Joe Victim: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  “Take a seat, Joe,” Schroder says.

  I take a seat. He takes his jacket off and hangs it over the back of the chair. The front of his shirt is wet, so is the collar, but the sleeves look mostly dry. He rolls them up. He brushes a hand through his hair and flicks the water off his fingers. His hair is longer than the last time I saw him, the fringe has grown out and is plastered over his forehead. He wipes a drop of rainwater off his nose. Then he sits down. He doesn’t have anything with him. Just his jacket. His wallet and keys and phone are probably out in a tray somewhere. He stares at me and I stare at him, and then I give him the big Slow Joe grin, the one with all the teeth.

  “I hear you’re having a hard time,” Schroder says.

  My grin disappears. Some people it’s just wasted on. “I hear you’re the one having a hard time,” I say. “Joe hears you were fired,” I tell him, and he was fired for showing up drunk to a crime scene. I wonder if it’s people like me that were the reason for people like him to start drinking. The thing is, showing up to work drunk as a cop isn’t a fireable offense. It’s something you would be suspended over, and perhaps demoted, but getting fired? No, not when the police force is struggling to recruit enough people. Schroder was fired for something else, but I can’t imagine him sighing, leaning back, and going Well, Joe, here’s what really happened.

  “Joe must hear a lot of things,” he says. “And Joe must know there’s a real shitty future ahead of him. You’re not getting away with any of this, so at least drop the fucking act.”

  “Joe likes actors. Joe likes TV shows,” I tell him.

  His eyes give a half roll, then he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Look, Joe, cut the bullshit, okay? I know you have a lot of time up your sleeve these days, but I’m not here to waste mine. I’m here to make you an offer. Your trial starts in four days. You—”

  “You’re no longer a cop,” I tell him. “Why are you here? How many times have you come to see me over the last year, asking about Melissa? I keep telling you—”

  “That’s not why I’m here,” Schroder says, putting out his hand.

  Since my arrest they’ve been offering incentives for me to talk, but at the same time they’ve been telling me I’ll never see the light of day again. “Then why are you here?” I ask.

  “I want to know where Detective Calhoun is buried.”

  During my time back before I was arrested, one of the victims attributed to me was a woman by the name of Daniela Walker. Only I didn’t kill her. The person who did staged the scene so it would look like she was another victim of the Christchurch Carver. It annoyed me. In fact, it annoyed me so much that I investigated her death, and found she had been killed by Detective Inspector Robert Calhoun. Calhoun had gone to talk to her at her house to try and convince her to press charges against her husband who used to beat her, and somehow Calhoun ended up beating her himself. My plan was to pin all of my killings onto him. It didn’t work out that way. It wasn’t me who killed Calhoun. I abducted him. I tied him up. But it was Melissa who drove the knife into him.

  I shrug. “Is he an actor?”

  “He’s a policeman. The man you filmed being killed.”

  “So he is an actor then.”

  His fists tighten, but only marginally. “I don’t know how it’s felt for you, but time’s been flying for me. It’s like the crime rate in Christchurch took a break. People are still partying in the streets. Since you’ve been arrested the murder rate has plummeted. I’m no longer a cop, but the city doesn’t need as many cops anymore.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I tell him. I watch the news. Bad shit is still happening out there. I’m just not part of it. “What do you want?” I ask.

  “Truthfully? I want to pick this chair up and crack it through your skull. But I’m here because we need each other’s help.”

  “Help? You have to be kidding.”

  “I didn’t come here to kid with you, Joe.”

  “Why isn’t my lawyer here?”

  “Because lawyers get in the way, Joe. And the help I need from you doesn’t require a lawyer.”

  “I’m an innocent man,” I say. “When the trial begins, people will learn that I was sick. I’m a victim in all of this. The things they say I did—that wasn’t me. That’s not the real me. The courts don’t punish victims.”

