Joe Victim: A Thriller (29 page)

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 bruise 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.

“You killed your goldfish?” she asks.

I try to stay calm, but I can feel the anger building up inside of me. For her to ask that means she just doesn’t get me. It seems to be a common problem. What is wrong with people? First she thinks my mom abused me, now she thinks I killed my fish. What is the world coming to? Now I’d almost certainly give my right and only remaining nut to get hold of the pen she’s using and drive it into her neck.

“No. No I didn’t,” I say forcefully. “It was a cat.”

“You look angry, Joe.”

“I’m not angry. I just hate the fact people always think the worst of me.”

“You killed a lot of people,” she says.

“I don’t remember any of them,” I say, “and I sure as hell didn’t hurt my fish.”

She writes something else down. She underlines it, then she rings a couple of circles around it. I’m pretty sure she’s doing it deliberately. I think she’s trying to throw me off guard, and that’s why her questions are all over the place. It’s not going to work. I think good things about my mom and about my fish, good things about Melissa. I think about doing good things to Ali once I get out of here. I might be a bad-thoughts kind of guy, but I’m a good-things kind of person. I’m Optimistic Joe. It’s how I roll.

“Tell me,” she says, “does the name Ronald Springer mean anything to you?”

Ronald Springer. Now she really has thrown me off guard. “No,” I say. “Should it?” I ask. The police asked me about Ronald a few months ago. Schroder did. They asked if I had known him. If I had any idea what had happened to him. I told them I never knew him, and they seemed disappointed, but had no reason not to believe me. No reason, sure, but they still spent a few hours questioning me about him.

“It means nothing?”

“It means something,” I tell her, knowing I’ve already reacted to the name, knowing she’ll have been told about my previous interviews. “Detective Carl came to see me a while ago to ask if I had known him. Ronald went to my school.”

“Did you know him?”

“No. I knew who he was, but that was only after he was murdered. I could tell Schroder wasn’t expecting any connection, he was just hoping to wrap up a cold case, only I had nothing to do with it.”

“You’re positive?”

“Of course I’m positive.”

“So how is it you can be positive when you don’t remember killing any of these other people?” she asks.

“Because killing isn’t in my nature.”

“That’s a quick response,” she says.

I shrug. I don’t really know how to respond to it.

“Killing is in your nature,” she says. “You just don’t know you’re doing it. Which means it’s possible you did hurt Ronald and just don’t remember it. Ronald went missing the same month your auntie stopped raping you.”

“Raping?”

“That’s what she was doing, Joe,” she says, but I’m shaking my head.

“That’s the wrong word,” I tell her.

“What’s the right word then?
Punishing
you?”

“No. She was
forgiving
me. Forgiving me for breaking into her house.”

“Is that really how you see it, Joe?”

“Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You say you only knew of him after he was murdered,” she says.

“That’s right.”

“The police never said he was murdered. Ronald just disappeared. How would you know he was murdered?”

“It’s just an assumption,” I tell her, and I hate her for trying to fool me. “The police thought so. Everybody thought so. That’s what normally happens when people go missing, right?”

“Sometimes,” she says.

“Well if he wasn’t murdered, what then?”

“Tell me about Ronald.”

“There’s nothing to tell. He was a kid that nobody knew until he was mur . . . until he went missing, then people were figuring out who he was, then suddenly he’d been everybody’s best friend. People were going around school telling Ronald stories. There were rumors, right, that he had run away, that he had been abducted, that his parents had killed him. School was nearly over and the way people were talking, you’d think Ronald had been a hot topic since school started. It was weird. Knowing Ronald made you popular. I didn’t understand it. Ronald would have hated all of those guys. Every one of them.”

“You knew him, then?”

“No. I mean, I’d spoken to him a few times because we were in some of the same classes. But people gave him a hard time. They gave me a hard time too. We had that in common, I suppose.”

“Sounds like you knew him a little.”

“I mean we didn’t hang out. Maybe a few times at school we’d eat lunch together because neither of us really had any other friends.”

“Why did the other kids pick on him?”

“You know already,” I tell her. “If you’ve read about him.”

“Because he was gay,” she says.

I shrug. “It didn’t matter if he was gay or not, not for real,” I say, “but once people start throwing around labels like
gay boy
or
serial killer,
they stick. People need to be more careful with that kind of thing—but at that age nobody is.”

“How long had you known him?”

“For always. We started school together when we were five, so I’ve always known who he was.”

“Did you kill him, Joe?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Or you did, but can’t remember.”

“I guess that’s possible,” I say. “Why are you so interested in Ronald anyway?”

