Paul Cleave - Joe Victim

So things didn’t work out with Sam after that. That was a week ago. She had to leave him and move on. And, just like any good-hearted pet owner would do, she put him down gently.

The trial starts Monday. Today is Thursday. She doesn’t want Joe deciding to start talking all about her because the prosecution makes him an offer he can’t refuse. She doesn’t want to shoot him on Tuesday, or Wednesday, or a month into the trial. The plan was for Monday, the plan has fallen though, but the new plan can be for Monday too.

At the moment people don’t look at her and see Melissa. They see a pregnant woman on the cusp of bursting, they see a mom-to-be. What they don’t do is take a good look and wonder if she could be a killer. People are easy to fool. She’s been fooling them for years now. She’s learned that wigs and hair dye and fake eyelashes and being nine months pregnant can make you anybody you want to be. Even Schroder, good old ex-detective inspector Schroder, didn’t recognize her. She could see him trying to place her, but there was no chance. They see fat pregnant chick and don’t see beyond that. He bought the acting story hook, line, and sinker, because she gave him no reason at all to doubt her. She can be a different person from who she was yesterday, and she can be a different person tomorrow. It’s how she’s been free to do what she wants all these years. It’s how she survives.

Right now the person she wants to be is dry. This rain is soaking through her clothes. She’s shivering. She waited five minutes on the chance Schroder noticed his keys were missing, but the detective is a former detective for a reason, and that’s probably one of them. Schroder’s car is about as messy as she’d expected it to be. Fast-food wrappers covering the mats in the backseat, children’s clothes, a car seat for a baby. Nobody is watching her. The weather is way too bad for anybody to think much beyond getting from point A to point B in a way that stops them from drowning. She said earlier to Schroder that she likes the rain, but the truth is she hates it. It surprises her that she still lives in this city. She was born here. Raised here. Raped here. Her sister was born here. Raised here. Raped here. And murdered here. There’s a lot of memories in Christchurch, not many of them any good. There are other cars in the parking lot, but she’s not concerned about anybody coming out at the wrong time and spotting her. She’s almost done here anyway. And if Schroder were to come outside now and catch her, well, she’ll just have to stab him and drive away with him in the backseat. It’d be a shame because over the last few minutes she’s come up with a very specific plan for Schroder’s future.

Schroder is still well informed for a guy who is no longer a cop. Which is what she was hoping for after I don’t want to shoot anybody Derek pointed out Joe’s route to the courthouse might not be the route she had imagined. She had to get the information from somewhere, and she figured Schroder would have it-after all, he was the lead on the Carver case. He was easy to follow too. She knows where he lives and where he works. She doesn’t know why he was fired. Something to do with drinking on the job is the official story-a whole bunch of cops showed up drunk at a crime scene a month ago-but she thinks there’s more to it than that. She doesn’t know what, exactly. And she doesn’t really care. All that matters is Joe, and what matters here is what Schroder knows about Joe, and about how Joe is getting to court.

There’s a box in the backseat containing files from Joe’s case. There are copies of crime scene reports, lots of photographs, evidence detailed down to the specifics. There’s a photograph of her, back when she was another person. She holds it up and runs her thumb over the smooth edge of it. It was taken a few weeks before she started university. God, that was ages ago. She wasn’t just a different person back then, but a completely different person. New look, new personality-staring into the photograph is like looking at a stranger. The person staring out at her had hopes and dreams. She was going to be somebody. That girl had no idea-she was innocent, she had no idea of her potential. Despite everything, she smiles at the memory of the picture being taken. The picture is as different as the day was different. Lots of sun. Blue skies. It was summer. Good times. Her best friend, Cindy, took the photograph. She’s leaning against a car and has a big smile and an easygoing nature. Cindy and her were heading to the beach. Cindy ended up fucking two guys in the sand dunes at the same time then crying all the way home, disgusted at herself. She hasn’t seen Cindy since leaving university, and she wonders what ever became of her, but she doesn’t wonder enough to ever look her up.

She folds the photograph into her jacket pocket.

She finds what she’s after a few pages down into the box. The route the police will be taking to the court. She scans through it. She sees Derek was right. She absorbs the facts. Then uses her cell phone to snap a photo. She puts it back, then carries on looking. There’s a second thing she wants too. The cell phone number and address of the man that is going to help her. That’s another idea Derek gave her. Obviously Derek was an ideas man. She finds what she’s looking for and photographs that too.

She’s glad she came out here. She almost turned around and left him to it once she realized where they were going, but turning around isn’t in her nature. Plus, who knew when there’d be another opportunity to go into his car? And time is short. And, of course, Schroder is now part of her escape plan. She takes out the C-four. She reaches up and under the steering column, right around toward the back of the car stereo. The square block changes shape slightly as she jams it to a stop back there. Then she reaches back under and jams the detonator into the not-so-perfectly-square lump of clay, the receiver attached to the end of it.

She gets back to her own car. She yawns heavily for a few seconds-she was up half of last night and more than anything right now she wants to take a nap, but can’t. She drives past the guard booth who asks her to pop the trunk to make sure nobody is hiding in there. When she gets out to the motorway she pulls over and takes off the baby bump, and suddenly she’s no longer nine months pregnant, no longer overweight and needing to use a bathroom every fifteen minutes. She tosses it into the backseat. She tosses the red wig back there too.

She programs the new address into the GPS function of her cell phone. Like always, it takes her and her GPS application a few minutes to come to an understanding, but they get there in the end, and then she has the directions of the man who is going to help her shoot Joe Middleton. But first she needs to go into town. She needs to find a new place where Joe can be shot from. And she already has a pretty good idea where that will be.

The prison officer has bloodshot eyes, as if every night while he sleeps the unibrow above them extends downward and scratches at them. He hands over the tray of Schroder’s belongings. Car keys, wallet, phone, coins-actually, that’s a negative on the car keys. He looks into the empty tray, then pats down his pockets.

“My keys aren’t here,” he says.

The prison officer doesn’t look impressed. He looks like he’s being accused of something. “You didn’t give me any car keys.”

“I must have.”

“Then they’d be here,” the prison officer says, his unibrow turning into a uni-V.

“That’s my point. I gave them to you and they should be here.”

“And my point is that if you did give them to me then I’d have just given them back. Maybe you dropped them. Maybe they’re hanging out of your car door. Maybe they’re in the ignition. Maybe you left them at home and walked here.”