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.”

I think about it. I think about what Schroder said last night, our nice friendly chat about people getting locked away and let right back out, our nice friendly chat about what a huge revolving door prison is these days.

“They’ve all spent time in jail,” he carries on. “Had to have. I’m betting some of them, if not all of them, probably met in jail. That’s what jail is, right? For me, it’s my home. I’ll never see outside of these walls again, but for these men it’s a place to learn new skills, make new friends.”

I stay silent, but continue to listen.

“Jail takes people in, it educates them in very, very dangerous ways, then it spits them back out into society. Most if not all of Jodie’s killers have walked in and out of these doors for various crimes.”

“And you know who these people are, right? It’s why you’re telling me. You want me to find these people to satisfy your darkness.”

“I think we can help each other out,” he says.

“No way. This is bullshit,” I say. “I’m not helping you out.”

“Would that be such a bad thing, son? Or would you rather let them go free? The voice can be a bad thing, son, but it can be a good thing too. You can use it to make the men who did this pay for what happened.”

“To satisfy your darkness?”

“No. To keep you sane. If you can’t control it the way I could, you’re going to hurt good people.”

“Hang on a second. Are you saying you controlled it all those years?”

“Of course. I gave in to it as well, in a way, but I controlled it. That’s why I never killed anybody who mattered.”

“You killed eleven prostitutes,” I say. “How can you say they don’t matter?”

“They don’t.”

“They do.”

“Compared to what? Compared to my own family? My friends? Our neighbors? They didn’t matter compared to anybody else I knew. Once you can control it, it’ll keep you from hurting good people. It’ll keep you from going off the rails and losing your daughter. The monster won’t go away now, not if it’s taking the steering wheel and making you do things. If you can’t control it, you’re going to be more like your old man than you ever thought possible. We’re blood men,” he says.

“What?”

“Other people, they’re attracted to looks, or money, nice jobs, all the hollow things in this world. Other men are attracted to tits or ass, women are attracted to smiles and eyes. Your monster, my darkness, they’re attracted to blood. It makes us blood men.”

He stands up, and suddenly I realize that this meeting, if that’s the word for it, is over. I stand up too. Dad reaches over and grabs my hands.

“No touching,” the guard says, and when Dad doesn’t let go, the guard comes over and separates us. “That’s enough for today,” the guard says, stamping his authority on us.

Dad walks away. “I love you, son,” he says, but he doesn’t turn back to say it. “No matter what happens now, remember that.”

I don’t know how to answer him, so I don’t. I walk away too. And it’s not until I’m in the parking lot that I look down at the folded piece of paper in my hand.

chapter twenty-three

I haven’t seen my father’s handwriting in twenty years. He used to help me with my homework. We’d lie down on the floor in the living room with the TV going but the volume mostly down, discussing why bees collected honey or how seven wouldn’t divide into twelve. He’d write things down for me, he’d read over my assignments and jot down ideas in the margins, other times he’d take notes out of whatever books I was searching through for answers. He has this elegant printing style, where the letters don’t bleed into each other, each one separate, easy to read, easy to recognize even after all this time. He always wanted me to be the best that I could at school. Those days come back to me, the smells of my mum baking something, or cooking dinner, the TV going, laughter, warm weather, a dog barking, school uniforms, life.