Joe Victim: A Thriller

by Paul Cleave

  Melissa holds the gun down by her side, just slightly out of view.

  The door swings open.

  The woman doing the swinging is dressed in winter pajamas and a robe that are a little too big for her, even though the woman is a little too big herself. Still, she’s not as overweight as she was in the papers twelve months ago after she jumped on Joe during his arrest, or even as she was three months ago when Melissa came to see her. Her face is somewhat flushed. She looks like she is running late. She’s wearing a crucifix around her neck. A little Jesus on a little cross. A little Jesus who doesn’t seem happy to be hanging where he’s hanging.

  “I thought we had a deal,” the woman says. “You promised you were going to leave me alone.”

  “And I have until now, Sally,” Melissa says. “But I’m here to make another deal. You need to start by letting me in,” she says, and she raises the gun and sticks it into Sally’s chest, right where Jesus is doing his best not to look. “Or if you prefer I can shoot you in the stomach and leave you here to rot.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Raphael wakes up expecting fate to intervene, that he’ll have a sore throat or a bad stomach from something he ate, maybe a racing heart from too much bad food, or at the very least a hangover—even though he didn’t really drink that much yesterday. Fate has never been one for the Can’t we all just get along school of thought, there are too many sad stories in the city that prove that, so for he and Fate to be on the same page about Joe seems like a small miracle.

  He holds his hands in front of his face in the six a.m. light and can barely make them out, but can see them enough to tell he doesn’t have any signs of the shakes. For a guy who hardly slept last night, he’s doing remarkably well. It’s been a clock-watching night, where every passing hour his mind would do the math, telling him just how much sleep he wasn’t getting. His mind was racing. In the beginning it was racing with positive thoughts. Then around one a.m., the first negative thought came along. Within thirty minutes the balance had shifted. The negative thoughts were chasing away all the good ones. By three a.m. there were no positive thoughts, just a bunch of frayed nerves he was struggling to keep under control. When he finally fell asleep at around four, he entered a dream world and somewhere in that world all the bad shit disappeared, and he’s woken up feeling good.

  He throws back the covers. Even though he sleeps alone these days, he still sleeps on the side of the bed he has slept on since being married. The other side barely has any wrinkles in it. He puts on his robe and slippers and walks through to the kitchen. The house is warm thanks to two heat pumps that have been running during the night. He has no appetite, but forces himself to eat anyway. A bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice and his hands stay calm the entire time. These are, he thinks, the hands of a killer. He makes toast and burns it so he tosses it into the trash. He puts in four fresh slices and gets it right, but doesn’t eat them, just leaves them in the toaster. It was the same way when he killed the lawyer. Same way when he killed the second one too. No appetite. No reason this morning should be any different.

  It’s cold outside. For some reason he’s suddenly transported back to when he was a kid, when he’d have to bike to school in freezing-cold weather along with thousands of other kids across the city, icy roads and frosty air, breath forming clouds in front of his face. Only right now it’s a bit darker than what it was when he used to leave for school. It’s still only seven thirty. People are driving to work with the lights on and with coffee cups in their drink holders, driving to a job involving numbers or materials or words or physical labor—none of them, he imagines, with the idea in mind of killing somebody. It’s too early for the protesters to be showing up. He turns on the radio. Not too early for the protesters to be calling in.

  He parks on the street between the office building and the courts, thinks better of it, then moves his car just around the corner, adjacent to the building he’ll be shooting from. Soon this whole area will fill up, and after the shooting he doesn’t want to get caught in a traffic jam ten yards from the back entrance to the court.

  It’s a thirty-second walk back to the office building. He takes the stairs up to the third floor and unlocks the office door. The duct tape has held the drop cloth in place, so the office is dark. He paces the office for half a minute, then sits down and leans against the wall. He’s brought a thermos with him full of coffee, and he pours himself one and slowly sips at it and watches the office as it slowly becomes lighter. He takes a photograph of Angela out from his pocket and rests it on his thigh.

