Joe Victim: A Thriller (7 page)

“If the law passes,” I say.

“In theory it
could
go either way. But it won’t. It will pass. The decision is yours. You’ve been given twenty-four hours to decide.”

“How can they do this to an innocent man?” I ask.

My lawyer sighs and leans back, not an ounce of belief anywhere in his features. He looks like he’s frustrated, like he’s been trying to tune into a TV station he can’t quite land on.

“I don’t need twenty-four hours,” I tell him. “I’m innocent. The jury will see that.”

“Joe—”

“They can’t convict a man for being sick, and that’s what I was. I was sick. It’s not right. There must be human violations against it. We must have other options.”

“You’re out of options, Joe. You didn’t leave yourself many options when you got caught with that gun, or that videotape in your apartment. The trial is only a show, Joe. The jury hasn’t been picked yet, but it’s already made up its mind. The whole world has. And you pass up this deal and you could be swinging from a rope in a year.”

“I’d rather that than life in here. Send our shrinks in. Let them evaluate me. They can go up on the stand and contradict everything Benson Barlow will say about me.”

“Listen, Joe, for the last time, I’m telling you it’s not going to work.”

“I’m not taking the deal.”

“Fine,” he says.

“Anything else?” I ask him.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Something encouraging, maybe. Seems all you ever do is bring me bad news. Seems like you’re just trying to bring me down.”

“I’ll let the prosecution know you’re rejecting the deal,” he says. He glances at his watch. “You’re talking to our psychiatrist at nine o’clock in the morning,” he says, as if I’d forgotten the time. “Don’t fuck it up.”

“I won’t.”

“We’ll see about that,” he says, and he stands up, knocks on the door, and leaves.

Chapter Nine

Melissa parks outside the house and stares at the front door for two minutes, getting her thoughts in order. It’s a typical house in a typical middle-class street. Twenty or thirty years old. Brick. Garden slightly overrun compared to the neighbors’. Tidy, warm, livable, boring. She has the window wipers off, so the view becomes distorted as more rain gathers on the windshield. She planned what she wanted to say on the way, now it’s just a matter of seeing if it will work.

She looks at the fat suit and wonders if it’s worth putting on, and decides that it is. And instead of the red wig, she goes with a blonde one. She climbs out of the car and holds a newspaper over her head and dashes for the front door. She isn’t sure if he’ll answer, if there’s going to be anybody home—after all, it’s only one in the afternoon. After twenty seconds she knocks again, and then there are footsteps and the rattle of a chain.

The door opens. A man in his late thirties opens it. He has black hair that is slowly receding. His stubble is black on his cheeks, but gray around his chin. She can smell coffee. His skin is pale white—as if he spent summer, last summer, and the summer before that all indoors. He’s wearing a red shirt that’s hanging over blue jeans, and cheap shoes. She hates it when people wear cheap shoes. It’s poor form. Already she’s starting to think this is a bad idea.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

“Mr. Walker,” she says, and it’s not a question but a statement because she saw Walker’s photograph in Schroder’s file.

“Are you a reporter?” he asks. “Because if you are, you can fuck off.”

“Do I smell like I just went through your garbage looking for tidbits of information?”

“No . . .”

“Then I’m not a reporter,” she says.

“So who are you?”

“I’m a woman who has a job proposal for you.”

He looks confused, as well he should. “What kind of proposal?”

“Can I come in?” she asks. “Please, it’s important, and it will only be a few minutes and I’m sick of standing in the rain and my feet are tired.”

He looks her up and down and seems to finally notice that she’s pregnant. “Are you selling something?”

“I’m selling you the chance to sleep like a baby,” she says.

“Huh. You must be selling some kind of miracle pill,” he tells her.

“It almost is.”

“A miracle pill disguised as a job proposal?” he asks.

“Please, just a few minutes of your time, then it will all make sense.”

Walker sighs, then steps aside. “Fine.”

