Joe Victim

Chapter Five

This must be what it’s like to win the lottery. Or what it’s like to win the lottery and not even have bought a ticket. Both guards look sick. Adam looks like he wants to punch me. Glen looks like he could do with a hug. The news sinks in and I feel my Slow Joe game face taking shape. The world that shifted off its axis twelve months ago is righting itself. What was out of whack is now in whack. Nature correcting itself. The laws of physics correcting themselves. My Slow Joe smile feels great and seems to fit a lot better than it did earlier when I was with Barlow. It’s the big smile that shows all the teeth, and if I can’t get it under control it’s going to break my mouth in half. My scar hurts as it shifts around the smile, looking for a comfortable position and not finding one, but I don’t care about the pain. Not now. I’m going to be home again. I’m going to have the chance to carry on doing the thing I love to do. Get some new pet goldfish. Buy some nice sharp knives. Get a really cool briefcase.

Adam looks at Glen, and then he starts to laugh, the muscles in his neck straining out from his shirt, and when he starts to laugh then Glen laughs too. They stare at each other for two seconds, then both look at me. “That was fucking great,” Adam says, and he’s looking at me, but talking to his boyfriend. “You see his face?”

“I didn’t think it’d work,” Glen says. “I really didn’t. Oh man, you totally picked it.”

“I told you,” Adam says. “I told you he was dumber than anybody really knew.”

“What?” I ask, but of course I know what. It’s a practical joke. In an ideal world, I’d stab these guys to death for making me look like a fool. But this isn’t an ideal world-proven by my surroundings and lack of knife. I play along with them-because to do otherwise would be to show them who I really am.

“He still doesn’t get it,” Glen says, his voice rising, trying to hold back a laugh. He sounds eager, as if excited to be making his point. Whatever that point is. “You think they’re ever going to let you out of here?” he asks, directing his question at me. “Come on, asshole, there’s somebody here who wants to see you.”

I take a step toward them. “Should I. . should I bring my books?” I ask, and boy I’m good. Very, very good.

“Oh my God,” Adam says, and starts laughing all over. “Oh my God, he still doesn’t get it!”

“Stop being such a fucktard. Let’s go,” Glen says, and he grabs hold of my arm. There’s a dark tone in his voice, the eagerness and excitement gone. He’s on edge. He sounds like he’s ready for me to try something, or more likely he’s wanting me to try something that will give them permission to find out if a man’s skull can be crushed between a forearm and a bicep.

“I’m. . I’m not going home?”

“You crack me up,” Adam says, and Glen agrees.

They lead me back to an identical room to the one I was in earlier with the shrink. I sit behind the desk and they don’t handcuff me and I know what that means. That means I’m going to be talking to somebody who has the ability to beat the shit out of me. The guards leave the room. I stand up and start pacing it. I’m faced with the two fundamental decisions of prison-sit down and do nothing, or pace the room you’re in. I study the concrete walls. Great architecture. A real timeless quality. I reach out and touch them. Prisons all over the world from last century to the next century are going to have these same walls. In a thousand years I doubt they will have improved on the design. The door opens up. Carl Schroder walks in. He’s soaking wet. I’ll update the weather conversationalists when I get back to my cell.

“Take a seat, Joe,” Schroder says.

I take a seat. He takes his jacket off and hangs it over the back of the chair. The front of his shirt is wet, so is the collar, but the sleeves look mostly dry. He rolls them up. He brushes a hand through his hair and flicks the water off his fingers. His hair is longer than the last time I saw him, the fringe has grown out and is plastered over his forehead. He wipes a drop of rainwater off his nose. Then he sits down. He doesn’t have anything with him. Just his jacket. His wallet and keys and phone are probably out in a tray somewhere. He stares at me and I stare at him, and then I give him the big Slow Joe grin, the one with all the teeth.

“I hear you’re having a hard time,” Schroder says.

My grin disappears. Some people it’s just wasted on. “I hear you’re the one having a hard time,” I say. “Joe hears you were fired,” I tell him, and he was fired for showing up drunk to a crime scene. I wonder if it’s people like me that were the reason for people like him to start drinking. The thing is, showing up to work drunk as a cop isn’t a fireable offense. It’s something you would be suspended over, and perhaps demoted, but getting fired? No, not when the police force is struggling to recruit enough people. Schroder was fired for something else, but I can’t imagine him sighing, leaning back, and going Well, Joe, here’s what really happened.

“Joe must hear a lot of things,” he says. “And Joe must know there’s a real shitty future ahead of him. You’re not getting away with any of this, so at least drop the fucking act.”

“Joe likes actors. Joe likes TV shows,” I tell him.

His eyes give a half roll, then he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Look, Joe, cut the bullshit, okay? I know you have a lot of time up your sleeve these days, but I’m not here to waste mine. I’m here to make you an offer. Your trial starts in four days. You-”

“You’re no longer a cop,” I tell him. “Why are you here? How many times have you come to see me over the last year, asking about Melissa? I keep telling you-”

“That’s not why I’m here,” Schroder says, putting out his hand.