  What are you doing? she asks him.

  “Today’s the day,” he tells her.

  You’re going to kill him?

  “Yes,” he tells her, but of course she isn’t really here, he knows that, but boy, wouldn’t it be great if somehow, somewhere, she really could hear him. “I know it doesn’t bring you back,” he tells her, “but I hope it makes you feel better.”

  You think killing him honors me? she asks. You think taking a life in your daughter’s name is something mom would want? Or I would want?

  “Yes,” he says.

  She doesn’t answer him.

  “Isn’t it?”

  Yes, she says.

  “I wasn’t there to protect you. This isn’t going to make it right, but it’s all I can do.”

  I’m sorry you weren’t there to protect me either, she says. You were meant to be there. That was your job.

  “I know,” he says, and he’s crying now. “I’m sorry.”

  Thank you for killing him for me, she says, and I’m glad you’re doing it in my name. Make him suffer, Daddy. Make him suffer and then he can rot in Hell. I just wish you could kill him ten times over. A hundred times over.

  “I miss you, baby,” he says, and he puts the photograph back into his pocket and reaches up into the ceiling for the gun.

  Chapter Fifty

  I wake up at seven o’clock. We all do. A loud buzzer goes off. It rips into our dreams and puts an end to any of the good stuff going on in there. Though in this case the good stuff was me remembering the blank look on Ronald’s face when the hammer cracked open his skull. He just stood there staring at me for a few seconds. I think he knew he was dead, but his body was still catching up. I thought he would have dropped like a rock, but it took two or three seconds for him to fall. It was the strangest thing, a physics-defying thing. Killers like to say they don’t remember what happened—that they just snapped, that it was a dream. But the exact opposite is true. Killing has a way of making you feel alive—who the hell would want to forget that?

  I use the toilet and wait patiently in my cell for thirty minutes until my block is taken through for breakfast, which appears to be something a patient with the Ebola virus coughed up. My stomach is feeling good. Whatever was in that sandwich has done its best, it’s gone through the motions, and I’ve come out on top. Adam comes and finds me. He looks me up and down. He doesn’t look happy.

  “You look better, Middleton.”

  “Fuck you,” I tell him.

  He laughs. “We showed those photos of you eating that sandwich to a lot of our buddies,” he tells me. “Got a whole lot of laughs.”

  “I just need a list,” I tell him.

  “What?”

  “A list. Because when I get out of here, I’m going to fucking kill every one of them, and I’m going to start with you.”

  He laughs at me again, even harder this time. “Christ, Joe, you really do make me laugh. This prison needs people like you, and thankfully for us you’re going to be here for a very long time—unless they end up hanging you, which would be a shame, I guess, until the next funny bastard comes along and we forget all about you.”

  He takes me down to the showers. I get cleaned up and Adam tosses me some clothes. It’s a suit. It’s the same suit other prisoners have worn in the past who are my size. The same suit I wore when I was charged a few days after I was arrested. A gray suit with a dark blue shir
t and black shoes. I look like a bank manager. Only one without shoelaces or a belt. Adam promises me I’ll be given those before I leave. The shirt has stains in the armpits and smells like cabbage and I shake it out, hoping whatever head lice are asleep in there lands on the floor.

  I’m taken back to my cell. I have to wait an hour. Most of it I spend sitting on the edge of my bed wondering about the trial. For the first time the reality of it is all kicking in. I always knew this day was coming, but part of me always believed it never would—part of me was sure I’d be out of here by now, that the police would have found a reason to let me go. The trial date just kept on rolling forward and now it’s here, and suddenly the nerves of the trial kick in and I almost throw up. And then I do throw up. When I’m done I back away from the toilet and Caleb Cole is standing in my doorway.

  “A farewell present,” he says, and then he rushes me with something sharp.

  I don’t even get to my feet before he hits me, but I manage to lift my pillow so whatever he is trying to stab me with—it actually is a filed-down toothbrush—goes into the pillow, but doesn’t come right through, stopping somewhere short of my hand. I use my other hand to punch him in the balls. He staggers back, but not as far as I’d have thought, and then I throw the pillow at him in what, to anybody else, would probably look quite comical.

