Joe Victim: A Thriller

“Do the names Derek Rivers or Sam Winston mean anything to you?” Kent asks, revealing names that are going to be on the news soon anyway. By the end of the day the country will know somebody is out there shooting some of its citizens—albeit not very nice citizens.

Raphael scratches at the side of his head, his fingers disappearing into his hair. “No. Should they? Are they dead too?”

“And you’re sure nobody stood out?” Schroder asks.

He gives it a few more seconds of thought. Then nods. “Positive,” he says.

“Thanks for your time,” Kent says, and they all shake hands and then she and Schroder are dashing back across the parking lot and into the shelter of his car.





Chapter Twenty-Two


It wasn’t just Schroder who showed up in the car—there was a woman with him. Melissa has seen her around. She makes it part of her job to know who’s manning the front lines of crime fighting. She doesn’t know her name, but knows she’s a recent addition. It doesn’t take a lot of wondering to figure out why Schroder is with her. The Carver case. They’ve found Tristan Walker and now they think there may be a link, and the Carver case was Schroder’s case, so now they’re asking him for help. What she can’t figure out is the connection they made to come here.

When Schroder pulls away with the woman, Melissa takes the safety off the gun and tucks it down by the seat. She puts the trigger for the C-four back into the glove compartment. She was ready for Raphael to point at her, then for Schroder to come over, and if that’d happened, then she would have provided some ka-boom for Schroder and the woman and some bang-bang for Raphael too.

Nobody else has come out of the hall for a few minutes now. Raphael finishes whatever it is he’s doing and comes outside. He locks up the door behind him, though Melissa can’t understand what there is inside that anybody would want to steal—the furniture wasn’t any better than the stuff you sometimes see on the side of the road with cardboard signs that say free. Maybe he’s locking the door so people won’t dump stuff inside. Maybe that’s what’s been happening and that’s where their current furniture has come from. Raphael tightens his jacket and runs over to her car.

“That was the police,” he says.

“Really?” she says, doing her best to sound surprised. After tonight’s performance she’s thinking she should have been an actress.

“Somebody was murdered today,” he says.

“Oh my God, that’s awful,” she says, and holds a hand up to her mouth. “Was it somebody you knew?”

“Well, not that awful,” he says. “The guy was a wife beater.”

Cue the frown and the confused look. “So why did the police come here?”

“Because his wife was one of Middleton’s victims,” he says. “And he was going to testify at the trial.”

“I don’t follow,” Melissa says.

“The police think maybe somebody is targeting people involved with victims of the family. People who are testifying.”

“That’s . . . that’s crazy,” she says, quite pleased to be hearing it, forcing herself not to smile. If that’s the connection, then she has nothing to be worried about because it really is crazy. “Is it? I mean, are we all in danger?”

The inside of the car is getting colder by the minute. She turns on the ignition and turns on the heater. There is only one other car left in the parking lot other than hers. It must belong to Raphael. It’s a dark blue SUV with the spare wheel bolted into the back, and on that wheel is a cover that says My other car was stolen. It reminds her of a phrase she heard a while ago—Welcome to Christchurch, your car is already here.

“I doubt it,” he says, “but they wanted a list of people who were here tonight.”

She wants to ask if she was on that list, but doesn’t bother. Stella isn’t a name that will get them far. And if she asks, well, then that might make him suspect something.

“I want to hear about your plan,” he says.

“Why? So you can go to the police?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “So I can help you. If I wanted to go to the police, I’d have just done it.”

She knows that, but she asked it because she’s on an Oscar-winning performance here. “My plan is to shoot Joe before he even makes it to trial,” she says.

“Is that it? Is that your plan?”

“There’s more,” she says.

“I would hope so,” he says.

Then she says nothing. She stares at him, and after a few seconds he starts nodding. He’s figured out the next step. “But you want to know if you can trust me.”