Blood Men: A Thriller

“My name is Carl Schroder,” he says, sitting down opposite Edward and not offering to shake hands, “and I know this is difficult, I know answering questions is the last thing you want to do right now, but you . . .”


“Not difficult,” Edward answers. “Impossible.”

“You’re right. It is impossible.” He pauses, taking in the impossibility of the situation. He isn’t the one who woke up today and lost his wife.

“Are you married?” Edward asks.

“Please, we need to focus . . .”

“You imagine what it’d be like if that was your wife out there?”

“I’d want the men who did this caught.”

“You mean you haven’t found them yet?”

“We’re working on it, Edward. It is Edward, right? Not Jack?”

“I didn’t give you my name.”

“I know.”

“Jack’s my father’s name, not mine, not anymore. Which means you recognize me. Everybody recognizes me.”

“Well, I don’t know about that.”

“It’s true. You recognized me. You didn’t know whether to call me Jack or Edward, so you knew. Everybody knows.”

“I recognized you because I was there the day your dad was arrested.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he answers. It was his first year on the force. He hadn’t spoken to Jack Hunter Sr., or really been anywhere near him. He’d been one of the constables who’d come along for the ride. He got a real good look at Jack Hunter Junior, the young boy, full of tears and pain.

“I remember you,” Jack—now Edward—says. “But not from then. From the year after. You were the one who came when Mum died.”

“I know,” Schroder answers. That was his second year on the force. He and his partner had gone inside and found the woman in the bathtub. He can still recall exactly how she looked, how the bathroom felt, can picture the emptiness in her eyes. Edward and his sister were sitting on the bathroom floor, the sister with her arm around Edward, both of them leaning against the wall, Edward unable to take his eyes from the floor. Schroder and his partner had gone in and taken the children out before examining the body. The sister had told them what had happened. Edward never said a word.

“You’re always there when my family is hurting,” Edward says, and Schroder can see the little boy all those years ago in this man now. “And you’ve never made it any better. Am I a suspect in this, now that you know who I am?” his voice getting louder. Angrier.

“Of course not. Why would you think that?”

“People always think weird shit like that. I’ve grown up with it.”

“What I need from you is to focus, Edward. I know this is hard,” he says, “but this is the time where you can help the most.”

“They just, they just came into the bank,” Edward says, shaking his head as he talks and turning his palms up, “you know? Just came in like they owned the place. The way they shot the manager, they didn’t care. They didn’t have to kill anybody. They were getting their money and . . . I mean, why do that? Why take the time to do that? Even when it was all done, they took Jodie with them. Why would they do that?”

“We’ve heard from other witnesses the men said they wanted a volunteer.”

“I tried to get them to take me.”

“I know you did. They also said you saved one of the tellers from being taken, maybe even saving her life.”

“What?”

“They say you called out. They say the men were going to take her, and you stopped them. That was a brave thing,” he says, trying to prompt Edward. “A brave thing, risking your life.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t my life I risked in the end, was it? They were going to take her and they took Jodie instead.”

“You couldn’t have known that.”

“You think?”

“It’s a fact. It’s a bad situation, Edward, a bad situation and people died, and you’re the only one in that bank who had the balls to try and do something about it, to try and save somebody’s life, and that woman is alive thanks to you.”

“It’s a shitty flip side, right? She’s alive because of me and my wife is dead for the same reason. It’s no different from me pulling the trigger myself.”

“It’s very different,” he says.

“All the people in here and they took her. They didn’t need to take anybody.”

Schroder knows exactly why they took her. They wanted somebody dead out on the road. They wanted to use up more police resources. It creates confusion and panic and gives them more of a lead time. It shuts down traffic into the street, creates congestion, slows down the roads in and out of town, the cars that had stopped outside the bank are still out there, blocked in. He doesn’t tell Edward any of this. Doesn’t tell him that his wife was a tool, a device they used to help them escape.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Schroder says.

“You’re wrong on that. There was everything I could have done. I could have made the appointment for a different time. I could have kept my mouth shut and let that other woman get taken. Maybe they wouldn’t have killed her. I could have fought more, could have insisted they take me instead.”

“It’s not your fault.”