Joe Victim

Chapter Seventy-Two

The office has no dividing walls. Just four walls and a door, and a window that’s currently being covered by a painter’s drop cloth. Duct tape is holding it up. Schroder doesn’t need to pull it aside to know what it overlooks, but he does anyway-him on the left, Hutton on the right-and they stare down into the back of the courthouse. At the edges of the cordons police officers are restraining the last few university students who are trying to push their way into the scene to get photographs of themselves drinking, probably to post online, but for the most part the students are still hanging back. They’re down there hugging each other-there are a lot of tears, a lot of people sitting down with their knees pulled into their chests. The majority of people are walking away from the scene, just wanting to get home. Some have blood on their faces.

“An easy shot to make,” Hutton says.

For a moment Schroder thinks Hutton is talking about the students and their cameras, but of course he isn’t-he’s talking about the shot the shooter made. Schroder looks back into the courthouse, he looks at the spot where his car was parked, and he knows the shooter must have been up here for some time, and that getting a parking space nearby means he was here before this morning’s cordons were set up. That means when Schroder showed up his face was in the sights of the same gun that’s lying behind him. He shudders at the thought, and then agrees with Hutton that yes, it would have been an easy shot to make. There are three casings on the floor, they’ll be checked for prints-maybe they’ll get lucky.

The gun that would have focused on Schroder as he stepped out of his car earlier is beyond them lying on the floor. There won’t be any prints on it, because it’s been covered in white paint from one of the tins that’s laying on its side, surrounded by more white paint that’s soaked into the concrete floor. The top of a paint tin is open, and there’s a set of earmuffs in there, one edge of them sticking out. The rule of renovating, Schroder knows, is work your way down. Ceiling, walls, then carpets. This office still had some work to do. There’s a guy leaning over the gun, a forensic tech whose name Schroder on normal days can never pronounce correctly, but after today’s explosion he’s completely forgotten. The gun will yield ballistic results, and they’ll know if it’s been used before, but it was likely taken from Derek Rivers, and Derek hasn’t been in a real talkative mood since either Melissa or somebody else put two in his chest.

The forensic tech is taking a photograph of three shell casings.

“You said there was only the one shot,” Schroder says.

“There was.”

“There are three casings,” Schroder says. “And if Joe was shot, and Jack was shot, then that’s two shots.”

“I can explain that,” the tech says, and he stands up to face them. He’s a guy in his late twenties with a hairline Schroder wishes he had, and though he can’t remember what his name is he suddenly remembers that the guy is a pub-quiz master who spends two or three weeknights every week winning bar tabs. “Okay, so we have three casings because there were three shots, but you only heard one, right?”

“Right,” Hutton says. “Everybody only heard the one shot.”

“Okay,” the tech says, nodding. “The barrel is clogged.”

“Clogged?” Schroder says.

“With a bullet. And if you all only heard one shot, then it’s probably clogged with two bullets. Bullet one was fired, bullet two got jammed, and bullet three got lodged right behind it.”

“That’s still three gunshots,” Hutton says. “Wouldn’t we have heard that?”

“My guess is the bullets were modified. I’m guessing the gunpowder was removed. Bullets are made up of four main parts, right? The bullet itself, the casing, the gunpowder, and the primer. The primer ignites the gunpowder and-”

“And we know how bullets work,” Schroder says.

“Okay, okay, well, if the gunpowder was removed, you’ve still got the primer that’s going to ignite, right? It’s going to go bang, but it’s not going to go boom. You’re going to hear it in the office here, but you’re not going to hear it out in the street. So the shooter, he fires the first bullet, then the second and third don’t sound or react the same. And those bullets are going to travel into the barrel but aren’t going to come out. I need to get it back to the lab to run some tests, but for now that’s my guess. Also, the magazine is empty, so whoever was up here only ever planned on firing three shots.”

“What about Jack?” Schroder asks. “He was shot.”

“But probably not by this. Could be the same gun that killed Derek Rivers and Tristan Walker. I’ll know more later.”

He goes about bagging up the gun and Hutton and Schroder go about thinking what all this means.

“If Raphael and Melissa were working together,” Hutton says, “then she really screwed him. But if she was planning on blowing him up anyway, why sabotage two of the three bullets?”

“There were two water glasses,” Schroder says.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Schroder says, and he should have trusted his bad feeling about Raphael. When he was at his house showing him the photographs, was Melissa there too? Is that what happened? Did Raphael think she was somebody else? Somebody who wanted Joe dead as much as he did? Yes-yes, it’s possible. It’s possible she heard his conversation with Raphael, possible she suspected he recognized her from the photograph. “They found an arm,” Hutton says. “An arm with two fingers attached and not a lot more, and those two fingers were badly burned. We’ve got people heading to his house now to get prints. If it was Raphael we’ll know it soon.”