Since my arrest they’ve been offering incentives for me to talk, but at the same time they’ve been telling me I’ll never see the light of day again. “Then why are you here?” I ask.

“I want to know where Detective Calhoun is buried.”

During my time back before I was arrested, one of the victims attributed to me was a woman by the name of Daniela Walker. Only I didn’t kill her. The person who did staged the scene so it would look like she was another victim of the Christchurch Carver. It annoyed me. In fact, it annoyed me so much that I investigated her death, and found she had been killed by Detective Inspector Robert Calhoun. Calhoun had gone to talk to her at her house to try and convince her to press charges against her husband who used to beat her, and somehow Calhoun ended up beating her himself. My plan was to pin all of my killings onto him. It didn’t work out that way. It wasn’t me who killed Calhoun. I abducted him. I tied him up. But it was Melissa who drove the knife into him.

I shrug. “Is he an actor?”

“He’s a policeman. The man you filmed being killed.”

“So he is an actor then.”

His fists tighten, but only marginally. “I don’t know how it’s felt for you, but time’s been flying for me. It’s like the crime rate in Christchurch took a break. People are still partying in the streets. Since you’ve been arrested the murder rate has plummeted. I’m no longer a cop, but the city doesn’t need as many cops anymore.”

“That’s bullshit,” I tell him. I watch the news. Bad shit is still happening out there. I’m just not part of it. “What do you want?” I ask.

“Truthfully? I want to pick this chair up and crack it through your skull. But I’m here because we need each other’s help.”

“Help? You have to be kidding.”

“I didn’t come here to kid with you, Joe.”

“Why isn’t my lawyer here?”

“Because lawyers get in the way, Joe. And the help I need from you doesn’t require a lawyer.”

“I’m an innocent man,” I say. “When the trial begins, people will learn that I was sick. I’m a victim in all of this. The things they say I did-that wasn’t me. That’s not the real me. The courts don’t punish victims.”

Schroder starts to laugh. In the years I worked around him it’s the first time I have ever seen it happen. He leans back in his chair, and suddenly he starts wheezing. He seems to get caught in a cycle where the laughter makes the situation even funnier, and he starts to cry along with it. His face turns red, and when he looks up at me he starts to laugh some more. I get the feeling if I were to laugh along with him he’d put me on the floor with his knee in my back and my arm twisted and broken behind me.

His laughing slows. It stops. He wipes his face with the palm of his hands. I can’t tell what’s tears and what is rainwater.

“Oh, Jesus, Joe, that was good. That was really good. And it was really what I needed because it’s been a shitty few weeks.” He sucks in a deep breath and fires it out fast, slowly shaking his head. “I’m innocent,” he says, and his smile returns and for a moment I’m worried he’s going to start laughing again, but he keeps control. “I can’t believe you said that with such. .” he seems to search for a word, and settles on “conviction. Please, you have to say that when you get up on the stand. Deliver it just like that. You’ll make a lot of people happy.”

“Why are you here, Carl?”

“Well, well, that’s a surprise. That was good, always acting like you were forgetting my first name over the years. I gotta hand it to you, you were very convincing.”

“If I wasn’t convincing, that would make you a moron,” I say, just pissed off at him now, the same way I’m getting pissed off with everybody. “Just tell me what you want.”

His smile disappears and he leans forward. He puts his arms on the table and folds them. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you.”

“If I’m the man you think I am, then I’ve already proven I’m smarter than you. But no, I’m not that man. Which proves I can’t be that smart.”

“Yeah, well, you were too smart this morning for that psych test. That zero percent rating of yours. You know what that was, don’t you? That was your ego. That was you proving to the rest of the world just how smart you thought you really were, but the results are back, Joe, and that ego of yours fucked you over.”

“Whatever,” I say, annoyed that he knows about the test. I guess word gets around, even if you’ve been fired from the force.

“Truth is, I kind of like the way you sounded when you were mentally challenged. Kind of went with your look. That’s why you pulled off that routine so well. I mean, of course you fooled us, Joe, because you played the perfect fool.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, okay, Carl? You’re trying to make fun of me, trying to put me down, what is it you want that doesn’t need my lawyer present?”

He leans back. He doesn’t interlock his fingers like the psychiatrist. Maybe he’s come to the same conclusions about psychiatrists that I have.

“You said you needed my help,” I say, prompting him, and his face twists up a little as though the words have cut him somehow. “Hell, Carl, you look pretty pale. You feeling okay?”

“Twenty thousand dollars,” he says.

I must have missed part of the conversation. “What?”

“That’s what I’m here to offer you.”

I start to laugh as hard as he did earlier, only mine is forced, not real at all, and the act doesn’t work. I end up coughing, and a few wet strands of something warm fall out of my nose and hit the desk. My eyelid locks up, and I have to reach up and close it manually to get it working again. Schroder sits there silently the whole time, just watching me, shifting occasionally to adjust his wet clothes.

