Joe Victim: A Thriller

But not Stella.

She was a good find. Eager. Angry. Capable. And, truth be told, a little scary. And since he’s admitting things to himself—quite the stunner. Last night he was hollow inside—the trial coming up, his protest starting on Monday. But what was that, really? He and others like him hanging outside the courthouse in the cold, holding up signs, and none of it was going to bring his daughter back. He was doing it because it was something to do—they were motions to go through, motions that were putting off what he really wanted to do to himself while he lounged around inside his house wearing his pajamas for entire days at a time, stains forming on the sleeves where he’d spill tomato sauce or whiskey on them. Last night Stella came into his life. He bought the coffees and she shared the plan. It was a great plan. Good coffees, but a great plan.

The sheep truck turns off. The motorway carries on. For all the conversation they made last night, this morning it’s different. He’s ready to explode with excitement, but he’s too afraid of saying the wrong thing, too afraid that Stella won’t turn out to be as capable as he first thought. At the same time he doesn’t want to disappoint her.

This is going to happen, he keeps telling himself. It’s going to happen and Joe is going to die, and Raphael is going to be the one to pull the trigger. It won’t bring Angela back, but it sure as hell beats protesting. It will bring peace to his life. Perhaps a destiny too. There are others who need his help. Others from the group. This feels like it could really be the beginning of something.

Of course he has to be careful not to get ahead of himself.

“We’re nearly there,” he tells her.

“When was the last time you were out here?” she asks.

Out here is thirty minutes north of the city.

“A long time,” he says, only it wasn’t a long time ago, it was last year. “My parents used to own a getaway nearby,” he tells her, “but it burned down years ago. I used to bring my wife and Angela out here for picnics during the summers, but not in a long time now. Not in almost twenty years.”

He takes a side road from the motorway, through farm country for another five minutes, and then another turnoff—this time onto a shingle road that after two hundred yards becomes compacted dirt as the scenery changes from open fields to forest. The road is bumpy, but the four-wheel drive manages it easily enough. He goes slow. There aren’t many twists and turns, but the back wheels occasionally skid off large tree roots as they round the few corners there are. It’s almost untouched New Zealand scenery. It’s why people come here, film movies here, farm sheep, and raise children. Snowy mountains in the near distance, clear rivers, massive trees.

He pulls into a clearing. It’s just like he told her. Nobody around for miles.

“It’s scenic,” Stella says.

“Easy to fall in love with,” he says.

They climb out of the car. The air is completely still. And quiet. The only thing Raphael can hear is the engine pinging from the SUV, and Stella moving about. No birds, no signs of life—they could be the last two people in the world. He walks around to the back of the SUV and pulls out the gun case. Stella starts messing around with a rucksack, reorganizing the order of things inside it before throwing it over her shoulder. His wife used to do the same thing with her handbag. Their feet sink a little into the dirt as they move beyond the car, through the trees, and toward another clearing, toward where the getaway used to be until one day somebody thought it would be fun to set fire to it.

“I can’t believe I’ve never fired a gun,” he says, and he really can’t believe it. What kind of guy gets to fifty-five years old without ever having fired one? “It’s always something I wanted to do,” he says, and he wishes he hadn’t said it. All he’s doing is confirming he might not be the right guy for this. And nothing could be further from the truth. Just ask the Red Rage.

Stella doesn’t answer him. He knows she’s fired one. It’s one of the reasons she’s come to him. She told him she’s a terrible shot. She told him that if he is a terrible shot too, then this mission is over. Only she didn’t call it a mission. He wonders if the police would call it a movement.