Schroder is sure the prints will match. He looks back out the window at the city. At his city. He wonders if he put this in motion the day he arrested Joe. He guesses he did. All that destruction down there, and yet in other parts of the city life is going on as normal, people going about their day-to-day business, carrying briefcases and handbags, eating lunch on the go, bike messengers weaving in and out of traffic.

“Fuck,” Schroder says.

Hutton says nothing.

“Let’s go,” Schroder says.

“Where to? Raphael’s house?”

“The hospital.”

“Good idea.”

They head back downstairs. Unbelievably, Schroder feels like crying. He doesn’t know why-he’s seen bad shit before, has lost people he worked with, but this is just. . just too much. Rebecca Kent. .

“We’ll find them,” Hutton says.

“Just like we found Melissa,” Schroder says.

Hutton doesn’t answer him.

The sling is still helping, but Schroder’s arm is really starting to hurt now. They walk to Hutton’s car. Journalists throw questions at them. People are standing around with blank looks on their faces. Paramedics are still working on people, though there doesn’t appear to be anybody seriously wounded lying on the street-they’ve been rushed to the hospital already. He doesn’t see any bodies either. Was nobody killed? Or have they been moved already?

“It all seems unreal,” Hutton says.

“I know.”

“Honestly, Carl, doesn’t this make you thankful you gave up the job?” Hutton asks, but Schroder didn’t give it up, it was taken from him, though he gets the point.

“I. . I don’t know,” he says. “I really don’t.”

They get into the car. Schroder uses the side mirror to get a look at himself. He’s a mess. The bandage around his forehead is pushing his hair upward. There’s blood on it, but there’s dried blood on other bits of his face. On his neck too. It only takes them ten minutes to reach the hospital, Hutton putting the sirens on at intersections. There are no free spaces out front. They’re full of cars, and other cars are all double-parked around them.

“Just drop me off here,” Schroder says, nodding toward the side of the road opposite the hospital. “I’ll be okay from here. You should try to do something useful.”

“I’m coming in,” Hutton says. “Rebecca is in there.”

“And she’d want you to be out here finding Joe and Melissa.”

Hutton nods. “Listen, Carl, I know what you promised her.”

“And?”

“And I think that means I ought to stick with you for a bit. You go in ahead of me and get your arm looked at, I’ll park around back and meet you inside.”

Schroder gets out of the car. He cuts between traffic. Hutton can’t be too worried about the promise he made, otherwise he wouldn’t have left him so quickly. He gets across the road and steps through the main doors into a crowd of people who are in shock, many with cuts and broken bones, pain etched into so many people’s features. From what he heard on the drive here most of the injuries have come from the rushing crowds, from people falling and being trampled. There’s a queue of people lined up behind a window all waiting to talk to the admitting nurse. He doesn’t want to wait in line. He steps back outside and moves further around the building and into the ambulance bay where an ambulance is pulling in. He steps out of the way as ER doctors move into position. The back of the ambulance opens and a gurney is brought out, a man dressed as the Grim Reaper who is missing part of his face. He’s conscious, his fists balled up tight. Schroder follows them through the doors until a doctor holds a hand up in front of him.

“Wrong entrance,” a doctor with the wrong choice in comb-overs says to him. He has bloodshot eyes and smells like coffee and has a badge on his chest that says Dr. Ben Hearse, and Schroder figures it’s a bad omen for his patients, but still one step removed from Dr. You’re Gonna Die.

“I’m a cop,” he says. “Detective Inspector Carl Schroder. Listen, I need to get in there. My partner is in there. She was brought in a few minutes ago.”

Dr. Hearse nods. “They’re working on her.”

“Is she going to make it?”

“They’re working on her,” he repeats, a little more sympathetically. “Let me take a look at your arm,” he says, then Schroder winces as soon as it’s touched. “Okay, follow me,” he says.

“Can’t you just give me a shot or something?”

“A shot?”

“For the pain. It hurts like a bitch.”

“No, I can’t just give you a shot, but what I can do is set your arm and put it in a cast.”

“I just need a shot. We can do the cast thing later.”

“Let’s do the cast thing now,” Hearse says.

Schroder follows him into the emergency department. The doctors who aren’t helping people are rushing around getting ready to help those still on their way. They keep going until they’re past all the operating rooms and into a doctor’s office.

“Wait here,” Hearse tells him. “We’ll get you x-rayed and figure out what’s going on.”

“I want an update on Detective Kent,” Schroder says, and he feels impatient, like he needs to be doing something to find Joe, but he doesn’t know what.

The doctor gives a brief nod. “Wait here,” he says again, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Schroder has only been alone for a minute when his cell phone rings. He reaches into his pocket. The display was broken in the blast so he can’t tell who it is. He realizes he still hasn’t phoned his wife yet. She’ll have heard the news and be worried about him.

“Detective Schroder,” he says, the title out of his mouth too quickly to avoid. Right in this moment he still feels like a cop.

“Carl, it’s Hutton,” Hutton says, either letting the detective comment go or not picking up on it. “Listen, I got something here.”

“Where?”

“Meet me out back in the parking lot, and make it quick.”