Joe Victim: A Thriller

“What? Up here in the office?”


“Where else would you wait?”

“What if somebody comes in?” he asks.

“Nobody is going to. Listen to me, you need to stay calm. It’s going to work out, I promise you.”

“You promise? How the hell—”

She interrupts him. “I’ll stay down here the entire time,” she says. “Don’t overthink it. Just stay calm and do what needs doing.”

She hears him sigh. She can imagine him up there in his police uniform, running his hands through his hair, maybe covering his face with his hands.

“Raphael,” she says.

“Suddenly all of this is seeming like a bad idea,” he says.

“It’s not a bad idea. It was just a small piece of bad luck. Or bad timing, really. There’s something wrong with him. He’s sick. For all we know they might bring him right back out. For all we know you’ll get another chance in five minutes.”

He doesn’t respond. She can hear him breathing into the phone. Can hear him wondering if this may end up being true. Trish is staring at her. Within the last minute the crowd outside the back of the courthouse has swelled as people have figured out Joe came this way. The signs don’t mess around—Die fucker die is a good litmus test for how the crowd is feeling. And what the hell is it with all these stupid outfits some of them are wearing?

“Are you still there?” she asks.

“I’m here,” he says.

“We can do this. If not now then at the end of the day when Joe comes back out. It’ll be just as good then. Maybe even better,” she says, not really believing that last bit. Better would be if Raphael had taken a successful shot already.

“Okay,” he says, “I’ll wait and get him on the way back out. I promise,” he says, and he hangs up and Melissa stares at the back door of the court building and tries to figure out how long is too long when it comes to waiting for a guy like Raphael, and hopes he can keep his nerve long enough to stay where he is.





Chapter Fifty-Eight


They drag me toward the holding cells until somebody decides that it’s a bathroom that I need dragging to, at which point they start me in a different direction. When I try to use my legs I find I just can’t get them to grip the ground beneath me. The organs squashed earlier aren’t bouncing back into shape. Instead they’re getting tighter. I’m placed in front of a toilet and the view of a chunk of shit caked above the waterline is better at helping the purging process than jamming my fingers down my throat.

I have never in my life felt this sick. Sweat is dripping off me. I throw up again, then topple forward and somebody catches me before I lose my front teeth against the porcelain. They get me up and I don’t see much of the journey except for some blurry walls and sometimes my own feet, but I’m taken into a first-aid station and I’m laid down on a cot, but none of the chains are removed. The room smells of ammonia and ointments and recently wiped-away vomit. It smells exactly how the first-aid station back in school used to smell, and for a moment, just one brief moment, I’m back there, I’m eight years old and I’m feeling sick and the nurse is soothing back my hair and telling me I’m going to be okay. That doesn’t happen this time.

“Joe,” somebody says. I open my eyes. It’s a nurse. She’s attractive and I try to smile at her, but can’t manage it. She’s looking down at me. “Tell me how you’re feeling,” she says.

“I feel sick.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Real sick,” I tell her, being real specific. She hands me some water and tells me to drink and I manage a few sips, then roll onto my side and start gagging.

Hot Detective Kent, Jack, and the other two officers are in the room with us. The nurse is chatting to them, but I can’t focus on what she’s saying. Then Hot Detective is making a call somewhere. The nurse comes back, Hot Nurse, and I must be sick because as much as I try to imagine Hot Nurse making out with Hot Detective, my mind just won’t go there. It wanders off to other things. I think about my mom’s wedding. I think about Santa Suit Kenny. I think about my nights spent with Melissa.

“Joe, what have you eaten over the last few days?”

“Shit food,” I tell her.

“Can you be more specific?”

“Real shit food,” I tell her, being real specific again, wondering if this woman needs everything in life explained.

“Does this hurt?” she asks, then pushes her fingertips into the side of my stomach. I can hear fluid moving in there. We all can. It doesn’t hurt and I don’t tell her it doesn’t hurt so therefore she doesn’t ask me to be more specific. She pushes a little harder and I have to tighten my ass muscles to stop a huge mess from happening.

“Yes,” I tell her, wanting to push something sharp into her stomach and ask her the same thing. “It’s a sharp pain,” I tell her.

“Where exactly?”

“Everywhere.”