Joe Victim

by Paul Cleave

  She puts the lid back on the juice and puts it into the fridge and looks at the slices of pizza in there and decides against them. There are some chocolate bars in a side compartment. She peels one open and takes a bite, and stuffs the remaining bars-four of them-into her pocket. Thanks, Derek. She finishes off the open one while carrying the briefcase upstairs. The stereo in the bedroom is pumping out a song she recognizes. She used to have the album back when she was a different person, more of a carefree, CD-listening kind of person. It’s The Rolling Stones. A greatest-hits package, she can tell by the way one song follows another. Right now Mick is screaming out about blotting out the sun. He wants the world to be black. She wants that too. He sounds like he’s singing about the middle of winter at five o’clock in New Zealand. She hums along with it. Derek is still singing, masking every sound she is making.

  She sits down on the bed. There’s an oil heater running and the room is warm. The furniture is a good match for the house, and the house looks like somebody ought to take a match to it. The bed is soft and tempts her to put her feet up and prop a pillow behind her and take a nap, but that would also be tempting the bacteria in the pillowcase to make friends with her. She pops open the briefcase and takes out a newspaper and reads over the front page while she waits. It’s an article about some guy who’s been terrorizing the city. Killing women. Torture. Rape. Homicide. The Christchurch Carver. Joe Middleton. He was arrested twelve months ago. His trial begins on Monday. She is also mentioned in the article. Melissa X. Though the article also mentions her real name, Natalie Flowers, Melissa only thinks of herself as Melissa these days. Has done for the last couple of years.

  A couple of minutes go by and she’s still sitting on the bed when Derek, wiping a towel at his hair, steps out of the bathroom surrounded by white steam and the smell of shaving balm. He has a towel wrapped around his waist. A tattoo of a snake winds its way from the towel up his side and over his shoulder, with its tongue forking across his neck. Some of the snake is finely detailed, parts of it really just sketched outlines with more to follow. There are various scars that go hand in hand with a guy like Derek, no doubt an even mixture of good times and bad times-good times for him and bad times for others.

  She lowers the newspaper and smiles.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asks.

  Melissa turns the briefcase toward him and reaches out and presses pause on the stereo. The briefcase actually belongs to Joe Middleton. He left it with her the same day he never came back. “I’m here with the other half of your payment,” she says.

  “You know where I live?”

  It’s a stupid question. Melissa doesn’t point it out to him. “I like to know who I’m doing business with.”

  He unwraps the towel from his waist, the entire time keeping his eyes on the cash in the briefcase. His dick sways left and right as he starts drying his hair.

  “It’s all there?” he asks, still drying his hair, his face at the moment behind the towel and his voice muffled.

  “Every dollar. Where’s the stuff?”

  “It’s here,” he says.

  She knows it’s here. She’s been following him ever since their initial meeting two days ago, where she gave him the first half of the payment. She knows he picked up the stuff only an hour ago. He went from there to here with no stops in between with a bag full of items his parole officer wouldn’t be too pleased about.

  “Where?” she asks.

  He wraps the towel back around his waist. She figures she could have just come in here and shot him and searched the house anyway, but she needs him. The stuff probably won’t be hard to find. She figures a guy who would ask You know where I live? to somebody standing in their bedroom is the kind of guy who hides things in the roof space or under the floor.

  “Show me,” he says, nodding toward the money.

  She slides the briefcase toward him on the bed. He steps forward. The twenty grand is made up in fifty- and twenty-dollar bills. They’re stacked neatly into piles with rubber bands around them. Over the last few years most of her income has been through blackmailing people or burglaries, some from the men she’s killed, but a few months ago she came into some pretty good money. Forty thousand dollars, to be precise. He thumbs through some of it and decides it must all be there.

