Joe Victim: A Thriller
Page 45
Chapter Eighty-Two
“What’s—” is all Walt can manage because a moment later Melissa’s bullet is rattling around in his wrong-on-so-many-levels skull. He stays standing as if being shot in the head is a momentary distraction, an annoyance, and then he’s waltzing down the steps taking the same path my mom took.
The shot Schroder took has gone high and wide, but he points his gun at me to take his second shot. Before he can, I pull Melissa in front of me, which ruins the shot she’s about to take, and ruins Schroder’s shot too. Instead of him shooting me, he shoots her. I can feel the impact of it.
I back into the church as Schroder takes his third shot. Another impact into Melissa and I get back through the church doors, dragging her with me. The door closes behind me. I lay Melissa on the floor next to the priest.
“You fucker,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I truly am. “It just . . . just happened that way.”
There are twin pools of blood forming on her chest. She raises her gun toward me and I reach out and take it out of her hands before she can fire it. “I can make it quick,” I tell her.
She shakes her head. Then she laughs. “I can’t believe you did this to me.”
“I didn’t mean to,” I tell her again, and it’s true.
“Abigail,” she says.
“I’ll look after her,” I tell her. “I’ll do everything right by her,” I tell her. “Where is she?”
“She’s safe,” she says.
“Don’t let her grow up without either of her parents,” I tell her, and I tell her this because I really need to know where Abigail is being hidden. I really need the safe place.
“Bullshit. You just want somewhere to hide out.”
“I promise you that’s not the case,” I tell her.
She laughs again. “I’ll tell you,” she says, “because I have no choice,” she says, and she hands me a key.
I don’t know what she means by that, but she gives me the address.
“Leave me the gun,” she says.
“No.”
“I’ll take care of Schroder,” she says. “Go out the back. Go through the cemetery. Make your way out onto a different street and steal a car, but do it now. Go now!”
I’m about to lean down and kiss her when she coughs up a small amount of blood.
“I love you,” I tell her.
“You have a funny way of showing it.”
I leave her the gun. I don’t know why I trust her, but I do. I run to the back of the church and turn to face her, but she’s not looking at me, instead she’s looking at the doors, pointing the gun toward them, and she’s talking to somebody, but I don’t know who. She laughs, and the only words I can make out are Smelly Melly. I have never in my life felt this guilty about a person. Or even guilt.
I go through a doorway into a corridor. I reach a back entrance and then I hear two gunshots that sound different from each other and then nothing. I go out the door and there’s a car parked there. It probably belongs to the priest. I climb into it. I don’t have the keys, but not having keys has never been a problem for me. I get it started and I drive around to the front of the church and there are no police cars, just people from mom’s wedding hiding behind other cars. I get out onto the street.
I keep driving.
After a few blocks I can hear sirens approaching.
I turn off so we don’t share the same road.
For the first few minutes my heart is racing so hard it feels like it’s going to pop right out of my chest. Then it starts to calm. Ten minutes into it I’m feeling pretty good. Good enough to look back over the last few hours and think that it all went really well.
I already miss Melissa.
It takes me another twenty minutes to get to the address she gave me. It’s a secluded house where the closest neighbors aren’t in looking distance. It’s a long shingle driveway and there’s a lot of land here. It’s not a modern place, but it’s not old either, and it looks comfortable. This place is going to be my home for the next few months until I can figure out where to go next.
I park around the back. I unlock the back door. I can hear a baby crying. My baby. My heart starts to speed up again. I make my way toward the sound. It’s a bedroom. I open the door. Inside is a woman. She looks to be in her twenties. Her hair is a mess. She’s wearing no makeup. She’s wearing clothes that look like they haven’t been washed in weeks. And there’s a metal chain going from her ankle to the metal pipe of a radiator. She’s trying to calm the baby, trying to feed it. This is what Melissa said when she said she had no choice but to tell me where the baby was. The woman looks up at me.
