Joe Victim: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  The offices on the third floor of the complex where Melissa and Raphael are standing range from fairly complete to hardly started. The one they’ve chosen is mostly complete. All the walls are in place and there are light fittings and power fittings and no exposed wires. There are some tins of paint resting against a wall, some cleaning supplies, some loose tools, a couple of sawhorses, and a plank of wood that doubles as scaffolding. There’s a whole lot of dust. Things have been sanded down, but nobody cleaned up. Everything looks settled, like it’s been that way for some time and there’s no reason to think that’ll change.

  Six months ago she killed a security guard who worked the building two blocks away, the one that overlooked the front of the courts that she was originally going to use. In an unfortunate twist of fate—at least for the guard—she wasn’t trying to kill him. Just pickpocket his keys. He caught her doing it. She had no choice. She thought back then that that building was going to be part of the plan. She thought they’d be taking a shot from the roof. This building is easier. She didn’t need to kill anybody. All she needed on Thursday when she picked this building was a minute with the lock of the entrance around the back. A child with a toothpick could have picked that thing. Once she opened the door, she used a screwdriver to remove the lock on the inside, leaving it so the door couldn’t latch closed. She had to. If she locked up, then re-picked the lock in front of Raphael, she thought at the time that he’d ask too many questions. It’s a miracle the offices in here aren’t all like two-star hotel rooms for the homeless. She’s surprised anything nailed down hasn’t been stolen and sold.

  Raphael opens up the case. He starts to assemble the gun. She could tell he loved shooting it. He loved being the man. All she could do was hit dirt. Or that’s what she showed him. It cemented the dynamic in their relationship. He was the shooter. She wasn’t the shooter. She was the collector. He wasn’t the collector. It was a shooting and collecting relationship, hence it’s a two-person plan. Nothing wrong with that.

  Raphael doesn’t put the scope on the gun. Instead he stands in front of the windows holding the scope in both hands. He’s wearing a pair of latex gloves. They both are. There’s no reason to leave their fingerprints everywhere. The police uniform is still in the bag.

  “I can see everything,” he says.

  “What about the courthouse? How does it look?” she asks, but she knows how it looks. She’s been here already. The office has a direct line of sight into the back entrance of the courthouse. A nice, clear view of the parking lot and the courthouse doors and the ten-yard strip of concrete between the parking lot and those doors. A lot can happen in a ten-yard strip of land. There are going to be thousands of people out in the street, but within the parking lot there’s only going to be a couple of cops and Joe. Shouldn’t be a problem. Crowd won’t be in the way. All Raphael has to do is stay calm. Six months ago the view from the other building she chose was very different. Six months ago it looked like a mess from any angle. Cranes. Bulldozers. Work crews.

  “Everything is so clear,” he says.

  “May I?”

  He hands her the scope. It has higher-quality optics than the binoculars. She looks at the courthouse, then up and down the street where there is going to be lots of traffic. The courthouse is a single story. The elevated view from the third floor of the office complex means she can see over the top of the courthouse and further into town. The courthouse takes up an entire block, with the back entrance right in the middle. She can see roads leading in all directions, two main roads running parallel up and down the city—one road passing by the courts on the left, the other on the right. So many protesters will be here on Monday that some of these roads will be closed off. It’s going to be perfect. Right now the roads are almost empty. Saturday evening in the middle of winter in a part of town where there are office buildings and a courthouse and nowhere serving beer—why would there be people down there?

  “Here,” she says, and hands the scope back to him.

  He lies down and holds the scope. A nice elevation. Simple to look down on the parking lot without anything in the way. Not too high that they have to worry about wind swirling between the buildings. And not too high that they won’t be able to escape quickly.

  Biggest thing they have to worry about is weather. They don’t need great weather, but bad weather won’t work. It can’t be pouring heavy with rain. Can’t be gusts of wind. Problem with Christchurch weather is the way you forecast it is the same way you forecast who’s going to win a horse race. You go with the favorite, but everything has a chance.

  “I won’t be able to lie down,” he says. “It’d mean shooting through the window. Windows open waist high and above.”

  She looks at her watch. It’s ten minutes from six o’clock. The transport is arriving at the back entrance of the court at six o’clock on the dot. She knows that because it was in the itinerary she stole from Schroder. She also knows the solution to Raphael’s problem. She’d figured that out when she came here on Thursday.

  “Help me with this,” she says, and she moves over to the paints where a large, canvas drop cloth has been folded up into a neat square foot. They unfold it and carry it over to the window.

  “What’s the deal with this?”

  “We hang it up,” she says, and reaches into her bag for some duct tape.

  Raphael seems to figure it out and together they start stripping off lengths of tape and a few minutes later they have a curtain that shields them from the street. The room, dark to begin with, now becomes pitch-black, and she uses a flashlight function on her cell phone to shed some light. She takes a knife and cuts a square of drop cloth away from in front of one of the opening windows, leaving a hole not much bigger than her head.

  “I shoot through this?” Raphael asks.

  “And you’ll be lying down too,” she says. “From out on the street nobody is going to see a thing.”

