The Killing Hour (14 page)

‘Look, Inspector, what you’re doing is crazy. Think about it. You’ve brought me …’

‘Shut up, Feldman,’ he says.

‘Just think about what …’

‘Are you deaf? The comic deaf man? Is that it?’

Jesus, why is he even bothering looking for a confession? He ought to just do what he came out here to do. Go home. Get drunk. Sleep it off. Get drunk again in the morning. Get drunk every morning between now and the end. That’s the real truth Feldman came close to hitting. Stay drunk then maybe none of this will seem real any more. It can all have been a very bad dream.

‘What about the door to my house?’ Feldman asks. ‘You know somebody broke in. You know somebody trashed my room. Why would I cut her breast off and leave it on my bed? Why would I let you inside knowing that? If I was going to kill somebody I’d hide all the evidence.’

‘You wanted a souvenir, Feldman. Your type always does. And your type are always so goddamn cocky you never think we’re going to show up.’

‘And the house? The break-in?’

‘You trashed it in an effort to draw attention away from yourself. You think by saying all this nonsense it diverts suspicion away from you. That’s what you were counting on if you ever got caught. Come on, Feldman, I’m getting sick and tired of your bullshit.’

‘You’re saying I’m cocky enough to assume you’ll never show up, and at the same time I trashed my house knowing that you would. See? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Here’s what I know, Feldman. I know you’ve lied to me. You told me you didn’t know these two women when you did. You told me you weren’t at their homes when you were. I know these two women died horribly. I know you’re into storing body parts. I know you removed your name and phone number from Kathy’s house. I found it on your bed. They weren’t innocent, though, were they, Feldman? They deserved it. They mocked you or rejected you or looked at you funny. Or did they simply forget to smile when you stood in line behind them at the supermarket?’

‘It doesn’t matter, does it?’

‘What?’

‘It doesn’t matter what I say. You’ve already made up your mind.’

‘So you’re confessing?’

‘I’m never going to confess to something I didn’t do. If that’s what you’re waiting for then you’re wasting your time. Why don’t we just get this over with so we can stop playing your petty little game?’

‘Maybe you’re right, Feldman. Maybe I have wasted too much of my time.’

He stands up and points the shotgun at him.
Think, goddamn it, think. You’re a police officer, your job is to uphold the law. Is that what you’re doing? It is? Well, why don’t you take a look at yourself?

Keeping the shotgun level he moves to the door and slides it open. The cold wind sweeps into the cabin, chilling Landry to the bone. It chills his mind too, and in these few frozen seconds he hates himself for what he’s going to do before the night is over.

No. No, no, no. He’s gone through this already, he’s gone through this and justified it.

Sure you’ve justified it. But you’re hiding something too, aren’t you? The change of clothes. The Bible. You knew you were coming out here tonight. It’s not that you came out here with no plan. You came out here with a bad one.

The change of clothes and the Bible doesn’t prove anything, not really. The leap between arresting somebody and driving them out into the forest at night and shooting them is still a giant one to make.

And you don’t think you’re making it?

He looks up at Feldman. The anger is starting to return but not all of it is directed at this murderer, yet to direct some of it at himself is detrimental. He hates Feldman. He hates Feldman because all of this is his fault. He hates Feldman for forcing him to do this.

Worst of all, he hates himself.

23

There’s no blood on my chair or on any of the walls or on the pine-needle stained glass door, so maybe Landry was telling the truth when he said he hasn’t been out here since finding the dead girl in the bathtub. Or maybe he’s lying and isn’t in the habit of shooting people indoors. Things would be easier for him if he took me for a walk in the woods. It’ll be like dragging my own cross through town.

‘You’re going to feel empty when Cyris is found. You’ll never be able to forgive yourself for killing an innocent man. Will you turn yourself in when that happens?’

He doesn’t answer me, just stands next to the door with both hands on the shotgun. The look on his face suggests he doesn’t want to be out here either. The gun reminds me that I’m just a homicide in progress, tomorrow’s statistic. My heart is pumping so loudly I can barely hear the rain. My stomach is so weak the fluids inside have created a cesspool of fear that makes me want to throw up and soil myself at the same time. I’m going to die.

