Five Minutes Alone (5 page)

We spend another five minutes talking to McKay and don’t learn anything new. When he’s gone Andrews comes back in and fills the space McKay left behind. He drags the now empty seat over to his desk, leans across it, and angles the computer monitor so we can all see it. He plays around with the mouse and the view on the monitor changes from one of a spreadsheet to one of multiple camera angles and what looks like live footage from the service-station forecourt. There are cameras placed inside the shop and over the counters and over the tills and one in the doorway to the locker room, the quality as high as I’ve ever seen. Hiring guys coming out of prison means a place like this is probably being covered from every angle, and the way the economy is these days, people often fill up with gas knowing they can’t afford to pay.

“Give me a time,” Andrews says.

“Last night,” I tell him. “McKay said Dwight Smith left early.
So I guess let’s go back to eight o’clock and see if we can see him.”

Andrews goes back to eight o’clock. We glance across the different camera angles, of which there are nine, and find him on the forecourt next to a car. He’s pumping gas. After a minute he takes the nozzle out of the gas tank and hangs it up, disappears from that camera, and enters the range of another. Andrews skips forward half an hour. Then another hour. McKay is there. And the other staff. Customers coming and going. He keeps skipping forward and there’s nothing here, it’s just your typical rapist out on parole doing his job and keeping his head down.

Then that changes.

Because at ten o’clock Dwight Smith takes the nozzle out of a car to hang it up, but then comes to a complete stop during midstep, his mouth opening and his eyes widening. He is staring at a woman who is four pumps away, swiping her credit card to pay for gas. She plays with the buttons, then turns towards her car and puts the nozzle into the gas tank. She doesn’t see Dwight Smith.

Smith’s customer gets into his car and drives off. Smith disappears from that camera and into another. A moment later he is climbing in his car. At the same time, the woman hangs up the nozzle, replaces the gas cap, and climbs into her car.

She pulls away from the service station.

With Dwight Smith following her.

CHAPTER SIX

Andrew Andrews burns a copy of the surveillance footage to DVD, covering the angle of the woman filling her car with gas and leaving, and Dwight Smith freezing in time when he spots her, moving to his car, and pulling into the street behind her. Andrews promises to let us know if he thinks of anything else. As soon as we’re outside Kent turns towards me. “Did you recognize her?” she asks.

Are we on the same page?

I slowly nod. “The lighting wasn’t so great, and the angle wasn’t so great, but . . . yeah . . . I think so. Plus it’s been five years. If it’s her, she’s cut her hair a lot.”

“It was Kelly Summers. She had the scar on her face,” Kent says, and at the same time a finger goes up to her own scar and traces the
S
-shape curve. I’ve seen her do this a lot over the last few weeks. She puts her fingers up to remind herself things are as bad as she remembers them being.

We get into the car and use the police computer to look up the registration plate of the car the woman was filling. A few seconds later it’s confirmed the car belongs to Kelly Summers.

“He followed her,” she says.

“I know.”

“Do you think he killed her?” she asks.

“I don’t know. I . . . I don’t know,” I say. Five years ago Kelly Summers survived. By all accounts, Kelly Summers is a survivor. Did she survive last night? Did Dwight Smith end up on the tracks because of her?

Checking the car registration also has given us Summers’s address. We put the sirens on and Kent drives there quickly, but we
don’t call for backup. There’s no need. The man that followed her is dead. We’re either going to find Kelly dead or alive or somewhere in between—and it’s the in-between bit which is why we’re speeding.

It takes us ten minutes from the service station. Four blocks out Kent cuts the sirens and slows down the pace. We don’t know what to expect, but we don’t want Kelly to know we’re arriving—not if she’s a suspect. It’s ten thirty when we pull into the street. There are kids out on front lawns and on the street playing on bikes, and no doubt there are children inside in front of TVs with overflowing bowls of cereal and milk they poured themselves. Kent brings the car to a stop and we share a look where I tell her this case is going to take us to a bad place, and she shares one saying
bad
is what life is all about when you’re in this line of work.

