Joe Victim: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  Jonas Jones.

  He can barely stand the smug bastard. In the past Jonas has ruined cases, gotten in the way, he’s released information to the public that has sprung police traps and gotten people hurt. There are no real psychics, but somehow Jones has a loyal fan base that seems to be growing by the day. And, if Jones is to find Detective Calhoun’s body that fan base will grow stronger, it will grow in numbers, and no doubt Jones will churn out another bullshit book. At the very least it will make for great TV.

  In some ways he hopes Joe keeps his mouth shut. Trumping that desire is Calhoun’s family’s right to have his body returned. In the background, of course, is the bonus. Despite everything, he needs the money. His family does. He’s profiting on something bad, but hey, dentists profit on cavities, roofers profit from storms, car wreckers profit from accidents.

  Sometimes Schroder likes to think that, honestly, he didn’t have any real choice but to accept the job. After all, he was unemployed. He has a select set of job skills that were of no use because he couldn’t be a cop again, and though he had applied for a PI license, he had been turned down with no explanation within a week of applying. He was sure it was something to do with the police department. Somebody somewhere had thrown a wrench in the works because they felt the last thing the city needed was another private investigator. He could flip burgers. He couldn’t sell cars. He could go back to school. He couldn’t work in retail. And when the TV studio approached him to be the police consultant on set for Jonas’s show, plus for other TV shows, he took it. He gave it only a day’s thought. It was better pay than being on the force. Fewer hours. Less bullshit. Only dealing with Jonas made him want to shower more. If it was all about Jonas, he’d rather have shot himself. But it’s not. It’s about his family, about paying the bills, about keeping the house, about forging ahead and finding a new career path.

  And anyway—dealing with Jonas is only a small part of his job and, right now, not part of his job at all.

  One of the producers of the TV show The Cleaner comes over and tells him he needs to finish up, that shooting is going to begin in fifteen minutes. The show is about a pair of crime-scene cleaners who struggle with the emotional impact of a rising crime rate, centering around a main character on the edge of a nervous breakdown who, scriptwriters have told him, keeps thinking about how he could get away with a murder of his own since he can make a crime scene “disappear.” They’re currently shooting the sixth episode, with the first going to air in two weeks’ time. Already there are billboards up across the city, ads on TV, articles in newspapers to promote the show. If the reviews are good, it will continue to be shot. It doesn’t bother Schroder either way. This show, or the next show, or another show—he gets paid the same either way. He guesses The Cleaner has an okay concept—he’s not big on TV shows—but it’s his job to help stage the scenes and to give authenticity to them. The diner they’re shooting in today is a real diner, closed for the afternoon, but the owner, who is being paid for having his business shut for the day, offered to cook Schroder a quick lunch. Schroder isn’t big into hugging people, but he definitely could have hugged that guy.

  He finishes up his meal and hides the plate behind the counter. The story, so it goes, is that two men broke in during the night and tortured the owner for information, pounding bits of him into the floor with a hammer, getting blood and bone in places that require elbow grease and chemicals and witty banter and no doubt some mood music too when it goes through editing.

  The actors get into their positions.

  “Everything good?” one of the scriptwriters asks him, and the scriptwriter is wearing a T-shirt with the words Climb on board Uncle Daddy’s love bus across it, and Schroder wonders if the scriptwriter scripted that himself. He hopes not—because that doesn’t look good for the show.

  Schroder takes one last look out over the scene. “For the most part it all looks fine.”

  “Most part?”

  “Chalk outline,” he says, and not for the first time.

  “I know,” the scriptwriter says.

  “I know you know,” he says. “But cops really don’t use them.”

  “But movie and TV people do, and it’s what people expect to see,” the writer says, and not for the first time either. “People don’t like not seeing things they’re expecting to see. It messes with them.”

  “You don’t give people enough credit.”

  “Really? You were on the force for what, fifteen years? Twenty? Do you think people really deserve a lot of credit?”