  Schroder starts to laugh. In the years I worked around him it’s the first time I have ever seen it happen. He leans back in his chair, and suddenly he starts wheezing. He seems to get caught in a cycle where the laughter makes the situation even funnier, and he starts to cry along with it. His face turns red, and when he looks up at me he starts to laugh some more. I get the feeling if I were to laugh along with him he’d put me on the floor with his knee in my back and my arm twisted and broken behind me.

  His laughing slows. It stops. He wipes his face with the palm of his hands. I can’t tell what’s tears and what is rainwater.

  “Oh, Jesus, Joe, that was good. That was really good. And it was really what I needed because it’s been a shitty few weeks.” He sucks in a deep breath and fires it out fast, slowly shaking his head. “I’m innocent,” he says, and his smile returns and for a moment I’m worried he’s going to start laughing again, but he keeps control. “I can’t believe you said that with such . . .” he seems to search for a word, and settles on “conviction. Please, you have to say that when you get up on the stand. Deliver it just like that. You’ll make a lot of people happy.”

  “Why are you here, Carl?”

  “Well, well, that’s a surprise. That was good, always acting like you were forgetting my first name over the years. I gotta hand it to you, you were very convincing.”

  “If I wasn’t convincing, that would make you a moron,” I say, just pissed off at him now, the same way I’m getting pissed off with everybody. “Just tell me what you want.”

  His smile disappears and he leans forward. He puts his arms on the table and folds them. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you.”

  “If I’m the man you think I am, then I’ve already proven I’m smarter than you. But no, I’m not that man. Which proves I can’t be that smart.”

  “Yeah, well, you were too smart this morning for that psych test. That zero percent rating of yours. You know what that was, don’t you? That was your ego. That was you proving to the rest of the world just how smart you thought you really were, but the results are back, Joe, and that ego of yours fucked you over.”

  “Whatever,” I say, annoyed that he knows about the test. I guess word gets around, even if you’ve been fired from the force.

  “Truth is, I kind of like the way you sounded when you were mentally challenged. Kind of went with your look. That’s why you pulled off that routine so well. I mean, of course you fooled us, Joe, because you played the perfect fool.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it, okay, Carl? You’re trying to make fun of me, trying to put me down, what is it you want that doesn’t need my lawyer present?”

  He leans back. He doesn’t interlock his fingers like the psychiatrist. Maybe he’s come to the same conclusions about psychiatrists that I have.

  “You said you needed my help,” I say, prompting him, and his face twists up a little as though the words have cut him somehow. “Hell, Carl, you look pretty pale. You feeling okay?”

  “Twenty thousand dollars,” he says.

  I must have missed part of the conversation. “What?”

  “That’s what I’m here to offer you.”

  I start to laugh as hard as he did earlier, only mine is forced, not real at all, and the act doesn’t work. I end up coughing, and a few wet strands of something warm fall out of my nose and hit the desk. My eyelid locks up, and I have to reach up and close it manually to get it working again. Schroder sits there silently the whole time, just watching me, shifting occasionally to adjust his wet clothes.

  “We got your DNA,” he says. “You drank and ate at your victims’ houses. You were found with Detective Calhoun’
s gun. We’ve got audio tapes you made from our conference room so you knew where our investigation was at. We got a parking ticket that was once in your possession that led to a body at the top of a car parking building.”

  “We? You’re a cop again now are you?”

  “We’ve got your DNA everywhere, Joe. We have so much on you that—”

  “You’re still saying we,” I point out.

  “That you’re embarrassing yourself with this insanity plea,” he says, carrying on. “A guy can’t kill as many people as you did and get away with it as long as you did unless he was in complete control of himself.”

  “Or unless the police force is made up of monkeys and morons,” I say. “So is this meeting over, Carl, or are you going to tell me what it is that you want that involves twenty thousand dollars?”

  “Like you know, I no longer work for the police force anymore,” he tells me. “In any capacity.”