  He moves over to the wardrobe. He drags a box of clothes out then lifts the patch of carpet and digs a screwdriver into the edge of the floor and Melissa finds herself rolling her eyes, thinking how lucky guys like Derek are that they can’t be charged for stupidity along with other crimes. He pries up the boards. He pulls out an aluminum case the length of his arm. Melissa stands up so he can lay it on the bed. He pops the lid open. There is a rifle broken into separate pieces, all of it slotting into foam cutouts.

  “AR-fifteen,” he says. “Lightweight, uses a high-velocity, small-caliber round, extremely accurate. Scope too, as requested.”

  She nods. She’s impressed. Derek may be stupid, but being stupid doesn’t mean you can’t be useful. “That’s half of it,” she says.

  He goes back to the manhole. Reaches in and pulls out a small rucksack. It’s mostly black with plenty of red trim. He sits it on the bed and opens it. “C-four,” he says. “Two blocks, two detonators, two triggers, two receivers. Enough to blow up a house. Not enough to do much more. You know how to use it?”

  “Show me.”

  He picks up one of the blocks. It’s the size of a bar of soap. “It’s safe,” he says. “You can shoot it. Drop it. Burn it. Hell, you can even microwave it. You can do this,” he says, and starts to squeeze it. “You can mold it into any shape. You take one of these,” he says, and picks up what looks like a metal pencil, only with wires coming from the end of it, “and stab it in. Attach the other end to these receivers,” he says, “then it’s just a matter of firing the trigger. You’ve got a range of a thousand feet, further if it’s line of sight.”

  “How long does the battery in the receiver last?”

  “A week. Tops.”

  “Anything else I need to know?”

  “Yeah. Don’t mix them up,” he says, and holds up one of the remotes. “See this piece of yellow tape I’ve put across it? It lines up with the piece of tape I’ve put on this detonator. So this,” he says, holding up the detonator with the tape, “goes with this,” he says, holding both the remote and detonator together.

  “Okay.”

  “That’s it,” he says, and starts packing them into the bag.

  “I need your help doing something else,” she says.

  He keeps putting things away. “What kind of something?”

  “I want you to shoot somebody,” she says.

  He looks up at her and shakes his head, but the question doesn’t faze him and doesn’t slow down his packing. “That’s not my thing.”

  “You sure?” She holds up the newspaper and shows him a picture of Joe Middleton, the Christchurch Carver. “Him,” she says. “You shoot him, and I’ll pay you what you want.”

  “Huh,” he says, then shakes his head again. “He’s in custody,” he says. “It’s impossible.”

  “His trial starts next week. That means transport every day, twice a day, back and forth from jail to the courthouse. Five days a week. That’s five times a week he’s going to step out of a police car and make his way into the courts, and five times a week he’s going to step back out of the courts and into a police car. I already have a spot where he can be shot from, and an escape route.”

  Derek shakes his head again. “Things like that aren’t always as they seem.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You think they’re just going to drive him the same way every day, and just drop him off outside the front door? That’s where your spot looks over, right?”

  She hadn’t thought of that. “Then what?”

  “They’re going to mix up the route. They’re going to try and get him there in secret. They might put him in a normal car. Or a van.”
/>   “You think so?”

  “A trial this big? Yeah. I’d put money on it,” he says. “So whatever plan you think you might be hatching, it isn’t going to work. Too many variables. You think you can just hide in the building somewhere and take a shot? Which building? Which direction is he coming from?”

  “The courthouse doesn’t move,” she says. “That’s not a variable.”

  “Uh huh. And which entrance will he be using? They’re going to mix that up too. That’s why whatever spot you think you’re going to shoot him from is probably not going to work.”

  “What if I can find out the route? And the way he’ll be going into the courthouse?”

  “How you going to do that?”

  “I have my ways.”

  He shakes his head. She’s getting sick of all the negativity. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “It’s just too hard a job. Shooting somebody like Joe, nobody’s going to get away.”

  “Who can help me?”

  He puts a hand to his face and strokes the bottom of his chin. He gives it some serious thought. Then comes up with an answer. “I don’t know anyone.”

