Joe Victim

Chapter Sixty-Five

Schroder is gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles have gone white. They are thirty yards behind the ambulance. There are people everywhere-many between them and Melissa, most though are on the sidewalks.

“There’s no way she can get away,” Kent says, looking around her, and Schroder can hear the message she isn’t saying: There’s no way she can get away, so no reason for us to keep trying to close the distance, no reason we can’t just stay hanging back so we don’t kill anybody.

“Maybe she has a plan,” Schroder says, “or maybe she knows there’s nowhere to go and doesn’t care. That could be part of her plan too. But we’re not hanging back. I’m not risking losing her.”

“I agree she has a plan,” Kent says, “but it doesn’t make sense-how did she know she was going to be asked inside?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Middleton was sick, so we got one of the paramedics to come in. She was waiting for it.”

“And you believed him?”

“He wasn’t faking, and even if he was there’s no way she could have known she’d be asked to come inside.”

“I don’t know then,” he says, annoyed at this new information. If he’d still been a cop he’d have been involved, and he’d never have fallen for that crap. He has to brake slightly as a guy in a wheelchair starts to drift from the sidewalk out in front of him, and he wonders if the guy genuinely can’t walk or if it’s just a costume. He loses a few yards on the ambulance in his effort not to run him over and make the costume permanent.

“Well it had to be something,” she says, “and it would have worked if somebody hadn’t shot him. How’s that for bad timing for Melissa, huh? Freeing her boyfriend and then another shooter trying to pick him off. I guess her plan was just to drive away without being chased.”

Schroder claims back the few yards he lost, then a few more. “I saw her. A few days ago.”

“What?”

“At the prison. When I went out to see Joe, I ran into her in the parking lot.”

“Why didn’t you-”

“Tell you? I had no idea it was her,” he says. “But it was. Shit,” he says. “My keys. When I came out of the prison I couldn’t find my keys. Then I found them on the ground.”

“She took your keys?”

“She was pretending to be pregnant. She had the bump and everything. I helped her out of her car. Oh my God she’s good. I had no idea.” He slowly shakes his head. “She must have swiped my keys then. She must have been in my car. . Oh shit, that’s why I couldn’t find the photograph of her.”

“What?”

“When we were talking to Raphael. Remember I went back to grab a photograph of her?”

“Why the hell would she risk breaking into your car just to steal a photograph?”

A young man dressed as a teapot with two spouts extends a hand to give Schroder the finger, probably annoyed at the speeding car without a siren that he almost stepped out in front of. This would be much easier if he had sirens. And a lot easier if people looked where they were going.

“I don’t know,” he says. “It doesn’t make. . Wait, what were you saying earlier?”

“About the photograph?”

“No. About the plan to escape.”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I said something about how unlucky she was Joe was shot.”

“You said it was her plan to drive away without being chased.”

“Yeah. It must have been.”

He shakes his head. “No. There has to be more. She was always going to be chased, not chased exactly, but there was always going to be an escort if Joe was sick in the back of the ambulance.”

“Makes sense,” she says.

“So how was she going to escape the escort?”

“Oh Jesus,” she says, and he can tell she’s coming to the same conclusion as him. “You think the explosives?”

“Has to-” he starts, but doesn’t get to finish, because that’s when the car blows up.