Joe Victim: A Thriller Read online

  “No way you could have.”

  “And I wasn’t stealing the car, I thought it was mine. Looked like mine. And it was dark. People make mistakes.”

  “Things look different in the dark,” I tell him.

  “That’s my point. That kid, he thinks I’m the one who took him, but how could he know that when I put a blindfold over his eyes?”

  “Right,” I tell him, and we’ve had this conversation before, quite a few times actually. I guess I could use some of the fifty thousand dollars to pay somebody to shut him up permanently.

  “Play some cards?” he asks.

  “Maybe soon,” I tell him.

  He shrugs, like soon is an insult to him. “Lunch in twenty minutes,” he says, and then he disappears. I pick the romance book back up. I stare at the pages and read some of the same words over and over. If I ever write a book where men and women fall in love, it’d be real, it’d be the kind of thing I had with Melissa. I miss her. A lot.

  The two prison guards come and get me again. They really seem to have taken a shine to me today.

  “Good news,” Adam says.

  “I’m going home?”

  “See? Sometimes you do catch on quick,” he says.

  They lead me back out of the cellblock. Weirdly I’m thankful for the break in the routine. These next few days are going to be like that because of the trial. A month ago, and a month before that, and a few more before that were all the same. I wake up. I stare at stuff. I eat. I stare at more stuff. Then it’s lights out. Next week I’ll be put in front of a jury, and there’s no way they’ll convict me. I’m Joe. People like Joe.

  I’m taken back to the same interview room. My lawyer is waiting in there already. He props his briefcase up on the table and for a moment I wonder if it’s full of knives. He’s in his late fifties. He has just the right amount of not looking so young that he’s cocky, and not looking so old that all the experience and wisdom he has gained will be spilling into a coffin along with the rest of him before Christmas. His name is Kevin, and Kevin is wearing a nice suit that I would never wear, cologne that makes me feel sick, and has an overweight wife that I would never touch. The photo of her clipped inside the lid of his briefcase must weigh as much as the briefcase itself.

  The guards handcuff me to my chair. Then they leave.

  “I got some news for you,” Kevin says.

  “Good news I assume?”

  He shakes his head and frowns. “Bad news.”

  “I’ll have the good news first.”

  “Err . . . you’re missing the point, Joe,” he says. “It’s bad news, worse news really.”

  “Then the bad news first.”

  “The prosecution is making you an offer.”

  “That’s good news,” I tell him. “They’re letting me go?”

  “No, Joe, they’re not. But they do think in the interest of expediting things, of saving taxpayer money, and of avoiding the risk of turning this whole thing into a circus, they are offering you life in jail without the option of parole. They’re trying to avoid what is looking to be a streetful of people protesting for or against the death penalty.”

  “Death penalty? I don’t get it,” I say, but I’m afraid that I do.

  “That’s the worse news, and I’ll get to that in a second.”

  “No, no, you’ll get to it now,” I say, wanting to wave my hands in the air, but unable to. What are you talking about?”

  “I said I’ll get to it, Joe. First there’s more bad news. There’s been a hiccup with the insanity defense.”

  “What kind of hiccup?” I ask.

  “Benson Barlow.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “He’s the psychiatrist the prosecution sent to speak to you. He hasn’t submitted a formal report yet, but I’ve been given a heads-up, and it’s very damning of you. Basically he’s going to say you’re faking everything.”

  “It’ll be his word against mine.”

  “Well, Joe, we can argue that at a trial, but I don’t see much hope in this. Barlow is an extremely respected psychiatrist, whereas you’re an extremely reviled serial killer. Whose word do you think will carry more weight?”

  “Mine,” I say. “Nobody likes psychiatrists. Nobody.”

  “I know the plan is to plead an insanity defense,” he says, “but here’s the thing, Joe, and this is what I’ve been telling you since I’ve been your lawyer—it’s not a great defense. You got away with murdering these women for so long that you had to be sane to do that.”

  Schroder said a similar thing. “Then why can’t I remember any of it?” I ask, remembering each woman in turn, the horror in their faces, the blood, the sex. Mostly I remember the sex. Good times. “You’re talking like you think I’m guilty,” I say. “And I still want my trial. Now, what the hell is this death penalty you’re talking about?”

