Joe Victim: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  “Like I said earlier, fuck off, okay?”

  “You feel like you owe him something to stay quiet?”

  “Schroder is the reason I’m in here with you, and not in general population.”

  “Yeah? So why are you acting like his best friend?”

  He stops eating. He puts his knife and fork down and twists toward me because I haven’t fucked off like he originally asked. He puts his hand onto the side of my tray and slides it off the edge of the table. It crashes onto the floor with a loud bang and the food goes everywhere. Everybody in the room is staring at me. They’ve all gone quiet.

  If he were a woman, I’d know what to do. I’d stab her right where she was. But he’s not a woman. And he’s not a man that I’ve already clubbed with a frying pan or shot or stabbed in the back. I suddenly feel very much out of my depth.

  “I’m glad you came over to see me,” he says, and suddenly I feel nervous. “I was in the hospital for a bit after being arrested, then they had me on suicide watch. They thought I wanted to die, and back then that was true. Not now. See, I have more to do before I want to die. Things to take care of. That’s why I can’t talk about Schroder. See, I just need to be left the fuck alone for the next twenty years so I can get out and carry on with my life.”

  “I heard you carried on with it a few months ago,” I tell him. “Carrying on with your life doesn’t bode well for others. That’s why you’re back in here.”

  “You think you’re funny, don’t you.”

  Yes. “No.”

  Sound starts back up in the room. More conversation. We stop being the center of attention.

  “See, the thing is,” he says, “even if I do make it another twenty years, the people I want to see on the outside may not even be around. So I’d have put up with twenty years of bullshit for nothing. That’s a depressing thought. It’s been with me since getting arrested. It gets me down. It’s why I was on suicide watch. What got me through that was figuring I needed to focus on other things. And in a place like this, a man doesn’t have too many options.”

  “One option is to tell me about Schroder,” I remind him.

  He shakes his head. “I already told you I’m not telling you about Schroder. Never. I tell you about him, and I’m back in general population.”

  “Come on, what did he do?”

  “I think I’m going to start focusing on you.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you’re talking to me right now. Because I’ve been thinking about you over the last few weeks. Everybody in the city has been thinking about you. Tell me about your trial. I’ve heard things. I’ve heard you’re running with an insanity defense.”

  “What of it?” I ask.

  “My daughter was murdered,” he says. “Fifteen years ago. You heard about that?”

  I shake my head. Other people and the things that happen to them don’t bother me unless it relates to me somehow.

  “She was murdered by a guy who should have been in jail, but you want to know why he wasn’t?”

  I shake my head. I don’t really want to know, or care. He takes the headshake as an indication to carry on.

  “Because he’d escaped conviction two years earlier of hurting another little girl because he used an insanity defense.”

  I slowly nod. This is good. Very good. “So what you’re saying is it works.”

  He stares hard at me. Then he slides his food tray away from himself and steps out from behind the table. He’s thinner than me, a little taller, but there’s something in his face that is frightening. I think if he were put into general population he’d get by just fine.

  “I don’t want you using an insanity defense,” he says, and maybe he should be my lawyer. “People need to be responsible for what they did. It’s not right that doctors can come along and make it otherwise.”

  “It truly isn’t my fault I did the things they say I did,” I tell him. “I don’t even remember any of it.”

  “Uh huh. So you’re using it,” he says, pointing at me. “The defense. You’re using the defense. The same defense that allowed my daughter to be killed.”

  “How old was your daughter?” I ask.

  He’s not ready for the question, but he’s been studying because he knows the answer. “She was ten.”

  “Then there’s no reason we can’t be friends. No reason you can’t help me out and tell me what Detective Schroder did to lose his job.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Well your daughter was too young to be my type.”

  He stares at me angrily and I’m not sure why. All I can put it down to is his jealousy. I’ll be getting out of here in a matter of weeks, and he’s stuck here for twenty more years, and that’s the kind of thing people in here don’t like.

  “Three days,” he says.

  “Three days for what?”

  “Your trial starts in three days, so that gives me three days to decide whether or not I want to kill you,” he says. “I’m in here for twenty years no matter what. Killing you won’t add to that. Killing you may even get my sentenced reduced. I’ll think about it,” he says. “I’ll let you know soon,” he says, and he walks away.

  I watch him go. Nobody else does. Nobody is watching me either—they’ve all gone back to their meals. My meal is all over the floor and Caleb’s is mostly still there, so I start in on his. I think about his three days and wonder if it’s possible he can do what he just said. Three days to kill me. But I see it as three days to win him over. Show him some of the Joe charm and get him talking. I see it like that because I generally have a positive outlook on life—it’s why people like me so much. Even so, my hands are shaking a little as I eat.

  Thursday afternoon carries on and, like all other Thursdays and Mondays, I have a visitor. It seems as if today people just can’t get enough of me. From Monday the country won’t be able to get enough of me. They’re all going to be glued to their TV sets watching the news.