“Are the kids at school?”

“Yeah.”

She puts the wet newspaper down by the door. “Then lead the way,” she says.

He leads her down a hallway where there are photographs of the kids, of his dead wife. There’s even a photograph of the house he used to live in. Melissa has been to that house. A year ago she killed Detective Calhoun in that house. Joe was there. It turned out there was a video camera there too. Joe really could be a tricky little bastard when he wanted to be.

“Have a seat,” he says, pointing to a couch beneath the window in the lounge, “and make it quick. I don’t want you going into labor and messing up the carpets.”

She isn’t sure if he’s joking, then decides he isn’t. She sits down. The fat suit has a hollow in the side of it, and inside that hollow is the pistol. She rubs at her stomach the way pregnant woman do, feeling the end of the silencer pushing against her hand. Walker sits down in the couch opposite. The furniture is new. All of it. The couches, the coffee table, the TV—none of it older than a year. Walker is creating a new life for himself. Only that life is a little disorganized. She has an angle to the hallway they came in and she can see the calendar is displaying last month’s month. The carpet needs vacuuming—there are chip crumbs resting in the top gap between the cushions of the couch. There are empty coffee cups on the table and about fifty times as many rings on it, as if no drink was ever put into the same place twice. Everything may be new looking, but it’s also tired looking. The same way Walker is tired looking.

“So,” he says. “What is this job you’re selling?”

“Your wife was murdered,” she says.

“Listen—”

“By Joe Middleton,” she says.

He starts to stand up. “If this is about—”

“He killed my sister,” she says.

He pauses halfway between sitting and standing. He looks like a man about to grab his back before having to lie on the floor for three days. She isn’t sure whether he’ll keep rising or if he’ll sit back down. Then he slowly lowers himself.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” he says.

“My sister never hurt anybody,” she says. “She lived her life in a wheelchair.”

“I read about her,” he says. “It was . . . I mean, all of it was horrible, but what he did to her was, well, was something . . . extra bad,” he says, his voice becoming sympathetic.

“It was,” she says, and she read about the woman in the wheelchair too. She never met her, but her own sister was murdered so she can imagine how it feels. Right now she is being relatable. It’s going well.

“Listen, I know you’re hurting,” Walker says, “but I’m not in the right space to come along to your group-counseling session, I’ve already told you that. I appreciate the offer, just like I appreciated it last time, but—”

“I’m going to kill him,” she says.

He stares at her and says nothing. The couch is uncomfortable. There are kids’ toys around the room, helping to mess up the floor and the rest of the furniture, and this is why she never wanted kids. They take up space and they take up time. They might be good for reaching under the couch for loose change, but beyond that all they do is give a room really bad feng shui. She holds back a yawn and rubs her stomach and carries on.

“You’re not here from the group?” he asks.

“I want you to help.”

“Help?”

“I want you to shoot him.”

He cocks his head slightly. “Why don’t you shoot him?”

“Because I’m in no condition to shoot anybody. Look at me,” she says. “And because it’s a two-person plan.”

He looks at her. “Just how are you planning on shooting Joe? Walking into the prison and asking if you can see him in his cell?”

“No.”

“Then what? Shooting him in the courtroom next week?”

“It’s not that either. It’s simpler than that. I already have a gun.”

“Listen—”

“Wait,” she says, and she holds up her hand. “You want him dead for what he did, don’t you?”

There is no delay in his answer. “Of course I do.”

“And don’t you want to be the one to make that happen?”

“Yes.”

“Then I can give you that. I can help you make him suffer,” she says, “and I can give you this.” She opens up the briefcase and turns it toward him.

“How much is in there?” he asks.

“Ten thousand dollars.”

“Is that what it’s worth? To kill somebody?”

“This, this is just money,” she says. “The payoff is in the satisfaction. He murdered your wife,” she tells him. “He broke into her house and he ripped off her clothes and he—”

“Stop,” he says, and he lifts up his hand. “Stop. I know what he did.”

