Joe Victim: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  Kent sent them the GPS location of the body. It was accurate enough to get him and Jones to the farm earlier this morning. They had shared a car ride out there just before nine. Schroder had driven. He didn’t like the idea of Jonas being in control of the car in case he was suddenly struck down by a vision of Elvis. The problem is Jones decided to be in control of the conversation instead. It takes a brave man to say the things Jones was saying, and on the drive Schroder started to wonder where the line was between being committed for speaking to the dead and going on TV to help the public for a fee. What is insanity for some is showmanship for others, he guesses.

  So Jonas Jones had rambled on for the twenty minutes they’d been together in the car. They had both worn thick jackets and hiking boots and the conversation dried up when they made the trek from the car to the grave. It wasn’t difficult to find where Calhoun was buried. Turned-over dirt was one big clue, footsteps leading all the way from the road another. So he and Jonas spent thirty minutes doing what Schroder thought was a pretty good job of hiding the fact anybody had been there within the last twenty-four hours. It had been an eerie feeling out there, and one that was spent mostly in silence. Jonas had been happy. Schroder had been sad. He was at the grave of a former cop, a man who had fought the same war; they had been brothers in arms and now Calhoun was the prop in some cheap parlor trick and Schroder had made that happen. The sun had come through the trees, none of which had any leaves, and hit the ground, burning off some of the moisture so it looked like rising steam. It was a good location for a TV shoot. The cameras were going to love it. He knew that’s what Jonas Jones, Psychic had been thinking. Whereas Schroder had been thinking about physics. About leverage and exertion and the effect an event can have on another. He was thinking about how hard it would be to dig Calhoun up and replace him with Jones. He was thinking about how that would make him happy, but Jonas sad. He was thinking about driving Calhoun to the morgue where he would be treated right. The dead man deserved more from both of them.

  Of course he hadn’t done that. Instead they had finished up, using branches to break up the footprints on their way out. Back at the car they threw their jackets into the backseat and used cold, soapy water and rags to wash down their hiking shoes because they needed them to be clean for the shoot. Then they had left. They hadn’t spoken on the way back to the TV station. Jonas had been busy writing down notes in his journal. His mind had been racing. He’d been putting together his script.

  Now they are heading out there again. They have to pull over a few times on the way for Jonas to clutch his head and tell the camera he was being drawn toward Calhoun. It was like he was dialing in the dead policeman on a receiver.

  It’s like I’m being pulled toward him, it’s an actual physical feeling. He had seen Jonas write that line down, and no doubt he’ll be using it now.

  When they get to the paddock they park up on the road and get out and into position and then it’s lights, camera, action. The cameraman shoots footage of them pulling hiking boots on, Jonas looking up into the camera at the time and saying, “I believe Detective Calhoun is around here somewhere.”

  For the most part, Jones does look somber, and Schroder knows that’s a combination of practice and the fact that coming here has cost him a lot of money. The talent Schroder is most impressed by is how Jonas keeps the excitement out of his features.

  The cameraman shoots footage of them dressing in warmer jackets before doing the same thing, then he hoists the camera back up and filming continues. Jonas tilts his head—another Lassie impression—then starts nodding, agreeing with the message Detective Calhoun is sending him.

  “It’s this way,” he says.

  The first obstacle is the fence, which Jonas climbs with ease. Then he leads them up a path made up of mud and stones and tree roots, the camera taking it all in. To his credit, Jonas doesn’t pick up a forked branch and use it as a divining rod. The psychic moves forward. Goes left, pauses, goes right, carries on. They walk a hundred yards. Two hundred. Then they’re there, the grave ahead of them, the director and camera crew having no idea that both Schroder and Jones were out here this morning, having no idea about the money Jonas paid for the information. To them, this is the real deal. There are a few footprints left from their earlier visit, and from Joe’s visit yesterday, but either nobody notices them or they choose not to mention it. Certainly he and Jones did a better job hiding them around the grave than they did on the path.

  “Here,” Jonas says. “I believe Detective Inspector Calhoun is buried here,” he says, “somewhere within a ten-yard diameter. Perhaps . . .” he says, then tilts his head a little more, “yes, yes, it’s quite strong now. I can hear him. He wants to be found. Perhaps just over here,” he says, and then he’s standing next to the grave. “A lost soul crying out to be found. He’s very sad, but relieved now,” Jonas says. “We need a shovel. Quickly now,” he says, then more urgently to the camera and to everybody else around, he says, “we must help him.”

  “Perhaps we should call the police,” Schroder says, injecting no enthusiasm into the line.

  “The police,” Jonas scoffs. “If we just call them they won’t come. They need a reason to. They need a body.”

  Schroder has been carrying the shovel. He points it at the ground. “Here?” he asks.

  “A few feet to your left,” Jonas says, and when this has gone through editing, when haunting music has been added, this is going to be a powerful moment. Hairs on necks all around the country will be bristling.

  “Not too deep,” Jonas says.