  He comes at me again, only this time I’m able to get to my feet. I don’t know what I’m doing other than reacting. A survival instinct has kicked in. The room, other than our footsteps and muffled grunts, is silent. This is what a real fight sounds like. I get both my hands around his wrist with the toothbrush, and he uses his free hand this time to punch me in the balls. Or ball. I drop quickly to my knees, but don’t let go of his wrist, knowing it’s the only thing keeping me alive. I pull him forward at the same time. His breathing gets louder. So does mine. I topple back—my back on the bed, my shins on the floor, and feet pinned beneath them. He topples onto me, and for the moment neither of us are throwing punches. Instead both of us are focusing on the toothbrush. I’m guessing nine out of ten dentists wouldn’t recommend having your stomach perforated by one. And the tenth dentist is either a prick or is the one doing the perforating.

  “Die, you fucker,” Cole says.

  I say nothing. I just keep focusing on the toothbrush. It’s angling at my chest and getting closer as he pushes his body weight into it.

  “Die,” Cole repeats, the word thrown at me with spittle and hate. I try pushing upward, but it’s a losing battle.

  So I do the only thing left to do. I scream like a girl.

  Cole pulls back a little, as if the sound waves are too much for him to handle. The sound reminds me of a year ago when Melissa gripped me with a pair of pliers in a place pliers should never be gripped. I put more effort into the scream. Only it’s not powerful enough, and a few seconds later as the scream fades the toothbrush comes back toward me.

  The last thing going through my mind as the toothbrush also threatens to go through it is my mother, my mother and her stupid fucking wedding, she in some ugly dress and Walt saying I do and then them kissing in front of a priest and whoever is unlucky enough to be attending. Then suddenly Caleb Cole is being pulled aside, and there standing behind him is Santa Suit Kenny. Santa Suit Kenny throws him against the wall, then looks down at me.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  Before I can even answer, the toothbrush that had my name on it now has Kenny’s name on in instead, and Caleb jabs it into him and twists it and turns it and there’s the sickening sound of flesh being punctured and a strange smell too, and then a snap as the toothbrush breaks, half of it left inside Kenny, half of it in Cole’s hand. Santa Suit Kenny staggers back and looks down at his side, where blood is blooming over his prison overalls, a look of disbelief on his face, like he can’t believe this is where his journey of music and molestation is going to come to an end.

  Caleb takes another run at me, and he swings the remaining half of the toothbrush at me and gets me hard in the stomach, only the handle doesn’t penetrate me because it has no sharp point on it—it just slides back through his hand, which is wet with blood, but the impact is enough to fire the storm back up in my stomach. It fires up hard and fast and things in there turn over, they turn and turn and I can’t hold on for much longer—scattered showers and a hurricane are on their way.

  The guards come in and drag Caleb, the fight mostly out of him now, away from me. I rip my pants down and squat over the toilet and the relief is sudden and painful, but relief nonetheless. Santa Suit Kenny stares at me as his life slips away and I stare back at him, my stomach burning hot as the world fades a little.

  “Queen,” Santa Suit Kenny says. “Muff. Punch. Queen,” he says, and I guess as far as dying words go, others have done better.

  I lean my elbows on my knees and do my best to stop from passing out, and we stare at each other—me doing the shitting, Kenny doing the dying—and he never says another word and the storm rages on.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Schroder doesn’t want to get out of bed. Ever again. He has somewhat of a headache. Or more accurately somewhat of a hangover. Brought on by somewhat too many drinks and the fact that yesterday was somewhat of a disaster. Jonas Jones loved every second of it. He was all over the news. He was the man the dead detective had come to in order to be found, and the camera loved him. The camera soaked up every second along with the public. Helping the living contact the dead was Jonas’s calling in life. A gift. Proven over and over. People shouldn’t doubt him, and less people doubted him after yesterday, and, if you wanted to know more about Jonas and his abilities, his books can be found at any good bookstore.