  “Lying down on what?” he asks, and she turns toward the sawhorses and the plank of wood and he doesn’t have to ask anything else.

  They drag the makeshift platform into place. He lies down on it and shuffles himself into position so he can see out through the drop cloth.

  “Try it out,” she says, and she attaches the scope to the gun and hands it over.

  He shuffles himself a little further up the planks. He puts the scope against his eye. Tightens the gun into his shoulder.

  “It’s good,” he says.

  “So you’ll be able to pull off the shot?”

  He smiles up at her. “With the window open, yeah.”

  “Just don’t open it when you’re in the uniform,” she says. “You open it before that.”

  “I know,” he says.

  She looks at her watch. “It’s almost time,” she says.

  Raphael stays in position. Melissa moves to the edge of their makeshift curtain and kills the light on her phone before pulling the curtain aside. Street lights, building lights, tungsten and neon burning from every direction in the city, more than enough to see clearly. They don’t make any further conversation. They just wait in silence. Somewhere in an adjoining office, or perhaps even the one below or above, an air-conditioning unit kicks into action, the low hum creating a background noise that makes the office complex feel less like a building in a ghost town. But not a lot less.

  Right on time a series of headlights comes from the south. Three police cars leading a van, three police cars following it. They’re driving slowly. None of the lights are flashing. They disappear from view, as the angle of the courthouse gets in the way as the cars get close to it, but she knows they’re turning toward the front of the building.

  On Monday their progress will be made slower by the traffic and by the crowds of people.

  They’re the decoy.

  At the same time a van comes into view from the parallel street. It disappears from view as the courthouse blocks them, but then comes back into view as it comes around the back. It turns into the str
eet between the office building and the back entrance. There’s a chain-link fence stretching the perimeter of the court’s parking lot. Somebody inside the compound pushes a button and part of the fence rolls open. The van drives in. The fence rolls closed.

  The van parks up close to the door. The back of the van is facing the office window. Its doors swing open.

  “I can see all of it,” Raphael says.

  “Focus,” she says. “Don’t miss the shot.”

  She can see it all too, but not in any great detail. Two men dressed in black step out of the back of the van. Then out shuffles a man in orange. She can’t see the chains, but can tell by the way he’s moving he must be wearing them around his ankles as well as his wrists. He steps down. People are pointing weapons at him. For two seconds nobody moves.

  A lot can happen in two seconds.

  The prisoner starts his thirty-foot walk.

  “Do you have the shot?”

  “I have it,” Raphael says.

  “How clear is it?”

  “Clear enough.”

  The thirty feet get eaten up. The group stands around the back door.

  “May I?” she asks, and she turns toward Raphael, but can’t see him. She puts out a hand and takes a step toward him. The only light in the office is what’s coming through the hole in the curtain. She feels nothing at first, then touches the side of the gun that’s being held toward her. She grabs it and moves back into position. She looks at the four cops and the man in orange. Almost like a painted target. The man in orange is a police officer. She’s seen him before. On TV or in real life she can’t remember, and it doesn’t rightly matter. Tonight he’s playing the part of Joe. This small field trip’s a rehearsal for Monday morning’s big event.

  Also a rehearsal for Raphael and her too.

  The cops are chatting with a security guard at the entrance. One of them throws back his head and laughs and the others are grinning at him.

  “Can’t miss,” Raphael says.

  “There are going to be a lot of people down there,” she says. “People will figure out the police may use the back entrance. The police may panic and have a couple of cars escort it. But no matter how many there are, there’s still only going to be one van. One Joe. And he’ll be covering the same ground his stand-in just covered.”

  Raphael gets onto his feet. He picks up the gun case and sits it on the plank he was lying on a moment earlier. Melissa uses duct tape to put the hole she cut in the curtain back into place. Then she switches her cell-phone light back on. Raphael starts taking apart the gun and putting it away. The magazine is empty. There is a mostly empty packet of bullets in the gun case—it’s the last of their supply. There are only two bullets left inside it. Plus the bullet she had to order especially. That one she hands to Raphael.

  “This one goes at the top of the magazine,” she says.

  He hefts it in his hand, checking the weight, as if it would make a difference.

  “This is the armor-piercing bullet?” he asks.

  “Don’t miss with it. It’s our only one.”

  “I won’t,” he says.

  He puts the round into the case, jamming it downward into the foam to separate it from everything else.

  “Try not to use the other two rounds,” she says. “The longer you stay up here, the higher chance of getting caught. We need this done in one round. More rounds also means more people being put at risk.”

  “It’ll get done in one.”

  Melissa climbs up onto the platform and gets to her feet.

  “What are you doing?” Raphael asks.

  She reaches up and pushes a ceiling panel aside.

  “Safer for us if the gun stays here,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t think it’ll look good on Monday morning if you have to carry it in here. We hide it up here, you use it, then you put it back up there. The police are going to figure out where the shot came from, but there’s no reason for them to think the gun will still be here. And even if they do somehow get lucky, it’s going to be clean.”

  “Makes sense,” he says. “Here, let me get it.”

