Joe Victim

Chapter Fourteen

Fate is on her side. Melissa didn’t think so, not when she had to put two bullets into Sam Winston and not when she had to open fire a couple of more times today, but it’s led her to the support meeting and if fate wasn’t on her side then the meeting would have been on any other day of the week and not today. Statistically she had a one-in-seven chance. Or, the other way of looking at it is she had a six-out-of-seven chance the meeting wouldn’t be today. That’s not luck, it’s fate. Good fate. Her life has been full of bad fate. Her sister, herself, bad shit happening. Now it’s good shit. Like finding the building earlier opposite the back of the courthouse, unfinished, the construction company gone broke the way construction companies are apt to do in this day and age. Seven stories of half-completed offices, a whole bunch of them with perfect views out over the back of the courthouse. She decides to wait and see what else fate can take care of tonight before embracing it.

Finding the support group wasn’t hard. Three minutes online is all it took. And it’s not just a support group for victims of Joe Middleton, but for other victims too-or, more accurately, family of victims who, so it seems, have labeled themselves as victims. It’s a community hall in Belfast, a suburb to the north of the city that on bad days smells like the dump only a few miles away and on other bad days is just Belfast. There are twenty cars in the parking lot out front, and hers makes it twenty-one. It’s still raining and still cold, but the forecast suggests an improvement over the next few days.

She takes her umbrella-actually, it used to belong to Walker up until earlier today-and makes her way into the hall, keeping a close eye on the ground to avoid the puddles forming where bits of pavement have broken away. She walks alongside a pair of elderly people who have their arms around each other as they share an umbrella. They nod at her and offer a kind smile. She wonders if they’re here because she killed their son. She has changed wigs again-this time she’s gone black.

The older man holds the door open for his wife, and keeps the door open for Melissa and she smiles at him and thanks him and can’t think of anybody she’s hurt who looks like them. She steps into a hall big enough to hold a wedding reception and ugly enough to hold a twenty-first birthday party. Every wall is covered in wooden paneling. The floor inside the doorway is wet with footprints and she steps around them carefully, not wanting to fall over in front of these people and have to fake an early labor. She can see and hear the heaters in the hall blasting out hot air, but it’s still cold in here. She closes her new umbrella and leans it up against the wall where there are a dozen similar ones. She takes off her jacket and carries it over her arm. There are thirty people in here, maybe thirty-five. Some are standing around in groups of two or three and chatting with some kind of familiarity. Others are by themselves. A set of chairs form a circle at the far end of the room, and beyond the chairs is a stage where in the past she guesses bands have sung and fathers have given speeches. At the moment there are more chairs than there are people. A long table has been set up with coffee and sandwiches. She wonders if in a few years all these people will begin to socialize, if meetings in summer will be held in parks and people will bring along picnics. Happy little social groups and lifelong friends brought about by death and misery, perhaps some intermarrying and interbreeding to go along with it. Both she and Joe have contributed to that. They should be proud.

“How far along are you?”

The voice comes a couple of feet from her left and almost makes her jump. Melissa turns toward the woman and smiles. She doesn’t know what the hell it is with women and why they keep asking her this when they see the bump. They think it’s their Goddamn business. Women who have shared the experience of giving birth seem to think that gives them the right to talk to any pregnant stranger they want to.

“Baby’s due next week,” she says, rubbing her stomach.

The woman smiles. She can only be four or five years older than Melissa. She’s wearing a wedding ring and Melissa wonders if she has been pregnant or wants to be, and wonders if the man she wanted to make her pregnant is no longer in this world.

“Boy or a girl?” she asks.

“A surprise,” Melissa says, smiling, because it really would be a surprise. She’s wearing a wedding ring of her own and she begins to twirl it around on her finger. She’s seen married people do that too. “It’s what we both wanted.”

“I saw you come in alone,” the woman says, and her smile disappears. “Your husband, he’s not. . not why you’re here, is he?”

