asks.
Schroder steps back outside. “Do you have an idea where he might go?”
There’s silence on the other end of the phone for a few seconds. “The cemetery. It makes perfect sense. He’ll want to be with his wife. Who did he kill, Detective?”
“I’ll call you back.”
Schroder calls the station. He organizes a patrol car to go to Gerald Painter’s house, to the homes of the bank tellers, to the cemetery, even to Dean Wellington’s house. He calls Landry and fills him in on the situation.
“You think Jack Hunter knew all along which bank teller was involved?”
“Maybe,” Schroder says. “We need to find out.”
The interview Schroder had with the bank teller yesterday was finished off by another detective. Because of all the events last night, nobody had the chance to get around to comparing all the details against each other. Another series of follow-up interviews have taken place over the last six hours, each bank teller difficult to get hold of on Christmas Day, each bank teller reluctant to help out, wanting to spend time with their families instead.
The problem is none of them can remember who loaded the dye packs.
Schroder turns on the sirens and speeds back into town, the houses and cars passing by in a blur. Other police cars come toward him on their way to Hunter’s house. When he reaches the station he runs inside to the interrogation room where, ten minutes earlier, Kelvin Johnson was escorted into.
“You’ve got one chance here to help yourself,” Schroder says, and Johnson, the only crew member of the gang who robbed the bank in custody—and now the only one still alive—doesn’t even look up from the interrogation table.
“You know everybody else is dead, right? We found Zach Everest a few hours ago, and I just came from looking at Doyle’s butchered corpse,” he says, Lance Doyle being the last name on the list. “There was a lot of rage there, Kelvin, a lot of rage.”
Kelvin says nothing.
“And we know somebody inside the bank was involved.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“Actually I do. I know you’re going to jail. I know that you know Jack Hunter has been running around out there killing off your buddies. You know that he’ll be in jail soon too, right alongside you,” Schroder says, which isn’t quite true. “You know Jack Hunter has connections in there—he’s been there twenty years so he knows how the place works. You know his daughter-in-law and granddaughter are dead because of something you did, and you know that makes you a target. I know you’re going to end up in a jail cell real close to him, and I know your days in there are limited. So both you and I know that the only way you’re ever going to live long enough to see
the outside world again is if you talk. You tell me who you had on the inside, and you spend your years in jail somewhere you never have to see Jack or Edward Hunter.”
“That’s bullshit,” Johnson says.
“No. What that is is a fact. A one hundred percent fact. So what I’m going to do right now is I’m going to give you thirty seconds to think about it. You’re probably thinking that you’re a tough guy and can handle yourself in jail since you’ve done it before. But what you should be thinking about is the desire of two men in this world who right now want nothing more than to see you dead—men who may not be able to do the job themselves, but at least one of them can afford to pay to have it done. Thirty seconds,” Schroder says. “And counting.”
“Marcy Croft,” Johnson says, with twenty-eight seconds still remaining. “Bracken paid her off. She was an easy mark. She needed the cash and she was new there and the plan all along was to shoot her anyway. Bracken wanted her taken out onto the street but instead we took that other woman, the wife.”
“Marcy Croft,” Schroder says, and he gets a mental picture of the bank teller. She’s the one who had the shotgun leveled at her. The one Jodie Hunter died for.
“Did she know people were going to die?”
“She thought it was a simple thing. We’d go in and get the money and get back out. We told her nobody had to get hurt, and for what it’s worth that’s what I thought too.”
“So why didn’t anybody try to kill her after the robbery?”
“Couldn’t risk it. If we’d touched her after the robbery, you’d have looked into why. You’d have made the connection.”
“You weren’t worried she’d talk to the police?”
“No. Bracken rang her cell phone about ten minutes after the robbery. Told her that if she spoke to the cops he’d kill her and everybody she loves.”
“Did Bracken shoot Jodie Hunter?”
“No. Bracken didn’t even say a word in the bank.”
“Did you shoot her?”
“No. It was Doyle.”
“Okay. That’s good, Kelvin. Real good. You can explain that to Hunter when you see him.”
“What? You said . . .”
“I lied.”
“You son of a bitch,” he says, but Schroder hardly hears him as he closes the interrogation door behind him. He checks the messages on his phone. The cemetery was canvassed and no sign of Hunter. No sign of him at the security guard’s house. No sign of him at any of the bank tellers’ homes. No sign of him at Marcy Croft’s house.
He gets in his car and chooses Croft’s house. He calls the detectives who spoke to her earlier today and they say she seemed nervous, but put it down to the events of the last week. There’s a patrol car parked outside her house.
“Nobody home,” the officers say. “Our orders are to wait till she shows up.”
Schroder knocks on the door anyway. When he finds her he knows she isn’t likely to put up a fight or any fuss. If anything she’ll break down in tears and beg for a forgiveness that isn’t his to offer. He tries the door. It’s unlocked. He opens it.
Marcy Croft lives in a small two-bedroom flat with a flat-screen TV and a Christmas tree filling the living room with blood on the carpet and tipped-over furniture.
