Joe Victim

Chapter Twenty-Two

It wasn’t just Schroder who showed up in the car-there was a woman with him. Melissa has seen her around. She makes it part of her job to know who’s manning the front lines of crime fighting. She doesn’t know her name, but knows she’s a recent addition. It doesn’t take a lot of wondering to figure out why Schroder is with her. The Carver case. They’ve found Tristan Walker and now they think there may be a link, and the Carver case was Schroder’s case, so now they’re asking him for help. What she can’t figure out is the connection they made to come here.

When Schroder pulls away with the woman, Melissa takes the safety off the gun and tucks it down by the seat. She puts the trigger for the C-four back into the glove compartment. She was ready for Raphael to point at her, then for Schroder to come over, and if that’d happened, then she would have provided some ka-boom for Schroder and the woman and some bang-bang for Raphael too.

Nobody else has come out of the hall for a few minutes now. Raphael finishes whatever it is he’s doing and comes outside. He locks up the door behind him, though Melissa can’t understand what there is inside that anybody would want to steal-the furniture wasn’t any better than the stuff you sometimes see on the side of the road with cardboard signs that say free. Maybe he’s locking the door so people won’t dump stuff inside. Maybe that’s what’s been happening and that’s where their current furniture has come from. Raphael tightens his jacket and runs over to her car.

“That was the police,” he says.

“Really?” she says, doing her best to sound surprised. After tonight’s performance she’s thinking she should have been an actress.

“Somebody was murdered today,” he says.

“Oh my God, that’s awful,” she says, and holds a hand up to her mouth. “Was it somebody you knew?”

“Well, not that awful,” he says. “The guy was a wife beater.”

Cue the frown and the confused look. “So why did the police come here?”

“Because his wife was one of Middleton’s victims,” he says. “And he was going to testify at the trial.”

“I don’t follow,” Melissa says.

“The police think maybe somebody is targeting people involved with victims of the family. People who are testifying.”

“That’s. . that’s crazy,” she says, quite pleased to be hearing it, forcing herself not to smile. If that’s the connection, then she has nothing to be worried about because it really is crazy. “Is it? I mean, are we all in danger?”

The inside of the car is getting colder by the minute. She turns on the ignition and turns on the heater. There is only one other car left in the parking lot other than hers. It must belong to Raphael. It’s a dark blue SUV with the spare wheel bolted into the back, and on that wheel is a cover that says My other car was stolen. It reminds her of a phrase she heard a while ago-Welcome to Christchurch, your car is already here.

“I doubt it,” he says, “but they wanted a list of people who were here tonight.”

She wants to ask if she was on that list, but doesn’t bother. Stella isn’t a name that will get them far. And if she asks, well, then that might make him suspect something.

“I want to hear about your plan,” he says.

“Why? So you can go to the police?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “So I can help you. If I wanted to go to the police, I’d have just done it.”

She knows that, but she asked it because she’s on an Oscar-winning performance here. “My plan is to shoot Joe before he even makes it to trial,” she says.

“Is that it? Is that your plan?”

“There’s more,” she says.

“I would hope so,” he says.

Then she says nothing. She stares at him, and after a few seconds he starts nodding. He’s figured out the next step. “But you want to know if you can trust me.”

“Can I?”

He stops nodding, the glow of the dashboard turning his face orange. The heater is slowly starting to warm up. “When Angela was killed,” he says, “I wanted to die. I wanted to buy a gun and put the barrel in my mouth and kiss the world good-bye. Losing her was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through,” he says, and for a moment Melissa thinks of her sister. “Soon after she died, me and my wife-well, often a marriage can’t survive that kind of thing. And ours was one that couldn’t. There wasn’t much that kept me going. But I came to realize I wasn’t the only one. Others were suffering too. I thought maybe somehow I could help them. But not a day goes by when I don’t dream about killing the man who killed my daughter. And there are other Carvers out there too. Other men taking away our little girls. This group, it’s at least something,” he says, “but the truth is if I could form a group of vigilantes to watch over the city and clean up the trash, I’d do that too. I keep seeing it, like something out of a western, you know? A group of do-gooders riding into town, you know, gunslingers. John Wayne types. Clint Eastwood types. But I can’t do that. Can’t make that happen. But what I can do is help you. I’m on borrowed time. Just waiting for something to make a difference. Something to live for. And that something is to kill Joe. I don’t care about my life. My life ended last year. This support group is like life support for me-it keeps me ticking, it keeps me breathing-but I’m not alive, not really, I’m just holding on. Killing Joe will bring me peace, and once I have peace, then I can let go of everything around me. I can. . I can die happy. So please, Stella, tell me you have more than just a plan. Because if you don’t, all I have are my dreams. I will do what it takes. Absolutely what it takes.”

“Can you use a rifle?”

“I’m sure I can figure it out. Is that the plan?”

“When it comes down to it, are you going to be able to pull the trigger?”

Raphael grins, the grin turns into a smile, and then he holds out his hand to tick off his points. “I have two problems,” he says. “The first problem is I want Joe to be able to see me. I want him to know who I am. So shooting him with a rifle from a distance doesn’t sound like my kind of thing. I’ll do it, if that’s all there is, but I’d rather be up close. I want to see the life drain out of his eyes. I want my daughter to be the last thing he thinks of.”

“And the second problem?” she asks, and she knows he’s going to tell her it’s about suffering and torture. Of course it is. Suffering, torture, and a good dose of payback.

“The second problem is I want him to suffer. A bullet in the chest means he won’t suffer for long. So if that’s your plan and there’s no way to modify it, then that’s your plan and I’m on board, but if we can-”

She reaches out and touches him on the forearm. “Let me stop you right there,” she says, “because my plan will solve both of your problems,” she says, and this couldn’t have gone any better. It’s fate. Gotta be. It’s fate and her ability to see something in people that others can’t see. It’s come from experience. It was a steep learning curve that started the night her university professor tore her clothes off her.

“Trial starts Monday,” he says. “Is that enough time?”

“We have three full days,” she says. “That’s just the right amount of time we need to make sure this happens.”