Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller (6 page)

When the man in black stood up, Sean peered at the cover
of the book he held. Below
the title,
Turn the Tables
, was an artist’s rendition of the famous
Cleansing of
the Temple
narrative where Jesus had overturned the tables of the money changers
in the synagogue. Sean shook his head.

In her trips in and out of the backroom over the next hour or so, Jessica didn’t
make eye contact with Sean. Not once. If she had, he would have signaled her over
and settled the misunderstanding. He wasn’t sure himself why it was so important
that he set the record straight. The
old
Sean Coleman wouldn’t have cared about offending
anyone or saying something unpopular. The
old
Sean Coleman would have blown off her
attitude. Today’s Sean Coleman cared.

Maybe it had something to do with his failed relationship with his ex-girlfriend,
Lisa. The two had met each other under turbulent circumstances six months earlier,
and their unconventional romance had never quite found its legs. She lived two states
away in Las Vegas, and with phone conversation being their primary means of communication,
their partnership was perhaps doomed from the start.

He had never been a man of great verbal eloquence. Words often left his mouth differently
than the way he intended. All parts of his life suffered from it. It didn’t help
that Lisa was a recent widow who needed more comfort and compassion than could be
given over a phone. His awkward pauses and long minutes of silence had perhaps been
interpreted by her as indifference.

When the plasma extraction was complete and Sean’s machine let off its own series
of beeps, a young man in scrubs attended to him. In just a matter of minutes, the
needle was free from Sean’s arm and the puncture covered with cotton and gauze. A
lot of beds were empty by then. The larger one’s body mass was, the longer the process
took, so several people who’d come in to donate after Sean had already been wrapped
up and sent on their way.

Jessica was still in the backroom. A shade was pulled across the
window, but he knew
she was there.

When he was all set, he stood up with the ticket he had been given to cash in back
at the front desk, but he wasn’t ready to leave quite yet. He waited until the handful
of remaining attendants was ministering to others before he cautiously walked over
to the backroom. When he was certain no one else was watching, he twisted the knob
on the door that led in and quickly entered.

The bright light from the larger outer room flooded into the small, darkened office
and Jessica’s body jolted forward. In a clear panic, she feverishly clicked buttons
on the computer mouse as she nervously glared at the monitor in front of her.

On the monitor, Sean noticed the words
The Denver Post
written in a large, bold black
font. Underneath the text was a close-up photo of a man in his forties or fifties
with thick sandy-blond hair. His arm was wrapped around a young, attractive woman
in her early twenties with long brown hair. Sean recognized neither of them but was
familiar with the longstanding
Denver Post
. Jessica had been reading an online version
of the statewide newspaper.

The web browser window hosting it disappeared and Jessica spun around in her chair
to face whoever it was that had just stepped into the room. Tears were streaming
down her cheeks and her eyes were red. She had been crying, but her expression was
a mix between despair and alarm, which suddenly changed to fury when she realized
it was Sean.

“What in the hell are you doing back here?” she snarled loudly, leaping to her feet.
“You can’t be back here! This room is for employees only!” Her chest heaved in fury
with each deep breath. Her lower lip quivered as she stared at him, her eyes demanding
an explanation.

“Why are you cry—?” he asked calmly.

“Don’t worry about it!” she snapped. “Why are you in here?”

“I needed to tell you something.”

“What?”

“I didn’t know that man was a reverend, or a pastor . . . or whatever he is.”

Her thin eyebrows narrowed and her head shook erratically. “Mr. Coleman, I have no
idea what you’re talking about. I just know that you need to leave. Now!”

“The man lying in the bed across from me. The one I thought was a casino dealer.
I wasn’t trying to make some joke. I just couldn’t see his collar. His book was in
the way.”

Her face went blank for a few seconds before her eyes began blinking with recollection.
“
That’s
why you came in here?” She placed her hands on her hips and suddenly looked
a bit more composed, though still angered. Her breath steadied. “Mr. Coleman, if
I had a dollar for every time a donor made some nonsensical remark to me, I could
have retired by now. Don’t worry about it.”

