Joe Victim: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  “The radio doesn’t work,” she says. “But aside from that, you’re right, it almost is genuine.”

  He moves over to a mirror in the lounge. He studies the way he looks. If he pauses to think about what’s going on, he risks coming to a grinding halt. He has to keep moving with it. He’s going to be killing Joe. He suspects the next few days are all going to be about momentum, and if he doesn’t keep pushing forward then none of this is going to work. He’s sure the Red Rage will help him.

  “Are you sure we’re going to be able to get away?” he asks, tugging at the uniform. In theory it’s just as good a part of the plan as the rest, but it still gives him a bad feeling. He stares at her in the mirror and catches her eye.

  “Would it matter if we didn’t? she asks. “If somebody right now gave you the option of putting a bullet into Joe’s head, and in return you had to spend ten years in jail, would you take it?”

  “Yes,” he says. He doesn’t even have to think about it. And it wouldn’t be ten years. No judge would give him ten years for shooting the man that raped and killed his daughter. Although perhaps that’s just hopeful thinking. Other judges have given people longer for doing just that. “You?” he asks.

  “In a heartbeat,” she says.

  Knocking at the door. They both freeze.

  “Are you expecting somebody?” she asks.

  He shakes his head.

  Stella moves over to the window and peeks out from behind the blind. “It’s the same car from last night, the one with the cops.”

  “Shit,” he says, and starts to unbutton the shirt. “They can’t see me like this.”

  “Just don’t answer the door.”

  “It might be important,” he says, tugging the shirt over his head to speed things up, half the buttons still clasped. “Plus my car is in the driveway. They’ll know I’m home.” He kicks off the shoes and tugs off the trousers and is down to his underwear and socks when the knocking is repeated.

  “Hang on a second,” he calls out, and he looks left and right for something to put on, but there’s nothing. “Shit,” he says, then moves to the bathroom just off the hall and grabs a towel. He wraps it around his waist and heads to the door.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Schroder is on his way to the casino when he decides to drop in to see Raphael. The writers and producer of The Cleaner were annoyed at yesterday’s absence. He has the bad feeling that later on today or early next week somebody at the studio will be sitting down with him and telling him that was strike one, and in a disposable world he’s only going to be given one more strike and then he’s gone.

  Coming here might be his second and only other strike.

  “Detective,” Raphael says, and Raphael has a towel wrapped around his waist and nothing else on except a pair of socks, and Schroder hopes he can look as good as Raphael does when he’s that age.

  Schroder smiles. “It’s just Carl these days,” he reminds him. “Bad timing, huh?”

  “Unless you’re planning on jumping in the shower with me,” Raphael says, laughing, and Schroder laughs at the joke too even if it was predictable.

  “I just need a few minutes of your time,” Schroder says. “Should we go inside or do you want to stand on your doorstep in the cold and put on a show for your neighbors?”

  “Umm . . . well, the thing is, Carl, I’m kind of in a hurry. Can we maybe do this later?”

  “It won’t take long,” Schroder says, and it reminds him of last night, of Raphael standing on the doorstep to the community hall and not inviting them in. It makes him suspicious. Of course all the years he was a cop means everything seems suspicious to him. He feels like adding the good ol’ classic unless you have something to hide. He’s used that line plenty of times over the years to people who do have something to hide. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

  “Umm, sure, I guess.”

  Raphael turns and heads down the hallway. Schroder follows him. He’s been in this house before. This is where they came to tell Raphael and his wife that their daughter had been murdered. It was over a year ago, but being back here now makes it feel like it was only last week. Back then Raphael and his wife knew within seconds of opening the door that the news wasn’t going to be good, not when Schroder and his partner back then, Detective Landry, held out their badges and asked if they could come inside. Police didn’t show up to tell you good news—they didn’t show up and say you’ve just won the lottery or a vacation. The wife broke down before they even made it into the lounge, and Raphael and Schroder had to help her onto a couch. Raphael sat next to her and held her hand and kept shaking his head as if he could dismiss the news, and he kept saying But we saw her this morning as if those words could ward off the evil that was entering their lives. Schroder and Landry spent an hour with them. It was a life-changing hour for Raphael and his wife, and it was just one of many hours for Schroder and Landry, who had knocked on other doors and given similar news. He’s thought about Landry a lot lately, about Landry’s own life-changing hour, about Landry’s funeral almost a month ago. This house was tidier back then. Now the woman’s touch has gone, along with the woman.

  They get into the lounge. Raphael is looking around as if he’s lost something.

  “You’ve got guests?” Schroder asks.

  “What? No, no guests.”

  “You normally have two glasses of water?”

  Raphael shakes his head. “One’s from last night,” he says, glancing around the room. “I poured it and didn’t finish it and, well, you know, just ended up being too lazy to clean up. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but if you look around the house you’ll find plenty more. If you’re offering to tidy up for me, I would appreciate the help.”