  Of course the media didn’t know if the body was going to be Calhoun’s—nobody knew that, not for a fact, not until later last night when Kent had rung him and told him about the pin put into Calhoun’s leg five years ago when he’d lost control of his car. No amount of pins would have helped the rapist he was chasing back then, because that guy was pinned between Calhoun’s fender and the brick wall of a dairy, and now that event has a serial number and that number confirms the body they dug up belongs to the dead detective. That discovery put a transfer of funds into place. People making money on a dead man. Including himself. A dead man who had been tortured. Ten grand showed up in Schroder’s account overnight. It’s the easiest money he’s ever earned and it’s the sickest he’s ever felt.

  “This will be made public tomorrow,” Kent told him, “and if you release that information before then I swear, Carl, I’ll never—”

  “I won’t say anything,” he said. “How are you getting on with your three dead bodies?”

  “We’re getting on,” she answered, and then she hung up.

  So last night he drank to numb the pain of what he had done, of who he had climbed into bed with. He drank because it helped, even though drinking wasn’t helping his marriage, but it wasn’t as though he was drinking every night. Jesus, the last time he even touched a drop was at Detective Inspector Landry’s wake four weeks ago—he hasn’t touched it since because that drink back then was the start of him losing his job. Things keep slipping away from him. A few months ago Kent was the new detective on the force, and now she was talking down to him, like he was worthless. A few months ago he was the one telling her what to do. How. The. fuck. Have things gotten to where they have?

  Of course, he knows exactly how.

  His daughter has helped wake him by jumping repeatedly on the end of the bed, each bounce like somebody squeezing his brain between their palms. He watches some cartoons with her for five minutes, then jumps in the shower.

  The hot water helps wake him, it helps massage the hangover away a little. When he’s done he puts on the same suit he wore yesterday when he was on TV, which is the same suit he wore when he was on the force, which is the only suit he has. His wife is making breakfast for the baby and his daughter. He smiles at her and she frowns at him and it’s not looking like it’s going t
o be a great day. It’s almost eight thirty and he’s feeling tired again. He shakes a couple of Wake-E pills out a packet from his pocket and takes them when his wife isn’t looking, not needing her to nag him again about how many he’s been taking.

  They don’t talk much over breakfast, which is common these days, and their lack of talking is becoming a habit and a problem and he wonders if he’s losing his marriage and hopes like hell he’s not. The baby is looking up and laughing at him, and smiles at her and she laughs some more.

  When this is over, all this stuff with the Carver, then he’ll tell Jonas to . . . to what? Shove his job? And then what? Have no money? He can spend more time with his family, as much time as he wants, then they can all starve in the cold, huddled beneath blankets and be together forever.

  He finishes his breakfast and his wife wishes him good luck at the trial. Then she kisses him good-bye and he hugs her back and maybe he’s just reading too much into things, maybe his wife is just as tired most of the time and there’s nothing wrong with their marriage because the hug feels good and warm and makes him wish he wasn’t going anywhere at all except back to bed with her. He kisses his baby good-bye and the baby smiles and giggles before a hiccup bubble appears between his lips, popped a moment later by a thick but short stream of undigested milk. He hugs his daughter and heads for the door.

  The trial starts at ten o’clock. Joe will arrive at the courthouse at nine forty. That’s thirty minutes away. He starts the drive into town. The airwaves are full of people expressing their opinions. There are reporters at the courthouse already, saying there is a large crowd with more people coming, many carrying signs, many chanting slogans. Then there is another growing group, one of teenagers in costumes—he can see Spider-Man, he can see a couple of Xena Warrior Princesses, he can see four Batmans, and at least half a dozen Waldos from Where’s Waldo?, among dozens of other costumes from Manga characters to popular movie personalities. The reporter says it’s going to be a tough day for everybody, which immediately restores Schroder’s faith in reporters—when they want to, they really can get the facts right.