“Don’t you feel it?” she asks. “It’s like a heat. It races around your body—this heat, this need, this desire for revenge. It burns inside you. Keeps you awake at night with bad thoughts. It runs your life and ruins your life and it doesn’t get better.”

“I feel it,” he says. “Of course I feel it.”

“I wake up at night sweating and shaking, and all I can think about is wanting to kill him. And we can do it,” she says. “Together we can do it and nobody will know it was us.”

He shakes his head. “I hate him, I really do, but I don’t want to throw my life away because of him. If anything goes wrong then we’re both going to jail.”

“Nothing will go wrong,” she says, but it’s already too late—she’s trying too hard to sell him and she didn’t want to try at all. She had wanted him to want to do it. She wanted to show up and say
I want to shoot Joe Middleton
and she had wanted him to say
I’m on board—show me how—no matter what the plan is I’ll make it happen.
Perhaps her first idea was the best, to pay somebody to do it. She thought there would be an advantage in getting somebody grieving to do the job. This way she can supply the gun, the plan, and she can supply the outcome too. She’s starting to worry that what is a two-person plan will have to be changed into a one-person plan—only she doesn’t have a one-person plan.

“Don’t you want revenge?” she asks.

“Of course I do. But not enough to risk going to jail. I’m sorry. I still have a family.”

“So you won’t help.”

He shakes his head.

She closes the briefcase and stands up and rubs her belly. “Before I go, tell me, you mentioned group-counseling sessions.”

“You think you can find somebody there to help you?”

“It’s worth a shot.”

“There’s a group that meets every Thursday night.”

“Thursday?”

“Yeah. Today. They’re family members and friends of homicide victims. I haven’t been, but from what I’ve heard there’s quite a big showing of people who have been hurt by the Carver. You’re going to have plenty of people to choose from. You’ll get so many volunteers you’re going to have to start turning people away.”

“Where and when?”

“Seven thirty,” he says. “They meet at a community hall.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere in town.”

“You’ll go to the police?”

“Hell no. I wish you the best of luck. I really do. I want nothing more than for somebody to nail that sick bastard. It just can’t be me. I’m sorry.”

She makes her way to the front door. He follows her. She thinks about what Joe told her about this guy, how he used to beat up his wife. It was Detective Calhoun who figured out Tristan Walker was always around when his wife and door occupied the same moment in space in time.

There’s nothing worse than a wife beater.

“You’re sure you won’t help me?” she asks, picking up the wet newspaper.

“All I want is to be left alone,” he tells her.

She keeps rubbing her belly when she steps out into the street, leaving Tristan Walker alone just like he asked.

Chapter Ten

The air-conditioning in the TV station is a season behind, or so he’s been told, and Schroder believes it too since it’s still blasting cold air. No doubt it’ll get around to pumping out warm air just when spring starts turning into summer. The station belongs to one of the major networks, coming into existence around the same time Joe Middleton started making the news. Until then there was only a local TV station in the city, the major ones were up in Auckland. But then suddenly Christchurch became the capital for crime, it became the place where journalists wanted to be. It also became the place where producers wanted to shoot crime shows. He once had a guy theorize that flights into Christchurch take longer every year the further the city slips into Hell—though the current temperature makes it an arguable point.

He catches the lift. There is elevator music, classical stuff he can’t imagine anybody ever liking. Especially him. Or maybe it’s just that he doesn’t like it because he doesn’t like being here. Another person gets on the lift next to him, and the two of them stare straight ahead, each of them making a big effort not to speak to the other. His stomach is rumbling, reminding him he skipped out on breakfast and he could end up skipping out on lunch too. On the fourth floor he steps into a corridor and makes his way past a makeup room, a cafeteria, offices, and down to Jonas Jones’s office. The studio itself where they broadcast from is on the floor below, and Schroder wonders if Jones has a certain satisfaction being above it all.

