Paul Cleave - Joe Victim

“What’s left of it,” I say, answering for Schroder, who then answers for himself by shrugging.

“You want this guy out of here quicker, we’re going to need that eyelid,” the doctor says.

“We’ll get it,” Schroder says.

“Then get it,” the doctor says. “Otherwise we have to graft something else that will work. And that’ll take longer. Can’t have him not blinking.”

“I don’t care if he can’t blink,” Schroder says. “Just cauterize the damn thing and glue a patch on his face.”

Instead of arguing or telling Schroder he’s out of line, the doctor finally seems to realize that all these cops, all the tension, all the anger, that must mean something special. I can see it occurring to him, I watch through one good eye and one bloody eye and he starts to frown, then slowly shake his head, a curious look on his face. I know the question is coming.

“Just who is this man?”

“This is the Christchurch Carver,” Schroder answers.

“No way,” the doctor says. “This guy?”

I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean. “I’m innocent,” I say. “I’m Joe,” I say, and the doctor jams a needle into the side of my face, the world shifts further off its axis, and things go numb.

TWELVE MONTHS LATER

Melissa pulls into the driveway. Sits back. Tries to relax.

The day is fifty degrees maximum. Christchurch rain. Christchurch cold. Yesterday was warm. Now it’s raining. Schizophrenic weather. She’s shivering. She leans forward and twists the keys in the ignition, grabs her briefcase, and climbs from the car. The rain soaks her hair. She reaches the front door and fumbles with the lock.

She strolls through to the kitchen. Derek is upstairs. She can hear the shower going and she can hear him singing. She’ll disturb him later. For now she needs a drink. The fridge is covered in magnets from bullshit places around the country, places with high pregnancy rates, high drinking rates, high suicide rates. Places like Christchurch. She opens the door and there are half a dozen bottles of beer and she puts her hand on one, pauses, then goes for the orange juice instead. She breaks the seal and drinks straight from the container. Derek won’t mind. Her feet are sore and her back is sore so she sits at the table for a minute listening to the shower as she sips at the juice as her muscles slowly relax. It’s been a long day in what is becoming a very long week. She’s not a big fan of orange juice-she prefers tropical juices, but orange was her only option. For some reason drink makers think people want their juices full of pulp that sticks in your teeth and feels like an oyster pissing on your tongue, and for some reason that’s what Derek wants too.

She puts the lid back on the juice and puts it into the fridge and looks at the slices of pizza in there and decides against them. There are some chocolate bars in a side compartment. She peels one open and takes a bite, and stuffs the remaining bars-four of them-into her pocket. Thanks, Derek. She finishes off the open one while carrying the briefcase upstairs. The stereo in the bedroom is pumping out a song she recognizes. She used to have the album back when she was a different person, more of a carefree, CD-listening kind of person. It’s The Rolling Stones. A greatest-hits package, she can tell by the way one song follows another. Right now Mick is screaming out about blotting out the sun. He wants the world to be black. She wants that too. He sounds like he’s singing about the middle of winter at five o’clock in New Zealand. She hums along with it. Derek is still singing, masking every sound she is making.

She sits down on the bed. There’s an oil heater running and the room is warm. The furniture is a good match for the house, and the house looks like somebody ought to take a match to it. The bed is soft and tempts her to put her feet up and prop a pillow behind her and take a nap, but that would also be tempting the bacteria in the pillowcase to make friends with her. She pops open the briefcase and takes out a newspaper and reads over the front page while she waits. It’s an article about some guy who’s been terrorizing the city. Killing women. Torture. Rape. Homicide. The Christchurch Carver. Joe Middleton. He was arrested twelve months ago. His trial begins on Monday. She is also mentioned in the article. Melissa X. Though the article also mentions her real name, Natalie Flowers, Melissa only thinks of herself as Melissa these days. Has done for the last couple of years.

A couple of minutes go by and she’s still sitting on the bed when Derek, wiping a towel at his hair, steps out of the bathroom surrounded by white steam and the smell of shaving balm. He has a towel wrapped around his waist. A tattoo of a snake winds its way from the towel up his side and over his shoulder, with its tongue forking across his neck. Some of the snake is finely detailed, parts of it really just sketched outlines with more to follow. There are various scars that go hand in hand with a guy like Derek, no doubt an even mixture of good times and bad times-good times for him and bad times for others.

She lowers the newspaper and smiles.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asks.

Melissa turns the briefcase toward him and reaches out and presses pause on the stereo. The briefcase actually belongs to Joe Middleton. He left it with her the same day he never came back. “I’m here with the other half of your payment,” she says.

“You know where I live?”

It’s a stupid question. Melissa doesn’t point it out to him. “I like to know who I’m doing business with.”

He unwraps the towel from his waist, the entire time keeping his eyes on the cash in the briefcase. His dick sways left and right as he starts drying his hair.

“It’s all there?” he asks, still drying his hair, his face at the moment behind the towel and his voice muffled.

“Every dollar. Where’s the stuff?”

“It’s here,” he says.

She knows it’s here. She’s been following him ever since their initial meeting two days ago, where she gave him the first half of the payment. She knows he picked up the stuff only an hour ago. He went from there to here with no stops in between with a bag full of items his parole officer wouldn’t be too pleased about.

“Where?” she asks.

He wraps the towel back around his waist. She figures she could have just come in here and shot him and searched the house anyway, but she needs him. The stuff probably won’t be hard to find. She figures a guy who would ask You know where I live? to somebody standing in their bedroom is the kind of guy who hides things in the roof space or under the floor.

“Show me,” he says, nodding toward the money.

She slides the briefcase toward him on the bed. He steps forward. The twenty grand is made up in fifty- and twenty-dollar bills. They’re stacked neatly into piles with rubber bands around them. Over the last few years most of her income has been through blackmailing people or burglaries, some from the men she’s killed, but a few months ago she came into some pretty good money. Forty thousand dollars, to be precise. He thumbs through some of it and decides it must all be there.

He moves over to the wardrobe. He drags a box of clothes out then lifts the patch of carpet and digs a screwdriver into the edge of the floor and Melissa finds herself rolling her eyes, thinking how lucky guys like Derek are that they can’t be charged for stupidity along with other crimes. He pries up the boards. He pulls out an aluminum case the length of his arm. Melissa stands up so he can lay it on the bed. He pops the lid open. There is a rifle broken into separate pieces, all of it slotting into foam cutouts.