“I just hope . . . I just hope she’s okay,” Kent says, then she raises a hand up to the side of her face like she did earlier.

We walk the path to the front door. The house looks like it’s been painted within the last few years. Red weatherboards, white trim windowsills, a black concrete tile roof that has moss growing along the edges. It looks cozy, but at the same time uninviting somehow, but I’m not sure if that’s just my perception because of why we’re here. There’s a lot of color in the front garden. A silk tree in the corner, some rhododendrons spilling flowers onto the lawn, a row of roses leading up to the doorstep. It’s that time of the year where one week your lawn is short, and the next it’s around your ankles. Kelly Summers’s lawn is short. There are strips in it that suggest a lawnmower passed this way within the last day or two. Sitting on the neighboring fence is a black cat with a white nose and eyes full of curiosity. I wonder what kind of things it’s seen.

I wonder if it saw Dwight Smith last night.

Kent puts her finger on the bell. We hear it ringing inside. There are no broken windows, no blood, no kicked-in door, but that
doesn’t mean anything. We wait twenty seconds and then we ring it again. A few seconds later we hear movement from inside, then footsteps as a figure moves down the hall.

When Kelly Summers opens the door she looks surprised, she looks sleepy, and most of all she looks very much alive.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Five Minute Man is listening to the radio. A body has been found hit by a train. No name, no details, not yet. The police will be covering the angles—they’ll talk to people who knew Dwight Smith. They’ll wonder why he went and sat on those train tracks. Then things will start to look odd. Things won’t line up. Time of death, for a start. Dwight Smith’s car for another.

He sits in the lounge on the couch he doesn’t like or dislike, and he waits, and as he waits he thinks back to three days ago, two days ago, last night. The referendum, the conversation, the spark that started his evolution. Of course he thinks about it—he’s thought about little else. The Old Him. The New Him. Both have evolved into the New New Him, and the way the New New Him sees it is like this—now that the death penalty has passed, he is allowed to kill people who deserve to die. Last night was the justice system in action at the beginning of a crime rather than at the end. Last night was putting a Band-Aid on your finger to stop the splinter from going in.

Dwight Smith was living in that god-awful halfway house in town, the one that housed a selection of ex–drug addicts, ex-rapists, and current crazy people. Fuckups from every walk of life. Even the building was a fuckup—a couple of stories of weatherboards covered in mold and flaky paint, a garden so dry it looked more likely to catch fire than the house. The place was run by an ex-junkie and ex-convict who was now clean and converted and who tried selling religion to those who came through his door.

He drove to that place two days ago. He was a man who didn’t care but who found himself caring more the closer he got. Dwight Smith didn’t deserve a second chance, because the Five Minute
man wasn’t getting one. It wasn’t fair. Killing Dwight Smith was like giving the Old Him a gift, which was ironic because the Old Him would have hated the man he has become.

The house was how he recalled it. Warped weatherboards painted green, rusty guttering painted the same shade of red as the roof, a big wooden porch silvered in the sun. There were people sitting in the front yard drinking beer. A few cars up the driveway. He couldn’t wait right outside the house, not with the beer drinkers classing up the neighborhood, so he drove around a little, passed by the same house a few times, then parked a couple of doors down. His persistence paid off. In the middle of the afternoon Dwight Smith climbed into one of those cars and the adventure started.

Smith was working at a service station. He started work at four p.m. and he finished at midnight. When he finished he visited a massage parlor, spent an hour upstairs, then reemerged a happier man. The Five Minute Man followed Smith back home, and he kept thinking
W
hy should.

Why should life be okay for Dwight Smith?

Yesterday was looking a repeat of the day before, but then Kelly Summers showed up to get gas. Smith saw her purely by chance. Christchurch is like that—purely by chance happens a lot in small cities.

