I keep driving.
After a few blocks I can hear sirens approaching.
I turn off so we don’t share the same road.
For the first few minutes my heart is racing so hard it feels like it’s going to pop right out of my chest. Then it starts to calm. Ten minutes into it I’m feeling pretty good. Good enough to look back over the last few hours and think that it all went really well.
I already miss Melissa.
It takes me another twenty minutes to get to the address she gave me. It’s a secluded house where the closest neighbors aren’t in looking distance. It’s a long shingle driveway and there’s a lot of land here. It’s not a modern place, but it’s not old either, and it looks comfortable. This place is going to be my home for the next few months until I can figure out where to go next.
I park around the back. I unlock the back door. I can hear a baby crying. My baby. My heart starts to speed up again. I make my way toward the sound. It’s a bedroom. I open the door. Inside is a woman. She looks to be in her twenties. Her hair is a mess. She’s wearing no makeup. She’s wearing clothes that look like they haven’t been washed in weeks. And there’s a metal chain going from her ankle to the metal pipe of a radiator. She’s trying to calm the baby, trying to feed it. This is what Melissa said when she said she had no choice but to tell me where the baby was. The woman looks up at me.
“Oh my God, oh thank God,” she says, and she drops the bottle of formula that the baby is refusing. The baby, Abigail, has a blank look on her face and she’s trying to clutch at something that isn’t there. She looks over at me and doesn’t smile or look away and I don’t know whether or not she can see me. She’s cute. As far as babies go. Very cute.
“What’s happening here?” I ask. “Who are you?”
“This crazy woman kidnapped us,” she says.
“Us? You and the baby?”
“No, me and my sister,” she says. “The baby belongs to the crazy lady. She said if anything happens to the baby she’s going to kill both of us, so I have to do everything she says. Please, please, you have to help us.”
“Is your sister younger or older than you?”
“A little older. Why? Why does it matter?”
“Just so I know what I’m in for.”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“I mean it really just isn’t your lucky day,” I tell her, and I close the door behind me and tell her about my day, then explain to her how she and her sister are my reward for getting through it.
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.