He doesn’t knock on the door. He figures there’s no need when you’re going to see a psychic. He opens the door and walks inside. Jones is sitting behind his desk with his shoes off, polishing them.

“Ah, I’m glad you’re back,” Jonas says.

Schroder isn’t glad. There are a few reasons he lost his job being a cop, and Jones is one of them. Schroder had never killed anybody before this year, and the nightmares he has about that probably wouldn’t get any worse if he were to put a few bullets into Jonas.

“I spoke to him,” Schroder says, sitting down opposite the desk. He’s tempted to put his feet up. The office has framed pictures of Jonas on the walls meeting other celebrities—a bunch of actors, some writers, some popular local figures. There are photos of him at book signings, even one of him signing a book for the prime minister that helps Schroder decide who he’s going to vote for.

“And?” Jonas asks. “Or are you just going to keep me hanging?”

“And he’s thinking about it.”

“Thinking about it? Come on, Carl, I’m sure you could have done better than that. You offer him the twenty grand?”

“Of course.”

“How much more did he want?”

“Fifty.”

“Fifty is good,” he says, and Schroder thinks about what Joe said earlier, about Sally being paid out that fifty-thousand-dollar reward. It was police work that got them there last year, and Sally was part of that. Was she a big enough part to have earned a reward? No. Not in his opinion. But the money wasn’t coming out of his pocket, and he was happy to see it go to her. It was as much a publicity stunt at that stage as anything else. There will be more rewards in the future, and if the public see that kind of money being paid out, then they’ll be more willing to offer up the names of people doing bad stuff. It’s all part of their new
Crime doesn’t pay, but helping the police does
campaign.

“Yeah, fifty is good,” Schroder says back to him.

Jones pauses to look at him for a few seconds, then goes back to work on his shoes. “We had budgeted for a hundred,” he says, scrubbing at them even though they already look clean. “Can you imagine it?” he asks. “Imagine how it will be, with us finding Detective Inspector Robert Calhoun?”

Schroder has been imagining it, and it makes him feel sick. “I just don’t get why you don’t use the psychic powers you keep reminding us that you have,” he says, and he’s said it before and he’ll say it again, just as Jonas has explained it before. It’s his way of reminding Jonas every day that he knows the psychic is full of shit.

Jonas turns the shoe in his hand examining it, or perhaps examining his reflection in the shiny leather. “It doesn’t work that way,” he says. “If it worked that way every psychic in the world would be winning the lotto. It comes and goes, and it doesn’t work with everybody. I’ve been trying with Robert, but just haven’t gotten anything. It’s another realm we’re tapping into—there are no hard and fast rules, you have to feel your way—”

“I get it,” Schroder says, and holds up his hand. He wonders if hating himself will reach a peak and subside, or whether it’s going to follow the current curve until he reaches the point he has to take up drinking and then smash every mirror in his house.

“No, you don’t get it,” Jones says, “and you never will. Not everybody in the spirit world wants to be spoken to, Carl. You don’t get it because you don’t want to get it.”

“Well, whether I get it or not, Joe has the offer. He’ll let us know tomorrow. Hardest part is giving him a reason to need the money.”

“Surely he can use it to buy protection inside,” Jonas says.

“He already has protection. He’s in a cellblock with a bunch of people who all need protection.”

“Well, then he can put the money toward a better defense.”

Schroder smiles at him. “Maybe. But after the last few lawyers wanting to defend him, I’m not sure there’ll be any takers.”

Jonas stops scrubbing the shoe and stares at Schroder. “So what else do you suggest we offer him?” he asks, sounding annoyed.

Schroder shrugs. He isn’t sure. “He’ll either accept it or he won’t. I guess with the timing and everything he doesn’t really need the body found right now.”

“Well, let’s hope he sees the merit in telling us.”

