Joe Victim: A Thriller

“Wow,” Raphael says, the word sounding like it’s coming from deep underground.

She lines up the tin again. Takes her time. He watches her breathe in. Breathe out. He can’t wait to have a turn. He can feel his heart racing. She pulls the trigger. The same explosion. This time he sees a divot appear in the ground about a foot from a tin. She wasn’t kidding about being a bad shot.

“Third time’s the charm,” Raphael says, though he doesn’t know if she can hear him. It turns out third time isn’t the charm. Nor is the fourth. Nor fifth. She lays the gun down on the blanket and rolls off to the side and takes off her earmuffs. She gives him a small I tried my best shrug, and he gives her a small Don’t worry about it smile.

“See what you think,” she says.

Raphael nods. He feels like a kid at Christmas.

He squats down, his knees hurting a little, the left one popping, and he feels a little embarrassed, he feels old. Stella puts her earmuffs back into place. He lies in the same position she was in. The gun feels like a natural extension of his arms. It makes him feel powerful. He likes feeling that way. He puts his eye up to the scope. It’s incredibly clear. So clear he doesn’t see how anybody could miss with something like this. Of course people miss because the conditions change. Wind. Rain. Glare from the sun. Other people around. All sorts of stuff. Shooting a tin can is different from shooting a man. The cans are still. There is no sense of urgency, no sense of panic, no sense of hitting the wrong can and ruining the lives of other cans who loved it.

He squeezes the trigger. The tin can takes flight, landing and skidding to a stop five yards away, where it lies on its side, half dented with a hole going through one side and out the opposite. He eyes up one of the tins half-hidden by a thick tree root. That one goes flying too. He’s two for two. He’s a natural.

He looks back through the scope. He thinks about his daughter. He knows how she died. He knows Joe broke into her house. He killed her cat before dragging her from her bathroom. He knows exactly what he did to her. The way he tied her to the bed, the way he pushed an egg into her mouth, the way he pushed himself into her. . . .

This third shot misses. Wild right. He pulls his face away from the scope. Stares at the ground beneath his chest.

“What’s wrong?” Stella asks.

He looks up at her. “Nothing,” he says. “Just . . . just nothing. Give me a second,” he says, and he sucks in a few deep breaths and he wants to scream. He wants to drive to the prison right now and take this gun into the cells and shoot Joe where he stands, shoot the fucker in the knees, stomp on them, punch him in the face over and over. He wants to cut his eyelids off, rip his organs out, drown him, revive him, set fire to him. There isn’t a single bad thing he doesn’t want to do. The Red Rage wants to keep the fucker alive for as long as he can, and just keep cutting and stomping, cutting and hurting.

And Stella—sweet, sweet Stella is going to give him that chance.

He puts his eye back up to the scope. He takes another shot and misses by just as much as the last one. Damn it. He closes his eyes. This isn’t working. Not when he’s angry.

“Raphael?”

He gets onto his knee. “Give me a minute,” he says, and gets to his feet, the other knee popping this time, only this time he’s too angry to feel embarrassed. He stares out at the foundations of the cabin, and in those long blades of grass hidden from view are parts of the walls too. If he’s missing now, he’s going to miss when the shot presents itself.

Stella puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay,” she says. “You just need to focus.”

“I am focusing,” he says, but he’s focusing on the wrong damn things. He has to stop thinking of his daughter, of her naked beneath Joe, of the fear racing in her head, of Joe being the last thing she would see and of her knowing that. He can’t think about how there were many people who loved her and how none of them were there to help her. He has to think about Joe. Joe with a bullet in his head. Joe with his head in a cardboard box. Joe with a lot of bad shit happening to him.

None of it will bring Angela back.

He lies back down, his knee popping again. He looks through the scope. He stares at the tin can hanging from the tree. That tin can is Joe’s head. That’s what he thinks. He has to let go of the anger. Not for good, just for now, just when he’s behind the barrel of the gun. Breathe in. Breathe out. Stay calm. Empty his mind. He’s doing a good thing here. Focus on that. Stay calm and fantastic things are going to happen. Not closure, he can never have that, but he can have revenge. It’s there waiting for him. He just has to take it.