  The same two asshole guards lead me down to the visitors’ area. It’s a much bigger room than the rooms my last two visitors spoke to me in. It’s the size of a large conference room that can accommodate perhaps a dozen prison members at a time, along with those coming to see them, and along with some guards. Today the room is mostly empty. A couple of prisoners talking with their wives. With their kids. There are hugs and tears and there are guards watching everything with eagle eyes. There’s a baby in a pram that keeps staring at me, and for a moment I wonder what life would be like having children. If I had a son I could teach him to fish, to throw a ball, to use a hooker and not pay. Then I think about nappy changes and sleepless nights, and I allow myself a few seconds to think about that life, then I turn toward the person who has come here to see me.

  My mother.

  She is sitting in the corner with a handbag clutched in her lap and an old man by her side. She doesn’t look like she has aged. If anything, she seems to look younger. She is certainly dressing better. And she looks happier. I hope that’s because of Walt, and not because her only and favorite son is in jail.

  She starts smiling the moment I sit down opposite her. It’s unusual. If my mom can smile it means I can win the lottery.

  “Hello, Joe,” she says, and she leans forward as though to hug me, and manages to restrain herself by simply touching my arm. “You look well,” she says, and there must be something wrong with her if she can smile and give me a compliment at the same time. I’m going with brain tumor. Or she’s had a stroke. I don’t ask her how she is.

  “Hello, son,” Walt says, even though I’m not his son—it’s just an old-person thing to do, like forgetting to put their dentures back in or drying the poodle in the microwave. I don’t answer him and he looks away, finding something interesting in the texture of the brick wall over my shoulder, perhaps thinking the same thing I was earlier about them being timeless.

  “Mom,” I say, “I’ve missed you,” which isn’t exactly true.

  “I wante
d to bring you some meat loaf,” she says, “but I wasn’t allowed.”

  “I think it is allowed,” I say.

  Walt says nothing. In fact nobody does for about ten seconds. Until my mom carries on, her beaming smile beginning to really annoy me now because it’s making me want to smile too.

  “We’ve got great news,” she says, and her use of the word we’ve suggests the news isn’t going to be about me, or about me getting out of here, but about her and Walt, and unless that great news has something to do with her kicking him in the balls and setting him on fire it isn’t something I want to hear.

  “I hate it in here,” I say. “I didn’t do any of the things they say I did, or at least I don’t remember doing them. I’m sick. I don’t even know how they could think—”

  “We’re getting married!” she says.

  “Plus there are some people here that want to kill me. They have to keep me in a separate—”

  “Can you believe that? Married! Could life be any better?” she asks.

  “It could be, if there weren’t people in here who want me dead.”

  “We’re in love,” she says, “and we see no reason to wait. We’re going to marry next week. It’s all so sudden, but exciting! We want you to be there.”

  “I was hoping you could be my best man,” Walt says.

  “Oh, what a wonderful idea,” Mom says, and squeezes Walt’s arm while giving him a look she has never given me—a look that I imagine can only be described as loving.

  Walt looks happy to have gotten the squeeze. That better be all he’s getting.

  “You’re getting married,” I say, finally letting her words settle. “Married.”

  “Yes, married, Joe. On Monday. I’m over the moon!” Mom says.

  “I might not be able to make it.” I say.

  “Because of the jail thing?” Mom asks. “I’m sure they can arrange for you to be released for the wedding. I’ll talk to somebody about it.”

  “It won’t happen,” I say. “There is no chance at all. My trial starts the same day.”

  “Then it’s perfect,” she says. “You’ll already be out of jail. We only need you for an hour.”

  “I don’t think the police are going to agree to that.”

  “Don’t be so negative,” she says.

  “Why don’t you wait until I’m released?”

  “Why do you have to always be difficult?”

  “I’m not trying to be difficult,” I tell her.

  “You are trying, and well done, Joe, because you’re succeeding. Already you’re ruining our day!”

  “Perhaps leave the boy alone, dear,” Walt says. “He’ll come around in his own time. It can’t be easy on him getting a new father.”

  Mom seems to think about what Walt says, which is a new trick because I don’t think she’s ever thought about anything I ever said. “No, I guess it can’t be,” she says, still giving me a sour look.

  “I’m not trying to be difficult,” I say again. “It’s just that, well, the people on TV seem to think I’m guilty, but you can never trust those guys,” I say, and I know the news is all about sales, all about selling fear, and isn’t an accurate representation of how the country is feeling. “What about the newspapers? What do they say?”

  “I don’t know,” Mom answers.

  “You don’t know?”

  “We haven’t been reading them,” Walt says.

  “We just haven’t been keeping up on the news,” Mom offers. “We don’t watch it and we don’t read it.”

  “But I am the news. Surely you’d keep up on me.”

  “The news is depressing,” Mom says.

  “And depressing,” Walt adds.

  “We haven’t been following the news at all. Why would we?” Mom says.

  “Because I’m in the news,” I say.

  “Well, how am I supposed to know that?” Mom asks, sounding short.

  “You’d know if you cared enough to turn on a TV and watch anything other than one of those damn English dramas.”

  “God, we have to tell you,” Walt says, and he leans forward. “Last night, you wouldn’t believe who turned out to be Karen’s real father.”