  Schroder carefully puts the blade of the shovel into the earth. He scoops it away slowly and creates a low mountain of wet earth behind him. A minute later he steps back.

  “We have something,” he says, and the crew all move in. “It looks like human remains. Okay, look,” he says, turning toward Jonas and the camera crew and sounding like the policeman he used to be, he says “I know what you just said, but we have to shut this down. There’s enough here now to call the police. This is now officially a crime scene,” he says, and he puts his hand up to cover the lens just like they spoke about. “Don’t go wandering off,” he says, “don’t risk disturbing the area. And stop filming this.”

  They stop filming.

  “This is incredibly good shit,” the director says. “I gotta say, I had my doubts, but you’re the real deal, man,” she says, looking at Jonas.

  Jonas smiles back at her, but Schroder can tell he’s looking a little offended by the fact that the director may have suspected he wasn’t on the level. “I’m just glad I can help,” he says.

  Schroder gets his cell phone out and calls Detective Kent.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  I wake up with a queasy stomach and I’m a little unsure of where I am. For the first week in prison I woke up like that every morning. Somewhat sick, somewhat forgetful of where I was, only the sickness would hang about all morning and the forgetfulness would last two seconds at the most, maybe three, before the reality would come crashing back in. The second week was easier, and since then it’s only happened a handful of times—certainly never as bad as that first morning. This morning my stomach is clenched tight, and the room is just a dark room and not a cell in solitary confinement until the memories start filling in the gaps left by the seconds ticking by and leaving. I climb off my cot and hover in front of the toilet for a few minutes thinking I’m going to throw up, but it doesn’t happen, and then it almost does again, but still doesn’t. The only moisture coming out of my body is in the form of sweat. It turns out the room isn’t as dark as I first thought. I have no idea what the time is. I know I’m going to be taken out of here soon—I have to be. Still, there is that nagging sense of doubt, that small voice telling me that this is it, that these four walls and the cave-dwelling light are going to make up my future. No trial, no lawyer, no more guards—just this.

  I move away from the toilet and lie back on my bed. My knees are sore and starting to bru
ise from when I fell on them in the van yesterday to start retching. In fact, I’ve fallen on them a lot over the last few days—when being force-fed a sandwich or when being punched by Caleb Cole. What I think is probably an hour goes by before there’s a buzzing noise and the door unlocks and swings open, a prison guard I’ve never seen before standing on the other side of it.

  “Let’s go, Middleton,” he says.

  So we go. The guard has the height of a basketball player and the girth of a truck driver and leads me toward the breakfast hall, one big hand on my shoulder the entire way. All the guys I’ve come to know and love and wish were dead are already eating breakfast. I’m given my share and sip at the water and look at the food, but can’t eat it. I sit uncomfortably, focusing on keeping what’s inside me still inside me, focusing on winning the battle—which I’m managing to do. Then we’re taken outside. I look at people exercising and don’t join in. My stomach still feels like a meat grinder, which is better than it felt yesterday. It’s looking like it’s going to be a pretty nice day, though cold, but good following-women-home weather, though the reality is I’m kind of like the mailman in that regard—I deliver no matter what the season. After an hour we’re led back inside. Nobody mentions the broken phone, but I know it’s only a matter of time. Maybe the message will be delivered in the form of another shit sandwich.

  When I’m back in my cell I divide my time between staring at the books and staring at the toilet, but my thoughts are divided between Melissa not saving me and Calhoun being found. I’m waiting for twelve o’clock to roll around. When it does we’re allowed out into the common area. My stomach isn’t feeling great, but it’s certainly feeling better. Things down there are on the mend. I find a good position where I can see the TV. The news has already started. There’s a special report. An exciting report. A body has been found in Canterbury farmland. Yes! The reporter is live at the scene. She’s attractive. Yes! Female reporters in their twenties often are. I wish she was reporting live from my cell. It would be an exclusive for her. This just in.

  Over her shoulder are police cars and trees and a piece of land that is having its fifteen minutes of fame. The land belongs to a guy by the name of Mark Hampton. Hampton is a farmer. He grows wheat and paints barns and fucks cattle and is helping police with their inquiries. The identity of the body has not been confirmed. However, the circumstances in which the body were found strongly suggest it’s Detective Inspector Robert Calhoun, who went missing a year ago.

  “We can’t confirm exactly how he did it,” the reporter with her lush lips and beautiful eyes says, “but Jonas Jones led a film crew here shooting next week’s episode of Finding the Dead, which revolves around the disappearance of the policeman. It’s been well-known that the policeman was murdered last year by Melissa X, who so far has continued to evade police capture. According to the producers of the show, Jonas Jones was experiencing a psychic link with the deceased detective.”

  The story carries on. I wait for her to pitch the fact that Finding the Dead is on the same network as them, but she doesn’t. At one point the camera focuses on Carl Schroder. He looks tired. The reporter confirms Schroder works for the TV station that produces Jonas Jones’s show. It confirms Schroder was present when the body was found. Then it focuses on Jonas Jones, who is being spoken to by the same woman who escorted me out to the farm yesterday.

