Joe Victim: A Thriller

Suddenly we’re all looking at Kent. She is now the center of attention the way I was earlier. My life is in her hands. My heart is racing and my legs feel a little weak and I’m actually close to throwing up. A year ago I tried to shoot myself when the police found me, but that was impulsive and stupid. I don’t want to die. Not here, not now. Not ever. Not at the hands of these assholes.

At least it would stop the stomach pains.

Then, slowly, Kent shakes her head. “This is ridiculous,” she says, without any emotion, as if she’s reading The cow goes moo off a cue card. Then she injects a little more conviction into it. But only a little. “I’m not going to risk my career for him,” she adds.

“There’s no risk,” Jack says.

“Of course there is,” she says. “You think we can say Joe ran so we had to shoot him? That we couldn’t catch him?”

“Why not? You think people will care?” Jack asks, and suddenly it’s looking like if Kent doesn’t agree, I’m not going to be the only one having new holes made inside them. They can say I got hold of a gun and shot her before they shot me. Then they’ll have an excuse for putting so many holes into me. Kent doesn’t see it. If she did, she’d stop arguing.

“People will care,” she says.

“Who?” Jack asks. “Come on, Rebecca, this is a freebie. This is why we became cops, right? To right some wrongs. To give justice. If we do this, then we can be honest about why we were out here. We don’t have to fuck around with this psychic shit.”

She doesn’t answer right away. There’s a pendulum swinging—or a wrecking ball—and she still hasn’t decided to go with it or against it. “Family members of victims will care,” she says.

“No they won’t. They’ll be thrilled,” Officer Dick says.

“They deserve to face him in court,” she says. “They deserve the right to confront him.”

Everybody goes quiet. More thoughts and no Melissa, just tension mounting upon more tension, and more tension rising in my stomach. I push my thumb a little deeper. Something in there swirls around. Something in there doesn’t want to be in there anymore.

“We can do this, Rebecca,” Jack says. “We can do it and say whatever we want. You know that, right?”

She nods. A slow, purposeful nod. “I . . . I don’t know,” she says. “But . . .”

“You can’t do this,” I say.

“Shut up,” Jack says. “Rebecca . . .”

“Can we live with it?” she asks.

“Don’t—” I say.

“Shut the fuck up,” Jack says.

“I can live with it,” Officer Dick says.

My stomach does one final turn, then my legs turn to jelly and my ass muscles just can’t hold on, and before anybody can add anything else a sound like a thunderclap tears itself free from my ass. It echoes through the trees and across the fields. The mess that follows is like a mudslide.

“Oh fuck,” Jack says, and Officer Nose says something similar and so does Dick and Kent, so it’s a chorus of fucks. They all jump back from me. I fall to my knees and into the mud. There are more thunderclaps, quickly followed by what sounds like a bucket of water being thrown at a mattress. I fall onto my side. Dick looks like he’s going to throw up, and then Jack starts laughing. He throws his head back and he has to hold on to the shovel to stay balanced, and he laughs just as hard as Adam and Glen did earlier—harder, probably. He laughs like a man who is in danger of tearing his vocal chords. Kent starts to laugh too, just a grin at first that widens and makes her look even more beautiful. Jack’s laugh becomes infectious, the harder he laughs the harder the others join in. Officers Dick and Nose are on the brink of losing control. My stomach lets go once more—not so much a thunderclap this time, but like somebody sticking a knife into a car tire. I can feel fluid running across my thighs. I try to get to my knees, but don’t have the strength.

“Now we really should shoot him,” Jack says, and he’s laughing as he’s saying it, but there’s still some seriousness in there, some tension, but it’s been broken. “Let him stink up the coroner’s van instead of ours.”

Kent is smiling and shaking her head. She is holding her nose with one hand and talking into her hand. “Let’s just get him back,” she says, “and let the prison clean him up.”

Nobody objects. Nobody suggests they ought to shoot me again. Part of that may be to do with the technical details—I’m covered in shit, and shooting an unarmed man covered in shit is going to be a much harder sell.

“It’s gonna smell,” Dick says, and they’re all still laughing only not as hard now. It’s dying down.

“Let’s just go,” Kent says.

“Wait,” I say. I’m still lying on my side with my face in the cold mud.

“What for?” she asks.

For Melissa to shoot you. All of you. For her to come and save me. It’s getting darker, but the sun hasn’t quite set yet. Isn’t this twilight? Didn’t Mom pass along my message?

“I want to pay my respects,” I say.