Joe Victim

by Paul Cleave

  “He’s asking for something I can’t help arrange,” Schroder says.

  “And if we do arrange it,” Wellington says, “it goes against what’s best for my client. There is no way we can have a police escort to the body, and then try to convince a jury Joe had no idea where it was.”

  Schroder agrees. “And there’s no way we can have a police escort, then have Jones use his psychic abilities to find the body.”

  They’re going around in circles. The deal isn’t going to happen. Jonas won’t get to show off his body-finding abilities. Schroder’s not going to get his bonus. Joe won’t get his money. And Detective Inspector Robert Calhoun isn’t going to be going home. Schroder doesn’t care about the first three things, but the fourth one is important to him. It’s been important since Calhoun went missing. Important enough for him to still be in this room trying to figure out a way to make Joe’s life easier.

  “How does it feel?” Wellington asks. “Working for a guy like that?”

  Schroder winces at the question. The way Wellington asks it makes it pretty obvious what Wellington’s views are. It makes Schroder think everybody must be feeling the same way. Yet despite it all, Jonas is doing well for himself. Not everybody can hate him. “Probably about the same as it must feel defending Joe,” Schroder says.

  Wellington slowly nods. “That bad, huh?”

  “Look,” Schroder says, “I know you don’t want him to take this deal, I see that, but Detective Calhoun deserves to be returned. That’s what we have to focus on here. He was a cop, damn it, a good cop, and like any cop he deserves a proper burial, he deserves to be mourned and remembered as something other than the policeman who disappeared and never came back.”

  Wellington says nothing as he takes it all in, and Schroder is reminded of how quickly this guy thinks, of how far ahead he really is.

  “There has to be a way,” Schroder adds.

  “There is no way,” Wellington says. “As soon as we involve the police Jones doesn’t get his deal.”

  Schroder gets up and starts pacing the room. Wellington watches him. He starts running different scenarios through his head. If he were still a cop, this would be a whole lot easier. But if he were a cop, he wouldn’t be coming to Joe with a deal that gives a serial killer fifty thousand dollars. The cops aren’t going to get Calhoun’s location from Joe. They’ve tried. The prosecution has tried.

  The only way to get that location is to pay him.

  And the only way Joe will tell them is to show them.

  And the only way Joe can show them is if it doesn’t involve the police.

  And that’s just not going to happen.

  “I’ll try working on him,” Wellington says. “See if he can just tell us the location. I mean, if he doesn’t tell you, he doesn’t get the money, and that’s why he’s doing this. I think he really believes he’s going to be going free after the trial.”

  Schroder turns and leans against the wall. He stares at Wellington. An idea is coming to him. He just has to work at it for a few more moments. “And what do you think?”

  Wellington shrugs, but then gives his view. “I think the very fact he thinks he’s going free, and the fact he thinks everybody is believing what he’s saying, may just prove he really is completely insane.”

  The idea is close now. Schroder can see it stretching out ahead of him. He just has to follow the path and shore up the crossroads. He pushes himself off from the wall and sits down opposite the lawyer. “What if,” he says, then doesn’t follow it up. He’s staring at the wall, at the cinder block, but really he’s on the path and checking that the angles all line up.

  Wellington doesn’t interrupt him.

  “What if,” Schroder says again, and yes, yes this might work. “What if we make two deals? We stick with our deal. The people I work for pay Joe his money for the location of Detective Calhoun.”

  “Okay. And what’s deal two?”

  “We go to the prosecution and we ask for immunity for Joe on what happened to Detective Calhoun. We all know he didn’t kill him. He buried him, sure, and he probably set up the circumstances and no doubt he would have killed him anyway, but we have Joe on all these other homicides. Pinning Calhoun on him isn’t going to make a difference. Technically we don’t need him on this one.”

  We. He hears himself saying the word. Once a cop, always a cop. At least according to those who are no longer cops. To everybody else he’s just a pain in the ass.

  “Technically,” Wellington says, nodding. “I don’t think too many people would be happy hearing that.”

  “I’m not even happy saying it,” Schroder says.

  “I think I can pretty much tell you the prosecution won’t go for it.”

