Joe Victim: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  Deciding there’s no more fun to be had at Caleb’s expense, they carry on, a cell door is opened further down from me and out of my line of sight. Thirty seconds later it’s closed, this time no doubt with Caleb on the inside. Caleb Cole is a killer. He was in jail for killing, he was released, and then he killed some more. Some people just have it in them. Some people say a serial killer can’t change their spots.

  The same guards who escorted Caleb to his cell now come to my cell and the door opens up. It means they’re going to take me somewhere, and I figure somewhere has to be a lot more interesting than here. They come into my cell.

  Adam looks like one of those guys who spends two hours a day in the gym and two hours in the evening in front of a mirror watching his hard work pay off. The other guard, Glen, looks like he’s probably right there alongside Adam the entire time. I bet they get together once or twice a week to fuck each other senseless and talk about how much they hate gay guys. Adam stands in front of me, muscles bulging at his uniform, the kind of muscles that a blunt screwdriver could bounce off. Some of the guys in here have found religion since being locked behind bars. They say Jesus will provide. I look around, but Jesus doesn’t provide me with a sharp screwdriver. All He’s giving me are the same two assholes who have used those muscles He provided them to push me around almost every day since being here. Into walls. Into the floor. Into doors.

  “Let’s go,” Adam says.

  “Where am I going?”

  He shakes his head. He looks angry. Maybe the bench press is broken. “Un-fucking believable,” he says, “but you’re going home, Joe.”

  My heart skips a couple of beats and I develop some kind of tunnel vision, where the walls disappear and all I can see is Adam as he’s talking to me. But that’s not all I can see—I can see myself walk through the door of my apartment and lie down on my own bed. I see women in my future. I see other dead people too—like Adam, like Barlow, like Glen. I can’t talk. My mouth hangs open and my eyes stretch wide and I can feel a goofy smile forming and I just. Can’t. Talk.

  “The charges have all been dropped,” Glen says, and his face is scrunched up like he’s been sucking on a bad piece of fruit. Or on a good piece of Adam.

  “Some stupid fucking technicality,” Adam adds.

  I still can’t talk. All I can do is smile.

  “Let’s go,” Adam says, and he almost spits the words at me and, just like that, my prison experience is over.

  Chapter Four

  The days are getting shorter. Colder. Most days the forecast says tomorrow is going to snow yet it doesn’t get there, and Schroder is never sure whether to blame the weatherman or Mother Nature. Last year had a summer that felt like it wasn’t going to end, with warm days late into May. This summer was on the same track until a few weeks ago. Earlier in the year a heat wave scorched the city and took lives. In this weather it’s hard to remember those times. The good thing about the cold is that it keeps the loonies inside because it’s too miserable to be outside mugging people. Crime always has a way of being scaled back in the winter. People at work are leaving houses that feel like refrigerators and nobody really wants to break into those. So it’s a good time of the year to be a cop. Only Carl Schroder isn’t a cop anymore. Hasn’t been for over three weeks, since the night he killed that woman and his rank—along with his gun and badge and all the shitty benefits that came along with it, including the shitty pay—was taken away.

  Every day since losing his job he’s still felt like a cop. It’s annoying. Every day for the first two weeks he woke up and wanted to put on the badge and ended up putting on sweatpants and a jacket and hung around the house all day helping his wife and being a better dad to his kids. Every night he went to sleep seeing the woman he shot and hating that he had to make that decision and knowing he’d make the same one again. The third week he worked. His new job doesn’t require him to shoot people.

  This is now his second week on the job. The drive out to the prison is miserable. It was raining when he woke up, raining when he ate breakfast, raining when he got the phone call to come out here, and even though the forecast for tomorrow is supposed to be fine, he’s sure it’ll be raining then too. The window wipers make it all clear before the rain turns it back into a blur. There are paddocks full of cows standing in mud, sheep wearing drenched woolen jerseys, and still there are farmers out there making the circle of life happen, making food, making milk, making money, driving around in their tractors as the rain keeps on coming. The grass shoulders off the side of the road are flooded. Small shrubs are under water. Birds are flapping around in it. The window wipers are struggling to cope. Every few miles there are warning billboards about not driving tired, or speeding, or driving drunk. One says The faster you go the bigger the mess. Superman would disagree. The faster he went the more people he saved. He once went so fast he went back in time and fixed a lot of messes before they began. Christchurch needs somebody like him.

