Joe Victim

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Raphael should have trusted his initial gut instinct last night. It told him there was more to Stella than she presented, but he saw what he wanted to see. The lies were good. So good he imagined anybody would fall for them. And the change in looks. Boy, she could almost fool anybody. She fooled him. Even when Schroder gave him the photograph, he didn’t pick it. Not at first. Not until he took a good look and then he started seeing. She looked different. Different makeup, different hairstyle-hell, a completely different hair color. Plus she’s put on weight, not much, but a little around the neck and face.

He connected the dots.

Stella wasn’t Stella. She wasn’t a rape victim who’d lost her baby.

She was Melissa.

The realization was almost like a blow to the stomach. He felt his breath catch and it took all of his composure to stay calm, to not let on that he knew the woman in the picture. He stood there staring at it while his mind was racing. What he felt was a sense of betrayal. What he should have felt was a need to tell Schroder she was in his house-and yes, that was a consideration-but not what he settled on. Telling Schroder would be the first step in the process of he himself going to jail-after all, he did kill two lawyers.

Of course Schroder sensed something. How could he not? But he recovered from the pause-he told the ex-policeman that he recognized her from the news, and Schroder bought it. No reason not to. Will Melissa buy it too?

What he can’t figure out is why she wants Joe dead. The trial must have something to do with it. That’s what the timing suggests. She wants Joe dead, and he’s okay with that. He wants Joe dead too. So their desires fall in line quite nicely.

Where things don’t line up are their views on people who take innocent lives. Melissa has been doing a lot of that lately. Other cops. Security guards. Paramedics. People in uniform. The media even labeled her the Uniform Killer for a while there, though that name doesn’t seem to have stuck much. The police uniform he has, it looks authentic because it is-it’s come from somebody she’s killed.

He knows the irony. He’s a smart guy. Smart enough to know that he’s a killer working with another killer to kill another killer. It’s not complicated.

Law Abiding Raphael knows he should go to the police. Red Rage Raphael thinks he should just shoot both Joe and Melissa and let the chips fall where they may. Sensible Raphael knows he can’t go to the police because Melissa saw the articles pinned to the wall in his daughter’s bedroom. She made the connection. If he goes to the police then he’ll be thrown in jail alongside her. Then Joe will get his trial. He’ll have his chance to plead his insanity defense, and then you just never know what will happen. He’ll be found guilty, has to be, but that doesn’t sit well with Raphael. So Sensible Raphael agrees with the Red Rage. There are more than enough bullets to go around. The plan allows for that. In fact, the very nature of the plan allows for it perfectly. And if he gets caught because he’s taken that extra shot? Then so what. So. What.

So he covered with Schroder while these thoughts went through his mind, and then he covered with Melissa too while those same thoughts were there. If she suspected he knew who she was, she would kill him. He didn’t know how. He wasn’t arrogant enough to think that just because he was bigger and perhaps stronger that that gave him an advantage. There was a reason she had killed so many people. It was foolish to underestimate her.

But she didn’t suspect. Had no reason to, not when he spoke about his anger toward Joe, and what Joe had done to him, his daughter, and to Stella. He spoke of his excitement to be the one to take Joe’s life. They spoke about the plan. They went over and over the plan. It wasn’t a simple plan. Not really. But he has a great way to streamline it.

Melissa rang him this morning. The next part of the plan was happening today. She said she would be by this afternoon to pick him up. Sometime around three thirty.

“It’s important we’re not late,” she had told him.

And now it’s three thirty and he’s waiting by the door, and he only has to wait another minute before her car pulls up. He heads out and climbs in. She’s still got black hair, but he wonders if it’s a wig or if she’s dyed it. He tosses the bag with the police uniform into the backseat.

“Then we’re doing this,” he says. “We’re really going to shoot Joe.”

“Gun’s in the back,” she says, and puts the car into gear and starts driving.