She wiped one of the long, flowing tears from her face and shook her head as her
gaze dropped to the floor. When her attention returned to him, she reiterated that
it was time for him to leave.

“Are you going to tell me why you’re crying?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, because it’s none of your business.”

He let a grunt escape, nodding ever so slightly. He turned around and opened the
door.

He closed it softly behind him and made a beeline to the hallway that he had entered
through earlier. After sliding a brown farmer-style jacket on, he stood impatiently
at the front desk as the receptionist counted out the money he was due in ten-dollar
bills.

Seconds after he nestled the money away in his front pocket, he was out in the parking
lot where light snow fell from the sky. He saw his breath in the chilling temperature.
Few cars were left in the lot. Most had a small American flag dangling from their
antennas in a show of national solidarity in the 9/11 aftermath that still hung over
the country.

A light dusting of white covered his ’78 Chevy Nova, concealing
its ancient pale-blue
paint job. He walked over to it and cleared the windshield with a broad sweep of
his arm. The glass hadn’t yet begun to ice up, so he was spared scraping.

The car’s spent shocks groaned under his weight as he plopped down in the driver’s
seat. When he slammed his door shut, the snow that had been covering his side window
fell to the ground. He twisted his key in the ignition. The engine reluctantly fired
up and the screeching of worn wiper blades drowned out whatever dull noise was coming
from the radio.

Sean glared up at the wide, bland GSL Plasma sign that hung above the building’s
entrance. His headlights illuminated it like a small billboard. After delivering
a sharp scowl at the sign, he popped the Nova into gear and sped off onto a side
street, skidding on the wet snow.

The clamor of the car’s shot muffler echoed off of neighboring dim buildings as he
fled into the night.

Chapter 3

B
y the time Sean reached the Winston town limits, the snow had gotten much heavier.
Between each swipe of a wiper blade, clumps of powder packed onto his windshield.

He felt his rear tires lose some traction as he crested a steep hill at the edge
of the town square. A few pumps of the gas pedal kept him aligned on the road.

The whitened limbs of the large pine trees prevalent throughout the area bowed from
the added weight of the elements. The tops of small buildings, closely clumped together,
displayed a good four inches of buildup along their triangular arches.

The small business district of downtown Winston wasn’t on Sean’s way home, but a
nagging question he’d held in his mind from the moment he’d left GSL urged him to
take a detour.

There wasn’t much going on in town that late on a weeknight. Bernard’s Pawn had been
closed for over an hour. So had French’s Pharmacy and Benson’s Hardware. The flickering
neon “Open” sign hanging outside of the Winston Café hadn’t yet been turned off,
but as Sean drove by the restaurant’s wide windows that faced the street, he saw
chairs placed on top of half the tables. No patrons were inside.

Down the street, he noticed a couple of lights on inside the Winston Police Station.
A Jeep was parked out in front. Police Chief Gary Lumbergh appeared to be burning
the midnight oil on something. Apparently, not even shoulder surgery could keep him
out of the office for a few days.

Sean milked the brakes as he approached the center of the
square—a small patch of
snow-covered grass that could have been considered a little park if it were only
a bit larger. Instead, it served as a lasting tribute to one of the town’s most respected
former citizens: Zed Hansen.

A life-sized, bronze statue of Hansen had been unveiled at the site just a few months
earlier. It was a good likeness: his uncle’s trademark straw cowboy hat sat proudly
on his head; his long sideburns and goatee; a toothpick wedged between his teeth.
Having been sculpted using a pile of pictures provided by Diana, it managed to capture
Hansen’s always dignified demeanor.

When passing through town, Sean would often steal a glance at the statue and chuckle
at the sight of a random bird perched upon its toothpick. Birds were obsessed with
the statue. It was often covered with white, runny excrement. One persistent swallow
even tried to build its nest on top of Uncle Zed’s squared chin. It drove Diana nuts,
but Sean knew his good-natured, modest uncle would find the same humor in it that
he did.