  A truck coming toward him hits a flooded section of road, splashing water up over Schroder’s windshield—more than the wipers can immediately handle—so for two seconds he can’t see a thing, a scary two seconds when you’re driving blindly on a motorway. He puts his foot on the brake and slowly presses it down until the windscreen clears. When it does, the view doesn’t change. Just more rain, more gray sky.

  He has the radio on as he drives. He’s listening to a national talk radio station. People are phoning in and the DJ is making conversation. It’s current events, and the current event people want to talk about is the death penalty. It’s been ongoing for the last few months. It’s the national debate. People are for it. Other people are against it. Emotions are strong. Those for it hate those against it. Same goes for the other side. There is no middle ground. No sitting on the fence. People can’t understand other people’s point of view. It’s dividing the country, dividing neighbors, dividing family and friends. Schroder, personally, he’s for it. He sees no problem dishing out a little of the same pain that killers have inflicted on this city. Half the people phoning in to the radio station share his opinion. Half don’t. Either way they want to be heard.

  “It’s not about justice,” somebody says, a guy by the name of Stewart who is phoning in from Auckland, where, according to Stewart, the rain is of biblical proportions. “It’s about punishment,” he says, which is pretty biblical too, come to think of it.

  It’s a twenty-minute drive to the prison that takes thirty-five in this weather. He hears a dozen different viewpoints. The DJ is trying to be impartial. Schroder could flick the dial and hear the same debate on about six other stations. The good news is that there is going to be a referendum. A vote is taking place. For the first time that Schroder can remember, the government is going to listen to the people. At least they are saying they will—after all, it’s an election year. The leading question to the prime minster and to those running against him is: Will the next government follow the will of the people? And the answer is yes. That means, technically, by the end of the year the death penalty could be back in place, if that’s what the people want. He wonders what direction that will take the country. Back into the dark ages? Or into a future where people aren’t killing each other as often?

  Hard to know.

  But depending on the vote, he may just get a chance to find out.

  Schroder turns the radio off. Next week, when Joe Middleton’s trial begins, will be a nightmare. He’s heard a rumor that the prosecution is going to ask for the death penalty if indeed the death penalty becomes law. There are going to be people outside the courthouse. They’re going to be carrying signs. Pro-death. Anti-death. Victim rights. Human rights.

  The prison comes up on the left. He slows down and takes the turnoff, a speeding van almost rear-ending him, and a minute later he comes to a guard post. He shows his identification to a guard with the same amount of humor as a tumor. Up ahead is the entrance. Beyond that construction workers are assembling another wing of the prison. Even
in the rain they’re working, eager to get the job done, eager to make more room for more criminals. Whoever said crime doesn’t pay also should have added that crime is a billion-dollar industry with all that it touches—new prisons, lawyers, funerals, insurances. It’s the only thing booming. Another car pulls in behind him into the parking lot. He parks and sits still for a few moments, wishing he had an umbrella, but knowing he probably wouldn’t use it even if he did. He looks over at the car parking next to him. A woman, all alone. She kills the engine and he can’t see her clearly enough to know what she’s doing, but he’s been around enough women to know she’s probably putting something into her handbag or getting something out, a simple job that can take his wife five minutes to do since her handbag is like a time capsule dating back to before they met. She opens the car door. She’s pregnant. From the looks of the way she’s trying to squeeze herself out of the car, she got pregnant sometime about a year ago.

  “You need a hand there?” he asks, getting out of his car, and he has to almost shout to be heard over the rain. Before he’s even finished the sentence he’s soaking wet, and so is she, only just her face and belly at this stage.