Smith walked off the forecourt, got into his car, and followed her home. The Five Minute Man, well, he followed them too, and in that time he was very aware of not calling the police, was very aware he could feel the engine inside him running, the hiccups were further apart, the fuel lines were clear, all systems were go—all he had to do was put his foot down. It was ten o’clock. It was dark. It was overcast. There was no natural light anywhere, only what was provided by streetlights and other houses. It was perfect breaking and entering and raping conditions.
A good night for getting what was owing to me,
which is what Smith said five years ago. Smith sat in his car for fifteen minutes doing nothing, maybe thinking, thinking the kind of thoughts a man like Smith would think. Then those thoughts led him out of his car and onto the
property. He put his face against one window of Kelly Summers’s house, stared inside, then moved on to the next. He made his way around to the back. He was carrying a crowbar.

He didn’t come back.

The Five Minute man sat in his car only a few houses away with the car engine running, and the engine inside him running, and he knew what the right thing to do was. He needed to call the police.
Why should
had nothing to do with it anymore. A woman’s life was on the line.

Only the police would never get there in time. He didn’t have a weapon, but felt surprise would be a good enough one. He got out of his car and moved around to the back of the house. There was a gate. It was six feet high and the same height as the neighboring fence. It was closed and when he reached over to open it, he found it was locked. Smith must have climbed it. So he climbed it too. At the back of the house there was an open window. The wood around the lock was splintered away. Locks were strong, but window frames and door frames often weren’t. He didn’t know it then, but Summers hadn’t heard the lock break because she had been in the shower.

The Five Minute Man went inside with a pretty good idea of what he was going to find, and he found exactly that—it was taking place in the bathroom. Kelly was face down on the floor. Smith was crouching behind her. They were both facing the other way.

Then Dwight sensed him. He twisted around and looked up. “Who the fuck,” he said, but that was as far as he got. Those were his final words on this earth, not exactly words to be inscribed on a gravestone, but they were the ones he owned right before Death owned him too. A man is easier to subdue when he’s naked with his dick in his hand. Smith was knocked unconscious and then dumped in the bathtub.

The woman had made her way into the corner of the bathroom. She was sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall. She was staring at him, her eyes wet, her hands were shaking, she was trying to cover herself.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Thank God,” she answered. “Thank God you saved me,” she said, and she was crying, and there was snot streaming down her face, and her cheeks were flushed and she was scared and confused and grateful and a whole bunch of other things he didn’t know how to feel anymore.

He handed her her robe. She took it quickly and covered herself with it.

“I know you,” she said. “I’m sure I know you.” She did know him, only he looks different these days. He’s lost weight. He’s bald now, and there’s a big scar on the side of his head, and she couldn’t get there, couldn’t put a name to the face. “You’re a cop,” she said.

“No,” he said. “Not anymore.”

“He was supposed to be in jail,” she said, then she started to slowly shake her head. He knew what she was doing. She was doing the addition. She was trying to figure out how many years had gone by and the math was all out of whack. Then she started to look angry. Her face tightened and she clenched her jaw. The arithmetic and shock were giving way to the reality of what almost just happened.

“I’m going to call the police,” he told her, and he meant it. He had wanted to kill Dwight Smith, but this would have to do. He couldn’t kill this man in front of this woman. Smith would go to jail. In a few years he would be somebody else’s problem. The engine was still running, but it had slowed down. Calling the police was the next move.

“Just who are you?” she asked again. “And why are you here?”

“I was following him.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Why was anything,” he said.

She didn’t understand his answer. “You followed him here.”

“Yes.”

“You saved my life,” she told him. “He was five seconds away from raping me.”

He said nothing.

“None of it makes sense,” she said. “I don’t understand, I mean, he’s supposed to be in jail, I’m sure of it, and why were you following him? How did you know he was going to come after me?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Then why were you following him?”

“Why was anything,” he said again.

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “You’re going to be okay.”

She thanked him over and over as she sat in the corner of the bathroom. What had happened was sinking in. Then it came to her—who he was. It didn’t make sense to her. Of course it didn’t. Then she asked, “How long will he get in jail this time?”