“It’s still not right,” Schroder says. “Doing it this way.”

“He’s getting prosecuted for so much as it is,” Jones says, “and we all know he didn’t actually kill Calhoun. He may have staged it and set Melissa up, but he’s not the one who killed her and tied him up. When are you heading back to see him?”

“Same time tomorrow.”

“Okay. Okay, good.” He puts the shoe down and leans back in his chair. “What are you going to do with your signing bonus?”

Schroder isn’t sure, and wishes Jonas hadn’t asked. The signing bonus is ten thousand dollars. That’s what he gets if Joe takes the deal. Joe gets fifty and Schroder gets ten and they’re both making money off a dead detective and Schroder’s curve of hating himself keeps reaching for the sky. “I don’t know,” he says, but he thinks he does know. As much as his family could do with it, it feels like blood money. He already has a few charities in mind—only when that check arrives he’s not so sure how willing he’ll be to part with it.

“You must have some ideas,” Jonas says. “Why don’t you treat your family to something? A holiday, perhaps? Or a new car?”

“Maybe,” Schroder says. “Or maybe I’ll treat my mortgage to an injection of cash.”

Jonas laughs. “It’s a good bonus,” he says. “If it all works out as planned, there may be other bonuses in the future.”

Schroder doesn’t answer him. He hates thinking of his future these days.

“Tell me, Carl, what do you make of this referendum?” Jonas asks, changing the direction of the conversation.

“I think it’s a good thing,” Schroder answers, happy to move away from the bonus that puts him deeper into Jonas’s pocket.

“You agree with the death penalty?”

“That’s not what I mean,” he says, even though he will be voting for it. “I mean it’s a good thing that the people are going to be listened to.”

“I agree. You know what I heard?”

“What?”

“I heard the prosecution will be asking for it if Joe is found guilty.”

“I heard the same thing,” Schroder says. It’s not exactly a secret. “It makes it difficult to suggest to a man that fifty grand is useful when he’s going to be put down anyway.”

“But we don’t know that. Even if the public votes for it, it may be years before it comes into play, and even more years before Joe is executed. Could be ten years away. Longer. Surely the money can be useful to him for that amount of time.”

Schroder nods. He hates agreeing with Jonas, but he’s right.

“Do you think there’s an angle here?” Jonas asks.

“What kind of angle?”

“I don’t know, not yet. But if Joe is executed, maybe that’s good for the show. Do you think that, if the referendum is voted in and the death penalty is reinstated, and let’s say the government makes an example out of Joe and executes him within the next year or two, do you think we can use that? Somehow, for the show? I’m thinking that if there are other victims of Joe’s, other bodies, we could get him to talk. Somehow. And then—”

“And then after he’s dead you’ll be in touch with him and he’ll tell you where these people are?”

“Something like that, yes. I don’t know. Not exactly. I can see the pieces there, I can feel the potential, I’m just trying to piece it all together. I don’t know what we could offer Joe that he would accept. But if we can figure something out, well, there could be a much bigger bonus in it for you. What do you think?”

He decides not to tell Jones what he really thinks. Instead he goes with, “I’m sure you’ll work it out.”

“I’m sure I will,” Jones says, his mouth stretching into a smile. He goes back to scrubbing at his shoe. “Tell me, have you heard anything about this morning’s homicide?”

“Probably less than you.”

“I’ve heard the victim was shot twice in the chest,” Jonas says. “Could be a professional killing.”

“So I do know less than you.”

“At the moment, yes, but you have the ability to find out more. Maybe there’s something in this for us. How about you look into it? Give some of those detective friends of yours a call.”

The problem is the detective friends haven’t been great friends since Schroder started working for the TV station. “I’ll do my best. I’m due on set in an hour.”

“You want some lunch first?” Jonas asks, putting his shoes back on. “I’m starving.”

“I’ve already eaten,” Schroder says, and gets up and heads back to the elevator.