  Schroder sits down on the couch. He believes him. The place doesn’t look like it’s been cleaned in a while. There’s a stack of unopened bills on the coffee table. The TV Guide next to them is from last year. It’s been used as a coaster.

  He reaches into his jacket pocket for the photograph that should have been in his car last night. He never did find where he lost it, but he did have another copy at home. There were a few things he’d copied twice. “Have you ever seen this woman before?” he asks, and he hands it over to Raphael, who is still standing, which Schroder is thankful for because if he sits it will be a view Schroder won’t want to see.

  Raphael takes it and stares at it for a few seconds. Then a few seconds more. There’s no indication of recognition. No tilting of the head like last night when he was trying to remember if the names they gave him meant anything. There’s no changing the angle of the picture to get a better look. Then slowly he’s shaking his head. He hands it back.

  “Should I?”

  “Yes,” Schroder says. “At the very least you should recognize her from the news.”

  “Why? Who is she?”

  “Her real name is Natalie Flowers,” Schroder says.

  “Oh, of course,” Raphael says. “Melissa. I didn’t recognize her. I don’t really watch a lot of news these days. It’s too depressing.”

  “So you haven’t ever seen her at one of your meetings?” Schroder asks, and he hands back the picture.

  “At a meeting?” Raphael laughs, then shakes his head. “Why the hell would she come to a meeting? He takes the photo and holds it closer to his face. Then he starts angling the photograph. He starts tilting the head. “This is Melissa?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “She doesn’t look . . .”

  When he doesn’t finish, Schroder looks for the word. “Evil?”

  Raphael doesn’t respond. He keeps staring at the photograph.

  “You recognize her, don’t you,” Schroder says.

  Raphael shakes his head. “I guess I do, you know, like you were saying, from the news. But other than that I’ve never seen her. Certainly not at one of my meetings.”

  “Are you sure about this, Raphael?”

  “Well, no, I can’t be positive. She must be usin
g disguises, right? That’s why you’ve never found her. But as far as I know, no, she’s never been. I can’t imagine any reason why she would.”

  “She might come along to enjoy the pain she’s caused,” Schroder says.

  Raphael nods. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Schroder takes the photo back and tucks it into his jacket. It was worth a shot. He stands back up. He has a job to get to, and this isn’t it.

  “Call me if you think of anything,” he says, knowing he’ll never hear from Raphael, that if Raphael does think of anything it will be the police he calls, not Schroder. Well, he’s done what he came here to do. He shakes Raphael’s hand.

  “Any time, Detective,” Raphael says, and follows Schroder to the door.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “You weren’t supposed to see any of that,” Raphael says.

  Melissa turns from the wall toward him. He’s standing in the doorway, wearing the towel and the underwear beneath and nothing else. “What is this room?” she asks.

  He takes a step toward her. “This used to be our daughter’s bedroom when she used to live at home with us. When she moved out, we turned it into a study and all her childhood stuff was put into storage. When she died we set the room up how she used to have it as a kid.”

  “Not exactly how she had it,” Melissa says, looking at the wall with newspaper articles pinned to it. This is quite fascinating. She can imagine Raphael sitting in here on the edge of the bed staring at this wall, plotting his revenge, the day turning to evening to dark to the middle of the night. Obsession mixed in with a little bit of alcohol.

  “Like I said, you weren’t supposed to be in here,” he says, taking another step toward her. He reminds her of her own father when she was being naughty. He would grab her by the arm and lead her away. Raphael looks like he wants to do just that.

  “I had to go somewhere,” Melissa says, “otherwise that policeman would have seen me.”

  “Would it have been a big deal if he had?”

  “No, no I suppose not,” Melissa says, but yes, it would have been a very big deal. What she has found in his dead daughter’s bedroom is good. Really good.

  “I suppose you want an explanation,” he says.

  “I think with what we’re planning on doing together, yes.”

  “Are you going to go to the police?”

  “That depends on your explanation,” she says, but no, of course not.

  “Give me a minute to get dressed,” he says. “And I don’t want you waiting in here. This was Angela’s room.”

  Melissa heads into the lounge and takes a seat. She had waited in here earlier, listening to Raphael and Schroder until it became obvious they were coming inside. From Angela’s room she had been able to hear them clearly, and at the same time she had studied all the interesting stuff pinned to the walls that no teenage girl would ever find interesting.

  Raphael comes in a minute later. He’s wearing the clothes he was wearing when they were out shooting, minus the boots. He definitely looked better topless, and definitely looked a whole lot better when he was in uniform. The casual handsomeness he usually displays has disappeared, his face lined with strain. He sits down on the couch opposite her and picks his water up from the coffee table and drinks half of it and then gets back up and goes into the kitchen and comes back out with a bottle of bourbon. He finishes his water and fills the glass back up with the good stuff. He offers some to Melissa and she shakes her head. It could hurt her fake baby.

  “At least now you know I’m going to pull the trigger,” he says, then grunts a small laugh.

  “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “You killed them? Both of them?” she asks.

  He nods. “They were going to defend him,” he says.