  Watching it unfold, I feel buoyed by the entire situation. Not just because there is now a guaranteed payday, but because if there are people out there who believe in psychics, and there are people out there who watch their shows, then that means there are people out there who will believe anything.

  That means there are people who will believe in my innocence.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Some warmth is finally starting to creep into the day. What isn’t creeping into the day is any more traffic, for which Melissa is thankful. She hates getting caught in traffic. She always has a fear of somebody rear-ending her, some kind of confrontation, some weird shitty set of coincidences lining up in which she gets caught. It’s happened in the past—not to her, but to others like her, other people who have taken lives have been caught by parking tickets and speeding tickets and flashed by red-light cameras. The sooner she is off the roads the better, and she wants to get this over with and back home because, after all, she still has a homelife that she’s been neglecting. She needs to get things prepared for Joe.

  She gets back to the office. Again she gets the same parking spot. The door is closed, but hasn’t been repaired and swings open without any resistance. She carries the gun up to the office. She peeks behind the curtain and stares out at the back of the courthouse, and she visualizes the tree she just shot, she visualizes Joe standing there, and now she’s even less confident this is going to work. She is sure Raphael will take the shot—but is he good enough? A hand shaking a fraction of an inch up here can result in a few feet down there. But there is no alternative. She spent months trying to think of other ways to get Joe out of jail—and this is it. It’s not that this is the best of a bunch of bad ideas—the fact is this was always the only idea.

  She has two bullets left, plus the armor-piercing round. She leaves the armor-piercing round as it is. The bullet puller she bought from the gun store is shaped like a hammer and uses kinetic energy to separate the bullet from the casing. It takes one bullet at a time. Arthur sold her the right-sized components, and the bullet slots easily into the end of the device. She crouches down and has to strike it against the floor, just like swinging a hammer, and after three hits the bullet comes apart. The second bullet takes four hits to come apart. She’s good with tools. Joe could verify that. She can imagine people doing the same thing with pliers and vise grips and blowing their fingers off. Using the tool is easy. It separates the bullet from the cartridge. She removes the powder. Then she uses the second tool she bought from Arthur—a bullet-seating die, to reassemble them. The bullets look and feel like the real deal—and the weight difference without the gunpowder is negligible.

  She puts the gun away just as it was left, all ready for Raphael to come along and use tomorrow morning. She has plans for the rest of the day, but she takes a moment to steal one more glance out over the back of the courthouse. Tomorrow is either going to go really well for Joe or really badly for Joe, but either way, by the end of the day Joe will no longer be a prisoner.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  When Ali arrives and I’m escorted through to see her, I’m nervous. Suddenly there’s a lot more riding on me convincing her I’m an innocent man. I may have just earned myself fifty thousand dollars, but I’d gladly part with every one of them to have her believe me.

  “Tell me about your mother,” she asks, once we’re seated and I’m cuffed to mine.

  “My mother? Why?”

  “Because I asked.”

  I shrug, the handcuff rattling against the chair. “Well, Mom is Mom,” I say. “There’s not much to say,” I add, which is about as much as I feel like adding.

  “You have a good relationship with her?”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Most serial killers have very strained relationships with their mother,” she says.

  “Can you not use that term?” I ask her.

  “Serial killer?”

  “Yeah. It sounds so . . . I don’t know. Something. I don’t like the label,” I say.

  “You don’t like the label.”

  “That’s right,” I say.

  She stares at me as if she can’t really believe I just said that. As if innocent until proven guilty isn’t relevant in my case. “Whether you remember it or not,” she says, “you still killed those people. The serial-killer label is accurate.”

  “Is that the label my lawyer will be using?”

  She nods. “I get your point,” she says. “But let’s get back to my point, which is most people in your . . . situation . . . don’t have great relationships with their mother.”

  �
��Joe isn’t most people,” I tell her, and truer words have never been spoken.

  “How long did you live with her for?”

  “I moved out of the house when Dad died,” I tell her.

  “Why?”

  “My mother became unbearable. When Dad was alive it gave her somebody to talk to all day long, but when he died that only left me.”

  “She ever abuse you?”

  “What?” I say, and the handcuff goes tight as I pull my arm up. “No. Never. Why would you ask something like that?”

  “You sure?”

  “Of course I’m fucking sure,” I tell her. “My mom’s a saint.”

  “Okay, Joe. Try to stay calm.”

  “I am calm.”

  “You don’t sound it.”

  I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” I say, which are words I’m not sure I’ve heard myself address to anyone before other than my mother. “I just don’t like it when people think bad things about my mother,” I say, but I’m not sure anybody has ever had good thoughts about her either. “Plus I miss my goldfish,” I tell her.

  “What?”

  “My goldfish. There were two of them. Pickle and Jehovah. They were murdered.”

  “We were talking about your mother,” she says.

  “I thought we had moved on,” I tell her.

  She jots down something on her pad. Then the pen moves back and forth as she underlines something. I’d almost give my right—and only remaining nut—to see what that is.