  “I’ll pay you a finder’s fee,” she says, trying not to sound desperate, but the fact is she is desperate. She’d already had a shooter lined up for this, but it fell through. Now she’s running out of time.

  “There is nobody,” he says. “Sourcing weapons is one thing,” he says, “but it’s not like I have a Rolodex full of people we can call if we want somebody dead. It’s the sort of thing you have to do yourself.”

  “Please,” she says.

  He sighs, as if the idea of letting down a pretty lady is just too painful for him. “Look, there may be somebody I can call, okay? But it’ll take a while.”

  “I need a name in the next few days,” she says.

  He laughs, his mouth opening so wide she can see a few missing teeth near the back. She hates seeing that kind of thing. Hates people with missing teeth about as much as she hates being laughed at. “Lady,” Derek says, and she hates being called lady too-it’s impressive Derek has just gone three for three. “It’s just not going to happen. Even if my guy could do that, he would never accept to do it so quickly. Killing somebody is about homework,” he says. “It’s about the money too, but not this late in the game.”

  “So you won’t call him?” she asks.

  “There’s just no point. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Then show me how to put the rifle together.”

  “It’s simple,” he says, and he picks it up piece by piece and attaches it, metal locking into metal, each piece making a satisfying click, him telling her along the way what each piece is called. It takes him less than a minute.

  “Again, but slower,” she says. “Pretend I’ve never used a gun before,” she says, but of course she’s used a gun before, and she’ll be using one again soon too. Real soon. As soon as he’s finished showing her how.

  He takes it apart. Puts it back together. This time it takes three minutes. He shows her how to load it. Then he takes it apart and puts it back into the case and shuts the lid and latches it closed.

  “Anything else?”

  “Ammunition,” she says.

  He unzips the front of the rucksack with the C-four buried inside. Reaches in and pulls out one box of ammunition. “There’s two more just like it in the bag,” he says. “Point two two three Remington,” he says. “All armor-piercing rounds.”

  “Thank you,” she says.

  She shoots him twice in the chest through the newspaper, the silencer allowing the neighbors to keep on being neighborly without fighting the need to call the police. She knows shooting the guy who gave you the guns is somewhat of a cliché, but it’s a cliché for a reason. She figures that arms dealers, just like taxi drivers and helicopter pilots, always know they’ll never make it to retirement. He drops where he stands. The look on his face is one she’s seen before, a look of disbelief mixed with anger and fear. She puts the pistol back into the briefcase along with the newspaper. She goes over to the manhole and reaches in and finds another bag. It’s most of the original money she gave him. Which means he probably used some of it to buy the gun and explosives. This is his profit.

  “I believe you,” she says, looking down at him, and he would thank her for agreeing with him, but all he can do is slowly open and close his mouth, a spit bubble of blood growing and shrinking. “If I can’t find somebody to shoot Joe for money, maybe I can find them to shoot him for another reason. Thanks for everything,” she says, “and I’m going to keep the bag too,” she says, holding it up. “I like the color.”

  She guesses he has another minute to live, two at the most. She takes one of his chocolate bars out of her pocket and starts working away at it. She enjoys the sugar rush about the same amount as she enjoys watching Derek die. Which is a lot. She starts the stereo back up while he’s doing it and the world for Derek, just like The Stones warned him earlier, becomes as black as night.

  Chapter Two

  “You passed the test,” he says, and it’s just more bullshit that I’ve heard for the last twelve months, and to be honest I’ve stopped listening to it. It seems people have made up their minds. Somehow this topsy-turvy world has taken upon itself to convict me without even getting to know me.

  I look up from the table I was staring at to the guy doing all the talking. He’s got more hair on his face than on his head, and I start wondering how flammable it is, starting with the comb-over. He seems to be waiting for an answer, but I’m not sure what he’s going on about. My short-term memory since being in jail has packed its bags and left-but my long-term goals are still the same.

