Joe Victim: A Thriller

Maybe that’s where the message is. Somewhere in the titles. I take the first word from each one. Twilight. Show. Bodies. Love. The. Twilight. I mix them up. Twilight bodies. Show the bodies. That bit works. Show the bodies. Twilight twice doesn’t work so much. Where does love fit in? Is Melissa telling me to show the police where the bodies are? The only one they’re looking for, or at least know whose to look for, is Detective Calhoun’s, the man Melissa murdered and the man I buried, the same man Schroder’s psychic wants the location of.

I don’t know. It’s a stretch. But Melissa does know where Calhoun is buried. Roughly. Because it made sweet pillow talk. The message—if it is that—says to show them, not tell them.

I don’t know. And the love?

So rather than being Negative Joe, a Joe nobody would like, I continue to be Positive Joe. Optimistic Joe. Likeable Joe. I imagine being outside. I imagine showing Schroder where Calhoun’s body is. Not telling him. Not drawing him a map. But leading him along the dirt path to the dirt grave where Calhoun’s body is shrouded in dirt. I imagine four or five other policemen with us. Guys in uniforms with guns on their waists. Maybe even the men in black who arrested me. I imagine walking—a few men ahead, a few behind, all of them waiting for the first sign of trouble. The air cold. The ground damp. Birds in trees that have been stripped of leaves. Then, from out of nowhere, gunshots start shattering the calm silence of the day.

Only it’s not daytime at all, it’s evening, it’s twilight, and Melissa is specific about that. Except she’s not being specific about which twilight. She knows my mother would have visited me today. She knows I’ll have gotten the books and would have figured out the message. She knows leading the police to the scene takes time, so she wouldn’t be planning on it today. Trial starts Monday, so she must be planning on it for tomorrow. In two twilights’ time, including today. Which makes perfect sense.

Tomorrow I have to show Schroder where Calhoun is buried.

Unless . . .

Unless what? Unless I’m seeing a message that isn’t there?

Positive Joe steps back in to save the day. He takes me back into the scenario. Twilight. We’re walking in a straight line. The gunshots. Birds take flight. The shots echo like thunder across the landscape. The policemen have no idea which direction they’re being shot from, then it’s over—their uniforms have red stains blossoming across them. Blood soaks into the dirt as Melissa steps into view. She wraps her arms around me and hugs me and kisses me and everything is okay now, everything is all right, and she leads me away from all the dirt and all the blood and into a life far from the jail cells with the pedophiles and the prison wardens, far away from Caleb Cole and his decision-making process, away from Glen and Adam and the hell they’ve been putting me through, away from it all and into bed and away from the darkness.

Negative Joe is coming around. He’s thinking that Positive Joe just may be on to something here.

Six book titles. Show the bodies at twilight. Love.

Now I’m convinced. Now I feel like an idiot for not seeing it earlier. It’s clever. Very clever, and Melissa is as clever as they get. That’s why she’s still out there. It’s why the police can’t find her.

And she’s going to save me.

Because she still loves me. Love.

When I lie on my bed I feel something I haven’t felt in some time—a sense of hope.





Chapter Twenty-One


Raphael heads inside and Kent and Schroder stay in the doorway. They have to step aside twice as more people leave, an elderly man nodding and saying “Detectives” on the way out as a greeting. Schroder recognizes an elderly couple who look like they have aged twenty years since he came to see them five years ago with the news their son had been murdered for a pocketful of change and his sneakers. The guy who had done the murdering had spent the change on a hamburger and had made it about halfway through before he was put into cuffs.

“Maybe we should have mentioned Melissa,” Schroder says.

“We agreed not to for a reason,” Kent says. “I shouldn’t have to remind you we don’t know if she’s involved, and if we start mentioning her then we risk people looking for facts that aren’t there. We can’t mention things we don’t know. Next thing it’s in the news, and false information like that might upset her. It might prompt her to make an example out of somebody. And if it is her, then we can’t afford to give her a heads-up that we know it’s her.”

“I know,” Schroder says, tightening his jaw. “I used to do this for a living.”

She smiles and it breaks the tension. “I know. I’m sorry,” she says.

The conversation reminds him of the kind of talks he used to have with his partner, with Theodore Tate, after Tate stopped being his partner and became a private investigator after his daughter was killed. Four weeks ago Tate started the process of becoming a cop again. He’s still in that process—though it’s on hold as he fights for his life in a coma. It’s almost as if the two men have exchanged roles. Tate is becoming a cop, and Schroder is becoming whatever the hell it is that Tate was. Maybe even something worse. Tate and Tate’s wife have swapped roles too—the same accident that cost Tate his daughter also put his wife into a vegetative state—she came out of it the same day Tate went into his.