  She already understands why he did it. Had done from the moment she saw the articles on the wall of the first two lawyers that were going to defend Joe. On those articles Raphael had drawn red Xs across their faces.

  “I don’t get lawyers even at the best of times,” he says.

  “And at the worst of times?” she asks.

  “At the worst of times they’re putting their hand up to defend people like Joe Middleton. These two bastards were using the tragedy of my daughter to make a name for themselves, to become famous, famous in lawyering circles so they could then represent other Joes out there and become more famous and earn more money. People who are capable of that are capable of anything.”

  Melissa says nothing. She knows what people are capable of. She also knows Raphael will carry on without prompting. She senses it will be good for him. Cathartic. This is something he’s kept inside. She picks up the glass she hadn’t touched earlier and takes a sip. The water has made it to room temperature.

  “I went there,” he says. “I made an appointment with the first lawyer and he saw me, and I begged him not to defend Joe. Really begged him. And you know what? He said he understood where I was coming from. He said he could imagine how I felt. Can you believe that? This son of a bitch tells me he knows how I must be feeling. Then he went on to say that everybody is due a defense, that’s what the law says, and Joe was entitled to what the law says just as anybody was entitled, and that didn’t make sense to me. I mean, you have a guy disregarding the law, disregarding humanity, then suddenly he has civil rights? Fuck that,” he says, and it’s the first Melissa has heard him swear.

  “So you started sending him death threats,” she says.

  He shakes his head. “No. I read about that, how both lawyers got death threats in the mail, but none of that was me.”

  “You just killed them,” she says.

  “Yes. But not right away. That first guy, after talking to him, I gave it a month. I was sure if he thought about it more, he’d come around to my way of thinking. He’d have to, right? So a month later I thought it’d be better if I met up with him in a less formal location because I hoped that would make him less formal and more human. So I went back to his work in the evening and waited for him to finish, and I followed him to his car.”

  He holds up his hand to her. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says, but he’s wrong. He has no idea what she’s thinking. “I didn’t follow him to hurt him, I just wanted to plead my case with him. I wanted to remind him of the pain he was going to cause.”

  “And he didn’t listen to you?”

  “No, he listened. That’s the thing,” Raphael says, becoming more animated now as he lifts his hands in the air. “He listened to everything I had to say, and even then he refused to stop defending Joe.”

  “And that made you mad.”

  “It would make anybody mad.”

  “So you killed him.”

  “It wasn’t like that. It was an accident.”

  “How?”

  He runs his fingers up over his forehead and through his hair, then slowly shakes his head a little. “I hit him,” he says, then exhales deeply. “With a hammer.”

  “You normally carry a hammer in the car?”

  “No.”

  “So you took one with you.”

  “I guess.”

  “And you spoke to him without him seeing the hammer, right? So you had it in your pocket, or tucked in the waistband of your pants. You took it with you because you knew if things went badly and he didn’t take your side, you were going to kill him. You went there a month later because you knew the police would go through his appointment schedule, but would only be interested in people he’d seen recently.”

  “I know that’s how it looks,” he says, “but it really wasn’t the way I thought it would play out.”

  “How did you think it would play out if he didn’t agree with you?”

  Raphael shrugs. “I don’t know. Not that way, anyway.”

  Melissa is nodding. It’s a great conversation. She wishes she was having it with Joe. They could talk about it and get naked. “Then what did you do?”

  “I stuff
ed him into the trunk of his car, then I went and got my own car. I pulled up next to him and transferred him, then drove him out to . . . well, I buried the body.”

  “Out where we went shooting today,” Melissa says. “That’s where, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did it make you feel any better?”

  “It didn’t bring Angela back, but I knew it wouldn’t. But yeah, it did. It made me feel a little better. Within days another lawyer was putting his hand up to take on the case. I didn’t bother going and seeing him because I knew the conversation would be the same. So I took care of him too. This time I left him for people to find. I thought it might make more of a message, you know, to other lawyers. And it did. Joe’s third lawyer was court appointed. The third lawyer seems like a man who really doesn’t want the job. So, you know, no reason to hurt him. At least not yet.

  “And somebody else would have killed them anyway,” he adds. “Somebody was sending those guys death threats.”

  “You killed two innocent people,” she says, not that she could care less, but she thinks that Raphael should see her caring more.

  “They weren’t innocent,” he says.

  “I’m sure they’d disagree.”

  “So . . .” he says, “does this change things?”

  She holds off on answering for a few seconds. Like she really has to think about it. Like weighing it up is a really tough decision. Only it’s not. It’s an easy decision. And it makes last night’s decision to approach Raphael look even better.

  “I just . . . I don’t know, I’ve never known a killer before,” she says. “I should be happy because it just confirms you’ll take the shot on Monday, but, well, to be honest . . . it’s a little weird. You killed two people.”

  “Two bad people,” he says.

  “Two bad people,” she repeats. “Lawyers who were doing bad things.”

  “Exactly,” he says. “So the question is the same—does this change things?”

  “No,” she says.