Joe Victim: A Thriller

“Hey,” Melissa says, and flashes him her door-opening smile. “You’re the team going to the courthouse?”


“Yep,” the woman, the driver, says, and she has to be in her midforties and has blond hair streaked with a few grays—it’s pulled back tightly into a ponytail, one of those quickly formed ponytails women make when they’re tired or lazy or don’t give a shit about their appearance anymore. “We’re on duty there all day.”

“Good. I was wondering, can you guys give me a lift there?” Melissa asks.

“Would love to,” the guy says, looking her up and down.

“Not if you’re going there to protest,” the woman asks. “Not dressed in your scrubs.”

Melissa shakes her head. “No. It’s completely unrelated to the Carver trial,” she says, looking at the man who can’t take his eyes off of her. She widens her smile a little more. The woman looks skeptical. The man nods.

“Climb in back,” he says.

She moves around to the back of the ambulance and climbs in. They move forward. About forty yards away is the intersection where the hospital road merges with other traffic. Melissa moves up the ambulance so she’s right behind the paramedics.

“Before we leave,” Melissa says, “can we pull over for a second before we hit the intersection?”

“Sorry, we’re on a tight schedule,” the driver says, not glancing back.

“Does this help change your mind?” Melissa asks, and points a gun at her, then at the guy, then back at the woman. “Right now I want a reason to let you both live,” she says. “But if you can’t give me that reason, then I’ll find another paramedic who can.”





Chapter Fifty-Three


There is blood all over the floor, and there’s some on the wall too. The wall blood is in the form of two handprints, each with lines of blood leading from the palm to the floor, each from a left hand even though I can’t remember either Cole or Kenny touching it. I’m still sitting on the toilet. I don’t want to be, but I have to be. The room smells of blood and shit and Kenny shit himself too and I guess it’s one more thing he’ll be remembered for. Santa Suit Kenny—singer of songs, lover of children, and savior of the Christchurch Carver. I wonder what they will say at his funeral. I wonder who the real Kenny was and I guess nobody will ever know.

Glen and Adam come in. Glen grabs Kenny by his feet and Adam grabs Kenny by his arms, and they don’t even look at me. They just pick him up and he sags in the middle and for a brief moment I think they’re about to fold him in half like a bedsheet, but they don’t, they take him out of the cell. When the police come and ask what happened, they’ll say they rushed him off for treatment. Only there was no rush. They’ve let him bleed out because a guy like Kenny wasn’t worth saving. They just had to make it look like they did something.

Kenny saved my life. I wish I could thank him. Best I can do is imagine I would have bought one of his books if he’d ever written one. At the least I should buy one of his CDs.

I finish up on the toilet and flush it and get my clothes tided back up. I stare at the blood on the floor knowing how easily it could have been mine. There is blood on my shirt that isn’t mine. I take it off. I lie down on my bed. I can still see the look on Kenny’s face, the disbelief of being stabbed, the acceptance that he was in trouble, and the hope that he wasn’t dying. I’ve seen that hope in others before, and I always enjoyed seeing that hope fade away, but not this time. This time was different and I don’t want to think about it anymore, I want to move on—after all, I have a big day ahead of me. Kenny would want me to. He’d hate to think he’d died just for me to mope around my cell feeling sorry for myself.

I pick up the wedding invitation my mother sent me. There will be no support from her during the trial, and I don’t know why that even surprises me. By the end of the day she will be married. I fold the card in half and tuck it into my pocket. My mom won’t be with me today, but having the wedding invite with me goes some way to making me feel less abandoned. Maybe it will bring me some luck. I start to wonder whether I’ll still have to go to trial today, or whether the events of the last few minutes will keep me here.

I have my answer less than a minute later when four guards come back into my cell. One of them throws me a fresh shirt—at least it’s fresh compared to the one I’m wearing. None of them discuss what just happened as I change into it. It’s almost as if the last five minutes just didn’t happen—the only evidence of it is the blood on the floor and walls, which, I imagine, will be gone when I get back. Santa Kenny’s cell will be filled with somebody new, a different kind of Kenny, but one equally bad.