  Schroder smiles. He concedes the point. “You’re good to go,” he says.

  Schroder stands off to the side of the room and watches the action take place. Hopefully it’ll look better when it’s on TV, because at the moment it just looks like a badly performed play. Thirty minutes into it his cell phone starts to vibrate. He takes it out of his pocket and checks the caller ID. It’s Hutton. The cameras aren’t rolling so he steps outside, not having to worry about sound.

  “Something’s happened,” Hutton tells him.

  “Yeah?”

  “May be related, may not be. But Tristan Walker was found dead about fifteen minutes ago. He was shot twice in the chest in his house.”

  Tristan Walker. Husband of Daniela Walker. Daniela Walker, victim of Joe Middleton. Shot twice in the chest just like Derek Rivers. “Shit,” Schroder says.

  “Yeah, that sums it up.”

  “So the theory is?” Schroder asks, and he’s already working on one of his own.

  He can almost hear Hutton shrugging. “We don’t know,” Hutton says. “I mean, this morning we thought it was about a potential bombing, but now we’ve got the husband of one of the Carver’s victims. The same victim that we were never entirely sure that Joe actually killed,” Hutton says.

  There were always things about that particular homicide that didn’t fit with Joe’s pattern. Joe has been asked about it, but like all the homicides, he’s sticking with the story of not remembering. It’s a story that won’t work well for him in court. It can’t do. Then he thinks about what the scriptwriter said, about giving people too much credit. Nothing in the legal system is a sure thing. Schroder starts walking to his car.

  “We want you to come here,” Hutton says. “If it’s related to the Carver case, you should be here. It was your case. You might see something that’s relevant.”

  “I’m already on my way,” he says, and hangs up.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Exercise hour is mandatory, unless you’ve just been shivved or raped by one or more of the other inmates, which, in general population, is mandatory too. All thirty of us are outside in the rain, with views of wire fences and guard posts that look like small air traffic control towers. There is nowhere to run, except back and forth across the yard, which I guess must be the point of exercise hour. I feel my own humanity the most when I’m around these people. If Schroder came and saw me right now, he’d see it. He’d see I’m just an innocent man.

  I walk the perimeter of the yard feeling the rain on my face, letting it soak my clothes, because after exercise hour is shower hour, and our Thursday showers come with a change of jumpsuit. For an hour a day I get to stretch my legs and it’s never long enough, and I never get to stretch them toward any of the nice women this city has to offer. Outside the walls the sounds of machinery fill the air—sparks of metal fly as grinders cut new pieces of steel and hammer drills dig holes into brick, construction taking place as a new wing of the jail is added, more room added for the increasing prison population. Some of the guys start kicking a soccer ball around. Only way football could be any gayer would be if they stripped off their shirts after scoring a goal and group hugged. My dad used to love football. Others are pushing weights, working on stretching the slabs of muscle where tattoos are flexing under the strain.

  Melissa visited my mother.

  That’s what I keep thinking about as Caleb Cole stares at me from across the yard with the kind of look that t
ells me he still has a long way to go to warm to my insanity defense. I try not to look at him, but every minute or so I’m curious if he’s still watching me so I glance in his direction, only to find that he is.

  I look out the fence where there are other fences and other patches of field. Beyond the furthest of fences is freedom. Joe Victim needs that freedom. Joe Victim was never meant to be contained in a place like this. Joe Victim needs to spread his wings and fly.

  I turn my thoughts to my mother and Walt, which is unfortunate because I end up thinking about what they’re going to get up to on their honeymoon. It makes me feel ill. Walt, with his wrinkly hands on my mother, my mother’s wrinkles sagging in all the places no man other than Walt would want to see, the way all those wrinkles lock into place like snapping pieces of a jigsaw together. I’m starting to think the only way to get rid of those thoughts would be to walk across the yard and hand Caleb Cole a sharpened toothbrush. Instead I focus on the books mom brought in for me.

