Paul Cleave - Joe Victim

“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.