‘Come on, Feldman. It’s time to go,’ he says, and he’s the one who sounds as if he’s been defeated.

‘No. No, please, think about what you’re doing.’

‘I am. And you’d be doing the same thing if you were in my shoes. Now come on, get up.’

I try to get to my feet but the angle of the chair and the way I’m buried in it makes things difficult, as do the handcuffs. The springs in the chair cut into me as I wiggle forward. When I finally get to my feet I’m puffing but it’s too cold in here to sweat. He gestures me towards the door where I pause looking out at what Mother Nature has to offer me on my final night. The wind is racing in and gripping us both tightly. My legs are shaking from fear and cold and my teeth are starting to chatter.

‘No jacket?’ I ask.

‘I’m sure you can survive without one.’

‘I thought I was supposed to be the funny one. Can I at least make an appeal?’

He shakes his head as he reaches into his pocket for his cigarettes. ‘No.’

‘You said there was no forced entry. Doesn’t that suggest that they knew the killer?’

‘That’s what I said all along.’

‘You misunderstand.’

‘No. I don’t.’

I look at his gloved hands. If anybody finds my body and links it to this cabin they’ll never find any of his prints. Once again he offers me a cigarette.

Once again I shake my head. ‘Those things will kill you.’

He smirks at my comment, then slowly shakes his head. ‘Goddamn it, Feldman, don’t you ever shut up?’

‘I can’t help it,’ I hear myself saying, and I really can’t. ‘But I guess now’s as good a time as any to try one.’

He tosses me a cigarette and I hurt my wrists plucking it from the air. I’ll smoke the whole lot if it will win me some time.

‘Light?’

He throws the lighter. This guy is taking no chances. He’s not going to get anywhere near me. Early in the evening I was intimidated by his authority. Now it’s the gun that demands my respect. I hold the cigarette tightly between my lips, raise the blue lighter, fumble with the catch, then light the end. The flame works but the cigarette doesn’t.

‘You need to breathe in,’ he says, and he almost sounds compassionate, as if teaching a five-year-old how to ride a bike.

I don’t know exactly what to expect but my mouth is quickly filled with thick smoke. It catches in my throat as if I’ve just swallowed a wad of tissues. I start gagging. Smoke is drawn into my lungs and smoke and snot gush from my nose. The cigarette falls from my mouth but clings to my lower lip. I brush it onto the ground. A small tentacle of smoke whispers from the end.

Landry is motionless, watching me with an emptiness in his eyes that suggests nobody is home. Nothing here, it seems, amuses or angers him. He looks lost.

‘You don’t have to do this.’

‘I’m almost sorry I have to kill you.’

‘
You’re
sorry?’

Suddenly he seems to snap out of whatever daze he’s in. ‘I was right about you, Feldman. You’re a real smartarse.’ He waves the gun at me. ‘Now tidy up that mess.’

I pick up the cigarette and flick it towards the fireplace. I pause, trying to think of an action or a word that will help me, but he pushes me onto the small porch by jabbing me with the shotgun. I put one foot forward and start walking. When I step down onto the mud it feels like I’m being acupunctured with needles that have been kept in the freezer overnight. The cold wind drives those needles deep into my flesh. My wet clothes flap against my skin.

Landry orders me forward by prodding me again. As we move past his car he leans in and grabs a torch, all the time keeping the gun trained on me. He tosses me the torch, then directs me into the belt of trees. Damn trees. I’ve seen more trees this week than in my entire life. I can’t see exactly where I’m supposed to be heading.

‘Stop stalling, Feldman, I’m sure you can find a path in there.’

I point the torch into the inky blackness, spotlighting branches and leaves but not a whole lot more – certainly no dirt path. I head forward anyway, figuring Landry will stop me if I’m too far off the track. I step between a couple of birch trees, struggling to cover my face from the branches that claw at me like dirty fingers. I manage two steps before becoming lost. Can’t see the forest for the trees. Well, in this case I can’t see the forest for the dark. The ground turns from mud to hard-packed dirt and roots. I move the torch around and start to walk slower, not to preserve time but in order to concentrate on each footstep.

‘You’ve got the wrong man, Landry.’

‘I doubt that.’

‘Shouldn’t you at least hold off killing me?’

