indicates and pulls over and somebody honks at us and gives the finger. Schroder keeps talking as he does a U-turn. I think about the man I was a year ago, but I don’t want to be him anymore. Schroder hangs up.
“Sorry to do this to you, Tate, but something’s come up. I can’t take you home. I’ll drop you off in town. Is that okay?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You got any money for a taxi?”
“What do you think?” I actually had fifty dollars stuffed into my pants pocket for this day, but between the time I took my clothes off four months ago and got them back, that fifty found a new home.
We hit the edge of town. We get caught in thick traffic where a lane has been closed down so some large trees overlapping the power lines can be trimmed back, the trucks and equipment blocking the way, but the workers are all sitting in the shade too hot to work. We reach the police station in town. He pulls in through the gates. There’s a patrol car ahead of us with two cops dragging a man out from the backseat, he’s screaming at them and trying to bite them and the two cops both look like they want to put him down like a rabid dog. Schroder digs into his pocket and hands me thirty dollars. “This will get you home,” he says.
“I’ll walk,” I say, and open up the car door.
“Come on, Tate, take the money.”
“Don’t worry—it’s not that I’m pissed at you. I’ve been locked up for so long I need the exercise.”
“You try walking home in this heat and you’re a dead man.”
I don’t want his help. Problem is the heat is already close to blistering the paintwork on the car. It blasts through the open door, passing over my skin and sucking away any moisture. Even my eyes feel like they’re being lubricated by sand. I take the money. “I’ll pay you back.”
“You can pay me back by picking up the file.”
“No,” I say, but I can feel it back there, pulling at me, this magnet for violence whispering to me, telling me within its covers is a map which will take me back into that world. “I can’t. I mean . . . I just can’t.”
“Come on, Tate. What the hell are you going to do? You’ve got a wife to take care of. A mortgage. You’ve had no income for four months. You’re slipping behind. You need a job. You need this job. I need you to take this job. Who the hell else is going to hire you for anything? Look, Tate, you nailed a serial killer last year, but do you think anybody is going to care about that? No matter how you justify it, or weigh up the rights and wrongs of what you did, the fact is always going to be the same—you’re an ex-con now. You can’t escape that. Your life isn’t the same life it was back then.”
“Thanks for the ride, Carl. It was about halfway useful.”
It isn’t until I’m on the street with the gates to the police parking lot closing behind me that I look down at the file, pages of death crammed inside its covers, waiting for me, knowing all along I couldn’t turn it away.
chapter two
The thumb is inside the jar, suspended in liquid murky with age. The lid is sealed tight and the jar safely cuddled by bubble wrap. The whole thing is packed inside a cardboard box the size of a football, the corners crushed in slightly, the contents surrounded by hundreds of pieces of jelly bean–shaped polystyrene packaging, each about the same size as the very thumb they’re protecting. The box is in the hands of a courier driver with an untucked shirt with the bottom two buttons open. He looks impatient. He looks frustrated by the heat. His eagerness to leave is evident in the way he thrusts his electronic signature pad into Cooper’s hands. The pad is the size of a paperback and Cooper awkwardly scrawls his name onto it. The driver gives him the box and tells him to have a good day, and a few seconds later he’s reversing from the driveway, the wheels spinning up small pieces of tar-coated shingle from the road that plink against the
“Sorry to do this to you, Tate, but something’s come up. I can’t take you home. I’ll drop you off in town. Is that okay?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You got any money for a taxi?”
“What do you think?” I actually had fifty dollars stuffed into my pants pocket for this day, but between the time I took my clothes off four months ago and got them back, that fifty found a new home.
We hit the edge of town. We get caught in thick traffic where a lane has been closed down so some large trees overlapping the power lines can be trimmed back, the trucks and equipment blocking the way, but the workers are all sitting in the shade too hot to work. We reach the police station in town. He pulls in through the gates. There’s a patrol car ahead of us with two cops dragging a man out from the backseat, he’s screaming at them and trying to bite them and the two cops both look like they want to put him down like a rabid dog. Schroder digs into his pocket and hands me thirty dollars. “This will get you home,” he says.
“I’ll walk,” I say, and open up the car door.
“Come on, Tate, take the money.”
“Don’t worry—it’s not that I’m pissed at you. I’ve been locked up for so long I need the exercise.”
“You try walking home in this heat and you’re a dead man.”
I don’t want his help. Problem is the heat is already close to blistering the paintwork on the car. It blasts through the open door, passing over my skin and sucking away any moisture. Even my eyes feel like they’re being lubricated by sand. I take the money. “I’ll pay you back.”
“You can pay me back by picking up the file.”
“No,” I say, but I can feel it back there, pulling at me, this magnet for violence whispering to me, telling me within its covers is a map which will take me back into that world. “I can’t. I mean . . . I just can’t.”
“Come on, Tate. What the hell are you going to do? You’ve got a wife to take care of. A mortgage. You’ve had no income for four months. You’re slipping behind. You need a job. You need this job. I need you to take this job. Who the hell else is going to hire you for anything? Look, Tate, you nailed a serial killer last year, but do you think anybody is going to care about that? No matter how you justify it, or weigh up the rights and wrongs of what you did, the fact is always going to be the same—you’re an ex-con now. You can’t escape that. Your life isn’t the same life it was back then.”
“Thanks for the ride, Carl. It was about halfway useful.”
It isn’t until I’m on the street with the gates to the police parking lot closing behind me that I look down at the file, pages of death crammed inside its covers, waiting for me, knowing all along I couldn’t turn it away.
chapter two
The thumb is inside the jar, suspended in liquid murky with age. The lid is sealed tight and the jar safely cuddled by bubble wrap. The whole thing is packed inside a cardboard box the size of a football, the corners crushed in slightly, the contents surrounded by hundreds of pieces of jelly bean–shaped polystyrene packaging, each about the same size as the very thumb they’re protecting. The box is in the hands of a courier driver with an untucked shirt with the bottom two buttons open. He looks impatient. He looks frustrated by the heat. His eagerness to leave is evident in the way he thrusts his electronic signature pad into Cooper’s hands. The pad is the size of a paperback and Cooper awkwardly scrawls his name onto it. The driver gives him the box and tells him to have a good day, and a few seconds later he’s reversing from the driveway, the wheels spinning up small pieces of tar-coated shingle from the road that plink against the
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