  From my girlfriend.

  From Melissa.

  The plastic bag was taken from me by the guards, but I was allowed to keep the books. The bag was considered a weapon. The books were considered a joke. Adam laughed at the titles. I’m sure he’s still laughing about it. Melissa visited my mother and gave her a handful of romance paperbacks to give to me, but why?

  There are only two reasons I can think of. The first is that she knows I really love romance novels. Spending two nights with Melissa and having her stalk me the week before, she learned that in my heart I am nothing but a true romantic. Her books are a gift to me to help me pass my days before we can be together again.

  The second reason needs looking into, and when exercise hour finishes I walk back to my cell before shower hour and start looking for it. I pick the first book up. It’s called Bodies of Lust, and at first I think it might be more than just a romance novel, that it might be more of a description of the nights I spent with Melissa before my world was thrown off course, but reading a few pages at random I quickly learn otherwise. I flick through the book, looking for bent pages, looking for highlighted passages, or any kind of pencil markings, but there is nothing.

  I open book two. An envelope falls out and lands on my stomach. My heart skips a beat, but when I turn it over I see it’s already been torn open, no doubt by the guards when they were checking for drugs. So whatever message Melissa has written for me, they’ve seen it. I open it up. It’s a card. Only it’s not from Melissa. It’s from my mother. It’s a wedding invitation. It has a picture on it. It’s an illustration, not a photo, and in the illustration two cartoon hands are cutting the wedding cake with a big knife. It reminds me of a knife I used to have. I read the details and shake my head while doing so. I put the card back into the envelope and pick the book back up.

  There are no hidden messages in it. The same goes for the other books. Books with bad titles and bad writing and bad characters that make me warm inside when I read them. No markings, no messages, no point, and the guards would have flicked through them for the same reason well before my mother ever handed them to me. But there has to be something, otherwise why would Melissa give them to me? And she would have known she couldn’t write in them, or underline things—because she would have known the books would be searched. So what then? What am I missing?

  I open Show Love to Get Love, which, I’m pretty sure, could be the worst title ever picked for a book. But these kinds of books all normally have bad names. It’s part of the appeal. Bad names and ripped men on the covers, women wearing sheer clothing. Except in this case the title sounds like a self-help book. I get a few chapters into it, realizing that the way for Belinda, the main character, to find love is for her to give her love to as many men as she can in the hope that one of them will look past the fact that she’s acting a little like a whore.

  It’s a short book and I’m a quick reader, but I still skim it because even though time is something I have plenty of, I feel an urgency to find Melissa’s message. I figure skim the books now, and if I miss the message then read them in detail later. So I find out Belinda’s fate, which is to marry a rich man who used to be a gigolo, but who was left ten million dollars by an old lady he used to service. It’s a timeless classic.

  I’m halfway through another when shower time arrives. The group of thirty somehow separates itself into different social classes. They do it by the crimes they committed. They see some crimes as better than others. Healthier, I suppose. Somehow that makes them better people. I don’t know. It’s a strange world, but here I am living in strange times, where a guy can burn down a retirement home with twelve people inside and be treated like a king compared to somebody like Santa Kenny, who raped three children and got caught with a fourth. Lines are being drawn all over the place in this world and none of them make sense. I don’t know what lines to stand behind, which ones to cross. I’m in the serial-killer gang all by myself even though I’m not the only serial killer in here. Edward Hunter, he’s by himself too. He killed a bunch of people and people call him a hero because they were bad people, but that doesn’t set him free. Caleb Cole is in a group of one too. We should be forming a club. We should get T-shirts made up.

  There is nothing fun about showering with other naked men—though, for some reason, my father’s voice pops into my head and tells me it doesn’t have to be that way. I’m not sure what he’s getting at—but his voice has popped into my head every other time I’ve stood naked in front of all these other men. It’s humiliating.