  “Thank you,” she says, and she reaches up and takes his hand. Rather than him pulling her up, she almost pulls him back into the car, and he almost lets her since it’s drier in there. He strengthens his back, switches on the stomach muscles he’s slowly losing, and pulls. She stumbles forward and has to wrap her arms around him, and he almost topples, grabbing at the car door to stay balanced.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry about that,” she says, pulling away from him.

  “You picked a hell of a day to visit somebody,” he says.

  She laughs, a very sweet laugh that her husband or boyfriend must love hearing. “You think today is going to be any better than tomorrow?”

  “Supposed to be sunny,” he says, “but maybe the snow they picked for last week might finally arrive.” He’s curious as to who she’s visiting. Maybe her boyfriend or husband is locked up out here. He doesn’t ask.

  “Can you . . . I hate to ask, but would you please grab my handbag for me?”

  “Sure,” he says. She steps aside and he reaches into the car and grabs her handbag off the passenger seat. “No umbrella?”

  She shakes her head. “It’s only rain,” she says.

  He closes the door for her. “Torrential rain,” he says, and there’s no point in hurrying now, he can’t get any wetter.

  She smiles. “I like it. The rain is . . . I don’t know, romantic, I guess.” She breathes in deeply. “And that smell,” she says. “I love that smell.”

  Schroder breathes in deeply. All he can smell is wet grass.

  They walk up to the main doors together, the woman has her hand on her stomach the entire way, and he figures she should be keeping that hand much lower, ready to catch what is surely going to fall out of her at any second. He opens the door for her.

  “You look familiar,” he says, but he can’t place her. It’s more he gets the feeling she looks like somebody he used to know. He looks at her red hair—it’s full and wavy and comes down to her shoulders and he imagines she spends a long time looking after it with hair moisturizers and shampoos. She’s wearing a light brown shade of eye shadow to match, and red lipstick too. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

  “Ha, I get that a lot,” she says, and they’re inside now, out of the rain. “I used to be an actress,” she says, “before this happened,” she adds, patting her stomach.

  “Oh really? I’ve just gotten into the TV industry myself.”

  “You’re an actor?”

  He shakes his head. “A consultant. What would I have seen you in?”

  “Well, this is kind of embarrassing,” she says, “but nothing much. Just shampoo ads, mostly. And some hotel ads. Often you’ll see me behind the desk, or sitting by a pool, or in the shower. My career is really taking off,” she says, giving a grin. “Though with the baby you won’t see me again for a few years, unless it’s a diaper ad. Well, I hate to be rude, but nature calls,” she says, and she pauses next to a small corridor with a sign indicating that the toilets are only a few feet away. “You have children?” she asks.

  “Two,” he says. Water is starting to puddle around his feet.

  “This is my first,” she says. “I think he’s going to be a practical joker. I mean, at the moment he finds it funny to have me running off to the bathroom every ten minutes. Thanks for . . . for the lift,” she says, smiling.

  “Anytime.”

  He walks up to the counter, on the other side of which is a very large woman. There’s a piece of Plexiglas between them. It feels like being in a bank. Last time he came out to the prison was back in summer when Theodore Tate was being released, and then all he did was wait out in the parking lot. Tate was a buddy of his who used to be a cop, but who became a criminal. Then he became a private investigator. Then a criminal again. Then a cop. Then a victim. Tate has been a lot of things, and Schroder makes a mental note to go and visit him. It’s been a few days.

  “I’m here for Joe Middleton,” he says, and he hands over his ID.

  Her face tightens a little at the mention of Joe’s name, and so does his. Joe Middleton. For years that slimy bastard worked among them, cleaning their floors, empting their rubbish bins, the entire time using police resources to stay ahead of the investigation. Joe Middleton. Schroder got the credit for arresting him, but the entire thing was a fuck up. They should have gotten him sooner. Too many people died. He felt responsible. A lot of them did. And so they should—they let a killer walk among them.

  “He’s five minutes away,” the woman says, and Schroder knows that no matter what this woman says, that’s the way it is. She doesn’t look like somebody you’d want to mess with. She looks like she could singlehandedly run the entire complex out here. “Take a seat,” she says, and points behind him. He knows the drill. He’s waited out here before—just never as a civilian. It’s different. He doesn’t like not having a badge.

