Joe Victim: A Thriller

Melissa says nothing. She knows what people are capable of. She also knows Raphael will carry on without prompting. She senses it will be good for him. Cathartic. This is something he’s kept inside. She picks up the glass she hadn’t touched earlier and takes a sip. The water has made it to room temperature.

“I went there,” he says. “I made an appointment with the first lawyer and he saw me, and I begged him not to defend Joe. Really begged him. And you know what? He said he understood where I was coming from. He said he could imagine how I felt. Can you believe that? This son of a bitch tells me he knows how I must be feeling. Then he went on to say that everybody is due a defense, that’s what the law says, and Joe was entitled to what the law says just as anybody was entitled, and that didn’t make sense to me. I mean, you have a guy disregarding the law, disregarding humanity, then suddenly he has civil rights? Fuck that,” he says, and it’s the first Melissa has heard him swear.

“So you started sending him death threats,” she says.

He shakes his head. “No. I read about that, how both lawyers got death threats in the mail, but none of that was me.”

“You just killed them,” she says.

“Yes. But not right away. That first guy, after talking to him, I gave it a month. I was sure if he thought about it more, he’d come around to my way of thinking. He’d have to, right? So a month later I thought it’d be better if I met up with him in a less formal location because I hoped that would make him less formal and more human. So I went back to his work in the evening and waited for him to finish, and I followed him to his car.”

He holds up his hand to her. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says, but he’s wrong. He has no idea what she’s thinking. “I didn’t follow him to hurt him, I just wanted to plead my case with him. I wanted to remind him of the pain he was going to cause.”

“And he didn’t listen to you?”

“No, he listened. That’s the thing,” Raphael says, becoming more animated now as he lifts his hands in the air. “He listened to everything I had to say, and even then he refused to stop defending Joe.”

“And that made you mad.”

“It would make anybody mad.”

“So you killed him.”

“It wasn’t like that. It was an accident.”

“How?”

He runs his fingers up over his forehead and through his hair, then slowly shakes his head a little. “I hit him,” he says, then exhales deeply. “With a hammer.”

“You normally carry a hammer in the car?”

“No.”

“So you took one with you.”

“I guess.”

“And you spoke to him without him seeing the hammer, right? So you had it in your pocket, or tucked in the waistband of your pants. You took it with you because you knew if things went badly and he didn’t take your side, you were going to kill him. You went there a month later because you knew the police would go through his appointment schedule, but would only be interested in people he’d seen recently.”

“I know that’s how it looks,” he says, “but it really wasn’t the way I thought it would play out.”

“How did you think it would play out if he didn’t agree with you?”

Raphael shrugs. “I don’t know. Not that way, anyway.”

Melissa is nodding. It’s a great conversation. She wishes she was having it with Joe. They could talk about it and get naked. “Then what did you do?”

“I stuffed him into the trunk of his car, then I went and got my own car. I pulled up next to him and transferred him, then drove him out to . . . well, I buried the body.”

“Out where we went shooting today,” Melissa says. “That’s where, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Did it make you feel any better?”

“It didn’t bring Angela back, but I knew it wouldn’t. But yeah, it did. It made me feel a little better. Within days another lawyer was putting his hand up to take on the case. I didn’t bother going and seeing him because I knew the conversation would be the same. So I took care of him too. This time I left him for people to find. I thought it might make more of a message, you know, to other lawyers. And it did. Joe’s third lawyer was court appointed. The third lawyer seems like a man who really doesn’t want the job. So, you know, no reason to hurt him. At least not yet.

“And somebody else would have killed them anyway,” he adds. “Somebody was sending those guys death threats.”

“You killed two innocent people,” she says, not that she could care less, but she thinks that Raphael should see her caring more.

“They weren’t innocent,” he says.

“I’m sure they’d disagree.”

“So . . .” he says, “does this change things?”

She holds off on answering for a few seconds. Like she really has to think about it. Like weighing it up is a really tough decision. Only it’s not. It’s an easy decision. And it makes last night’s decision to approach Raphael look even better.

“I just . . . I don’t know, I’ve never known a killer before,” she says. “I should be happy because it just confirms you’ll take the shot on Monday, but, well, to be honest . . . it’s a little weird. You killed two people.”