Joe Victim: A Thriller

She has asked herself this question a thousand times, and she’s no closer to answering it now than she was a year ago when she first met Joe.

There are a few cars parked out front of the hardware store, but for the most part the store feels deserted. She hasn’t been into a hardware store since she was a kid and her dad came here a few times the way dads do when they’re planning on fixing something around the house or building a deck. It’s been a while, and while hammers and screwdrivers all look the same, the power tools all seem to be made of brighter colors than the last time she was here, some of them going as far as looking like they were made in the future. She’s wearing the red wig, but not the pregnancy suit. She isn’t real sure where to look, but a bald guy with moles littering his arms and neck helps her out, and a few hundred dollars later she has what she wants.

The next stop is town. She parks outside the office building, getting the same parking space as yesterday evening. She goes inside and takes the lift up to the third floor, feeling too lazy to use the stairs. The environment may not thank her, but her calves do. The office is just how she left it. Why wouldn’t it be? The drop cloth is still playing curtain, but there’s enough ambient light to see. The gun is exactly where it was left. She gets it down and rests it on the bench they made then goes to the window. She gets her hardware-store purchase out and quickly browses the instructions. The device uses a laser to measure distances. She points it over the road where Joe is going to be standing, but can’t see the red dot of the laser pointer and can’t tell where she’s pointing. She gives it a minute and is about to give up in frustration when she suddenly spots it in the shade of the back door to the courthouse. She follows it to the spot where Joe will be standing tomorrow and locks in the distance. With the elevation, it’s almost forty yards.

She takes the tool and the gun and heads back down in the elevator. She puts the gun into the trunk. Traffic doesn’t increase over the next hour. It never does, no matter what the hour on a Sunday morning. The temperature doesn’t increase much either. Maybe one degree, if that. She drives with the heater on and the radio on. She’s listening to Bruce Springsteen. He’s singing about a guy who went on a killing spree with his girlfriend in the fifties. Things were simpler back then.

Driving the car is easier when you’re not eight or nine months pregnant, but she puts the suit on now. She pulls into the parking lot of the gun store and goes inside. The guy who helps her is in his forties, has thick glasses and eyebrows reaching across to shake hands with each other. His name is Arthur. Arthur seems a little in shock. He seems to think she’s going to give birth to a redheaded baby right there in the store. He looks like a friendly guy that the world hasn’t beaten up. She tells him what she needs. A box of ammunition. Plus a bullet puller for taking apart bullets and a bullet-seating die for reassembling them. She tells him they are for her husband. He nods thoughtfully, probably thinking the husband was planning on shooting himself rather than face what was balancing a fine line between staying in her womb and spilling out of it onto the floor. He gets the items for her and she pays in cash.

“Tell him,” Arthur says, “if he has any questions to come in and see me. People messing around with this stuff, using pliers and vise grips instead of the right tools, can blow off their fingers.”

She thanks him and gets back on the road.

When she gets to the forest she takes the same route as before and parks in the same place and takes a blanket and the gun, but forgoes any tins as those from last time are still here—not that she needs them. The ground is a little drier today. The air is still. It’s going to be the same weather conditions tomorrow morning, but it’s supposed to rain later on in the day. At least that’s what the weather report is telling them. She uses the tool to measure out the same distance from a tree and lays down the blanket when she gets there. She gets out the gun. She loads the magazine. Puts the gun together. And points it at the tree.