Paul Cleave - Joe Victim

A year ago?

The Sally looks jealous-and I realize the crush she has on me hasn’t faded, her love still burns strong and Melissa better not turn her back on her because nothing sums up crazy as much as a fat woman in love.

“It’s her birthday,” I say.

“What’s wrong with him?” Melissa asks.

“She’s twenty-one,” I say.

“It’s the medication,” The Sally says. “It’s messing with his mind, that’s all. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Do you remember our wedding?” I ask Melissa.

She smiles at me and it’s a stupid question-of course she remembers it. Why wouldn’t she? It was an amazing day, made more amazing by the fact that my mother got the dates confused and missed it.

“I love you,” I tell her.

“You’re going to be okay, Joe,” she tells me.

I’m naked from the waist up. My clothes are in a bloody pile at the foot of the bed. It’s no loss-it’s just the cheap jail suit the warden will replace with one of his own, or with thirty bucks from the petty cash drawer. I’m becoming increasingly concerned about how real the dream is feeling. I try to focus on Abby, which kind of works and kind of doesn’t, because when I try to think about her features, I can’t find them. What color are her eyes? What shape is her nose? Her cheeks? Her hair? Then I try to remember Mom’s new husband. I try to remember my sessions with Benson Barlow. I try to remember Walt’s funeral, but maybe I didn’t go. The neighbor with the fridge, what’s his name? And what did Schroder do to get himself locked up?

It’s a bad dream. That’s all. Just like the bad dream I had following the removal of my testicle.

So I go with it. I stick with the dream and see where it leads. My biggest red flag, if I’m looking for one-which I’m not-is that out of all the people I could dream about, why would The Sally be one of them?

It wouldn’t.

I would never dream about somebody like Sally.

The Sally.

Never.

And that, more than anything, tells me that this is real.

“You need to go to a hospital, Joe,” The Sally says.

I look around the room. Sally’s bedroom. This must be a dream come true for her. There’s a poster on one wall of a vase of flowers, but no vase of flowers anywhere. Why not put up a picture of a window and keep the curtains closed? There’s a mirror above a chest of drawers and poked into the side of the mirror are what must be family photographs. They take up a lot of real estate and I guess that’s so there’s less reflective space and less of a chance for Sally to keep seeing herself.

“It hurts,” I tell her, which is perhaps the most honest thing I’ve ever told her.

“The bullet went right through,” The Sally says. “You’ve got muscle and ligament damage. I’ve stopped the bleeding, and you’re okay for now, and I’ve cleaned it, but it’s going to get infected, and you’re probably never going to be able to use your shoulder properly.”

I shake my head at the thought of that, of my shoulder locking up and going into spasm right when I’m in the middle of cut-cut-cutting. “Fix it,” I tell her.

“You need surgery. It’s not going to heal by itself,” she says.

“Then operate.”

“I can’t.”

“Find somebody who can.”

Melissa steps away from the window. She looks down at me and she looks concerned. “I think what Sally is saying,” she says, “is that she’s done all she can. Isn’t that right?” she asks, looking over at The Sally.

The Sally nods. “You should still take him to a hospital. If you don’t want it infected and if there’s any chance of him using it a hundred percent again, then you have to take him.”

Melissa nods. “It’s funny,” she says, “because you’re talking and all I hear you saying is that we have no more use for you,” she says, and she raises her hand and there’s a gun in it and she points it at The Sally, and in the moment I realize that Melissa hasn’t changed at all, that she’s still the same woman I fell in love with, that I’m so lucky to have found her.

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?”