  Schroder gets up and starts pacing again. “We ask for immunity, and in exchange for it we offer to give them the location of Calhoun’s body. They still have plenty to convict Joe with, so there’s no reason for them to say no. They get Calhoun back. It’s a win-win situation. Two deals. And Joe gets his one hour of freedom in which to show them the body.”

  Wellington sits still and Schroder can see him absorbing the information. He’s churning it over in his four-hundred-dollar-an-hour head. “It might work.”

  “It will work,” Schroder says.

  “It might. The other problem is the police aren’t going to be too keen about leaving the body where they find it for your boss to come along and take the credit.”

  “First of all, he’s not my boss,” Schroder says. “And second of all, they will go for it if it means bringing home one of their own.”

  Wellington almost laughs. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  Wellington shakes his head. “There is no way they’re going to go for that. This is real life, Carl, not one of your TV shows. The police aren’t a tool for Jonas Jones and the TV network.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then why suggest otherwise?”

  “Because it’s the only way we’re going to get Calhoun back,” Schroder says.

  “No,” he says. “And you know what? I’m not even going to suggest it. I go in there with that idea, and I get laughed back out. Nobody will take me seriously again. There isn’t one cop on the force who would want to help out Jonas Jones.”

  “They’re not doing it for Jones,” Schroder says. “They’re doing it for Calhoun, and that’s a big difference. A really big difference. They’re doing it for Calhoun and his family. That’s the selling point to all of this.”

  Wellington is still shaking his head. “And if it’s a trap?”

  “It can’t be,” Schroder says. “We only brought this deal to him yesterday. I bet if we check his visitor logs we’ll find the only people he’s seen or spoken to are you, me, his psychiatrists, and his mother. There’s no way he could have set something up in that time.”

  “And if you’re wrong?”

  “I’m not wrong,” Schroder says.

  “Okay,” Wellington says. “I agree. You’re not wrong. But it’s still not going to work. Even with a small team taking him out there, there’s still a big problem you’re overlooking.”

  “Yeah? And what’s that?”

  “These people need to keep their mouths shut.”

  “They’re cops,” Schroder says. “Keeping your mouth shut is part of the job. We just need four or five people who can be trusted to do their job.”

  Wellington is still shaking his head, but Schroder can see that slowly he’s changing his mind. “We have to at least try,” Schroder says.

  “Okay. I’ll go to the prosecution with it. I mean, it can’t hurt.”

  “If Joe doesn’t keep his mouth shut he’ll blow it all to hell,” Schroder says, and he feels like he’s sold a part, just a little part, of himself to the devil. That’s one part to Jonas Jones and one part to Joe Middleton. Soon he’ll be out of parts.

  “He’ll keep it shut,” Wellington says. “I point out the benefits to the prosecution, I point out it
can’t be a trap, and I point out the good faith on my client’s part.”

  “Point out what you need to,” Schroder says. “Let’s just get this done before this whole thing turns into a circus.”

  Wellington taps his index finger on the surface of the table. “My daughter is a university student,” he says, and Schroder knows there are two ways this can go. Wellington is either going to say a guy with a daughter doesn’t want a guy like Joe out on the streets. Or he’s going to say something worse. He’s going to say something bad has happened to his daughter. Only he’s wrong, because Wellington doesn’t tell him either of those. Instead he says, “She phoned me an hour ago. My daughter studies law. She’s into her third year. She loves it. Wants to be like me. Wants to defend innocent people.”

  “She’s going to be in for a shock,” Schroder says.

  “Because there are no innocent people?”

  “They’re just rare, that’s all.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not as rare as you think. But you want to have a guess as to what the Canterbury University students are going to be doing on Monday?”

  It doesn’t take much of a guess. “Protesting,” Schroder says.

  “Yeah? What do you think, for or against the death penalty?” Wellington asks.

  Schroder shrugs. “I don’t know. Half for it, half against it, I guess.”

