Free Joe Victim: A Thriller by Paul Cleave

“I can bet you a hundred bucks right now that you didn’t hand any keys to me.”
    Schroder looks up at the camera, then pats down his pockets again. Did he lock his car? Of course he did. He always does. Only this time he was distracted by the pregnant woman. Distracted enough to leave them in the ignition? Maybe. Certainly distracted enough not to notice he didn’t put them into the tray when emptying his pocket. But does he ever? When he comes here it’s just like going through security at an airport—he doesn’t really notice what he’s taking out of his pockets, all he’s focused on is making them empty.
    “Okay,” he says. “I’ll check outside.”
    “You do that.”
    Schroder follows the corridor back the way he came, past the waiting area, past the corridor to the bathrooms, past more puddles of water that have formed from other visitors. He stands at the door and puts on his jacket then heads into the rain. There’s a similar number of cars in the lot as before—some gone, some new ones. The pregnant woman’s car is gone. Probably whoever she was visiting she couldn’t visit for long, her future baby pushing against her bladder would have put an end to that. He tightens his collar.
    His car is locked. His keys are lying on the ground next to where the pregnant woman’s car was. He must have been carrying them in his hand. He must have dropped them when he caught her. He feels like an idiot. Part of him thinks he ought to go back inside and apologize to the prison officer, but it’s a small part, nowhere near big enough to make him actually do it. The guy was too big a dick for that.
    He gets into the car and peels the wet jacket off him and tosses it into the back next to a box full of files from the Carver case. One of the sleeves lands on top of it, so he leans back and flicks it aside, not wanting water from his jacket to soak onto the files—files he shouldn’t have. The Carver case has lived with him for the last few years—it would come home with him, it would invade the room of his house that he had turned into an office, an office he made his wife promise never to go into because the content inside would give her nightmares. In a way the file invaded his marriage too. He would work at work and he would work at home when there was spare time, of which there wasn’t much because of the kids. Then that all changed and he lost his job, and all the copies of documents and photos he’d brought home had to be returned. Only he made copies of those copies first, and it’s some of those copies that occupy the cardboard box in his car. It wasn’t his case anymore, but with the trial coming up he wanted to be prepared for whatever came his way.
    What he really wanted to come his way was a chance to strangle Joe. Hell, he’s imagined his hands around his neck a thousand times. He’s imagined shooting him, stabbing him. He’s imagined setting him on fire. He’s imagined a lot of things, all of which end very badly for Joe Middleton. He’s confident many people across the city have imagined all those same things.
    Honesty being the policy and all that, not a day has gone by when Schroder hasn’t hated himself too. A serial killer was in their midst. They saw him five days a week. The bastard even made him coffee. Schroder doesn’t deserve to be a cop. None of them do. How many hours does that add up to? How many minutes did Joe make fools of them all?
    The drive back into town isn’t any different from the drive out here. Same view. Same animals. Same guys in tractors making more money than he’ll ever earn, but they’re getting up far earlier every morning than he’d ever want to. The rain is still persistent. It’s beating down on the car and he isn’t sure he can make it through winter. If things don’t work out well with the new job, maybe it’s time to leave the city. He could pack the family in the car and drive up to Nelson, the sunshine capital of New Zealand. He has a