Three small spotlights lit up the effigy from the ground, and though most of the
figure was covered with snow, its wide hat-rim kept the face fairly dry.

Just a few yards away, on the cobblestone sidewalk in front of the statue, were two
metal newspaper vending machines. They were barely visible from the indirect light
around the statue. The navy-blue machine dispensed copies of the
Denver Post
. The
bright-yellow one belonged to the
Winston Beacon
. Both were coated with powdery snow.

The
Winston Beacon
was a local paper sold only in town. Its owner, Roy Hughes, had
become somewhat of a nemesis of Sean in recent years. When Hughes, at the age of
twenty, inherited the fledgling publication from his father, he decided that the
only way to keep a sustainable level of readership was to turn a section of it into
what was essentially a tabloid column. The regular piece entitled “The Winston Buzz”
featured town gossip, often with an invasive,
investigative reporting twist to maximize
the shame of those Hughes chose to target.

Sean Coleman was by far Hughes’ favorite victim.

Sean had a long history of being a drunk, a bully, and a man who had a knack for
always making the wrong decisions at the worst possible times. Much of the town’s
citizenry didn’t like him. Thus, Hughes felt legitimized in exploiting him for the
purpose of lowbrow entertainment. It worked well with a readership that had an appetite
for learning of Sean’s failures. Hughes had backed off for a while following Zed’s
murder, but in recent weeks—possibly due to a decline in sales—he’d begun to ratchet
things up again. Sean figured it was probably tough for a guy like Hughes to compete
against the national news cycle with a war going on in the Middle East. Crucifying
Sean was apparently his answer to that problem.

Sean pulled up to the curb and stepped out of his car, nearly taking a tumble after
his foot slid on a patch of ice along the sidewalk. He fed a quarter into the blue
machine and yanked open the door at its face.

“Fuck!” he snarled at the sight of an empty shelf inside.

Had the front of the machine not been covered with snow, he would have noticed that
all copies of that day’s
Denver Post
had been bought.
Or had they?

He had long speculated that Roy Hughes occasionally emptied the competing paper’s
machine out with a single coin in hopes of compelling disappointed readers to purchase
a copy of the
Beacon
instead. He had never caught Hughes in the act, but he hoped
to one day.

Regardless, the empty machine riled him. He let its door slam shut and in frustration
sent the
Beacon
machine to its side with a stiff kick. It crashed to the sidewalk
with a metallic thud that echoed loudly through the cold night air. He nearly climbed
back into his car and sped off for home when he found his eyes lifting to meet those
of
his uncle glaring down at him from above with a kind, permanently etched grin.

His chest inflating and contracting, Sean narrowed his eyes. He brought his visible
breath under control and nodded slowly. He leaned forward, wrapped his ample hands
underneath the yellow apparatus, and pulled it back up to its short, stilt-like legs.
Uncle Zed would have never condoned vandalism.

With the snow now knocked from the front of the
Beacon
machine, he could see the
front of the day’s edition pinned behind the glass. His heart stopped. His own face
was pictured just above the fold. The photograph had been taken at an odd angle,
somewhere in an outside setting without Sean’s knowledge. He quickly spun the machine
to face the light so he could better read the unusually long headline featured above
it.

“Guess Who’s Selling His Sperm for Cash? A Case for Forced Sterilization?”

Sean’s eyes widened to the size of silver dollars. His fists and teeth clenched and
his body began to shake in rage. “Son of a bitch!”

It came out like a vicious howl.
He lunged forward, wrapped his arms around the machine, and hoisted it up over his
shoulder as if it weighed no more than a large stuffed animal. He lumbered out into
the middle of the street, roaring obscenities, before arching his back and body slamming
the machine to the pavement with every ounce of strength he could muster. The implosion
sounded like a bomb had gone off. Glass shattering. Metal shrieking. Asphalt cracking.

Sean didn’t remember getting back into his car, but he soon found himself in his
Nova’s driver’s seat. He tore down Main Street, heading for the outskirts of town
where Roy Hughes lived. He couldn’t hear the cry of the car’s muffler over the sound
of blood boiling through his veins.