Edward says nothing, just stares out the window at the night. Schroder stays quiet for a bit, thinking about Benson Barlow and the shrink’s warning.

“I have a friend,” Schroder says, “that you remind me of in a way. He looked into something he shouldn’t have, and it cost him. Same thing happened to him that’s happening to you. He thought drinking was the answer, but it screwed him up, screwed with his judgment. He went out one night in his car and ran into a woman, almost killed her. That shit will happen to you if you don’t get a grip on things. My friend, he was a cop once who knew better. You’ll end up falling into an abyss right alongside him, and his abyss now has him in jail. He’s locked away for six months for what he did. That what you want? To leave your little girl for six months?”

Edward doesn’t answer him.

“Or it’ll be worse. You’ll head out driving and you’ll have your daughter with you. You’ll drag her into that abyss and get her killed.”

Still nothing.

“Look, Edward, we’ll get the men who did this. These people, they always get caught. Always.”

“And you always let them go,” Edward says. “Isn’t that it? You’ll find these guys and you’ll find you’ve dealt with them before, locked them away before, and let them right out.”

“It’s not like that,” he says.

“Isn’t it? How about you explain it to me.”

“We kept your father locked away.”

“But he’s the only one, right? Everybody else gets tossed back out onto the street to do whatever it is they want to do.”

“You think I don’t know that? You think it’s easy being a cop in this city? What would . . .,” he trails off. “Look, what’s the alternative? That we don’t try? You know how many cops we’re losing every year because nobody wants to try anymore? The last year, Edward, the last year has been damn hard. With all that’s happened—hell, even I have days where I want to give up. It’s what this city does. It produces these people. It catches them, takes them into its prisons, then churns them back out harder and rougher than they were going in. But we’re trying, Edward, and we’re making progress. Things will change. We’re doing the best we can with what we have, and I promise you, we’ll get the men who killed your wife. And I promise you they will pay.”

“People think I’m the same as him,” I say.

“What?”

“My father. They think I’m the same as him. People recognize me from the news and think I’m going to be the next big serial killer.”

“No one recognizes you from the news, Edward,” he says, remembering what Barlow said. “That was twenty years ago. And you weren’t to blame for anything then.”

“People are ready to convict me, they want to send me away for life. They’re frightened of me. But these men, why aren’t we frightened of them enough to keep them locked away forever? When you find them, Detective, and lock them away, what then? How long until you have to find them again for killing somebody else’s wife? Three years? Five?”

“I promise they’ll pay, Edward,” he says.

They reach the house and Schroder pulls into the driveway and they both climb out. The car following pulls up to the curb, its tires scraping against it. The wheels have splashed rain and dirt off the road onto the bottom half of the car.

They walk to the front door and Schroder unlocks it.

“What happened to your friend?” Edward asks.

“Huh?”

“The friend you were telling me about. He was looking into something. He ever sober up and find it?”

“Yeah. He found it, and people died because of it.”

“He lose his family to bank robbers?”

“I’ll keep these tonight,” Schroder says, and he rattles the keys. “You can pick them up from the station in the morning. Where are the spares?”

“I don’t have any.”

“Everybody has spare keys.”

“Not me ’cause I never lose them.”

“Okay, Edward. Go and get some sleep,” he says. “Don’t do anything else stupid tonight. Don’t make me regret helping you out.” He closes the door and heads to the other car and drives away.

chapter twenty-two

I take a leak, find the spare keys, take another leak, grab a beer, grab a jacket, and within ten minutes of being dropped off home I’m back on the road, which is better than jail, which is where I thought Schroder was going to take me for what the monster had wanted me to do tonight. The spare keys have Jodie’s car key too, and for a few seconds I can’t figure out which one to jam into the ignition.

The car is harder to control than normal and there must be something wrong with it. I’m steering straight but the car keeps veering off to the left, and other times off to the right. It’s not the time to have a faulty car—the road ahead of me isn’t exactly laid out clearly because my vision is shot to hell. Everything is blurry, and when I squint I end up seeing double. I lose control of the car and hit the curb and come to a stop. I can see my house in the rear-vision mirror—I’ve only driven about thirty meters.

I give it another go, slower this time, more focused. There is even less traffic on the road now. A few people are out shopping since the malls are still open, Christmas extending the closing hours till midnight. Statistically, some of these people will go bankrupt over the Christmas season. Statistically, many of them will come home to find their homes have been burgled, or they’ll walk out of a mall to find their cars have been stolen. Statistically, one of these people will show up dead on some grass verge in the morning and Schroder’s caseload will become that much heavier for it.

I’m not familiar with the area and get lost on the way to the cemetery. I run a couple of red lights by accident, but I also end up sitting at a few green lights, which I figure balances the equation. I make it there safely and turn into the cemetery driveway. There is no detail in the church, only an absence of light, a dark shape somewhat darker than the night around it. I keep driving ahead and quickly become lost. I haven’t been out here since Jodie was buried, and then I was following everybody else. Now it’s a maze. The church disappears behind the line of trees, then it’s graves and grass everywhere, broken up by more trees. Maybe this is why it’s called the Garden City—the view is fucking fantastic when you’re dead.

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.