“What’s going on here?” the doctor asks, and it’s a good question, except it’s coming from a guy who’s in his fifties wearing a bow tie, and that makes him somebody worth staying away from.
“This . . .” Schroder starts, and he seems to struggle for the next word. “Man,” he spits out, “needs medical treatment. He needs it now.”
“What happened?”
“He walked into a door,” somebody says, and a group of men start to laugh.
“Yeah, he was clumsy,” another man says, and more men laugh. They’re bonding. They’re using humor to start coming down from whatever high they’re on. A high I gave them. Except for Schroder and Jack and the doctor. They look deadly serious.
“What happened?” the doctor asks again.
“Self-inflicted gunshot,” Schroder says. “Grazed him deep.”
“Looks worse than a graze,” the doctor says. “You really need this many men around?”
Schroder turns back and seems to do a mental count. He looks like he’s about to nod and say they could do with a few more, but instead he signals to about half the team and tells them to stay put. I’m pushed in a wheelchair and my hands are uncuffed only to be recuffed to the arms of it. They wheel me down a corridor and lots of people keep looking at me as if I’ve just won a Mr. Popularity contest, but the truth is nobody knows who I am. They never have. We pass some pretty nurses that on any other day I’d try to follow home. I’m put on a bed and cuffed to the railing. They strap my legs down and I can’t move. They strap and cuff everything so tight it feels like I’m encased in concrete. They must think I have the strength of a werewolf.
“Detective Schroder,” I say, “I don’t understand what’s going on.”
Schroder doesn’t answer. The doctor comes back over. “This is going to be a little painful,” he says, and he’s half right, getting the little wrong, but nailing the painful. He prods the wound and examines it and shines a torch into it, and without the ability to blink it’s like staring at the sun.
“This is going to be more than a few hours’ work,” he says, almost talking to himself, but loud enough for the others to hear. “Going to need some real detailing here to give him any kind of functionality, and also to minimize scarring,” he says, and it sounds like he’s about to give an estimate then tell us how much it’s going to be for the parts. I just hope he has them in stock since mine is still out in the parking lot.
“We don’t care about scarring,” Schroder says.
“I care,” I say.
“And I care too,” the doctor says. “Damn it, the eyelid is completely gone.”
“Not completely,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s back at the car. On the ground.”
The doctor turns to Schroder. “His eyelid is out there?”
“What’s left of it,” I say, answering for Schroder, who then answers for himself by shrugging.
“You want this guy out of here quicker, we’re going to need that eyelid,” the doctor says.
“We’ll get it,” Schroder says.
“Then get it,” the doctor says. “Otherwise we have to graft something else that will work. And that’ll take longer. Can’t have him not blinking.”
“I don’t care if he can’t blink,” Schroder says. “Just cauterize the damn thing and glue a patch on his face.”
Instead of arguing or telling Schroder he’s out of line, the doctor finally seems to realize that all these cops, all the tension, all the anger, that must mean something special. I can see it occurring to him, I watch through one good eye and one bloody eye and he starts to frown, then slowly shake his head, a curious look on his face. I know the question is coming.
“Just who is this man?”
“This is the Christchurch Carver,” Schroder answers.
“No way,” the doctor says. “This guy?”
I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean. “I’m innocent,” I say. “I’m Joe,” I say, and the doctor jams a needle into the side of my face, the world shifts further off its axis, and things go numb.
TWELVE MONTHS LATER
Chapter One
Melissa pulls into the driveway. Sits back. Tries to relax.
The day is fifty degrees maximum. Christchurch rain. Christchurch cold. Yesterday was warm. Now it’s raining. Schizophrenic weather. She’s shivering. She leans forward and twists the keys in the ignition, grabs her briefcase, and climbs from the car. The rain soaks her hair. She reaches the front door and fumbles with the lock.
She strolls through to the kitchen. Derek is upstairs. She can hear the shower going and she can hear him singing. She’ll disturb him later. For now she needs a drink. The fridge is covered in magnets from bullshit places around the country, places with high pregnancy rates, high drinking rates, high suicide rates. Places like Christchurch. She opens the door and there are half a dozen bottles of beer and she puts her hand on one, pauses, then goes for the orange juice instead. She breaks the seal and drinks straight from the container. Derek won’t mind. Her feet are sore and her back is sore so she sits at the table for a minute listening to the shower as she sips at the juice as her muscles slowly relax. It’s been a long day in what is becoming a very long week. She’s not a big fan of orange juice—she prefers tropical juices, but orange was her only option. For some reason drink makers think people want their juices full of pulp that sticks in your teeth and feels like an oyster pissing on your tongue, and for some reason that’s what Derek wants too.
She puts the lid back on the juice and puts it into the fridge and looks at the slices of pizza in there and decides against them. There are some chocolate bars in a side compartment. She peels one open and takes a bite, and stuffs the remaining bars—four of them—into her pocket. Thanks, Derek. She finishes off the open one while carrying the briefcase upstairs. The stereo in the bedroom is pumping out a song she recognizes. She used to have the album back when she was a different person, more of a carefree, CD-listening kind of person. It’s The Rolling Stones. A greatest-hits package, she can tell by the way one song follows another. Right now Mick is screaming out about blotting out the sun. He wants the world to be black. She wants that too. He sounds like he’s singing about the middle of winter at five o’clock in New Zealand. She hums along with it. Derek is still singing, masking every sound she is making.
She sits down on the bed. There’s an oil heater running and the room is warm. The furniture is a good match for the house, and the house looks like somebody ought to take a match to it. The bed is soft and tempts her to put her feet up and prop a pillow behind her and take a nap, but that would also be tempting the bacteria in the pillowcase to make friends with her. She pops open the briefcase and takes out a newspaper and reads over the front page while she waits. It’s an article about some guy who’s been terrorizing the city. Killing women. Torture. Rape. Homicide. The Christchurch Carver. Joe Middleton. He was arrested twelve months ago. His trial begins on Monday. She is also mentioned in the article. Melissa X. Though the article also mentions her real name, Natalie Flowers, Melissa only thinks of herself as Melissa these days. Has done for the last couple of years.
A couple of minutes go by and she’s still sitting on the bed when Derek, wiping a towel at his hair, steps out of the bathroom surrounded by white steam and the smell of shaving balm. He has a towel wrapped around his waist. A tattoo of a snake winds its way from the towel up his side and over his shoulder, with its tongue forking across his neck. Some of the snake is finely detailed, parts of it really just sketched outlines with more to follow. There are various scars that go hand in hand with a guy like Derek, no doubt an even mixture of good times and bad times—good times for him and bad times for others.