Joe Victim: A Thriller

For a moment Schroder thinks Hutton is talking about the students and their cameras, but of course he isn’t—he’s talking about the shot the shooter made. Schroder looks back into the courthouse, he looks at the spot where his car was parked, and he knows the shooter must have been up here for some time, and that getting a parking space nearby means he was here before this morning’s cordons were set up. That means when Schroder showed up his face was in the sights of the same gun that’s lying behind him. He shudders at the thought, and then agrees with Hutton that yes, it would have been an easy shot to make. There are three casings on the floor, they’ll be checked for prints—maybe they’ll get lucky.

The gun that would have focused on Schroder as he stepped out of his car earlier is beyond them lying on the floor. There won’t be any prints on it, because it’s been covered in white paint from one of the tins that’s laying on its side, surrounded by more white paint that’s soaked into the concrete floor. The top of a paint tin is open, and there’s a set of earmuffs in there, one edge of them sticking out. The rule of renovating, Schroder knows, is work your way down. Ceiling, walls, then carpets. This office still had some work to do. There’s a guy leaning over the gun, a forensic tech whose name Schroder on normal days can never pronounce correctly, but after today’s explosion he’s completely forgotten. The gun will yield ballistic results, and they’ll know if it’s been used before, but it was likely taken from Derek Rivers, and Derek hasn’t been in a real talkative mood since either Melissa or somebody else put two in his chest.

The forensic tech is taking a photograph of three shell casings.

“You said there was only the one shot,” Schroder says.

“There was.”

“There are three casings,” Schroder says. “And if Joe was shot, and Jack was shot, then that’s two shots.”

“I can explain that,” the tech says, and he stands up to face them. He’s a guy in his late twenties with a hairline Schroder wishes he had, and though he can’t remember what his name is he suddenly remembers that the guy is a pub-quiz master who spends two or three weeknights every week winning bar tabs. “Okay, so we have three casings because there were three shots, but you only heard one, right?”

“Right,” Hutton says. “Everybody only heard the one shot.”

“Okay,” the tech says, nodding. “The barrel is clogged.”

“Clogged?” Schroder says.

“With a bullet. And if you all only heard one shot, then it’s probably clogged with two bullets. Bullet one was fired, bullet two got jammed, and bullet three got lodged right behind it.”

“That’s still three gunshots,” Hutton says. “Wouldn’t we have heard that?”

“My guess is the bullets were modified. I’m guessing the gunpowder was removed. Bullets are made up of four main parts, right? The bullet itself, the casing, the gunpowder, and the primer. The primer ignites the gunpowder and—”

“And we know how bullets work,” Schroder says.

“Okay, okay, well, if the gunpowder was removed, you’ve still got the primer that’s going to ignite, right? It’s going to go bang, but it’s not going to go boom. You’re going to hear it in the office here, but you’re not going to hear it out in the street. So the shooter, he fires the first bullet, then the second and third don’t sound or react the same. And those bullets are going to travel into the barrel but aren’t going to come out. I need to get it back to the lab to run some tests, but for now that’s my guess. Also, the magazine is empty, so whoever was up here only ever planned on firing three shots.”

“What about Jack?” Schroder asks. “He was shot.”

“But probably not by this. Could be the same gun that killed Derek Rivers and Tristan Walker. I’ll know more later.”

He goes about bagging up the gun and Hutton and Schroder go about thinking what all this means.

“If Raphael and Melissa were working together,” Hutton says, “then she really screwed him. But if she was planning on blowing him up anyway, why sabotage two of the three bullets?”

“There were two water glasses,” Schroder says.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Schroder says, and he should have trusted his bad feeling about Raphael. When he was at his house showing him the photographs, was Melissa there too? Is that what happened? Did Raphael think she was somebody else? Somebody who wanted Joe dead as much as he did? Yes—yes, it’s possible. It’s possible she heard his conversation with Raphael, possible she suspected he recognized her from the photograph. “They found an arm,” Hutton says. “An arm with two fingers attached and not a lot more, and those two fingers were badly burned. We’ve got people heading to his house now to get prints. If it was Raphael we’ll know it soon.”

Schroder is sure the prints will match. He looks back out the window at the city. At his city. He wonders if he put this in motion the day he arrested Joe. He guesses he did. All that destruction down there, and yet in other parts of the city life is going on as normal, people going about their day-to-day business, carrying briefcases and handbags, eating lunch on the go, bike messengers weaving in and out of traffic.

“Fuck,” Schroder says.

Hutton says nothing.

“Let’s go,” Schroder says.

“Where to? Raphael’s house?”

“The hospital.”

“Good idea.”

They head back downstairs. Unbelievably, Schroder feels like crying. He doesn’t know why—he’s seen bad shit before, has lost people he worked with, but this is just . . . just too much. Rebecca Kent . . .