Joe Victim: A Thriller

“Let’s go,” Jack says, and he reaches down and pulls me to my feet. Officer Dick puts the dirt back into place and pats it down.

The trip out here is put into reverse order. Now the mountains in the distance are on my right. Same trees, same dirt, same rocks with mold. Same view all around except darker. A hundred yards. Two hundred. The seat of my prison jumpsuit is cold. It’s sticking to my legs and ass and smells just like the sandwich. The walk is slow thanks to the chains around my ankles. The pain in my stomach has lessened, but I can already feel it starting to build again. Melissa is in the trees somewhere, but taking her time, just waiting for the perfect shot. Being covered in my own shit will be a mood killer for her, but I’ll clean up good. I lose my shoe in the same place I lost it earlier, but don’t have the strength to bend down and look for it. It’s getting darker by the minute. My sock is soaked in mud and my foot is cold and it hurts when I step on a tree root or a stone or anything else that isn’t flat. Then we’re at the fence. We go over it the same way as before, two ahead of me to drag me, but the two behind me don’t want to push. They don’t want to touch me. So the two ahead have to do all the work because I don’t have any strength to help them. When I’m over I break the fall with my arms and am given only a few seconds before being pulled back up. We approach the van. My feet are heavy with mud. My bank account is about to be heavy with cash. Cash I can’t use unless Melissa starts shooting. Only she doesn’t. Nobody does.

We all stand at the back of the van wondering how to make the next step less messy than it’s going to get, but nothing comes to mind, there’s nothing to lay across the seat first, so I head in and the reverse order continues. Hell, even Calhoun was found and then not found. The only thing that hasn’t been taken back is me shitting myself—that one was for keeps. The chain between the eyelet and my handcuffs is fastened. I’m all hunched over. The two cops back here sit as far from me as they can. Jack opens his window. Kent opens hers the rest of the way. There’s a moment where the van doesn’t want to start, a good two-second turnover of the engine where I get to think Melissa has done something to it, but then it catches and Jack pumps the accelerator a few times then releases the hand brake and pulls a U-turn. More lefts and rights, but in the opposite order. Jack flicks on the headlights. A rabbit on the road twenty yards away is all lit up and seems happy with the idea of being hit by the van, and that happiness probably fades as he goes tumbling under the wheels. Moths are flying into the lights and splattering over the windshield. It’s as though nature is trying to kill itself around me, that we are a van of death driving into town. Traffic is thin. My feet are wet and cold. Melissa didn’t come.

She didn’t come.





Chapter Forty


The outer shell of the building is complete. Inside are offices in various stages of completion. The complex won’t reach the finish line until hard economic times become good economic times. Nobody knows when that will be. Opposite the building are the Christchurch Criminal Courts that, until recently, were also under construction. Hard times or good times—it doesn’t matter where the economy is at when it comes to prosecuting crime. The old courts are a few blocks away, but Christchurch was a growing city with bigger problems, and it needed bigger courts to reflect that and to feed bad people into the prison population at a faster rate.