Joe Victim: A Thriller

The offices on the third floor of the complex where Melissa and Raphael are standing range from fairly complete to hardly started. The one they’ve chosen is mostly complete. All the walls are in place and there are light fittings and power fittings and no exposed wires. There are some tins of paint resting against a wall, some cleaning supplies, some loose tools, a couple of sawhorses, and a plank of wood that doubles as scaffolding. There’s a whole lot of dust. Things have been sanded down, but nobody cleaned up. Everything looks settled, like it’s been that way for some time and there’s no reason to think that’ll change.

Six months ago she killed a security guard who worked the building two blocks away, the one that overlooked the front of the courts that she was originally going to use. In an unfortunate twist of fate—at least for the guard—she wasn’t trying to kill him. Just pickpocket his keys. He caught her doing it. She had no choice. She thought back then that that building was going to be part of the plan. She thought they’d be taking a shot from the roof. This building is easier. She didn’t need to kill anybody. All she needed on Thursday when she picked this building was a minute with the lock of the entrance around the back. A child with a toothpick could have picked that thing. Once she opened the door, she used a screwdriver to remove the lock on the inside, leaving it so the door couldn’t latch closed. She had to. If she locked up, then re-picked the lock in front of Raphael, she thought at the time that he’d ask too many questions. It’s a miracle the offices in here aren’t all like two-star hotel rooms for the homeless. She’s surprised anything nailed down hasn’t been stolen and sold.

Raphael opens up the case. He starts to assemble the gun. She could tell he loved shooting it. He loved being the man. All she could do was hit dirt. Or that’s what she showed him. It cemented the dynamic in their relationship. He was the shooter. She wasn’t the shooter. She was the collector. He wasn’t the collector. It was a shooting and collecting relationship, hence it’s a two-person plan. Nothing wrong with that.

Raphael doesn’t put the scope on the gun. Instead he stands in front of the windows holding the scope in both hands. He’s wearing a pair of latex gloves. They both are. There’s no reason to leave their fingerprints everywhere. The police uniform is still in the bag.

“I can see everything,” he says.

“What about the courthouse? How does it look?” she asks, but she knows how it looks. She’s been here already. The office has a direct line of sight into the back entrance of the courthouse. A nice, clear view of the parking lot and the courthouse doors and the ten-yard strip of concrete between the parking lot and those doors. A lot can happen in a ten-yard strip of land. There are going to be thousands of people out in the street, but within the parking lot there’s only going to be a couple of cops and Joe. Shouldn’t be a problem. Crowd won’t be in the way. All Raphael has to do is stay calm. Six months ago the view from the other building she chose was very different. Six months ago it looked like a mess from any angle. Cranes. Bulldozers. Work crews.

“Everything is so clear,” he says.

“May I?”

He hands her the scope. It has higher-quality optics than the binoculars. She looks at the courthouse, then up and down the street where there is going to be lots of traffic. The courthouse is a single story. The elevated view from the third floor of the office complex means she can see over the top of the courthouse and further into town. The courthouse takes up an entire block, with the back entrance right in the middle. She can see roads leading in all directions, two main roads running parallel up and down the city—one road passing by the courts on the left, the other on the right. So many protesters will be here on Monday that some of these roads will be closed off. It’s going to be perfect. Right now the roads are almost empty. Saturday evening in the middle of winter in a part of town where there are office buildings and a courthouse and nowhere serving beer—why would there be people down there?

“Here,” she says, and hands the scope back to him.

He lies down and holds the scope. A nice elevation. Simple to look down on the parking lot without anything in the way. Not too high that they have to worry about wind swirling between the buildings. And not too high that they won’t be able to escape quickly.

Biggest thing they have to worry about is weather. They don’t need great weather, but bad weather won’t work. It can’t be pouring heavy with rain. Can’t be gusts of wind. Problem with Christchurch weather is the way you forecast it is the same way you forecast who’s going to win a horse race. You go with the favorite, but everything has a chance.

“I won’t be able to lie down,” he says. “It’d mean shooting through the window. Windows open waist high and above.”

She looks at her watch. It’s ten minutes from six o’clock. The transport is arriving at the back entrance of the court at six o’clock on the dot. She knows that because it was in the itinerary she stole from Schroder. She also knows the solution to Raphael’s problem. She’d figured that out when she came here on Thursday.

“Help me with this,” she says, and she moves over to the paints where a large, canvas drop cloth has been folded up into a neat square foot. They unfold it and carry it over to the window.

“What’s the deal with this?”