Joe Victim

Chapter Seventy-Six

Schroder and Hutton are leading the chase. He knows they are because when Hutton calls in the new information he’s told backup is ten minutes away. While Hutton is on the phone organizing that, Schroder is once again searching his pockets for his Wake-E pills. Nope. Definitely gone. He has a headache coming on.

“A team has just reached Raphael’s house,” Hutton says.

“And?”

“And the results are interesting. Nothing there to suggest he was working with Melissa. But plenty to suggest Raphael wasn’t exactly a Good Samaritan.”

“Yeah? What’d he do?”

“Joe’s lawyers,” Hutton says. “It looks like Raphael’s the guy who killed them.”

“Shit,” Schroder says.

“We’ve sent people to Joe’s mother’s house, hoping he’ll turn up there, or hoping she may offer something, but there’s no sign of her.”

They both revert to their own thoughts. Schroder starts thinking back to the last time he saw Sally. When was that? It was last year, not long after Joe was arrested. Within days of being given the reward money she quit her job. She went back to studying. She never stayed in touch with anybody from work, and why would she? The night they figured out who Joe was, they treated her like hell. They arrested her and put her in an interrogation room because they’d found her prints on a piece of evidence. She ended up being the reason they caught Joe. Not police work, not detective skills, but pure luck because Sally had picked up something she shouldn’t have.

“You should give me Kent’s gun,” Hutton says.

“You’re probably right.”

“I know I’m right. Come on, Carl. We’re almost there. If you end up shooting somebody we’ll probably both go to jail.”

“They’re armed,” Schroder says. “It’s only fair that I’m armed too.”

“You think she’s still alive?” Hutton asks. “Sally?”

“No.”

“Nothing I can say to get that gun back from you?”

“Nothing.”

“Just don’t fuck up. Promise me that, okay?”

“You have my word.”

“And don’t tell anybody I knew you had it.”

Town races by. The neighborhoods race by. Schroder doesn’t take any of it in. Six minutes later they’re pulling into her street. They watch the numbers on the letterboxes, but then stop watching when they see the blue van up a driveway six houses ahead, exactly where the numbers were going to line up. The houses are all pretty small and look like they’ve spent thirty years being blasted by bad weather and no love. Hutton does a U-turn and drives back to the start of the block. He takes out his cell phone and reports in. Backup is still four minutes away. He tells Schroder this when he hangs up.

“A lot can happen in four minutes,” Schroder says.

“And a lot can happen for the worse if we go in there.”

“We opened the ambulance before, right?” Schroder asks. This isn’t any different from that.”

“It’s a lot different,” Hutton says, and Schroder knows it. “We knew that thing was going to be empty. Whereas this time we know they’re in there. If only we had Jonas Jones along with us. He’d be able to tell us what’s going on inside.”

“Funny. Look, they wouldn’t have come here if Sally was dead,” Schroder says. “They’ve come here for her help. Most likely for her medical skills. I say we go in. We have to. We owe it to Sally.”

“We owe it to Sally to give her the best chance we can, and her best chance is if we wait for backup, and nobody from backup is going to have a busted arm. Three minutes, that’s all,” Hutton says, and Schroder knows he’s right, and in Hutton’s position he’d be making the same decision. So then why does the right thing to do feel so very, very wrong?

He opens the car door and steps outside.

“Jesus, Carl,” Hutton says, and he does the same. Schroder starts walking. “Have you forgotten you’re not even a cop anymore?”

“We have to do something, Wilson.”

“Don’t make me arrest you.”

“And what? Cause a scene?”

“You’re going to get me fired.”

“And you’re thinking of your job over saving Sally’s life.”

“That’s a really shitty thing to say, Carl,” Hutton says.

“I know. You’re right, and I’m sorry. But we can’t just stand by and wait.”

“Two minutes,” Hutton says. “Just two minutes now.”

“Then that’s less time for us to fuck up.”

Schroder keeps walking to the house. He can do this. He can save Sally and Hutton can arrest Joe and Melissa. It’s what they’re trained for. Only it’s not. They’re trained to investigate. And they’re trained to stand back and send in the AOS team in these situations. Melissa is armed. She’s already killed one policeman today. No reason to make it easy for her to kill a second. He stops walking.

“Okay,” he says.

So they wait twenty more seconds and then Schroder decides twenty seconds is long enough. The thing is, a lot can happen in two minutes. People can die. Joe and Melissa can hear the police arrive and cut their losses and kill whoever they have in there with them. So he takes a few steps toward the house. There’s a throbbing in his head, a pound-pound-pounding, and he realizes it’s the sound of his footsteps on the pavement as he runs toward the house.