  The showers are like gym showers, a large communal area with plenty of different sprays and lots of taps and plenty of tiles everywhere. It’s a concrete floor with a dozen different drains. The air is thick with steam and the water a little too hot and there are only a few cakes of soap to go around so we have to share, which is pretty awful when they get handed to you with the occasional pubic hair caked into the surface. A few minutes into the shower and suddenly the men immediately to my left and to my right move further to their left and right and I’m alone.

  Then not so alone, as Caleb Cole comes up to me.

  “I’ve made my decision,” he says.

  The water is pouring down on us. Steam is rising. The air is thick and I feel a little light-headed. “And?”

  “And I’m going to kill you,” he says, and his fist moves so quickly I don’t even see it happening, not until it hits me solidly in the stomach, knocking the air out of me and dropping me to my knees. Caleb takes a step back and cradles his hand against his chest and covers it with his other one.

  “Hey,” one of the guards calls out, “what’s going on there?” he asks, but the steam is too thick for him to see that well and he’s too dry and lazy to really come and check.

  “He slipped over,” Cole shouts out. “People slip in showers.”

  I look up at him, but stay on my knees, which is not a great height to be at in a room full of naked men unless you’re a football player.

  “Is that right?” the guard shouts back.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I slipped.”

  The guard doesn’t respond.

  “As soon as I find something I can shape into a blade, I’m going to cut you open,” Caleb says, and he starts washing himself down while staring at me, the scars across his body disappearing behind lathers of soap. “What do you think about that?”

  I think I need to find something sharp too.

  “I can pay you,” I tell him. “Twenty thousand dollars.”

  He stops soaping himself. He twists his head and his eyes narrow. “What are you talking about?”

  “To leave me alone,” I say. “I’ll pay you twenty thousand dollars and you can use that money to pay somebody to finish the job on the outside that you’re going to have to wait twenty years to do yourself.”

  He slowly nods, the sides of his mouth turning down as he does. “Okay,” he says.

  “Okay, you’ll take it?”

  He shakes his head. “Okay, I’ll think about it,
” he says. “Something like that is going to require a lot of thought.” He rinses off the soap. “I’ll let you know tomorrow,” he says, and then he disappears back into the steam and I’m left alone on my knees, wondering now what my chances are of even making it to trial.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Fate is on her side. Melissa didn’t think so, not when she had to put two bullets into Sam Winston and not when she had to open fire a couple of more times today, but it’s led her to the support meeting and if fate wasn’t on her side then the meeting would have been on any other day of the week and not today. Statistically she had a one-in-seven chance. Or, the other way of looking at it is she had a six-out-of-seven chance the meeting wouldn’t be today. That’s not luck, it’s fate. Good fate. Her life has been full of bad fate. Her sister, herself, bad shit happening. Now it’s good shit. Like finding the building earlier opposite the back of the courthouse, unfinished, the construction company gone broke the way construction companies are apt to do in this day and age. Seven stories of half-completed offices, a whole bunch of them with perfect views out over the back of the courthouse. She decides to wait and see what else fate can take care of tonight before embracing it.

  Finding the support group wasn’t hard. Three minutes online is all it took. And it’s not just a support group for victims of Joe Middleton, but for other victims too—or, more accurately, family of victims who, so it seems, have labeled themselves as victims. It’s a community hall in Belfast, a suburb to the north of the city that on bad days smells like the dump only a few miles away and on other bad days is just Belfast. There are twenty cars in the parking lot out front, and hers makes it twenty-one. It’s still raining and still cold, but the forecast suggests an improvement over the next few days.

  She takes her umbrella—actually, it used to belong to Walker up until earlier today—and makes her way into the hall, keeping a close eye on the ground to avoid the puddles forming where bits of pavement have broken away. She walks alongside a pair of elderly people who have their arms around each other as they share an umbrella. They nod at her and offer a kind smile. She wonders if they’re here because she killed their son. She has changed wigs again—this time she’s gone black.