chapter thirty-one

It’s a matter of priorities. If one of the bank tellers was an inside man, they’ll know soon enough. Schroder is confident a series of interviews will get them some answers before the day is out. Hell, maybe the whole thing will be over before Christmas Day even begins.

He drives back to Kingsly’s house with Landry and drops him off. The plan is for Landry to get started on the interviews while Schroder goes back out to the prison. The trip there earlier didn’t net them much. They found medication in Hunter’s cell. The warden said he was given two pills to take every day. Adding up the pills they found suggests he stopped taking his meds the day of the robbery. Instead of flushing them, he was saving them. Maybe, Schroder thinks, Hunter was planning on building a stockpile to take the whole lot at once.

When he gets back to the prison, Theodore Tate is already waiting for him. Tate used to be a cop until a few years ago, when he turned private investigator, and after both those things he became a criminal. The visiting room is empty except for Schroder and Tate and one prison guard against the far wall, hardly paying any attention. It’s been a few months since he last saw Tate. He hasn’t changed much, except his hair is shorter and he’s lost a bit of weight.

“Thanks for doing this, Tate,” he says, sitting down opposite him.

“I was surprised you called,” Tate says. “I mean, in the beginning I was. I thought you were calling to check up on me, to see how I was doing. It was a surprise, a nice one even. Then it turns out you wanted something.”

“Look, Tate, I’ve been meaning to come and see you for some time now,” he says, and even though he means it, he knows he would never actually have done it. There’s nothing worse than seeing a fellow cop in jail—even if he isn’t a fellow cop anymore. “I just, you know, didn’t get around to it. You know how it is.”

“Actually I don’t. You could educate me. We could swap places and see how it goes.”

“I understand why you’re bitter, but it’s not my fault you’re in here.”

“I realize that. Only sometimes it’s easier if I can blame somebody else except myself. Hell, maybe it’s even therapeutic,” he says, smiling at that last bit. “So—what’s new? How’s Christchurch? Is it still broken?”

“It’s not broken,” Schroder says, and he really believes that. Really, absolutely, almost believes that.

“Yeah, well, I think it’s broken no matter what side of the bars you’re on. So what is it you want, Carl?”

“Your help. You heard about Hunter, right?”

“Everybody heard,” Tate says.

“You heard anything more than that? Like who stabbed him?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“I think he was stabbed because he got hold of some names.”

“What names?”

“I think he was putting together a list of the men who robbed the bank last week.”

“And that got him stabbed?”

“Giving those names to his son got him stabbed,” Schroder answers.

“And you think the son is going to go after these people?”

“I’m pretty sure he already has. One of the robbers was found dead this morning. The victim drove the van. Timing fits perfectly. Dad gives son a name, that guy shows up dead, the next day Dad gets stabbed. The scene this morning was pretty messy. He got killed by somebody who had no idea what they were doing. Whole thing could have been an accident, or a fluke, the way it played out.”

“You think the son is capable of it?”

“You tell me,” Schroder says. “You think it’s possible for a man to kill in revenge for his family?”

“Depends on the man,” Tate says.

“Well, this man has a father who’s a serial killer. His shrink came to see me yesterday. He thinks Jack Hunter suffers from an illness that could be passed to the son. Paranoid schizophrenia—he says it can be hereditary. Says it’s a medical thing. He told me Edward Hunter has the potential to be a real bad guy. I wasn’t so sure, not then—but now I think so.”

“So arrest him.”

“We will, once we have more evidence. Landry tried to bluff him out saying we had a witness, but he didn’t go for it. We have blood, though. That’ll tell us.”

“So where do I fit into this equation of yours?”

“Two different ways. You can find out who stabbed Hunter. That might lead us back to the bank crew. Or maybe you can get some names for us. Hunter managed it, so maybe you can manage it too.”

“Nobody’s going to talk to me.”

“There’s more of a chance they’ll talk to you than to me.”

“So why am I doing this for you? Why stick my neck out like that?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do.”

“For you, maybe. Not for me. My best chance of survival in here is to keep a low profile, which is damn hard to do when there are others in here I arrested back in the day.”

“There’s a girl in the equation. Edward Hunter has a daughter.”

Tate slowly nods. “And you were waiting to lay that on me, figuring it would work.”

“Did it?”

Tate stands up and Schroder follows suit. “I’ll see what I can find.”

chapter thirty-two

I drop down, the shotgun exploding, and I’m back at the bank all over again, the air-conditioning replaced by real air, the houseplants replaced by bushes and trees, the six men replaced by two men in a car. A hole appears in the garage door about the same time my knees crash into the concrete.

The car door starts to open. I have nowhere to run, I have no idea what to do. But then I realize I’m not alone, I have my monster with me and he knows what to do. We’re already in action. I get up and run forward, the monster leading the way, the monster in full control and now I’m the one along for the ride. We get closer to the car. To me this seems the wrong way to be going, but I’m in no position to argue. A leg comes out of the car and touches the sidewalk: jeans and a black steel-capped boot. I drop down and ram the entire weight of my body into the door, leading with my shoulder, slamming it hard on the leg. The guy inside yells out and the shotgun drops somewhere inside the car, buying me a couple of seconds. I don’t wait around. I run up the street, crossing behind the car, making it difficult for them to fire on me.

The car hits reverse. The transmission whines loudly as the gap closes. Words of anger spill out the window as the two men swear at each other, a miscommunication passing between them. Maybe the passenger wanted to get out and take another shot, or the driver wanted to hit me with the car in the beginning. I weave across to the opposite sidewalk. The car screeches to a halt. It fishtails so the front turns toward me. The doors fly open and the two men jump out, but the driver has forgotten he’s still wearing his seat belt and he’s pulled back in, his eyes wide in confusion.

The passenger runs around the side of the car and lines up another shot as I dive forward, getting behind a parked car and bang, metal is ripped out of the bodywork as I hit the ground. I get up and run, weaving between silver birch trees lining the street, waiting for the next shot, but there isn’t one, only footsteps as they pound the ground behind me.

The houses in the street are all similar, around ten years old, in great condition but a little tired, none of them—thankfully—with any front fences. I race over the front yard and down the side of a house, hitting the side gate with my shoulder, busting the latch holding it closed. I get through and the gate swings back and the top section explodes in a cloud of splinters from the next gunshot. I go left, cutting across the backyard, over the deck and past the french doors and a small sandpit that has bright yellow toy trucks in it. I reach the corner of the house and go left again, back toward the road. This time there’s a fence across, but no gate. I duck into the alcove by the back door. It’s a glass laundry door that I ram my fist through, the bandage around my hand protecting me from any cuts. The glass shatters into a thousand tiny pieces. I reach inside and unlock the door and spill into the house, my feet slipping on the glass. I go left into a hallway as the men come into the house behind me. Nobody’s home. I turn into a bedroom and shut the door behind me. I tip a chest of drawers across the doorway and a moment later it rattles as the men push against the door. The door wobbles in its frame as it’s kicked. I try opening the windows, but they have security latches and only open far enough to fit my arm through. I grab the nearest thing, which is a clock radio, and yank it from the power socket and thrash it against the window. It cracks on the third hit, then smashes on the fourth. A shot roars from the hallway and a large hole appears in the door, then the entire thing folds in on itself with one more kick. I don’t wait around to see the rest. I take a running jump where the window was and do my best to clear the glass, but end up dragging my right thigh along a shark tooth of glass jutting out from the frame.