Joe Victim: A Thriller (43 page)

Epilogue

I pull the car into the driveway. Sit back. Try to relax.

I have the car stereo going. Over the last three months since my escape, I’ve listened to the news a lot. It’s always nice to know what’s going on in the world. In the beginning, the news was all about me. Some of it was good news—like Walt being killed at the church. Some of it was heartbreaking—like Melissa being killed at the church. I miss her a lot.

I twist the keys in the ignition, grab my briefcase, and climb out of the car. I fumble with the lock to the front door of the house and make my way inside.

I can hear the shower going from down the hall. I make my way into the kitchen and open the fridge and help myself to the first beer I’ve had in over fifteen months. I carry it with me down to the bedroom and sit on the bed a few feet from the bathroom door, from which steam is steadily creeping under. I pop open the briefcase and sit it on the bed and pull out the newspaper. The front page is about Carl Schroder. Three months ago he was shot in the head, but survived. He was put into a coma. The paper makes a big deal out of it because he shared a hospital room with a guy he used to work with who was also in a coma. They were called the Coma Cops. The media really played it up. The other guy, Tate somebody, woke up two weeks ago. And yesterday Carl Schroder woke up.

Today is the first day I’ve been out of my house since the escape. I’m already missing my daughter. Right now she’s being looked after by my housemate. My housemate’s name is Elizabeth, and her sister’s name is Kate, but Kate isn’t at the house. She never was. Kate exists, but it’s obvious Melissa only ever told Elizabeth she was there in order to manipulate her. I use the same tactic, and it works.

Mail comes to the house. Power bills, mostly. They all say they are being taken care of by direct payment to a credit card, but whose, or how Melissa set that up, I don’t know. I found a notebook. It was a budget. Melissa prepaid the rent for one year. She prepaid some guy to come mow the lawn every few weeks too.

As well as leaving cupboards full of baby food, baby clothes, and baby supplies, Melissa also left a bag full of cash. I use it for groceries. The same credit card used for the bills also gets used to order groceries online from a nearby supermarket. So once every week or two I shop with a computer and the groceries are left at my door. There is a lot of money here. Almost thirty thousand dollars. It will come in handy when we leave. It’s a nice house, but it does feel a little like prison since I never get to go anywhere. Feels like a prison too for Elizabeth, I imagine.

I’m growing my hair long. It looks awful, but I’m getting used to it. I’ve dyed it too. Blond. It was the color Melissa had chosen for me. There were a few boxes of dye left for me.

Abigail is getting bigger. I don’t know her birthday, but I guess I can pick any day really. She smiles at me a lot now. And sometimes she laughs uncontrollably. I’ve figured out that the best sound in the world is a baby laughing. The worst sound in the world is pretty much any other sound a baby can possibly make. She smiles at Elizabeth too, and the two seem to like each other. Elizabeth is starting to like me too. Maybe there’s something there. It does happen. Or maybe she’s just wanting me to let her go.

But, like I say, the house feels like a prison, and it’s nice to finally be out. I have needs that Elizabeth can’t meet. Urges that keep me awake at night just as much as Abigail does. I’ve been a good boy. I’ve kept my hands off the babysitter. I like the idea of a more hands-on approach, but I don’t like the idea of accidently killing the only person who can get Abigail to go to sleep.

Good things are going to happen.

The shower is switched off. I hear footsteps and a towel being pulled from a rack, then general bathroom noises of drawers being opened and closed. An extractor fan is turned on. I fold the newspaper up and put it back into my briefcase.

I take out the biggest knife I have and rest it on the bed. Then I take out the gun I found at my new house.

Then I take out the sandwich I brought along with me.

Adam the prison guard steps out of the bathroom and into the bedroom.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asks, because he doesn’t recognize me. It’s the hair—plus I’ve put on some weight.

I hold up the gun and I hold up the sandwich. “I’m Joe Optimist.”

Acknowledgments

Joe Victim
is the result of a process that’s taken more than ten years, starting with a vague idea for a sequel way back when we saw one millennium leave and another one come in. That’s when I was writing
The Cleaner
. Sometime during the year 2000 when it was done, but before the five or six years of rewriting that would follow it, I used to think—
a sequel would be cool.

The sequel didn’t progress beyond the idea of
I’d like to write a sequel, and for now I’ll call it The Cleaner II,
for many years. Back in 2008, two years after
The Cleaner
was finally published, I wrote the first 20,000 words of
The Cleaner II,
then no more. Of course it was never far from my mind. I kept people updated on what Joe was up to in the other books—he was in jail. He’d show up, he’d get mentioned—Joe wasn’t going to be forgotten. Then the end of 2011 rolled around and suddenly, out of nowhere, I knew it was time. The sequel went from something I’d been thinking about to something I had to do. I spent that summer inside writing, binging on junk food and ignoring my Xbox. The book took shape. It had a direction. It even had a title.
Joe Victim
.

Like the six books before it,
Joe Victim
has had many helping hands. My editor at Atria Books in New York, the wonderful Sarah Branham, always makes me think in different directions. She helps shape the novels and makes me be a better writer, and makes me
want
to be a better writer. Sarah rocks! As to the rest of the Atria and Simon & Schuster team: Judith Curr, Lisa Keim, Mellony Torres, Anne Spieth, Isolde Sauer, Janice Fryer, Gillian Cowin, and Emily Bestler, among all the others who do great, great things.

Aside from being lucky enough to have one of the best editors around, I also have the best agent in the world. If you know Jane Gregory of Gregory & Company, then you know what I say is true. Jane is brilliant. As are Claire Morris and Linden Morris, and of course Stephanie Glencross, Jane’s in-house editor—my go-to person for all things writing and all things life.

Let me sign off once again by thanking you, the reader. Thanks again for the support, the emails, and the Facebook messages. Thanks for coming along to book signings and festivals to say hi. You’re who I write for, you’re the reason I like to make bad things happen . . .

Till next time!

Paul Cleave

March 2013—Christchurch

About the Author

PAUL CLEAVE
is the author of seven internationally bestselling thrillers:
The Cleaner
;
The Killing Hour
;
Cemetery Lake
;
Blood Men
, winner
of the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel of 2011;
Collecting
Cooper
, a Suspense Magazine Best Book of 2011; and
The Laughterhouse
,
a Suspense Magazine Best Book of 2012. He lives in Christchurch,
New Zealand. Find out more at
www.paulcleave.com
.

Also by Paul Cleave

The Laughterhouse

Collecting Cooper

Blood Men

Cemetery Lake

The Killing Hour

The Cleaner

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright ©2013 by Paul Cleave

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First Atria Paperback edition September 2013

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Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cleave, Paul, date.

Joe Victim : a thriller / Paul Cleave.—First Atria paperback edition.

pages cm

1. Serial murderers—Fiction. 2. Death row inmates—Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

PR9639.4.C54J64 2013

823'.92—dc23 2013005568

ISBN 978-1-4516-7797-3

ISBN 978-1-4516-7798-0 (ebook)