  “It was exciting,” Mom says.

  I listen to them tell me about the program, and I store the information and I think about Pickle and Jehovah, my goldfish from another life, and how I’d tell them about the same program, and I wonder if they used to think the same thing I’m thinking now. I hope not. I miss them. My little pets with their five-second memories—they wouldn’t even remember dying.

  “Can you believe we’re really getting married?” Mom asks, when a guard comes over and tells us our time is nearly up.

  “I can’t believe it,” I tell them, and I don’t want to believe it either.

  “You don’t have to call me Dad,” Walt says, “at least not yet.”

  “He’ll come around,” Mom says.

  “Of course he will,” Walt says. “He is your son.”

  Mom stands up. She’s carrying a plastic bag full of something. Walt follows her move. She moves toward me and gives me a hug. It’s a tight bear hug in which I can smell old-lady perfume and old-lady soap and old lady.

  “He’s so much better than your father,” she whispers. “And I’m glad you’re not gay, Joe. The things the police told us that you did—no gay man would do that.”

  “He’s definitely not gay,” Walt says, because my mom’s whispering is loud enough for him to hear. My mom has no idea how to whisper.

  “And nor are you,” my mom says, pulling back and looking at Walt. She giggles a little bit. “But after what we tried last night, you wouldn’t know.”

  They both laugh. The floor falls away from me and I collapse into the chair. My mom turns to leave, but seems to remember the plastic bag she’s carrying, and hands it to me. “These are for you.”

  “What?”

  “These. Are for you,” she says, louder and emphasizing each word as if trying to break a language barrier.

  I take the bag from her. It’s full of books. Which is great because I need more books—not as much as I need a gun—but it’s still good.

  “They’re from your girlfriend,” she says.

  For a moment the prison fades away, and I remember myself cuffed to a tree with a pair of pliers hovering around my nuts. Then I remember lying in Melissa’s bed, the way her body felt, the tight curves, the way her eyes would close when she was focusing on the way things felt between the sheets. My heart races and I feel the skin on the back of my neck start to tingle. “My what?”

  “She was very lovely,” Walt says, and mom gives him the kind of look she usually gives me—the one where she just bit the end of her tongue and her face scrunches up in pain.

  “Who gave them to you?” I ask.

  “We already told you,” Mom says, and they start to walk to the exit. A guard moves toward the door to let them out. “We’ll see you Monday,” she says. “It’ll be a small affair. Ten people at the most. You should ask the prison warden today so he’ll have plenty of time to organize letting you out.”

  “I’ll be—”

  “Your cousin Gregory will be there,” she says. “He has a new car.”

  “In court.”

  “Joe—”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, holding up my hand. “I’m being difficult.”

  “You are, but I love you anyway,” she says, and she leans down and gives me a hug and then she is gone.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lunch is a big breakfast. It consists of bacon and eggs and sausages and coffee—all of it very, very good. A breakfast like that can change the way a man will look at life—at least that’s the blurb beneath it in the menu under the heading “Heart Stopper.” Halfway through the meal Schroder sees no reason to doubt either the blurb or the name.

  He is sitting alone at the counter filling the hole that’s been growing inside of him since missing breakfast. There’s blood on the floor and a chalk o
utline of a body six feet to his right. Two of the tables are overturned and there’s some broken glass. There are fifteen people in the diner and he’s the only one eating. Evidence markers are scattered around the room, photo evidence scales that measure the size of blood drops and handprints and footprints. Fingerprinting powder on various surfaces. Crime-scene tape by the door.

  Just like a crime scene.

  Well, almost like a crime scene.

  Another phone call to Detective Hutton gave him little in the way of information about this morning’s homicide, but enough to know that there’s nothing of value in it to Jonas Jones, and enough to know what Hutton meant when he said it was a bad one. The victim was an ex-con who did time for smuggling weapons into the country. The smuggling was one thing, but what those weapons were used for was a whole different thing. He didn’t care who the buyers were, just as the buyers didn’t care about the people who would have died if they had managed to detonate the various explosives they were trying to stack around the parliament building in the country’s capital city. Schroder wasn’t so sure much of the public would have cared either if the country had woken up one morning a hundred politicians shorter than the day before. The guy who imported the explosives was Derek Rivers and Derek was treated to twelve years of cinder-block views. He was released from jail a year ago, and this morning was treated to two shots to the chest. According to Hutton, electronic explosive sniffers have confirmed that Rivers has recently been in touch with explosives.

  “There was a manhole in the wardrobe,” Hutton had told him. “He’d stored weapons and explosives under there. Our best guess is whoever he bought them for is who shot him. That means somebody is covering their tracks. That means—”

  “The explosives are going to be used for something pretty bad,” Schroder had finished for him before they’d hung up.

  Schroder could remember Rivers from the case way back when. He was a real piece of work. Not the kind of guy anybody is going to miss. Nothing in it for the psychic. Not yet. Maybe if somebody manages to blow something up and take a lot of lives—then there’s a whole lot of somethings in it for Jonas.