  “No shit. I’m surprised you’re working at all. I saw the footage of you showing up drunk to a crime scene. It made good TV viewing. You deserved to be fired.”

  “I work for a TV show now.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a show about psychics.”

  I slowly shake my head, hoping to shake something loose in there that will help any of this make sense, but I’m missing the bits and pieces to make that happen. A psychic? Money? What the fuck? “What the hell are you on about, Carl?”

  “It’s a show about psychics who help solve unsolved cases.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “They want to look at your case.”

  “My case? I don’t have a case, Carl. I haven’t hurt anybody.”

  Schroder nods. No doubt he expected this answer. “Okay, let me speak hypothetically here,” he says. “Let’s say you know where Detective Calhoun is.”

  “I don’t. All I know is that he’s dead.”

  “But we’re being hypothetical here, Joe.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” I tell him. “Hyper what? Hyper pathetic? I’m not good with big words.”

  He closes his eyes and pinches the top of his nose again for a few moments. “Look, Joe, this show,” he says, talking into his hand, “they’re willing to pay you twenty thousand dollars on the chance that you may know where the body is.” He pulls his hand away from his nose and interlocks his fingers with his other hand. “Giving us a location would in no way suggest your guilt. In fact both you and the show would sign waivers to say you could never discuss with anybody that you gave this information. Now, hypothetically, if we found the body, what would your guess be that there is anything the police could use to find Melissa?”

  I think about it. I set fire to Detective Calhoun’s dead body, and I buried it. There’s nothing there for the cops to find, just ashes and bone and dirt, maybe a few fragments of clothing.

  “Look, Joe, we know Melissa killed him. We know you hid the body. You have nothing to lose by telling us where he is, and a lot to gain.”

  “What does the show need with the body?” I ask, but the words are barely out of my mouth before I know the answer. They want to find it. They want to put on some stage show with the dead, probably with the late Detective Calhoun, probably some psychic surrounded by candles and going into some kind of fuck-knuckle trance. Then he’ll lead them to his remains. The TV viewing public will love it. The show will gain ratings, it’ll gain attention, the psychic on the case will gain a fan base for more shows, maybe even write a book. “Wait,” I tell him. “I’ve figured it out. The psychic wants to eat him.”

  “Yeah, Joe, that’s right.”

  “What the hell am I going to do with twenty thousand dollars?” I ask.

  “You can use it to make yourself more comfortable,” he tells me. “Money is as good in here as it is anywhere else. Hell, maybe you can use it to get yourself a better lawyer.”

  “First of all, Carl, no, money is much better out there than in here. Secondly, I don’t know where this dead guy is,” I say, and before Schroder can react I raise a hand in a stopping gesture. “But maybe I’ll think about it overnight. Twenty grand isn’t going to help the thinking, though. In fact I’m having a psychic vision of my own. I’m sensing . . . I’m sensing that if it were fifty grand I might be more helpful.”

  “No way,” Schroder says.

  “Yes way. The way I see it, Carl, Sally got paid fifty grand after you arrested me, right?” I ask, and it’s true. Last year there was a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for my capture, and somehow The Sally—the overweight, Jesus-loving maintenance worker at the police station—was given that reward. Somehow through a series of fuckups, The Sally figured out what the police couldn’t, and that led them to my door. “So if you’re going to hand money out like candy, then I want my share.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “Hyper pathetically you should get me those contracts you’re talking about. Hyper pathetically for fifty thousand dollars I might take a guess as to where Detective Calhoun is.”

  “So you’ll do it?”

  I shrug. Hypothetically I just might.

  “Clock is ticking, Joe. You have till tomorrow to decide.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I tell him. “Come back tomorrow and bring the contracts.”

  Schroder stands back up. He grabs his wet jacket and doesn’t put it on, just drapes it over one of his dry arms. He moves to the door and bangs on it. It’s opened and we don’t hug, he just walks out the door without even a good-bye. I wait in the room to be escorted back to my cell, my world is about waiting, and now I have something new to think about while I’m doing it—and that’s trying to figure out what kind of power fifty thousand dollars could buy in a place like this.

