Joe Victim

Chapter Eighteen

The gun is still inside the fat suit. Right now Melissa has no weapon. Her keys are in the ignition. She can grab them. Stab Raphael with them a few times. Messy but effective, but loud too because he’ll scream, and people will see it, and suddenly she’s not driving out here with a partner in crime like she wanted, but driving out of here in the back of a police car. She’ll go for it and hope for the best, if that’s her only option. But right now she’ll play it out-see where things go. She has a good instinct for things, and right now it’s telling her this could be a good thing.

“You can start by explaining the outfit,” he says, pointing his thumb into the backseat. “Are you a reporter? You writing a book? Who are you really?”

“It’s none of that,” she says.

“I know a lot of the victims’ families,” he says. “Daniela Walker, we asked her husband along, him and the kids. He said no. But her parents came. They were even there tonight. You’d have known that if she really was your sister,” he says, and Melissa knew it at the time-she knew giving a name was a mistake, but he was good, way too good at not letting her know he knew it at the time. She’ll have to be careful about that. “So, let me ask you again, who are you really?”

“My name really is Stella,” she says.

“Bullshit.”

She shakes her head. “It’s true,” she says with enough conviction to convince him-or maybe he’s doing that thing again where he knows she’s lying, but is hiding it.

“But Joe Middleton didn’t kill your sister.”

“No,” she says. “He didn’t. But. .” she says, and she wipes at her face, smudges some of the raindrops across it and hopes it looks like tears, “but he did kill, kill my baby,” she says.

“Bullshit,” he says.

“It’s true,” she says. “He. . he raped me. Last year. I was pregnant. Three and a half months pregnant and I lost, I lost the baby,” she says. “It’s why I wear the. . wear the baby suit,” she says, “because I wanted nothing more than to be nine months pregnant, to be at that stage of giving life, but I never got there, I never got there because he killed my baby and my husband left me, he didn’t want to touch me after that because somehow he blamed me, and he hated me for not going to the police. So I’m sorry I lied, I’m sorry I wore a pregnancy suit, but I wear it because it makes me feel better, it makes me feel like things are the way they’re supposed to be, that my life stayed on the track I’d worked so hard to put it on. Only it isn’t, things aren’t the way they should be because that bastard hurt me, he took away my baby and he hurt me and I want him dead. I want him dead and I thought that if I came along here tonight maybe it would help me forgive him, or forgive myself, but all I want now more than ever is to put a bullet in him. A lot of bullets. I want him dead and I guess. . I guess I wanted to find somebody who felt the same way. I have a plan,” she says, “a plan to kill Joe, and I wanted. . I want somebody to help me do it.”

He says nothing. Five seconds go by. Ten. She’s sure he believes her. He’s just thinking it through. There are a few options, but not many.

“I’m. . I’m sorry,” he finally says.

“He killed my baby,” she says.

“You should have just told us.”

“Told you? What? Go in there and tell everybody I wear a pregnancy suit because I can’t face the fact my baby died, and how I sometimes pretend I’m still pregnant because it brings me comfort?”

He doesn’t answer. How can he?

She lets the silence build. The rain keeps hammering on the roof. The passenger door is still open and occasional gusts of wind bring water into the car. Raphael is playing out several scenarios in his head. She’s playing out different ones. His involve whether he should help her or walk away. Hers involve whether she should stab her keys into his eyes first or into his throat.

“And if you found somebody to help you, what then?”

“I don’t want there to be a trial. I want Joe dead, and I want to be the one to make it happen. I don’t want his lawyer getting him off on some technicality. I don’t want him being a free man and going into hiding. I want to kill him.”

“And you have a plan,” he says.

“A good plan.”

He’s slowly nodding the whole time she tells him this, nodding and rubbing a hand over his chin. And thinking. There’s a lot of thinking going on behind those designer glasses. “Twenty minutes,” he says. “I need twenty minutes to finish putting everything away and lock up. Wait here for me. I think we might have a few things to talk about. I think we have a few things. . in common.”

“Twenty minutes,” she says. “For you to call the police?”

“No,” he says, and she believes him. “Will you wait for me?”

She nods. She’ll wait. He gets out of the car. He closes the door and walks back toward the hall, head down and collar turned up as the rain hammers him. He reaches the step when another car pulls into the parking lot. He turns toward the lights that sweep across him, and holds his hand up to his face to shield his eyes.

The car comes to a stop. The engine dies. Carl Schroder steps out into the rain.