  He adjusts his tie, making me think that out of all the ways to kill somebody I’ve never strangled anybody with a tie. I’ll put it on my bucket list. “Here’s the thing, Joe. Since you’ve been in here things have changed out there. In a way you’ve made that happen. People don’t like the way Christchurch has gone, and you’ve become, well, you’ve become the poster boy for that. People try to figure out how it all started, and you’re the guy they point to. There’s a referendum taking place. The government is spending nine million of the tax payers’ dollars to get their opinion on whether or not to bring back the death penalty.”

  I exhale hard through my nose, almost scoffing. I’ve seen that on the news, but it’s not going to lead anywhere. It’s all bullshit.

  “They’re sending out voting forms to everybody on the electoral roll. The country wants to be heard, Joe, and everybody over eighteen years old is going to get that chance. I have to be honest with you. Judging by the climate that isn’t good news for you. So the prosecution is offering you a deal. Plead guilty now, accept you’re never going to get out of prison—”

  “But I’m innocent!”

  “Again, or they’re going to push for the death penalty.”

  “But the referendum . . .”

  “You ever read the Bible, Joe?”

  “Only for the recipes in the back.”

  “An eye for an eye,” he says, ignoring my answer. “That’s what this referendum comes down to. And it will pass. Trust me on that. And if it passes, you’re going to swing.”

  “Swing?”

  “That’s how they used to do it here, Joe. They used to hang people. Hasn’t happened since nineteen fifty-seven, but if you don’t take this deal you’re not only going to go down in history as being the Christchurch Carver, you’re going to go down as the man who brought back the death penalty.”

  “But—”

  “Listen to me, Joe,” he says, and his tone is the same as the one I grew up with, and I don’t like it any more now than I did then. “Listen to me. They want to start hanging people. Okay? They think it’s the only path back to a civil civilization. It’s an election year. And the politicians are listening to the voters. They’re being asked if they’ll pass the law if the public votes for it, and they’re saying they will because they want the votes. It’s a minefield. You need to take this deal. You have to listen to me when I tell you it’s the only way of saving your life.”

  “You can save my life by getting me out of here,” I tell him. “I can’t help what I did. It wasn’t my fault. With drugs and counseling I can . . .”

  He starts tapping his fingers on the table, starting with his pinkie and rolling on down to his thumb, over and over. “I tell you to listen to me, but you’re not listening.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “Let me put this to you more simply, Joe. You,” he says, and he stops rolling his fingers so he can point one of them at me so I know exactly who he means. “Are. Completely. Fucked,” he says, pointing hard with each word. “So take the deal and tell the police everything they need to know about Melissa, about where Detective Calhoun is buried. Let the
city avoid an unpleasant trial. There are going to be masses of people protesting. Half want to kill you, the other half only want you in jail forever—but all of them hate you. It will get ugly. You have no supporters here, Joe. Nobody on the jury is going to be on your side.”

  “I can’t do life in here. I can’t do twenty years,” I say, and I begin to imagine it. I imagine being in my fifties, my hairline sliding back the same way my father’s did. I imagine trying to steal a car. I imagine the mechanics of stuffing somebody who I wasn’t getting on well with into the trunk with bad hips and perhaps a dash of arthritis too. I try to imagine sneaking up somebody’s set of stairs with a knife in my hand and a bad back, having to use a cane. The world comes out with brand-new, twenty-five-year-old women every year that I’d like to visit, and I imagine spending some quality time with one of them in her bathroom then leaving my hairs in her sink. I’m used to these women looking at me with fear in their eyes. What will they look at me with in twenty years? Humor?

  “No deal,” I say. “I want the trial. At least I have a chance. There’s no difference between twenty years and the death penalty. What if I die in jail in eighteen years? It all would have been for nothing. I want another option.”

  The whole time Kevin is slowly shaking his head, scratching the side of it at the same time. Small pieces of dandruff land on his spotless suit jacket. “No, Joe, you’re missing the point. Life is life in this case. It’s not twenty years. It’s not thirty years. Life is you never stepping beyond these walls again. Take it, or in a year’s time you’ll be getting fitted for a noose.”

  “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 i
s 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.”