Joe Victim: A Thriller

“If there’s a wedding,” she says, “often there’s a honeymoon. If the police know she’s gone away, they’ll stop watching the house, which means . . . Joe, hey, are you okay?”


I’m not okay. I’m thinking about the honeymoon. I had forgotten about that. I don’t know where they’ll be going. Somewhere awful. I’m thinking about the fifty thousand dollars my mother will have drawn out in cash.

“Joe?”

I’m thinking that money may not be at the house at all, but with her, that their honeymoon starts right after the wedding and the trip will consist of her and Walt and all that cash. She doesn’t think I’m ever getting out of jail. She doesn’t see any reason not to spend it.

“Joe? What’s wrong?”

“We need to go to the wedding. We need to find my mother now.”

“Why?”

Because I know my mother. I tell Melissa this and she keeps on driving, her hands tightening on the wheel.

“We should just let it go,” she says.

“It’s not in my nature to let things go,” I tell her.

“It’s not in mine either. Do you know where the wedding is?”

“I can’t . . . Oh, wait,” I say, and I lean sideways and reach into my pants and find the invitation I’d folded in half this morning, the invitation I was hoping would bring me some luck. It seems it’s done just that. I hand it to her. She glances at it then back at the road.

“We should let it go,” she says. “We can see her in a few months and if there’s anything left—”

“I went through a lot to earn that money,” I tell her.

“And I went through a lot to get us to this point.”

“The police have no reason to go there,” I say.

She seems to agree, because we stop talking about it and we start driving in the direction of my mother’s big day.





Chapter Seventy-Eight


Schroder is sitting down at the kitchen table. There’s nobody else in the room. His hands are still cuffed behind him and he’s doing his best to stay as still as possible because any movement brings him close to passing out. His mind is still buzzing. The sling is still hanging from his neck. The third syringe he took from the ambulance is sitting on the table in front of him, and the second shot he took earlier isn’t helping in this position. A minute ago Hutton came in to check on him, and then to abuse him too—by the end of the day there was a good chance Hutton would be losing his job. Or at the very least he would be suspended. Perhaps demoted. It was a world of possibility.

“Where’s the gun?” Hutton asks, keeping his voice low.

“I lost it.”

“They patted you down. Where’d you hide it?”

“I can’t remember,” Schroder says, and he knows Hutton can’t mention it to anybody else. Not only is Hutton in a world of trouble for letting Schroder come here, but if they found out he came here armed, then getting suspended or fired would be the least of his problems.

“Goddamn it, Carl, you promised me.”

“Nobody knows I have it,” he says, “and I promise I’ll never say you knew I had it.”

“You don’t make great promises,” Hutton says.

“I intend to keep the one I made Kent.”

Hutton walks out. Superintendent Dominic Stevens walks in. Stevens is the man who covered Schroder’s crime four weeks ago. He’s the man that fired him.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Stevens asks. “Don’t you see what you’ve become? What you’re becoming? I could have you arrested for this. You could have cost people their lives.”

“Kent—”

“I don’t give a fuck about any of your excuses,” Stevens says, “or your reasons. You’re more trouble than you’re worth. You used to be a great cop, and now . . . now I don’t know.” He sighs, then leans against the kitchen counter. He takes a few seconds to calm down. “Listen, Carl, I know how much you’re hurting these days, and I know you’re probably blaming yourself for some of what’s happened, but you can’t be here. You just can’t. And the man I used to know would have known that.”

Schroder doesn’t have an answer.

“Do I need to carry on?”

“No,” Schroder says.

“I’m tempted to leave you in cuffs for the next twenty-four hours. What’s wrong with your arm? Is it broken?”

“From the explosion.”

“You’re lucky to be alive,” he says.

“And Kent?” Schroder asks.

“They’re still working on her,” he says, “but we’ve been told she’ll pull through.”

Schroder feels his body flood with relief. It’s a warm sensation. “Thank God.”

“So here’s what’s going to happen. There’s an ambulance outside treating Sally. She’s going to stay to help us, but you’re going to climb into the back and they’re going to take you to the hospital.”

“I can still help,” Schroder says.

“Go home, Carl.”

“I know Joe better than anybody here.”

“If you knew him that well he’d still be in custody.”