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exactly why they took her. They wanted somebody dead out on the road. They wanted to use up more police resources.It creates confusion and panic and gives them more of a lead time. It shuts down traffic into the street, creates congestion, slows down the roads in and out of town, the cars that had stopped outside the bank are still out there, blocked in. He doesn’t tell Edward any of this. Doesn’t tell him that his wife was a tool, a device they used to help them escape.
    “There was nothing you could have done,” Schroder says.
    “You’re wrong on that. There was everything I could have done. I could have made the appointment for a different time. I could have kept my mouth shut and let that other woman get taken. Maybe they wouldn’t have killed her. I could have fought more, could have insisted they take me instead.”
    “It’s not your fault.”
    “Then why does it feel like it is?”
    “We have to focus, Edward, on finding the men who did this.”
    “I know. I know.”
    “Then it’s time to tell me what happened. Start at the beginning,” he says.
    “Okay,” Edward says, tears slowly sliding down his face. Schroder takes out his notebook and writes it all down.

chapter six
    I’m given a lift home. The sun is past its peak and the city seems darker now. The shadows cast by the tired buildings are small but ominous, the people on the streets appear defeated, those caught in half shadows are dazed, the trees and plants and flowers that make up the garden city have all lost their vibrancy—the life is draining out of the world. We pass rundown fruit stalls on the side of the road, FOR SALE signs in front of houses that people want to leave. The blood on my clothes is drying, the color fading from bright red to deep maroon, my body itchy where the stains are stiff and scratchy. With every passing second the distance between me and Jodie stretches, and the hope of getting her back finally turns into the despair it was the moment I saw her gunned down. This is my city, my home, the place I loved but love no more. Now I don’t know what it is. Certainly not my home. Not now. Now it’s the place that killed my wife and took my daughter’s mother away. Now it’s a hellhole and I don’t see any future here.
    The officer driving doesn’t say anything. He’s never gotten around to preparing any rhetorical conversation for this exact situation. It’s a thirty-minute drive in busy traffic in which the world goes by and I wonder how I can change it. He’s relieved when he lets me out in my driveway. I’ve taken a car ride away from one reality to a new one. There aren’t any neighbors walking about or working in their gardens. The houses are all dirty, the plants and trees all too dry, the cars old and the sidewalks cracked, the colors everywhere seem so diluted. There are brief moments—less than a second—where I’m distracted and Jodie is still alive, small lifetime moments like putting my key in the door—
bang!
A distraction—and the world is okay. Then that split second passes and reality floods back in, crushing me.
    It’s almost four o’clock and Sam has been picked up from school by Jodie’s parents. One of the detectives arranged it. One of them made the call so I didn’t have to, and I don’t know who broke the news to them first, the detective or the media. From a stranger they learned their daughter had the misfortune of getting herself gunned down this afternoon, had the misfortune of being married to a man who couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and they’d need to pick their granddaughter up from school.
    My house has become a museum, everything inside a relic of my past, happy memories all turning to dust. The air-conditioning was switched off this morning so the house is stuffy. Jodie has been dead for three hours and I’m stepping into a different place, the ghost of the house that it was this morning. I wander through it, not really knowing what to do. Jodie’s stuff is