“No, no, thank God,” Melissa answers.

The woman nods slowly, a sad look on her face, then holds out her hand. “My name is Fiona Hayward,” she says.

“Stella,” Melissa says, simply because it’s the name she decided to use on the way over here. She takes the woman’s hand. It’s warm. “Your husband-is he why you’re here?”

“He was murdered nearly a month ago,” Fiona says, and her voice catches a little and her tears well up a little. “At home. Some madman followed him home and stabbed him.”

“I’m sorry,” Melissa says.

“Everybody is,” Fiona says. “At least they got the guy. And you?”

“My sister,” she says. “She was murdered.”

“I’m sorry,” Fiona says.

“Everybody is,” Melissa says, then smiles at the woman who smiles back and nods. “It was a long time ago,” Melissa adds, remembering her sister, the funeral, the toll it took on her family.

“This is my first time here,” Fiona says. “I don’t know anybody, and I feel somewhat nervous about being here. I had plenty of friends and family offer to come with me, but, well, I wanted to come alone. I can’t explain why that is, really. Truth is I didn’t even think I would come along, but, well,” she says, then gives a small nervous laugh, “here I am.”

“My first time too,” Melissa says, trying to think of a way to free herself from this conversation. She thinks about the gun in her pregnancy suit. She draws comfort from it.

“Do you mind if. . if I sit with you?”

Yep. She thinks about taking that gun out. “That would be nice,” she says.

People are starting to fill the seats. Some are carrying coffee. Some drag their seats a little closer together. When everybody is seated a man in his mid to late fifties goes around picking up the empty chairs and moving them beyond the circle, others dragging their seats forward to close the gaps. He has a few days’ worth of stubble and a pair of designer glasses and expensive shoes. Attractive, with good taste, gray hair-but only in the temples, the rest of it dark brown. Everybody keeps chatting among themselves until Designer Glasses takes a seat then everybody goes quiet. Melissa can’t take her eyes off him.

“Thank you again for coming along,” he says, his voice is deep and, in other circumstances, probably seductive. Melissa likes him. “I see there are a few new faces in the crowd,” he says, “and I hope the rest of us can offer you some support and companionship, and some hope too. We’re all here out of tragedy. We’re all here because we faced an incredible ugliness. For those who don’t know me, my name is Raphael.” He smiles. “My mother was an art scholar,” he adds, “hence the name,” as if Melissa should care, “and my daughter was a murder victim,” he says, “hence why I’m here.”

He delivers the line with the casualness of somebody who’s said it a hundred times.

“This support group,” he says, “was created from loss. My daughter’s name was Angela, and she was killed last year by Joe Middleton,” he says. “He took away a daughter, he took away a wife, and he took away a mother. A few of you are here because of him, and others are here because of similar men to Joe, or similar women,” he says, and there’s a moment where Melissa thinks everybody in the room is going to turn toward her, but of course that doesn’t happen. “I’m a full-time grief counselor,” he adds. “I’ve been helping people for nearly thirty years, and yet when I lost my daughter I could do nothing to help myself until I realized I needed to be with others like me. So we’re all here to help each other,” he says, smiling as he looks from face to face, spending an extra second on Melissa because there’s more of her to take in. “We’re not here to make the pain go away, because nothing can do that. We’re here to share it, to understand it. We’re here because we need to be.”

Melissa has to suppress a yawn as she looks around the room at the faces. She didn’t have time for a nap and the best she can hope for is that this won’t take long. She’s so tired she could sleep for the next twenty-four hours. Out of all these people, though, somebody will help her. She just has to invest an hour. Or however long it is these meetings go. Talking about your pain doesn’t make it go away. When her sister was killed she had to talk to a shrink every week for a year and it didn’t help an iota. All the shrink kept doing was looking at her legs.

Everybody is staring at Raphael. Lots of warm bodies for her to choose from, and she doesn’t doubt one of them has to be angry enough at Joe to shoot him.

The trick is to figure out who.