“I don’t need twenty-four hours,” I tell him. “I’m innocent. The jury will see that.”
“Joe—”
“They can’t convict a man for being sick, and that’s what I was. I was sick. It’s not right. There must be human violations against it. We must have other options.”
“You’re out of options, Joe. You didn’t leave yourself many options when you got caught with that gun, or that videotape in your apartment. The trial is only a show, Joe. The jury hasn’t been picked yet, but it’s already made up its mind. The whole world has. And you pass up this deal and you could be swinging from a rope in a year.”
“I’d rather that than life in here. Send our shrinks in. Let them evaluate me. They can go up on the stand and contradict everything Benson Barlow will say about me.”
“Listen, Joe, for the last time, I’m telling you it’s not going to work.”
“I’m not taking the deal.”
“Fine,” he says.
“Anything else?” I ask him.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something encouraging, maybe. Seems all you ever do is bring me bad news. Seems like you’re just trying to bring me down.”
“I’ll let the prosecution know you’re rejecting the deal,” he says. He glances at his watch. “You’re talking to our psychiatrist at nine o’clock in the morning,” he says, as if I’d forgotten the time. “Don’t fuck it up.”
“I won’t.”
“We’ll see about that,” he says, and he stands up, knocks on the door, and leaves.
Chapter Nine
Melissa parks outside the house and stares at the front door for two minutes, getting her thoughts in order. It’s a typical house in a typical middle-class street. Twenty or thirty years old. Brick. Garden slightly overrun compared to the neighbors’. Tidy, warm, livable, boring. She has the window wipers off, so the view becomes distorted as more rain gathers on the windshield. She planned what she wanted to say on the way, now it’s just a matter of seeing if it will work.
She looks at the fat suit and wonders if it’s worth putting on, and decides that it is. And instead of the red wig, she goes with a blonde one. She climbs out of the car and holds a newspaper over her head and dashes for the front door. She isn’t sure if he’ll answer, if there’s going to be anybody home—after all, it’s only one in the afternoon. After twenty seconds she knocks again, and then there are footsteps and the rattle of a chain.
The door opens. A man in his late thirties opens it. He has black hair that is slowly receding. His stubble is black on his cheeks, but gray around his chin. She can smell coffee. His skin is pale white—as if he spent summer, last summer, and the summer before that all indoors. He’s wearing a red shirt that’s hanging over blue jeans, and cheap shoes. She hates it when people wear cheap shoes. It’s poor form. Already she’s starting to think this is a bad idea.
“Can I help you?” he asks.
“Mr. Walker,” she says, and it’s not a question but a statement because she saw Walker’s photograph in Schroder’s file.
“Are you a reporter?” he asks. “Because if you are, you can fuck off.”
“Do I smell like I just went through your garbage looking for tidbits of information?”
“No . . .”
“Then I’m not a reporter,” she says.
“So who are you?”
“I’m a woman who has a job proposal for you.”
He looks confused, as well he should. “What kind of proposal?”
“Can I come in?” she asks. “Please, it’s important, and it will only be a few minutes and I’m sick of standing in the rain and my feet are tired.”
He looks her up and down and seems to finally notice that she’s pregnant. “Are you selling something?”
“I’m selling you the chance to sleep like a baby,” she says.
“Huh. You must be selling some kind of miracle pill,” he tells her.
“It almost is.”
“A miracle pill disguised as a job proposal?” he asks.
“Please, just a few minutes of your time, then it will all make sense.”
Walker sighs, then steps aside. “Fine.”
“Are the kids at school?”
“Yeah.”
She puts the wet newspaper down by the door. “Then lead the way,” she says.
He leads her down a hallway where there are photographs of the kids, of his dead wife. There’s even a photograph of the house he used to live in. Melissa has been to that house. A year ago she killed Detective Calhoun in that house. Joe was there. It turned out there was a video camera there too. Joe really could be a tricky little bastard when he wanted to be.
“Have a seat,” he says, pointing to a couch beneath the window in the lounge, “and make it quick. I don’t want you going into labor and messing up the carpets.”
She isn’t sure if he’s joking, then decides he isn’t. She sits down. The fat suit has a hollow in the side of it, and inside that hollow is the pistol. She rubs at her stomach the way pregnant woman do, feeling the end of the silencer pushing against her hand. Walker sits down in the couch opposite. The furniture is new. All of it. The couches, the coffee table, the TV—none of it older than a year. Walker is creating a new life for himself. Only that life is a little disorganized. She has an angle to the hallway they came in and she can see the calendar is displaying last month’s month. The carpet needs vacuuming—there are chip crumbs resting in the top gap between the cushions of the couch. There are empty coffee cups on the table and about fifty times as many rings on it, as if no drink was ever put into the same place twice. Everything may be new looking, but it’s also tired looking. The same way Walker is tired looking.
“So,” he says. “What is this job you’re selling?”
“Your wife was murdered,” she says.
“Listen—”
“By Joe Middleton,” she says.
He starts to stand up. “If this is about—”
“He killed my sister,” she says.
He pauses halfway between sitting and standing. He looks like a man about to grab his back before having to lie on the floor for three days. She isn’t sure whether he’ll keep rising or if he’ll sit back down. Then he slowly lowers himself.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” he says.
“My sister never hurt anybody,” she says. “She lived her life in a wheelchair.”
“I read about her,” he says. “It was . . . I mean, all of it was horrible, but what he did to her was, well, was something . . . extra bad,” he says, his voice becoming sympathetic.
“It was,” she says, and she read about the woman in the wheelchair too. She never met her, but her own sister was murdered so she can imagine how it feels. Right now she is being relatable. It’s going well.
“Listen, I know you’re hurting,” Walker says, “but I’m not in the right space to come along to your group-counseling session, I’ve already told you that. I appreciate the offer, just like I appreciated it last time, but—”
“I’m going to kill him,” she says.
He stares at her and says nothing. The couch is uncomfortable. There are kids’ toys around the room, helping to mess up the floor and the rest of the furniture, and this is why she never wanted kids. They take up space and they take up time. They might be good for reaching under the couch for loose change, but beyond that all they do is give a room really bad feng shui. She holds back a yawn and rubs her stomach and carries on.
“You’re not here from the group?” he asks.
“I want you to help.”
“Help?”
“I want you to shoot him.”
He cocks his head slightly. “Why don’t you shoot him?”
“Because I’m in no condition to shoot anybody. Look at me,” she says. “And because it’s a two-person plan.”
He looks at her. “Just how are you planning on shooting Joe? Walking into the prison and asking if you can see him in his cell?”