“Because your lawyer asked me to ask you about him. It seems the people prosecuting you have been looking into the case. We don’t know what their interest is, but they may introduce it at trial.”

I shake my head. “I liked Ronald,” I tell her. “I wouldn’t have hurt him.”

“How long were you friends?”

“We weren’t friends. I just knew who he was, and I liked him because he was the guy people teased, and you need kids like that in school so the rest of us are safe.”

“How long had you been having lunch with him?”

I shrug. I think about it. “A year. Maybe two. Not long. And it wasn’t every day.”

“Did you see him outside of school?”

“Never.”

“Did you used to think that he was attracted to you?”

I almost laugh at that. “What? No. No way. I’m not gay,” I tell her.

“That’s not what I asked,” she says. “I asked if you thought he liked you.”

“I’m sure he probably did. I was the only guy who talked to him that wasn’t giving him a hard time.”

“I mean, Joe, do you think he liked you in a sexual nature?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know where you’re going with any of this,” I say, “but I didn’t kill him. I don’t know what happened, and the prosecution can dig into it all they want because I had nothing to do with it. Can we move on?”

“No. Not yet. Tell me something else about Ronald. Tell me about the last time you saw him.”

“Jesus, why the hell is everybody hung up on Ronald? I’m telling you, I don’t know what happened to the guy.”

She stares at me and says nothing and I realize I’ve been shouting. I shake my head and I think about Ronald, and I picture him the way I saw him last. School wasn’t a whole lot of fun for either of us, and I imagine it’s like that for most people. We weren’t best friends, but he was a pretty good friend. He’d come around after school sometimes, we’d head down to the beach, sometimes mountain bike around the sand dunes, or climb trees in the park. We’d talk about the kind of stuff that sixteen-year-old boys talked about, except for women. We didn’t talk about them. I knew he was gay. When we were fifteen, though, he was so deep in the closet I’m sure he could taste Turkish delight. I knew he liked me. I didn’t mind—having a gay guy like you doesn’t make you gay, it just makes you feel flattered. Then things changed. The Big Bang happened, followed by two years of smaller bangs, and my friendship with Ronald got pushed aside. I saw him around at school, but I hardly spoke to him. I saw him getting a hard time, but that just meant things were easier for me, and now that I was paying off my bullies, life was actually pretty good. Except for the auntie-loving rape, as Ali would put it.

When my relationship with Auntie Celeste stopped, I started hanging out with Ronald again. Only things were different—I think the most awkward thing between us was the fact he didn’t want me hanging out with him anymore, but I’d still follow him around anyway. I knew he’d come around. After all, the guy had had a crush on me the previous year, and crushes like that don’t disappear. It only made sense he’d want to be my friend again. Truth is, him ignoring me annoyed me just as much as my auntie ignoring me. I felt abandoned all over.

I wanted to punish my auntie. Not for what she had done, but for finally making me enjoy it, and then for cutting off the supply. So when Ronald started rejecting me too—well, I didn’t just feel abandoned, but I felt angry too. The same anger I felt toward my auntie—only with Ronald I could do something about it.

“I can’t really remember the last time I saw him,” I tell her. “One day he was there, and the next day he wasn’t, and that’s how most people will always remember him.”

“But not you,” she says. “You remember him in a different way.”

The way I remember him is indeed different. The way I remember him is with a hole in the side of his skull that a claw hammer would fit nicely into. “I didn’t kill him,” I say, only I did kill him. He rejected me and I hit him with a hammer. People say you always remember your first—and people don’t get much right, but in this case it’s spot on. Ronald was my first—I remember him—I just don’t think about him.

“Are you sure?” she asks.

“Positive,” I say.

“He didn’t come on to you, and you rejected him by killing him?”

“Nothing like that happened at all,” I say.

“That’s a shame,” she says. Again it takes a few seconds for her words to sink in. They only just have when she carries on. “If you had, then we could have linked everything back to the events with your auntie. We could have shown it all started back then, and that what has happened to you since were results of that. People aren’t going to believe that you let twelve years slip by between the events of your auntie and killing your first person.”

It feels like a test, like she is baiting me to suddenly say that I do remember killing him.

“Joe?”

“Yes?”

“I think I have what I need,” she says.

“Already?”

“Yes,” she says, and she stands up.

“And?”

“And what?” she asks.

“What are you going to tell the courts?” I ask.

“I’ll spend the rest of the day going over my notes, Joe, and then I’ll talk to your lawyer.”

“So you believe me?”

She knocks on the door and turns toward me. “Like I said, Joe, I’ll talk to your lawyer,” she says, and then she is gone.