“Oh my God, oh thank God,” she says, and she drops the bottle of formula that the baby is refusing. The baby, Abigail, has a blank look on her face and she’s trying to clutch at something that isn’t there. She looks over at me and doesn’t smile or look away and I don’t know whether or not she can see me. She’s cute. As far as babies go. Very cute.
“What’s happening here?” I ask. “Who are you?”
“This crazy woman kidnapped us,” she says.
“Us? You and the baby?”
“No, me and my sister,” she says. “The baby belongs to the crazy lady. She said if anything happens to the baby she’s going to kill both of us, so I have to do everything she says. Please, please, you have to help us.”
“Is your sister younger or older than you?”
“A little older. Why? Why does it matter?”
“Just so I know what I’m in for.”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“I mean it really just isn’t your lucky day,” I tell her, and I close the door behind me and tell her about my day, then explain to her how she and her sister are my reward for getting through it.
Epilogue
I pull the car into the driveway. Sit back. Try to relax.
I have the car stereo going. Over the last three months since my escape, I’ve listened to the news a lot. It’s always nice to know what’s going on in the world. In the beginning, the news was all about me. Some of it was good news—like Walt being killed at the church. Some of it was heartbreaking—like Melissa being killed at the church. I miss her a lot.
I twist the keys in the ignition, grab my briefcase, and climb out of the car. I fumble with the lock to the front door of the house and make my way inside.
I can hear the shower going from down the hall. I make my way into the kitchen and open the fridge and help myself to the first beer I’ve had in over fifteen months. I carry it with me down to the bedroom and sit on the bed a few feet from the bathroom door, from which steam is steadily creeping under. I pop open the briefcase and sit it on the bed and pull out the newspaper. The front page is about Carl Schroder. Three months ago he was shot in the head, but survived. He was put into a coma. The paper makes a big deal out of it because he shared a hospital room with a guy he used to work with who was also in a coma. They were called the Coma Cops. The media really played it up. The other guy, Tate somebody, woke up two weeks ago. And yesterday Carl Schroder woke up.
Today is the first day I’ve been out of my house since the escape. I’m already missing my daughter. Right now she’s being looked after by my housemate. My housemate’s name is Elizabeth, and her sister’s name is Kate, but Kate isn’t at the house. She never was. Kate exists, but it’s obvious Melissa only ever told Elizabeth she was there in order to manipulate her. I use the same tactic, and it works.
Mail comes to the house. Power bills, mostly. They all say they are being taken care of by direct payment to a credit card, but whose, or how Melissa set that up, I don’t know. I found a notebook. It was a budget. Melissa prepaid the rent for one year. She prepaid some guy to come mow the lawn every few weeks too.
As well as leaving cupboards full of baby food, baby clothes, and baby supplies, Melissa also left a bag full of cash. I use it for groceries. The same credit card used for the bills also gets used to order groceries online fro
m a nearby supermarket. So once every week or two I shop with a computer and the groceries are left at my door. There is a lot of money here. Almost thirty thousand dollars. It will come in handy when we leave. It’s a nice house, but it does feel a little like prison since I never get to go anywhere. Feels like a prison too for Elizabeth, I imagine.
I’m growing my hair long. It looks awful, but I’m getting used to it. I’ve dyed it too. Blond. It was the color Melissa had chosen for me. There were a few boxes of dye left for me.
Abigail is getting bigger. I don’t know her birthday, but I guess I can pick any day really. She smiles at me a lot now. And sometimes she laughs uncontrollably. I’ve figured out that the best sound in the world is a baby laughing. The worst sound in the world is pretty much any other sound a baby can possibly make. She smiles at Elizabeth too, and the two seem to like each other. Elizabeth is starting to like me too. Maybe there’s something there. It does happen. Or maybe she’s just wanting me to let her go.