  The lawyer smiles. “Neither,” he says. “They’re planning on going just for the show. My daughter says it’s the talking point all over social media at the moment. Hundreds if not more students are going to treat the event as a party. There’s even a competition where the student who can get the most airtime on camera wins a bottle of vodka. So for the chance of one bottle of vodka a bunch of these kids are going to be dressing up in costumes and trying to get into every camera angle they can to get on TV, but that’s not why they’re going-it’s just an additional bonus. They’re going because it’s an excuse to drink and be loud and drink some more and throw up in the gutters. They’re going because they think it’s cool. Even my daughter is going. They don’t care about Joe Middleton or the justice system because all they care about is drinking. That’s their generation. It’s my daughter’s generation. Kind of makes you wonder why the hell we’re doing all of this, why we’re trying to make a safer world when that’s who we’re making it safer for.”

  “I’m not sure what you want me to say,” Schroder says.

  “Nothing you can say. It is what it is. But I just want to point out that if you think you can avoid this turning into a circus, then you’re probably the only genuinely insane person I’ve truly ever met.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  If Raphael had known he would be having guests, he would have tidied up more. He feels embarrassed and hopes Stella doesn’t think he always lives like this. He actually does live like this pretty much all of the time these days. For a while there he used to care about how badly he lived, how badly he ate, then, thank God, he just stopped caring.

  “Sorry about the mess,” he tells her, but she doesn’t seem to mind. He suspects her own house is in a similar state after she lost the baby and her husband left. She rubs her belly as if she were still pregnant. He remembers his wife doing that all the time when she was pregnant with Angela. He remembers lying in bed beside her at night with his hand on her stomach, feeling the baby kick, his wife smiling and amused, him being somewhat freaked out by it all. Back then he wasn’t seeing too much difference between a kicking baby and what happened to that poor bastard over the dinner table in Alien.

  “Can I get you a drink?” he asks.

  “Just water.”

  He goes into the kitchen. The dishes from breakfast are still scattered over the counter, along with a week’s worth of toast crumbs and splashes of water around the sink. He grabs two fresh glasses and fills them and gets out to the lounge. Stella is looking at the photographs on the wall.

  “This is Angela?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “And these are your grandchildren?” she asks, looking at a photograph of the kids.

  “Adelaide is six,” he says. “She started school this year. She goes to school in England and keeps hoping her school is secretly like that school in Harry Potter. Hoghoofs, or whatever it’s called. Vivian is four and wants to be a ballerina,” he says, “and a pop singer too.”

  “Cute,” she says.

  “I don’t get to see them,” he says, and he’s angry at his son-in-law for that, which is why there are no photos of him on the walls, but at the same time he can’t blame him for moving away. Can’t blame him at all. “I get to speak to them once a month if I’m lucky.”

  Stella hands him a plastic bag full of clothes that’s been riding in the car with them all day. “Try it on,” she says. He pulls out the light blue shirt and the dark blue pants. “Should be your size,” she says.

  “Where did you get it from?”

  “It’s a rental costume,” she says. “Try not to damage it otherwise I won’t get my deposit back.”

  He isn’t sure if she’s joking. He unfolds the police uniform and looks it over. “It seems real,” he says.

  “Of course it does. That’s the entire point of costume-rental shops. Go ahead, try it on.”

  “You really think this part is necessary?”

  “Hopefully not, but I imagine it will be. There’s going to be a lot of confusion and a lot of people running around. Wearing this will stop you from being arrested.”

  He takes the uniform down to the bedroom. His bedroom, like the rest of the house, isn’t a mess, but it isn’t exactly tidy. The bed hasn’t been made and there are clothes on the floor, but it’s not like the carpet is stained with food or the windowsills with mold. He lays the uniform out on the bed and quickly changes. It’s a little loose, but not bad.

  “Well? What do you think?” he asks, walking back out into the lounge.

  Stella smiles. It’s the first time he’s seen any positive emotion in her. Even her eyes are sparkling. It must be true, what they say about men in uniform. If he were twenty years younger, hadn’t lost his daughter, wasn’t still technically married, and if Stella weren’t a rape victim seeking out revenge for the loss of her unborn baby, well, maybe things would happen while he was wearing that uniform.

  “It fits pretty good,” he says. “You must have a keen eye for sizes. I’m impressed it even comes with the belt,” he says, and fiddles with the compartment holding the handcuffs. “And it even has a radio. All this stuff looks genuine.”

  “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?”