Joe Victim: A Thriller

“We’ll find them,” Hutton says.

“Just like we found Melissa,” Schroder says.

Hutton doesn’t answer him.

The sling is still helping, but Schroder’s arm is really starting to hurt now. They walk to Hutton’s car. Journalists throw questions at them. People are standing around with blank looks on their faces. Paramedics are still working on people, though there doesn’t appear to be anybody seriously wounded lying on the street—they’ve been rushed to the hospital already. He doesn’t see any bodies either. Was nobody killed? Or have they been moved already?

“It all seems unreal,” Hutton says.

“I know.”

“Honestly, Carl, doesn’t this make you thankful you gave up the job?” Hutton asks, but Schroder didn’t give it up, it was taken from him, though he gets the point.

“I . . . I don’t know,” he says. “I really don’t.”

They get into the car. Schroder uses the side mirror to get a look at himself. He’s a mess. The bandage around his forehead is pushing his hair upward. There’s blood on it, but there’s dried blood on other bits of his face. On his neck too. It only takes them ten minutes to reach the hospital, Hutton putting the sirens on at intersections. There are no free spaces out front. They’re full of cars, and other cars are all double-parked around them.

“Just drop me off here,” Schroder says, nodding toward the side of the road opposite the hospital. “I’ll be okay from here. You should try to do something useful.”

“I’m coming in,” Hutton says. “Rebecca is in there.”

“And she’d want you to be out here finding Joe and Melissa.”

Hutton nods. “Listen, Carl, I know what you promised her.”

“And?”

“And I think that means I ought to stick with you for a bit. You go in ahead of me and get your arm looked at, I’ll park around back and meet you inside.”

Schroder gets out of the car. He cuts between traffic. Hutton can’t be too worried about the promise he made, otherwise he wouldn’t have left him so quickly. He gets across the road and steps through the main doors into a crowd of people who are in shock, many with cuts and broken bones, pain etched into so many people’s features. From what he heard on the drive here most of the injuries have come from the rushing crowds, from people falling and being trampled. There’s a queue of people lined up behind a window all waiting to talk to the admitting nurse. He doesn’t want to wait in line. He steps back outside and moves further around the building and into the ambulance bay where an ambulance is pulling in. He steps out of the way as ER doctors move into position. The back of the ambulance opens and a gurney is brought out, a man dressed as the Grim Reaper who is missing part of his face. He’s conscious, his fists balled up tight. Schroder follows them through the doors until a doctor holds a hand up in front of him.

“Wrong entrance,” a doctor with the wrong choice in comb-overs says to him. He has bloodshot eyes and smells like coffee and has a badge on his chest that says Dr. Ben Hearse, and Schroder figures it’s a bad omen for his patients, but still one step removed from Dr. You’re Gonna Die.

“I’m a cop,” he says. “Detective Inspector Carl Schroder. Listen, I need to get in there. My partner is in there. She was brought in a few minutes ago.”

Dr. Hearse nods. “They’re working on her.”

“Is she going to make it?”

“They’re working on her,” he repeats, a little more sympathetically. “Let me take a look at your arm,” he says, then Schroder winces as soon as it’s touched. “Okay, follow me,” he says.

“Can’t you just give me a shot or something?”

“A shot?”

“For the pain. It hurts like a bitch.”

“No, I can’t just give you a shot, but what I can do is set your arm and put it in a cast.”

“I just need a shot. We can do the cast thing later.”

“Let’s do the cast thing now,” Hearse says.

Schroder follows him into the emergency department. The doctors who aren’t helping people are rushing around getting ready to help those still on their way. They keep going until they’re past all the operating rooms and into a doctor’s office.

“Wait here,” Hearse tells him. “We’ll get you x-rayed and figure out what’s going on.”

“I want an update on Detective Kent,” Schroder says, and he feels impatient, like he needs to be doing something to find Joe, but he doesn’t know what.

The doctor gives a brief nod. “Wait here,” he says again, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Schroder has only been alone for a minute when his cell phone rings. He reaches into his pocket. The display was broken in the blast so he can’t tell who it is. He realizes he still hasn’t phoned his wife yet. She’ll have heard the news and be worried about him.