Joe Victim: A Thriller

The first thing Schroder has to get past is the ring of media vans that have shown up. They’re blocking the end of the street, along with the local sightseers. With all the murders in Christchurch he’s surprised people still come out to watch the show, especially in this weather. There really is, he supposes, nothing quite like a good homicide. It makes for great reality and it makes for great TV. The reporters are holding up umbrellas and the camera operators are wrapped in wet weather gear and the cameras are protected by plastic linings. What the city needs—no, strike that—what humanity needs right now is a bolt of lightning, something strong and biblical to come down from the heavens and land in the middle of them all. He wonders if that’s something Jonas Jones might think he can arrange.

He can’t get the car past them. There’s no way through, and the only way he could give it a good go would be to hit them at a pace somewhere near the speed limit and scatter them all like bowling pins. He has no siren and therefore has to park on the wrong side of the crowd, with them and a lot of rain between him and the scene.

The exhaustion he was feeling in his last few months of being a cop wasn’t turned in with his gun and badge. Instead it’s been dogging him like a head cold that won’t go away. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the packet of Wake-E tablets that he always keeps within reach these days and swallows one of them, then decides to chase it with another. In five minutes the exhaustion won’t be gone, but it will be bottled inside him with all that other exhaustion he’s built up over the years.

He climbs out of the car into the rain and shoulders his way through the onlookers. The officers guarding the cordon have to take a double take as he approaches them—they know he’s no longer a cop, but they’re thinking perhaps that’s no longer the case. Before he can start explaining himself, Kent comes toward him, an umbrella keeping the rain off her. She has a quick word to the officers and then Schroder lifts the crime-scene tape and ducks under it. The house is in a quiet neighborhood, not the same house the Walker family used to live in. That place was burned down the same night Detective Calhoun went missing. Burned down, no doubt, by Joe. Since then the land was sold. This one is half the size, a single-story place that’s perhaps five years old at the most, the same color scheme from one house to the next, pale browns and grays that look washed out by the rain.

Kent holds the umbrella higher so it covers them both, just not that well. He has to take his shoes off at the door and put on a pair of nylon booties. The body is in the hallway, just inside from the front door. Hutton comes and joins them.

Schroder feels like he’s back on the job. The smells and sights and sounds all confirm he’s in an authentic crime scene and nobody is going to draw a chalk outline around anything and ask him if he thinks the dialogue could be tightened. He’s cold and wet and miserable, which completes the sense of realism. He can see down the end of the hall into the lounge. Dark brown carpet and plush sofas and warm color walls. All very homey, except for Tristan Walker himself, who is lying on his side with one hand on his chest and the other hand pinned beneath him. It’s been twelve months since he last saw Tristan Walker. Walker was staying with his parents at the time. Schroder went there to tell him they’d made an arrest.

Kent and Hutton couldn’t be more opposite. Hutton is overweight. He wasn’t that way when he joined the force, couldn’t have been because he never would have been accepted, but now the guy consumes so much sugar he has to stay out of the rain for fear of dissolving. Hutton remains on the force because he’s so large it would almost be like firing two detectives—though, ironically, it was simple for the department to fire Schroder. Back when Caleb Cole made him kill somebody.

Kent is attractive. Stunning, even. The kind of woman you look at and would give up a week of your life just to see her smile. No doubt half the guys here are in love with her.

“This is the third victim,” Kent says.

“Huh?”

“The third victim,” she repeats.

He lets the information settle for a few seconds. “You’re telling me you’ve got two others like this?” he asks.

Kent smiles at him. “I’m glad your mind has stayed sharp since leaving the force, Carl. That’s some quick addition.”

“You should see me with crayons,” he says. “I always stay within the lines.”

“Sounds like you’re living on the edge.” She steps around the body so they can talk to each other, the three of them forming a triangle with a dead guy in the middle.

“Victim one was last week,” Kent says. “Guy by the name of Sam Winston.”