Joe Victim: A Thriller

“He’s buried,” Jonas says, which is a nice generic beginning, but Schroder knows it’s only going to get a whole lot more accurate. “Out of the city, but not far. Half an hour away perhaps. I sense . . . I sense water,” he says, then slowly shakes his head, “no, not water. Darkness. Damp darkness. The ground is exposed. It’s wet from the rain. I see . . . I see a shallow grave.” He tilts his head, like Lassie listening for children stuck down wells, only Lassie had ethics. “North,” he says. “North and . . . west a little.”


Jonas Jones opens his eyes. He looks directly into the camera, just the right amount of happiness in his features because he’s been able to help, just the right amount of sadness the occasion demands, all mixed in with a pinch of looking drained—being in touch with the spirit world is bound to take its toll. He doesn’t blink. “I have a very real sense of what happened to Detective Robert Calhoun,” he says. “I believe I can . . . yes, yes, I believe I can lead us to him. I . . .” he squeezes his eyes closed and tilts his head the other way, grimacing slightly as if in pain, proving once again the burden of being a gifted psychic, Schroder guesses. That and always knowing the lotto numbers. “I think I know where he is.”

“Where?” Schroder asks, frowning slightly, looking serious, playing the part.

“It’s hard to explain,” Jonas says, but then goes about explaining it anyway. “He’s calling to me. He wants to be found. He wants me to find him,” he says, stressing the word me because after all it’s Jonas that’s having the vision, not any one of these four-dollar-a-minute psychics you find on the other end of a phone line at two o’clock in the morning helping you with your love life.

“That’s good,” the director says, and Schroder thinks they might cut that last line, otherwise it suggests that if Jonas can’t find other murder victims they don’t want to be found.

“I didn’t go over the top?” Jonas asks.

“It was perfect,” the director says. “Let’s pack up and get this show on the road.”

The show gets on the road a few minutes later, starting with the parking lot. In the hour and a half they’ve been inside the morning hasn’t gotten any warmer. It’s sunny, thank God, but it’s still the kind of cold that makes you wonder just what temperature frostbite kicks in. He brings up the rear, the others ahead chatting contentedly among themselves, the way tight-knit groups do who have worked plenty of times together before. Jonas climbs into the driver’s seat of a dark blue sedan, which is two years old at the most. One camera operator sits in the passenger seat, and the sound guy sits in the back. The director and the lighting intern take a separate car, the second camera operator sitting in the passenger seat so they can shoot footage of Jonas’s car driving through the city. Schroder takes his own car, driving alone. It’s creeping up toward noon and he’s already tired. He needs to do something—he can’t carry on like this. Can’t be the whipping boy for a guy shooting what Schroder knows ought to be as appealing as late-night shopping shows. He just doesn’t get it, never will, and hates that he’s helping to make it more credible.

They head north. The view of the city changes as they pass through different suburbs, old houses next to new, new houses next to shops—the style of Christchurch evident at every turn. It’s his city, a city many of the people here have a love/hate relationship with. He remembers reading that most people die within a few miles of where they were born. They either never leave the city, or they go out into the world and come back many years later. He wonders if it’s true. It’s something he’s been thinking about a lot since last December when he almost died. Well, for a few minutes back in hot, sunny December he actually did die if you want to get all technical about it. He can’t shake the memory of it. It’s wedged down deep like a splinter buried beneath a fingernail that he can’t tweezer out. His hands were cuffed behind him and his head was held down in a bathtub full of water. When he died, he saw no light at the end of a tunnel, felt no peace, and then he was brought back. Since then he’s been seeing the world in a slightly different way. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like raising his kids in it. Doesn’t like the memory he has of his lungs flooding with bathwater.