“Confirms what witnesses said.”

“Hell of a way to go,” Sheldon says.

“We’ve seen much worse. Would he have survived the injuries from being run over?”

“Left leg completely severed, right leg half severed, half crushed. I’d have rated his chances as somewhere between extremely slim and none.”

Unable to take his partner with him, and worried they could be identified, the shooter had taken steps to try and hide the identity of the dying man by blasting away his face and fingerprints. It didn’t work: the forensics team have already emptied the victim’s pockets, turning up some coins, a cigarette lighter, and a packet of smokes—all of which have clear fingerprints on them. They’ll have a name within the next two hours. Plus they’ve got the car with another whole set of prints to narrow down. He looks over at the bump in the canvas sheet over the body where the severed leg is. The very bottom of it, with a shoe still attached, is sticking out from underneath, the canvas not big enough to hide the blood on the street. It looks like the guy was attacked by a bear.

“Jesus,” Landry says, coming over as Sheldon leaves. “The Hunter family must really be cursed.”

“Where are we on the interviews?”

“Still working on it. Surveillance from the vault doesn’t suggest anything one way or the other. Just shows four panicked people stuffing money into bags,” Landry says.

“Yeah, well, combined with the names we’re going to get from this, I think by the end of the day we’re going to know who all the players are. No sign of the in-laws and daughter?” Schroder asks.

“None. You really think these men have her?”

“Doubtful. I think they’re somewhere completely unaware of the danger they could be in. Anyway, I don’t see any real reason for the robbers to go after Hunter’s daughter. It gets them nothing—all it does is put them at risk.”

“And Hunter?”

“He’s freaked out, but he’s doing okay.”

“He give anything up about Kingsly?”

“Nothing,” Schroder answers.

“You think he did it?”

“The bank robbers sure as hell think so. Both Hunters in one day. We have to find his daughter. Hunter said he’d talk once we got her safe.”

“Every patrol car in the city has a description of them. We’ll have her soon.”

“I hope so,” Schroder says, “for everybody’s sake.”

chapter thirty-six

They wheel me into another room when the stitches are done. Each stitch as it went in made me stronger. There are three other men in here in different states of pain and misery. One has both legs in casts, suspended above him. A man in his seventies is snoring, a bald patch with stitches on the side of his head. The third man is reading a magazine and coughing every fifteen seconds. There are two cops outside the door, either there to protect me or to stop me from fleeing. I think about my dad—he’s in a different ward with cops of his own.

My leg hurts a lot. After an hour, a nurse comes in and holds up a chart with five “happy faces” on it. The first face is yellow and smiling. The last one is purple and has a large frown and an upside-down smile. The three faces between range in color from yellow to purple, their expressions from somewhat happy to pretty much unhappy.

“Point to the one that represents how you feel,” she says.

I look for the happy face of the guy who had his wife murdered last week but he isn’t on there. “Just give me some painkillers,” I say, “and I’ll be fine.”

The nurse, who is overweight with breasts the size of bowling balls, gives me one more chance to get it right. “Point,” she repeats.

I point to the smiley face. “Can I go now?”

“Soon,” she says. “Now take these,” and she hands me a small plastic cup with pills in it. I shake the two pills into my palm and she gives me a cup of water. “Drink,” she says, as if I couldn’t figure out the next step by myself. Then she takes my blood pressure and seems neither pleased nor concerned by the result. I don’t understand the numbers.

“We’ve found your daughter,” Schroder says, coming into the ward, and for the briefest of seconds I’m terrified, absolutely shit-scared because I don’t know how he’s going to finish that sentence. They found her at the park and she was playing on a swing with Mr. Fluff ’n’ Stuff, or they found her covered in blood with her throat cut? Schroder’s pause is so brief, so hardly noticeable, but for me it lasts a lifetime. “They’d gone to the movies. They’re at home now.”

“So . . . so they’re okay?”

“They’re okay. But they thought it might scare her too much to bring her down here to the hospital. We’ve got a man at their house to keep an eye on them until we get there.”

“Just the one?”

“It’s Christmas Eve,” he says. “One’s all we can spare, but it will be enough. You’re the target, not them.”

He tosses me a pair of pants that are old but are at least in better shape than mine. He also has a pair of sneakers that aren’t full of blood, so I don’t complain. The nurse with the bowling-ball breasts comes back and unhooks the IV from my arm.

“Ten minutes,” Schroder says. “That’s the deal. I give you ten minutes with your daughter, and then you’re coming to the station to tell me everything.”

The pain is instant when I stand; my leg throbs and I almost collapse. All the blood drains in one direction and I get light-headed. The nurse pushes me back toward the bed but I regain myself and straighten up. “See?” I say, pointing at my face. “A happy smile. I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“I will be.”

It takes me longer than usual to get dressed, and instead of walking out of the hospital they push me out in a wheelchair. All the people that seemed to be around this afternoon have gone home for Christmas. We pass only two nurses on the way out and an orderly and nobody else, not even any visitors. Everything that was in my pockets is handed to me in a white paper bag. I don’t bother opening it. At the hospital doors I leave the wheelchair behind. My leg is tight with all the new stitching.

Schroder is parked in one of the handicapped spots close to the door. The parking lot is empty except for two other cars. I think he’s about to put me in the back of the car, but he lets me ride up front. He knows I’ve killed two people within the last twenty-four hours, and I’m sure he’ll try to prove it once he gets me into an interrogation room. I have no idea how, but the day has stretched into night. I’m no longer wearing my watch—I don’t even know if it’s in the paper bag, or if I lost it in the excitement of the day, or maybe one of the paramedics stole it. It must be around 9:30.

There’s a warm breeze. Clear sky. Perfect weather conditions for Santa, and if I were home with Sam, if I still had a family life, we’d watch TV together and watch Santa’s approach to New Zealand, her excitement building at the presents to come. I still haven’t got anything for her, but Nat and Diana took care of that, picking up and wrapping some gifts. The malls are closed and I’d like to have got her something myself. Jesus, I’m a bad father. How can I have not made an effort to pick her something up? Some toys, a doll, something to make her feel better. I’m focusing on revenge and not on the things that matter.

Revenge matters.

“You talk about defending the city like this is a war,” I say, staring out the windows as we drive through town where drunk teenagers are roaming the streets.

“I could rant on about this city for the next five hours and it wouldn’t be anything you didn’t already know,” he says. “There are thousands and thousands who live here, ignorant of the violence that is seething in the soul of this city, until one day it reaches out and pulls them down. You probably knew about it because of your dad. But it wasn’t until last week that you really cared.”