He shrugged. Dwight Smith had broken into her house, he had assaulted her, but he hadn’t raped her. The justice system was like a lottery sometimes. “I don’t know. Two years. Five years. Ten. I don’t know.”

“Can I get cleaned up first? I don’t . . . don’t want to be naked when the police arrive.”

“Of course,” he said.

She would look at him and she would look at Smith, but mostly she would just look at the spot on the floor where, if things hadn’t changed, she would now be pinned beneath a man and his knife. She didn’t look like she was about to get up any time soon. She was nodding. She wasn’t saying anything and she still kept looking at the floor, but she was nodding.

Then it came. A different question. Not too dissimilar to
Why should,
close enough, almost, to be related. She asked
What if.

“What if we didn’t call them right away?” Silence followed the question, and he let it hang there, allowing her to get her thoughts together. “What if . . . I mean, I mean, what if you gave me five minutes alone with him?” She looked up at him, and there were no more tears, all her tears had dried up and so had the snot, but her cheeks were still flushed. She looked angry. Only there was something else too. Something in her eyes. She was looking into
the future. She was looking five minutes into the future and she was seeing what one human being was capable of doing to another, and she was liking it. And what did the New Him see? The New Him saw him evolving into a New New Him. The engine was red-lining.

“Would you do that?” she asked.

It was a good question. An excellent question. It got him thinking. It got him thinking that in his twenty years as a cop he’d put away a lot of bad people, and in that time he’d had a lot of good people ask him that exact question. It was always five minutes. They wanted five minutes alone with the man that had hurt them or their family. It was never ten minutes. Or half an hour. Or an hour. Always five. He knew her five minutes probably weren’t going to look like self-defense. He knew it could lead to problems.

“Yes,” he said, because what did he care? Who was he to say no?

Even so, he knew he didn’t want to go to jail. He didn’t want her to go to jail either. He weighed that up against Dwight Smith’s future—he had been released for good behavior, and he would be released again for the same.

“If you want five minutes, you can have them,” he said, and he figured she deserved them. She had earned them.

“And then?” she asked.

“And then what happens happens,” he said. “And we deal with it.”

“I hate him,” she said, looking at Dwight Smith. “I used to think of him as Cowboy Dwight. Even though he’s been in jail all these years, he still keeps me awake. Sometimes I dream about what he did to me. Other times I dream about what I want to do to him. Will killing him help me sleep better?”

“It won’t make you sleep any worse,” he said, and he believed it.

“Then what? When the police come, will they arrest me? They’ll know it wasn’t self-defense.”

“The police won’t come,” he said. “Dwight Smith will disappear. I promise you they’ll never find him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said, but of course the car . . . the damn car would make a liar of him.

So he gave Kelly Summers her five minutes, in which Smith went from being unconscious to dead, then they got him loaded into the back of Smith’s car, and everything was working fine until it wasn’t. Ten minutes short of where he wanted to go, Dwight Smith’s car broke down.

Will the police go to the service station where Smith worked? Yes, of course they will. Will there be surveillance footage? Yes, there will be. Nothing conclusive. That’s what he told Kelly Summers. She just has to play her part when the police come. He told her that her bedroom window had been broken. He told her what to say. However it won’t be enough. He has to make the police dismiss her as a suspect.

All those years . . . all those people asking the same question—he is beginning to think that is the answer to all of this. That’s what will keep the police away from Kelly Summers.
When you find the guy who did this, just give me five minutes alone with them. Please.

Please
.

His answer was always the same, a sorrowful sorry, but he couldn’t do that, he understood their pain, but that wasn’t the way justice was done.

No? What gives that guy/bastard/asshole/son of
a bitch more rights than my dead daughter/son/brother/friend/sister/parent? My daughter/son/brother/friend/sister/parent will be in the ground forever, and the guy who put them there will be free in fifteen years to roam the earth. How does that make sense? Why should it be that way?

Why should anything.

He knows what he has to do.