The room is as modern as the surroundings would suggest, but I don’t really take the time to check them out. I carry Sam and put her gently into bed, taking off only her shoes, then I collapse on top of my bed and fall asleep.
chapter fifty-seven
They’re shooting one in four. They found Kelvin Johnson, but the other two bank robbers are in the wind, along with Oliver Church—though news of another body means Church may have been found. Dawn has come and gone and Schroder is dead on his feet. They all are. They all feel like zombies and look like zombies and it’s nights like these that keep divorce lawyers rolling in cash.
The Armed Offenders Unit is long gone now, having packed away its guns and headed for home, all of them still on standby if needed—all of them probably tempted to switch off their phones. Schroder knows that he is. They’ve busted into four houses and for all their efforts they’ve come away with one suspect.
The patrol officers sent to check the slaughterhouse have reported a body, the head of a male so badly damaged that identification was impossible. No sign of anybody else, but a couple of magazines, a small games unit, and a battery-powered lantern suggest whoever was out there had been there most of the night.
It’s a twenty-five-minute drive to the slaughterhouse from his last location. He’s too tired to drive fast, and has the window down so the air can whistle around his face to keep him awake. He makes a couple of calls to get the ball rolling, organizes the forensics techies to come out; long nights for everybody now turning into long mornings too.
The slaughterhouse is an imposing building in the early-morning light. It’s mostly made up of concrete that could probably survive an atomic bomb. There’s a police car parked outside with two officers sitting in it. The air is full of birdsong and the loudest sound is Schroder’s feet across the ground. The officers lead him inside and he keeps yawning on the way. Assuming he ever makes it home, he’s going to sleep for about twenty-four hours, he thinks; but at this stage it’s an assumption he wouldn’t bet his life on.
Oliver Church is surrounded in blood. He thinks it’s Oliver Church. The clothes certainly suggest it’s not Edward Hunter or his father, and he doesn’t see too many other possibilities at this point. Church’s head is twisted to the side with a large indentation in the side of it which has elongated the front of it, so the distance between his left eye and the left side of his mouth is far greater than the right. He looks like he’s fallen from a great height, so much so that for a moment Schroder is reminded of Suction Cup Guy. A piece of rebar with a bloody lump of cement on the end lies next to him. No way of knowing at this point if Church was tortured to give up more information, or tortured for taking Sam Hunter.
“No other cars out there?” Schroder asks.
“None.”
Probably Jack Hunter took Church’s car, which means father and son have separated. There’s an old mattress lying on the floor. Jammed between it and the wall, barely in sight, is a small teddy bear. The bear isn’t that old but seems to have had a hard life. He bets Sam Hunter cuddled that bear every night of her life, and wonders what she called it. His own daughter has a bear that she sleeps with. For a second he imagines it was her out here and not Sam, and the image is so strong it makes him want to cry. Jesus—he’s so tired.
“You think he found her?” Landry asks on the phone.
“I think so. I think Oliver Church paid the price for taking her.”
“He deserved what he got,” Landry says. “Deserved it years ago.”
“I know. But now I have to lock Edward Hunter up for it. Wasn’t his job to find Church, wasn’t his job to get his daughter back.”
“Wasn’t it?” Landry asks.
Even if it was Jack Hunter who pounded in Church’s skull, it still comes back on Edward for freeing the old man. Edward has to go to jail now, and that leaves Sam where? Maybe, if he’s lucky, he could get a suspended sentence—if he can prove he didn’t kill any of the others. Maybe.
Schroder bends down and picks up the teddy bear. Jack Hunter is on the loose and there’s already a task force looking for him—but that’s not his job, his job is to find the men who robbed the bank, and that job is almost over.
“There’s nothing more we can do tonight,” Landry is saying. “The girl was there, and she’s not there anymore. Edward Hunter got her, has to be him. He’ll have taken her somewhere safe, and he’ll keep her safe until all this is over. We’ll get the rest of the bank crew today, you know we will. Tomorrow at the latest.”
He hangs up and walks past the two officers. “Call me if anything changes,” he tells them. And with that he gets into his car and heads home, hoping for at least a couple of hours’ sleep and some time with his family before he has to start up again, right where he’s left off.
chapter fifty-eight
I wake up in the early afternoon with Sam cuddled up next to me. I let her carry on sleeping while I make some coffee and go about waking up some more. I switch on the TV and can’t find any news anywhere, as if this city is sick of the news now. There are holiday movies on, a fantasy on one channel, action on another, drama everywhere else, and I wonder what Hollywood would think if one day a Christchurch story showed up on its doorstep—whether it’d think the tale was too dark or too real to turn into a Christmas blockbuster. I prop Sam up in front of one of the movies and she watches it quietly, not laughing or smiling or even saying a word. She misses her mum and she misses Mr. Fluff ’n’ Stuff and she doesn’t understand why we’re spending Christmas Day in a motel room instead of our home, or with her grandparents.
I take Sam to the cemetery so she can spend some time with her mother. With all that’s happened, I figure it’ll be the last time the three of us are together for a while. I carry Sam out of the car and sit her down by her mother’s grave and we hold hands and I tell her over and over that everything is going to be okay. There are plenty of other people out at the cemetery, all of them like me, spending time with the dead; Christmas Day is a day for celebration no matter what world you’re in. When I head back to the car with Sam, people keep watching us, and though I’m used to it, this morning it bothers me more than ever. I shield Sam from their stares and drive her back to the motel. She’s asleep again before we get there, and I lay her back on the bed and check on her every five or ten minutes, sometimes holding her hand, not sure what I should do next. I leave the TV on and flick channels but nothing of any interest comes up. Outside, Christmas afternoon is looking like a hot one; only a couple of clouds in the sky, the sun beating down on the city. Mine’s the only car in the parking lot out front. I figure everybody else has family or a better place to be than this motel.
I sit at the window watching the Christmas day, thinking about what today could have meant, about the presents we didn’t get to give, the family time we never got to have, the Christmas lunch and barbecue dinner and the excitement of Santa. I think about my dad, wondering where he is now, what or who he’s looking for. I think about the darkness he’s trying to satisfy. My own monster is quiet now, and maybe that’s the way it’ll stay.
My thoughts turn to Schroder when his car pulls in to the motel parking lot. Two patrol cars pull up alongside him, but Schroder is the only one who gets out. A fourth car, a dark station wagon, also pulls in. I watch Schroder go to the office; he disappears inside for about sixty seconds, then comes back out. It’s Christmas Day and I figure he’d rather be anywhere else but here, and I’m the same—except there are still a few places worse than this, for me. Jail is one of them. The slaughterhouse is another.