  “What test?” I ask, and I ask not because it interests me, but because at the very least it relieves the boredom. If only for a moment. “Joe isn’t not remembering test,” I add, just for fun, and the words sound a little over the top, even to me, and I regret them.

  The man’s name, Benson Barlow, sounds pretentious, and in case you weren’t quite sure he even has leather elbow patches on his jacket to drive home the point. His thin smile looks obnoxious. In other times, better times, I’d cut that smile off his face and show him how it looked hanging all bloody in his fingers. Unfortunately these aren’t the best of times. They’re the worst.

  “The test,” he repeats. He looks smug. He has that annoying look people get when there’s something they know that you don’t, and they’re dying to tell you and trying to stretch it out for as long as they can because they like being the only one to know. I hate people like that almost as much as I hate people who say Open mouth, insert foot. But, to be fair, I hate other people too. I’m an equal-rights kind of guy. “The test you took. Half an hour ago.”

  “Joe took a test?” I ask, but of course I remember the test. It’s like he said-it was only half an hour ago. My short-term memory may not be that great these days when every day is the same as the last, but I’m not an idiot.

  The psychiatrist leans forward an interlocks his fingers. He must have seen other psychiatrists doing that on TV or maybe they taught it in psych 101 just before they taught him how to sew on the leather patches. Wherever he learned it, he doesn’t look as good doing it as he must think. This whole thing is a big deal for him. It’s a big deal for everybody. He’s interviewing the Christchurch Carver for the people who want to lock me away, and he’s trying to find out just how insane the Carver really is, and he’s learning that I’m a big bowl of retard.

  “You took a test,” he says. “It was thirty minutes ago. In this very room.”

  This very room is an interview room that is an awful room by anybody’s standards, particularly by Benson Barlow’s, I imagine, yet is nicer than the cell I currently live in. It has cinder block walls and a concrete floor and a concrete ceiling. It’s like a bomb shelter, only one that would collapse in on you if a bomb actually hit it, which, to be honest, would actually be a relief. It has a table and three chairs and nothing else, and right now o
ne of those chairs is empty. My chair is bolted to the floor and I have one hand cuffed to it. I don’t know why. They think I’m a threat, but I’m not. I’m a nice guy. I keep telling everybody. Nobody believes me.

  “Here?” I ask, looking around at the different concrete views. “I don’t remember.”

  His smile widens, he’s trying to give me the look that suggests he knew what my response would be, and I get the idea that maybe he did. “See, Joe, the problem is this. You want the world to think you’re mentally challenged, but you’re not. You’re a sick, twisted man, nobody will ever question that, but this test?” he says, holding up a five-sheet questionnaire that I filled out earlier, “this test proves you’re not insane.”

  I don’t answer him. I get the bad feeling he’s leading somewhere with this. And the smirk on his face tells me it’s not somewhere I want to go.

  “This question here,” he says, and his voice rises and makes it sound like a question. He points to one that was pretty easy for me to answer. Some of the questions were multi-choice, some of them I had to fill in. He reads it out. “It says What color is this dog? And what did you tick? You ticked yellow. The dog is red, Joe, yet you ticked yellow.”

  “It’s yellowish,” I tell him.

  “This one here? If Bob is taller than Greg, and Greg is taller than Alice, who is the tallest? You wrote Steve, and then you said that Steve is a fag,” he says, and the way he says it is enough to make me laugh, but the prospect of where he’s going is enough to keep me worried, so everything balances out and I stare impassively at him.

  “Steve is tallish,” I tell him.

  “There is no Steve,” he says.

  “What have you got against Steve?” I ask.

  “This test has sixty questions in it. You got every single one of them wrong. Now that takes some real effort, Joe. Forty of them are multiple choice. Statistically you should have gotten a quarter of those right. At the least, a couple. But you got none. Only way you could get none right would be if you knew the right answers and chose the wrong ones.”