‘I’m a busy man.’

‘You could just tie me up. At least until you have a few more facts.’

‘I’ve all the facts I need.’

‘You’re wrong. Tie me up and when you find you’re wrong I promise not to tell anybody.’ I really do promise it. The river nearby is getting louder. ‘Think about what you’re doing.’

‘I am thinking. I’m thinking about your next victim.’

I don’t know how far we’ve come. Obviously Landry doesn’t want my body found near the cabin. I’m picking he has a nice location out here for me. Maybe a big hole. The colder I get the more I lose any comprehension of time. It could have been half an hour now. We could have walked a couple of kilometres. Kathy told me that time and distance slip away when you’re being dragged through a bunch of trees towards your death. Well, she was right.

‘I was right about a lot of things, wasn’t I, Charlie?’ Kathy asks, and she’s walking along with me now, gliding easily through the trees.

‘You were right,’ I admit silently, and she starts to nod.

‘Do you remember what I told you?’

I remember. ‘You told me you owed me everything. We were heading away from Luciana’s house. It couldn’t have been long before she died.’

‘Oh, it wasn’t that quick, Charlie. You dropped me off home before she died. Do you remember what we were discussing?’

‘We were heading towards your house, we were talking about going to the police. I remember driving past the paddock and you pointing out the black van parked opposite. Seeing it gave me the creeps. We both looked towards the trees as we went by.’

‘Dali’s trees,’ she says.

‘Dali’s trees.’

‘What the hell are you on about?’ Landry asks, but I don’t answer. I keep walking, scraping my hands and arms on the branches, shivering hard.

My mind tries drifting to a time where the world was safe and we didn’t know that Evil was a timebomb waiting for us. Then it drifts far enough so I’m no longer walking through the trees but turning left into Tranquillity Drive and Kathy is no longer a ghost but flesh and blood that was warm to touch. All I knew about Tranquillity Drive was I couldn’t afford to live there. Looking at her house, I knew Kathy was rich. That was fine by me. The house was a two-storey place, a tad more mansion than townhouse. Maybe ten years old. Dozens of shrubs dotted the front section and there were patches of roses in bloom. At that time of night they were black roses. The trees were black too. Like the birds sitting in them.

This is the house I wanted to live in, with Kathy. All my life I had imagined backing out of my driveway into a neighbourhood where Mercedes cars littered the street like cheap Toyotas. Kathy was the woman I wanted to be kissing goodbye as I left for work in the morning on my way to being a brain surgeon or an astronaut instead of an underpaid high school teacher who is the enemy of dysfunctional teenagers.

I walked her inside because her husband wasn’t home.

‘He was off screwing some bimbo,’ her ghost says, ‘and I told you he would be back at some point for some fresh clothes before work. You were glad to hear I was having marital difficulties.’

‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ I say, but something about it bugs me. The same something that bugged me when I read the newspaper this morning.

‘It wasn’t your fault. You helped me check the house and it was nearly five o’clock when I walked you outside. I wrote your name and number down. You left then, and I was dead.’

‘You weren’t dead.’

‘And you’re splitting hairs.’

I walked backwards down the driveway to my car, watching her watching me. We waved then she stepped inside. I heard the door lock and I would never again see her alive. I climbed into my car. I was yawning and dozing, just driving along with the windows down and the breeze coming through, and I had this feeling of normality that made me feel ill. When I drove past the paddock I already had an expectation of what I would see – Cyris stalking through the grass towards the road.

What I saw was worse. When I drove past the paddock …

‘The van was gone,’ Kathy finishes, and then she’s gone too.

I break between two trees and see the flashing movement of the river flowing quickly over and around large round boulders, the water white and violent. The rain is hard here, unsheltered by the trees. Huge drops pluck the dirt next to the river, sending out small splashes of mud. It hammers on my head and shoulders and drives those angry needles of ice deeper into my soul. Landry’s footsteps are loud behind me, and each time I wonder if I will hear another. It would have been warmer had he just shot me back at the cabin. All this would be over and I wouldn’t have to be scared or talk to ghosts.

‘Hold it there,’ Landry says.

I stop walking and study the landscape. Black trees, black ground, black water, black sky. This is what colour the end must be.