Free Joe Victim: A Thriller by Paul Cleave Page A

sister who lives up there. Nelson is the kind of place where everybody has a relative who lives there because it’s so damn nice. He could work at a vineyard. Pick grapes and make wine. Or become a tour bus driver—take people on wine-tasting tours and watch them get trashed.
    Joe. Fucking Joe. Thoughts of Nelson disappear and, like always, Joe replaces them. When the trial is over maybe then he can get some closure.
    There aren’t too many cars on the roads, but what traffic is there is much slower because of the weather, giving the appearance of a slight traffic jam. It worsens as he gets toward town. He has a lunch date with Detective Wilson Hutton, which he’s going to be late for. He pulls over and uses his cell phone to call his ex-colleague to give him an extra fifteen minutes, but before he can the phone rings anyway. It’s Hutton.
    “I was just about to call you,” he says.
    “Listen, Carl, sorry, but I’m going to have to cancel lunch,” Hutton says.
    “Let me guess,” Schroder says, “another homicide?” It’s meant to be a joke, and Hutton is supposed to say no, but as soon as Schroder says it he knows it doesn’t sound like a joke at all—it’s just his bad mood coming through by suggesting the worst-case scenario, and anyway, there’s nothing funny about people dying. He already regrets saying it.
    “Yeah, body was found this morning,” Hutton says.
    “Ah, shit,” Schroder says.
    “Well at least this time the victim was a bad guy, Carl, so don’t start feeling too bad.”
    In that case Schroder doesn’t feel bad at all. The world with one less bad guy in it? Why would he?
    “Details?” Schroder asks, and he stares out the window at a campaign billboard looking down over the intersection. The billboard is for the already prime minister who is hoping to do what Schroder wasn’t able to do this year—keep his job. A vote for him is a vote for the future of New Zealand, according to the poster, but doesn’t specify if that’s a better or worse future. The prime minister has the look of a confident man, even though the polls suggest he doesn’t have the right to be. The election is only a few months away. Schroder isn’t sure who he’s going to vote for—probably for the candidate who doesn’t put up as many distracting billboards at intersections.
    “Sorry, Carl, you know I can’t do that.”
    “Come on, Hutton . . .”
    “All I can tell you is that it’s bad.”
    “What kind of bad?”
    “Not the kind of bad you’re thinking of. Listen, I’ll tell you when I can.”
    “A drink tonight?” Schroder asks.
    “Why? So you can pump me for information for that TV show of yours?”
    “Weren’t you the one who said they believed in psychics?”
    “I’ll give you a call if I can make it,” he says. “Later, Carl,” he adds, and hangs up.
    Schroder tosses his phone onto the passenger seat next to the folder with Finding the Dead sketched across the cover. He wonders what Hutton means, and how bad it can get in a city where bad things happen a lot.
    Now that he’s missing lunch he heads straight in to the TV station. He swallows his pride while still maintaining the sensation of selling his soul, and steps out into the rain and heads into the building to talk with Jonas Jones.

Chapter Eight
    I’m left sitting in the interview room by myself for a few minutes until Adam and Glen come back in.
    “Your choice,” Adam says. “Your lawyer is due here soon. You can either wait here for half an hour or we can take you back to your cell.”
    It’s all the same to me. Almost. The difference is that here is a little bigger and I don’t have to listen to other prisoners. “I’ll wait here.”
    Adam shakes his head. “You don’t get it, do you,” he says.
    “Get what?”
    “You don’t get to make choices. I heard you’ve already fucked up one test today, and now you just fucked up another. Come on, let’s go.”
    They lead me back to my cell. We go through more