  He moves over to the seats. He’s the only one here. The pregnant woman is still in the bathroom, and he remembers what it was like with his own wife, and how in the end she refused to be more than thirty seconds away from a bathroom.

  He sits down, his wet clothes pushing against him. The chair is a solid plastic one-piece with metal legs. There’s a table with magazines on it. Add some coughing people and a screaming baby and it would be just like a doctor’s office. He can hear drips of water coming off him and hitting the floor. The guard looks over at him and he feels guilty about the mess he’s making. He expects that any second now the Take a seat woman is going to throw him some paper towels, or throw him a mop, or throw him out.

  Five minutes. And then he has to face the man he arrested a year ago.

  The Christchurch Carver.

  The man who made a fool of them all.

  Chapter Five

  This must be what it’s like to win the lottery. Or what it’s like to win the lottery and not even have bought a ticket. Both guards look sick. Adam looks like he wants to punch me. Glen looks like he could do with a hug. The news sinks in and I feel my Slow Joe game face taking shape. The world that shifted off its axis twelve months ago is righting itself. What was out of whack is now in whack. Nature correcting itself. The laws of physics correcting themselves. My Slow Joe smile feels great and seems to fit a lot better than it did earlier when I was with Barlow. It’s the big smile that shows all the teeth, and if I can’t get it under control it’s going to break my mouth in half. My scar hurts as it shifts around the smile, looking for a comfortable position and not finding one, but I don’t care about the pain. Not now. I’m going to be home again. I’m going to have the chance to carry on doing the thing I love to do. Get some new pet goldfish. Buy some nice sharp knives. Get a really cool briefcase.

  Adam looks at Glen, and then he starts to laugh, the muscles in his neck straining out from his shirt, and when he starts to laugh the
n Glen laughs too. They stare at each other for two seconds, then both look at me. “That was fucking great,” Adam says, and he’s looking at me, but talking to his boyfriend. “You see his face?”

  “I didn’t think it’d work,” Glen says. “I really didn’t. Oh man, you totally picked it.”

  “I told you,” Adam says. “I told you he was dumber than anybody really knew.”

  “What?” I ask, but of course I know what. It’s a practical joke. In an ideal world, I’d stab these guys to death for making me look like a fool. But this isn’t an ideal world—proven by my surroundings and lack of knife. I play along with them—because to do otherwise would be to show them who I really am.

  “He still doesn’t get it,” Glen says, his voice rising, trying to hold back a laugh. He sounds eager, as if excited to be making his point. Whatever that point is. “You think they’re ever going to let you out of here?” he asks, directing his question at me. “Come on, asshole, there’s somebody here who wants to see you.”

  I take a step toward them. “Should I . . . should I bring my books?” I ask, and boy I’m good. Very, very good.

  “Oh my God,” Adam says, and starts laughing all over. “Oh my God, he still doesn’t get it!”

  “Stop being such a fucktard. Let’s go,” Glen says, and he grabs hold of my arm. There’s a dark tone in his voice, the eagerness and excitement gone. He’s on edge. He sounds like he’s ready for me to try something, or more likely he’s wanting me to try something that will give them permission to find out if a man’s skull can be crushed between a forearm and a bicep.

  “I’m . . . I’m not going home?”

  “You crack me up,” Adam says, and Glen agrees.

  They lead me back to an identical room to the one I was in earlier with the shrink. I sit behind the desk and they don’t handcuff me and I know what that means. That means I’m going to be talking to somebody who has the ability to beat the shit out of me. The guards leave the room. I stand up and start pacing it. I’m faced with the two fundamental decisions of prison—sit down and do nothing, or pace the room you’re in. I study the concrete walls. Great architecture. A real timeless quality. I reach out and touch them. Prisons all over the world from last century to the next century are going to have these same walls. In a thousand years I doubt they will have improved on the design. The door opens up. Carl Schroder walks in. He’s soaking wet. I’ll update the weather conversationalists when I get back to my cell.