Joe Victim

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.