  They swap positions. He reaches up and puts the case into the ceiling. She hands him the bag with his police uniform in it. “We keep this here too,” she says.

  He slides the panel back into place then climbs down.

  “So you won’t be back here,” he says.

  She shakes her head. “No reason to,” she says, because she’s going to be down among all the action, among the cops and the protesters, right in the middle of the tension and the chanting and the screamed insults. Raphael is the shooter. She is the collector. No reason to pretend any different.

  “We’re not going to practice anymore?”

  She shakes her head. She tucks aside the curtain and looks out the window at the van as it starts to pull away. The only difference in the layout between now and Monday is there will be an ambulance there too. There’ll be a few of them scattered around the streets near the courthouse.

  There’ll need to be because the protesting is a powder keg ready to explode.

  That’s why she got her hand on a paramedic’s uniform months ago. After all, she’s the one who’s playing the collector.

  Chapter Forty-One

  The prison comes up on the left. We turn off. Having the windows down in the van has helped, but only marginally. Being cold was a sacrifice everybody seemed prepared to make, only the damp air that flooded in seemed to soak up the smell and then cause it to stick to every surface like a thin film of condensation. We pass the barrier gates and go to the same entrance I was taken out of earlier. The warden is there to greet me. He looks at me with disgust. Everybody does. Just because I’m used to that look doesn’t mean I like it. In a fair and just world, I wouldn’t be in chains and these people would all be drawing short straws.

  “Get him cleaned up,” the warden says to nobody in particular, and nobody in particular takes any notice because I end up standing there with people who don’t want to look at me. I’m standing on a slight angle because of my missing shoe. The warden seems the most annoyed out of everybody, and if he’d joined our trip and been part of the vote I’m sure I’d still be out there now, surrounded by spotlights and crime-scene tape. There is more paperwork. I stand there watching it get filled out and signed. Then the same four guards that escorted me out earlier escort me back in. They don’t look pleased with the job. They don’t want to touch me. I’m tossed the key for the cuffs and told to undo them myself then step away from the chain. I’m told to take my remaining shoe off first because it’s muddy, and the opposite sock too. The concrete floor is cold. The pressure in my stomach has built back up. I’m taken directly to the showers. I’m given sixty seconds to clean myself up. I make use of every one of them. I don’t think I’ve ever had a shower feel so good. When the water is shut off I’m thrown a towel and a fresh jumpsuit and socks and given another minute to get dressed. Then I’m taken back to my cellblock. There are others sitting around playing cards and watching TV and making idle chitchat, the kind of idle five-or-ten-or-twenty-year-passing chitchat that gets repetitive after day one. I don’t partake in it, instead I head into my cell and I climb onto the toilet and I spend ten minutes feeling about as sorry as a guy can for himself, the toilet no doubt feeling even sorrier.

  I keep waiting to feel better. I don’t.

  I try to figure out what happened with Melissa. I can’t.

  I should have been free by now. I’m not.

  Optimistic Joe is struggling to live up to his name.

  I’m off the toilet for barely a minute before the guards come in and lead us all away for dinner. I still have no shoes. There are no new people in our group. Nobody has left. It’s the same mystery meat. Caleb Cole is sitting a few tables away. He’s sitting by himself. Seeing him, my face starts to hurt. I look at the food and can’t touch any of it.

  “Looking forward to Monday?” Santa Suit Kenn
y asks me. He sits down on my left and starts in on the meat that could have easily started out the day as somebody’s pet. Or as somebody.

  I think about his question. I’m not sure. In some ways no, because there could be a travesty of justice and I’m found guilty. In other ways yes, because it’ll be different from the rest of this bullshit. It gives me a chance to clear my name.

  I sum all of this up by shrugging.

  “Yeah, I know what you’re saying,” he says, which really goes to prove I should sum more things up by shrugging. I’ll remember that for when I’m on the stand. Mr. Middleton, did you kill those women? You’re shrugging? I see . . . well, I think we all understand now.

  “Trials are tough,” Santa Kenny says. “People don’t see the real you. They judge on the potential of bad things you can do just because of the bad things they think you’ve done, and that potential grows with every cop show and serial-killer movie they’ve seen. To them, we’re all Hannibal Lecter, but without the class.”

  I don’t bother pointing out that to them Kenny is just a child rapist in a Santa Claus suit, and no amount of cop movies or Christmas movies is going to alter that.

  “It’s totally unfair,” he adds.

  I push my tray aside. At this stage any food entering my body would trigger a violent reaction. Santa Kenny stuffs in his mouth some mashed potatoes that, like the meat, probably started the day as something completely different. He chews quickly and swallows it with an audible gulp, then starts up the conversation again. No matter what anybody hears, prison can be full of really friendly folk.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he says, “of what I should do with my life if the band doesn’t want to get back together.”

  For the first time I answer him. “It seems being an inmate is something you’re good at,” I tell him. “And you’re experienced at it.”

  “I’ve always wanted to be an author.”

  I can’t contain my surprise. “Really?”

  “Yeah. A crime writer,” he says. “You read romance books right? Well, people love crime books more than romance books,” he says.