But, like I say, the house feels like a prison, and it’s nice to finally be out. I have needs that Elizabeth can’t meet. Urges that keep me awake at night just as much as Abigail does. I’ve been a good boy. I’ve kept my hands off the babysitter. I like the idea of a more hands-on approach, but I don’t like the idea of accidently killing the only person who can get Abigail to go to sleep.
Good things are going to happen.
The shower is switched off. I hear footsteps and a towel being pulled from a rack, then general bathroom noises of drawers being opened and closed. An extractor fan is turned on. I fold the newspaper up and put it back into my briefcase.
I take out the biggest knife I have and rest it on the bed. Then I take out the gun I found at my new house.
Then I take out the sandwich I brought along with me.
Adam the prison guard steps out of the bathroom and into the bedroom.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asks, because he doesn’t recognize me. It’s the hair—plus I’ve put on some weight.
I hold up the gun and I hold up the sandwich. “I’m Joe Optimist.”
Acknowledgments
Joe Victim is the result of a process that’s taken more than ten years, starting with a vague idea for a sequel way back when we saw one millennium leave and another one come in. That’s when I was writing The Cleaner. Sometime during the year 2000 when it was done, but before the five or six years of rewriting that would follow it, I used to think—a sequel would be cool.
The sequel didn’t progress beyond the idea of I’d like to write a sequel, and for now I’ll call it The Cleaner II, for many years. Back in 2008, two years after The Cleaner was finally published, I wrote the first 20,000 words of The Cleaner II, then no more. Of course it was never far from my mind. I kept people updated on what Joe was up to in the other books—he was in jail. He’d show up, he’d get mentioned—Joe wasn’t going to be forgotten. Then the end of 2011 rolled around and suddenly, out of nowhere, I knew it was time. The sequel went from something I’d been thinking about to something I had to do. I spent that summer inside writing, binging on junk food and ignoring my Xbox. The book took shape. It had a direction. It even had a title. Joe Victim.
Like the six books before it, Joe Victim has had many helping hands. My editor at Atria Books in New York, the wonderful Sarah Branham, always makes me think in different directions. She helps shape the novels and makes me be a better writer, and makes me want to be a better writer. Sarah rocks! As to the rest of the Atria and Simon & Schuster team: Judith Curr, Lisa Keim, Mellony Torres, Anne Spieth, Isolde Sauer, Janice Fryer, Gillian Cowin, and Emily Bestler, among all the others who do great, great things.
Aside from being lucky enough to have one of the best editors around, I also have the best agent in the world. If you know Jane Gregory of Gregory & Company, then you know what I say is true. Jane is brilliant. As are Claire Morris and Linden Morris, and of course Stephanie Glencross, Jane’s in-house editor—my go-to person for all things writing and all things life.
Let me sign off once again by thanking you, the reader. Thanks again for the support, the emails, and the Facebook messages. Thanks for coming along to book signings and festivals to say hi. You’re who I write for, you’re the reason I like to make bad things happen . . .
Till next time!
Paul Cleave
March 2013—Christchurch
About the Author
PAUL CLEAVE is the author of seven internationally bestselling thrillers: The Cleaner; The Killing Hour; Cemetery Lake; Blood Men, winner of the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel of 2011; Collecting Cooper, a Suspense Magazine Best Book of 2011; and The Laughterhouse, a Suspense Magazine Best Book of 2012. He lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. Find out more at www.paulcleave.com.
ALSO BY PAUL CLEAVE
The Laughterhouse
Collecting Cooper
Blood Men
Cemetery Lake
The Killing Hour
The Cleaner
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright ©2013 by Paul Cleave
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Manufactured in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cleave, Paul, date.
Joe Victim : a thriller / Paul Cleave.—First Atria paperback edition.
pages cm
1. Serial murderers—Fiction. 2. Death row inmates—Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PR9639.4.C54J64 2013
823'.92—dc23 2013005568
ISBN 978-1-4516-7797-3
ISBN 978-1-4516-7798-0 (ebook)
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Twelve Months Later
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
&n
bsp; Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-One
Chapter Eighty-Two
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Cover
Dedication