Joe Victim: A Thriller

Wellington shrugs, but then gives his view. “I think the very fact he thinks he’s going free, and the fact he thinks everybody is believing what he’s saying, may just prove he really is completely insane.”


The idea is close now. Schroder can see it stretching out ahead of him. He just has to follow the path and shore up the crossroads. He pushes himself off from the wall and sits down opposite the lawyer. “What if,” he says, then doesn’t follow it up. He’s staring at the wall, at the cinder block, but really he’s on the path and checking that the angles all line up.

Wellington doesn’t interrupt him.

“What if,” Schroder says again, and yes, yes this might work. “What if we make two deals? We stick with our deal. The people I work for pay Joe his money for the location of Detective Calhoun.”

“Okay. And what’s deal two?”

“We go to the prosecution and we ask for immunity for Joe on what happened to Detective Calhoun. We all know he didn’t kill him. He buried him, sure, and he probably set up the circumstances and no doubt he would have killed him anyway, but we have Joe on all these other homicides. Pinning Calhoun on him isn’t going to make a difference. Technically we don’t need him on this one.”

We. He hears himself saying the word. Once a cop, always a cop. At least according to those who are no longer cops. To everybody else he’s just a pain in the ass.

“Technically,” Wellington says, nodding. “I don’t think too many people would be happy hearing that.”

“I’m not even happy saying it,” Schroder says.

“I think I can pretty much tell you the prosecution won’t go for it.”

Schroder gets up and starts pacing again. “We ask for immunity, and in exchange for it we offer to give them the location of Calhoun’s body. They still have plenty to convict Joe with, so there’s no reason for them to say no. They get Calhoun back. It’s a win-win situation. Two deals. And Joe gets his one hour of freedom in which to show them the body.”

Wellington sits still and Schroder can see him absorbing the information. He’s churning it over in his four-hundred-dollar-an-hour head. “It might work.”

“It will work,” Schroder says.

“It might. The other problem is the police aren’t going to be too keen about leaving the body where they find it for your boss to come along and take the credit.”

“First of all, he’s not my boss,” Schroder says. “And second of all, they will go for it if it means bringing home one of their own.”

Wellington almost laughs. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No.”

Wellington shakes his head. “There is no way they’re going to go for that. This is real life, Carl, not one of your TV shows. The police aren’t a tool for Jonas Jones and the TV network.”

“I know that.”

“Then why suggest otherwise?”

“Because it’s the only way we’re going to get Calhoun back,” Schroder says.

“No,” he says. “And you know what? I’m not even going to suggest it. I go in there with that idea, and I get laughed back out. Nobody will take me seriously again. There isn’t one cop on the force who would want to help out Jonas Jones.”

“They’re not doing it for Jones,” Schroder says. “They’re doing it for Calhoun, and that’s a big difference. A really big difference. They’re doing it for Calhoun and his family. That’s the selling point to all of this.”

Wellington is still shaking his head. “And if it’s a trap?”

“It can’t be,” Schroder says. “We only brought this deal to him yesterday. I bet if we check his visitor logs we’ll find the only people he’s seen or spoken to are you, me, his psychiatrists, and his mother. There’s no way he could have set something up in that time.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not wrong,” Schroder says.

“Okay,” Wellington says. “I agree. You’re not wrong. But it’s still not going to work. Even with a small team taking him out there, there’s still a big problem you’re overlooking.”

“Yeah? And what’s that?”

“These people need to keep their mouths shut.”

“They’re cops,” Schroder says. “Keeping your mouth shut is part of the job. We just need four or five people who can be trusted to do their job.”

Wellington is still shaking his head, but Schroder can see that slowly he’s changing his mind. “We have to at least try,” Schroder says.

“Okay. I’ll go to the prosecution with it. I mean, it can’t hurt.”

“If Joe doesn’t keep his mouth shut he’ll blow it all to hell,” Schroder says, and he feels like he’s sold a part, just a little part, of himself to the devil. That’s one part to Jonas Jones and one part to Joe Middleton. Soon he’ll be out of parts.

“He’ll keep it shut,” Wellington says. “I point out the benefits to the prosecution, I point out it can’t be a trap, and I point out the good faith on my client’s part.”