  Chapter Six

  The fact is she had a plan. A good plan. A two-person plan. There was her, and then there was him—the second person of the two-part plan. A guy by the name of Sam Winston. Sam let her down. Maybe it was something that men with girls’ names do. Sam used to be in the army. She met him over the summer when he tried to break into her house.

  She almost killed him, but she saw something in Sam, the same something others see in sick kittens and dogs with three legs, a kind something that makes you want to help. And he hadn’t been trying to break into her house, not really—it’d turned out he used to live there a few years earlier before drugs had taken away his money and chunks of his memory and sent his wife packing. He’d come back. He’d been drunk and furiously unwilling to accept that his key wasn’t fitting into the door.

  That was the thing about Christchurch—it was a small world, a world full of coincidences, and people bumped into people like that every day.

  Sam had been discharged from the army five years earlier. He hadn’t seen any action, unless you included getting so high that he crashed a fuel truck into the mess hall and injured half a dozen men, but nobody died as he told her proudly. Sam was angry at the world, angry at life, though he never told her exactly what it was he was angry about. He was happy to follow her around and do what she asked. He really was like a three-legged dog. A pet, really. Until he started to figure out who she was. By then they’d been planning on how to shoot Joe for a good two months. Then he got dollar signs in his eyes. She saw it happen. The news was on and the police had figured out her real name. There were pictures of her coming up on the screen and he kept looking at them and then at her, and his eyes widened as if big cash-register dollar signs were ringing off behind them.

  So things didn’t work out with Sam after that. That was a week ago. She had to leave him and move on. And, just like any good-hearted pet owner would do, she put him down gently.

  The trial starts Monday. Today is Thursday. She doesn’t want Joe deciding to start talking all about her because the prosecution makes him an offer he can’t refuse. She doesn’t want to shoot him on Tuesday, or Wednesday, or a month into the trial. The plan was for Monday, the plan has fallen though, but the new plan can be for Mon
day too.

  At the moment people don’t look at her and see Melissa. They see a pregnant woman on the cusp of bursting, they see a mom-to-be. What they don’t do is take a good look and wonder if she could be a killer. People are easy to fool. She’s been fooling them for years now. She’s learned that wigs and hair dye and fake eyelashes and being nine months pregnant can make you anybody you want to be. Even Schroder, good old ex–detective inspector Schroder, didn’t recognize her. She could see him trying to place her, but there was no chance. They see fat pregnant chick and don’t see beyond that. He bought the acting story hook, line, and sinker, because she gave him no reason at all to doubt her. She can be a different person from who she was yesterday, and she can be a different person tomorrow. It’s how she’s been free to do what she wants all these years. It’s how she survives.

  Right now the person she wants to be is dry. This rain is soaking through her clothes. She’s shivering. She waited five minutes on the chance Schroder noticed his keys were missing, but the detective is a former detective for a reason, and that’s probably one of them. Schroder’s car is about as messy as she’d expected it to be. Fast-food wrappers covering the mats in the backseat, children’s clothes, a car seat for a baby. Nobody is watching her. The weather is way too bad for anybody to think much beyond getting from point A to point B in a way that stops them from drowning. She said earlier to Schroder that she likes the rain, but the truth is she hates it. It surprises her that she still lives in this city. She was born here. Raised here. Raped here. Her sister was born here. Raised here. Raped here. And murdered here. There’s a lot of memories in Christchurch, not many of them any good. There are other cars in the parking lot, but she’s not concerned about anybody coming out at the wrong time and spotting her. She’s almost done here anyway. And if Schroder were to come outside now and catch her, well, she’ll just have to stab him and drive away with him in the backseat. It’d be a shame because over the last few minutes she’s come up with a very specific plan for Schroder’s future.