“Goddamn it,” Hutton says, but Hutton is overweight and hasn’t seen the inside of a gym in years, and all that extra eating holds him back. Even with a broken arm Schroder outruns him.

He reaches the house. The van has been reversed into the driveway and it’s easy to see the front is empty. Kent’s gun is back in his hand. The back doors of the van are open and he comes around the side of it and peers in and it’s empty too, except for some blood on the wall. Hutton is only a house away now, but he’s stopped running. Not because of the strain on his body, but because to catch Schroder now would be to create a confrontation. Still there are no sounds of sirens in the distance. Either they’re late, caught in traffic, or are running silent.

The house is a single-story dwelling with weatherboard walls and a concrete tile roof. The garden is tidy and looked after but uninspiring. There’s a headless garden gnome by the step to the front door. The front door is closed. Schroder peers through the window and can see into the lounge. There’s nobody in there. He ducks down and listens for any sound, but there’s nothing. He moves to the side of the house and looks through another window into the same room and gets the same view, but from a different angle. Next window looks into the kitchen. Small but tidy. He tries the back door. It rattles, but it’s locked. He puts the side of his face against it and listens. Nothing. No movement inside. No sirens approaching from the street. No sign of Hutton. Further around the house and now he’s looking into the bedroom window. There’s a body on the floor. It’s Sally. She’s face down. He can’t tell whether she’s dead or alive, but knows what he’d put his money on. The bed has blood on it. There are medical supplies scattered around the room. Some bloody clothes. A paramedic uniform. Joe and Melissa are gone, probably in Sally’s car.

He moves to the front door. He tries it. It’s unlocked. He pushes it open and moves into the bedroom, the gun pointing ahead. He crouches down next to Sally and has to put the gun on the floor so he can put two fingers on her neck. He looks for a pulse and finds one, steady and strong. He rolls her onto her back. There’s a big bruise on the side of her forehead and some blood.

“Sally,” he says, shaking her a little with his good arm. He wonders why they let her live. He wonders how Melissa and Joe go about putting a value on human life. “Sally?”

Sally doesn’t stir. So he slaps her slightly on the side of the face, and then a little harder. “Come on, Sally, it’s important.”

Sally doesn’t seem to think so. He moves into the kitchen. He finds a bucket beneath the sink. He fills it up with cold water. He thinks about the gun and knows what’s going to happen within the next few minutes. He takes it out and wraps it in a tea towel and sets it on the counter near the sink. He carries the water back into the bedroom. His arm is starting to wake up.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her, and then he pours it over her face. She wakes up a quarter of the way into it, starts sputtering, and by the end she’s rolled onto her side and is coughing.

“Sally,” he says, and he crouches down next to her.

“Detective Inspector Schroder?” she says.

“You’re safe now,” he tells her.

“Where are they?” she asks. “Have you arrested them?”

“No,” he says. “Please, Sally, tell me what happened. Did they say where they are going? Do you still have your car? Did they take it?”

“The woman, Melissa, she came here last night,” she says. “She threatened to shoot me. She tied me up and used my uniform and took my ID card. Then she left this morning and came back with Joe. He’d been shot. They made me help him. I thought. . I thought they were going to shoot me.”

“You’re safe now,” he tells her again. “What did they say? Do you know where they’re going?”

She shakes her head, then quickly puts one hand on the side of it and closes her eyes, the movement enough to bring her close to passing out. He helps her up so she can sit on the bed. Okay, his arm is really starting to hurt now. He pulls out the second of his three syringes.

“What are you doing?” Sally asks.

“Don’t worry, it’s not for you,” he says, and plunges the needle into his arm.

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” she says.

“Tell me what happened here,” he says, and puts the cap on the syringe and dumps it on the floor. The numbness in his arm begins to return.

“They had a baby,” Sally says.

“What?”

“Not with them,” she says. “But. . but Melissa made me help.”

“Wait. She had the baby last night?”

Sally shakes her head. “Three months ago. She came here and-”

“And you didn’t tell us?”

“I couldn’t,” Sally says, looking down.

“Why the hell not?”

She starts to cry. And she tells him why. He should be more sympathetic than he is, but all he can feel is the anger and frustration. People have died. Cops have died. She should have come to them. They could have done something with that information. They could have caught Melissa and the baby would have been safe.

“Tell me about today,” he says. “How bad was the wound?”

“He was shot in the shoulder. The bullet went right through.”

“And you’re sure neither of them said anything that might help?”

“Nothing.”

Before he can say anything more half a dozen men storm into the room, all of them dressed in black, one of them shouting at him to Get down, get down. A knee is put in the middle of his back and his face pressed into the floor, and then he screams into the carpet as his broken arm is pulled out of the sling and behind him, the numbness leaving in an instant as the handcuffs go on.