“We got your DNA,” he says. “You drank and ate at your victims’ houses. You were found with Detective Calhoun’s gun. We’ve got audio tapes you made from our conference room so you knew where our investigation was at. We got a parking ticket that was once in your possession that led to a body at the top of a car parking building.”

“We? You’re a cop again now are you?”

“We’ve got your DNA everywhere, Joe. We have so much on you that-”

“You’re still saying we,” I point out.

“That you’re embarrassing yourself with this insanity plea,” he says, carrying on. “A guy can’t kill as many people as you did and get away with it as long as you did unless he was in complete control of himself.”

“Or unless the police force is made up of monkeys and morons,” I say. “So is this meeting over, Carl, or are you going to tell me what it is that you want that involves twenty thousand dollars?”

“Like you know, I no longer work for the police force anymore,” he tells me. “In any capacity.”

“No shit. I’m surprised you’re working at all. I saw the footage of you showing up drunk to a crime scene. It made good TV viewing. You deserved to be fired.”

“I work for a TV show now.”

“What?”

“It’s a show about psychics.”

I slowly shake my head, hoping to shake something loose in there that will help any of this make sense, but I’m missing the bits and pieces to make that happen. A psychic? Money? What the fuck? “What the hell are you on about, Carl?”

“It’s a show about psychics who help solve unsolved cases.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“They want to look at your case.”

“My case? I don’t have a case, Carl. I haven’t hurt anybody.”

Schroder nods. No doubt he expected this answer. “Okay, let me speak hypothetically here,” he says. “Let’s say you know where Detective Calhoun is.”

“I don’t. All I know is that he’s dead.”

“But we’re being hypothetical here, Joe.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I tell him. “Hyper what? Hyper pathetic? I’m not good with big words.”

He closes his eyes and pinches the top of his nose again for a few moments. “Look, Joe, this show,” he says, talking into his hand, “they’re willing to pay you twenty thousand dollars on the chance that you may know where the body is.” He pulls his hand away from his nose and interlocks his fingers with his other hand. “Giving us a location would in no way suggest your guilt. In fact both you and the show would sign waivers to say you could never discuss with anybody that you gave this information. Now, hypothetically, if we found the body, what would your guess be that there is anything the police could use to find Melissa?”

I think about it. I set fire to Detective Calhoun’s dead body, and I buried it. There’s nothing there for the cops to find, just ashes and bone and dirt, maybe a few fragments of clothing.

“Look, Joe, we know Melissa killed him. We know you hid the body. You have nothing to lose by telling us where he is, and a lot to gain.”

“What does the show need with the body?” I ask, but the words are barely out of my mouth before I know the answer. They want to find it. They want to put on some stage show with the dead, probably with the late Detective Calhoun, probably some psychic surrounded by candles and going into some kind of fuck-knuckle trance. Then he’ll lead them to his remains. The TV viewing public will love it. The show will gain ratings, it’ll gain attention, the psychic on the case will gain a fan base for more shows, maybe even write a book. “Wait,” I tell him. “I’ve figured it out. The psychic wants to eat him.”

“Yeah, Joe, that’s right.”

“What the hell am I going to do with twenty thousand dollars?” I ask.

“You can use it to make yourself more comfortable,” he tells me. “Money is as good in here as it is anywhere else. Hell, maybe you can use it to get yourself a better lawyer.”

“First of all, Carl, no, money is much better out there than in here. Secondly, I don’t know where this dead guy is,” I say, and before Schroder can react I raise a hand in a stopping gesture. “But maybe I’ll think about it overnight. Twenty grand isn’t going to help the thinking, though. In fact I’m having a psychic vision of my own. I’m sensing. . I’m sensing that if it were fifty grand I might be more helpful.”

“No way,” Schroder says.

“Yes way. The way I see it, Carl, Sally got paid fifty grand after you arrested me, right?” I ask, and it’s true. Last year there was a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for my capture, and somehow The Sally-the overweight, Jesus-loving maintenance worker at the police station-was given that reward. Somehow through a series of fuckups, The Sally figured out what the police couldn’t, and that led them to my door. “So if you’re going to hand money out like candy, then I want my share.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Hyper pathetically you should get me those contracts you’re talking about. Hyper pathetically for fifty thousand dollars I might take a guess as to where Detective Calhoun is.”

“So you’ll do it?”

I shrug. Hypothetically I just might.

“Clock is ticking, Joe. You have till tomorrow to decide.”

“I’ll think about it,” I tell him. “Come back tomorrow and bring the contracts.”

Schroder stands back up. He grabs his wet jacket and doesn’t put it on, just drapes it over one of his dry arms. He moves to the door and bangs on it. It’s opened and we don’t hug, he just walks out the door without even a good-bye. I wait in the room to be escorted back to my cell, my world is about waiting, and now I have something new to think about while I’m doing it-and that’s trying to figure out what kind of power fifty thousand dollars could buy in a place like this.