“He’s got her,” he says into the phone. “The bank teller.”
“Explain it to me,” Barlow says, and Schroder does.
“Does Hunter know the bank teller was in on the robbery?” Barlow asks.
“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s possible. Jack Hunter may have known. He certainly knew other names.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Barlow says. “If Edward knew she was in on the robbery, he would have killed her already. You said he took her from her home?”
“There’s sign of a struggle and blood on the carpet. Not much,” he says.
“Okay. Let’s assume he didn’t kill her. Let’s assume he took her. What for? If he thought this woman was somehow partly responsible
for the death of his wife and daughter, he would have killed her already. No reason for him to take her.”
“Well, he has her. No doubt there.”
“Yes, but why? Let me think . . . are you sure Jack Hunter knew about this woman?”
“I never said I was sure. Could be either way.”
“Interesting,” he says, then doesn’t follow it up. Schroder can almost hear his thinking process. “This woman, he may have taken her for a different reason.”
“What other reason is there?”
“It all started with her. This is the woman Edward called out to save. Don’t you see? When he saved her, he condemned his wife to death. That in turn condemned his daughter to death. He blames her, Detective, and if he’s in as fragile a state as I believe him to be, then he sees her as the catalyst for everything he’s lost. Maybe . . . yes, yes, maybe he thinks he can right the wrongs that have happened since then.”
“Right the wrongs? You mean he thinks that by killing her he can turn back the clock and save his family?”
“It’s possible. And if this is the case, then you’ll find he’s taken her to—”
“The bank,” Schroder finishes, already running toward his car now.
“Exactly.”
“Jesus,” Schroder whispers, and he turns on the sirens and races back into town.
I get out and move around the car. I open the door and drag the woman out. She’s confused. She’s scared. This is nothing new for her—she’s been confused and scared before, in fact she’s been confused and scared in this very place.
She stumbles and falls down and cuts her knees on the glass. She tries talking to me but I can’t hear her over the alarm. I can hear a few of the words and can fill in the rest of them myself. She’s telling me over and over that she’s sorry, but it doesn’t matter, not now. Her being sorry isn’t going to fix things. I pick her up and drag her to where she almost died last time. The bank alarm keeps going off, and I wonder if things would have worked out different last week if the alarm had gone off like this when the men came into the bank. I get her standing in the same place but when I let her go she collapses back into a heap. Everything is the same as the last time I saw it, only the people are missing. Same posters advertising low interest rates, pictures of
happy people paying off twenty-five-year mortgages or borrowing money to buy a boat. The hole in the ceiling has been repaired, the broken office window replaced, the bullet holes in the wall plastered over and repainted, and all the blood cleaned up. No security guard, no front windows now, nobody with a shotgun. Nobody else to call out wait, to stop this woman getting killed, putting his own family in the firing line, nobody with cell phones to capture footage for the news.
“Try to stand up,” I say, but she doesn’t. I guess it’s okay. I can’t reenact everything. It’s not like I have a shotgun. Just a knife. It’ll all work out the same way. This woman for Jodie. For Sam. The woman is crying, sobbing hard now.
“It’s the only way,” I say.
Do it. Feel it. Feed the urge.
I lean down over her. I hold the knife tightly.
Come on, get it done.
There are footsteps on the broken glass, loud enough to be heard over the alarm. Detective Schroder comes to within a few meters of us, his palms raised to me. He studies the woman before focusing on the knife in my hand.
“Put the knife down, Edward.” He has to yell to be heard.
I move behind her and hold it against her throat. She’s shaking and she’s warm and it’ll be over soon, it’ll be the way it was meant to be.
“I can’t,” I yell back.
“Please, please, help me,” the woman says, but her voice is low and I don’t think Schroder can hear her over the alarm.
“Edward, put down the knife.”
“Why are you even here? You weren’t here last time.”
“I’m here because I don’t want anybody else to die.”
“How come you got here so fast? Last week nobody showed up for five minutes, this week you’re here within seconds. It’s not fair.”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Schroder says. “And it won’t work. You can’t fix the past, Edward. I know you called out to save this woman and she lived and Jodie died and then Sam died, but you can’t bring them back.”
“All I have to do is make sure it never happened,” I say. “All I have to do is never call out.”
“There aren’t any takebacks in this world, Edward. No resets.”
“Doing this will make everything the way it was supposed to be.”
“I wish it were that easy, Eddie, I really do. Life would be so much easier. But it isn’t. It is what it is, and killing her won’t bring Jodie or Sam back.”
“I know it won’t. It will stop them from ever being hurt.”
“Listen to yourself.”
Listen to me. Kill her. It’s in your nature. It’s who you are.
“Is this what you want?” he carries on. “To become your dad?”
Daddy’s a ghost.
“I’m nothing like him.”
“You keep telling me you hate what he is, that you hate the rest of us for thinking that you’ll become him.”
“I’m nothing like him,” I repeat.
“Take a look at yourself.”
“This isn’t about any of that. It’s not about what my dad was.”