The Killing Hour (3 page)

‘You’ve …’ was all she could say before breaking into loud sobs. She collapsed with her forehead pressed to my arm. Her skin felt like wet clay. She was shuddering, choking on her sobs and the beginnings of small words. I was half out of my seatbelt when she pulled away and doubled her efforts to speak.

‘You’ve … got …’

I put my hands on her shoulders and told her to take a deep breath.

‘You should have gone straight to the police,’ Jo says.

‘I didn’t have the option.’

‘Sure you did.’

I can see how she would think that. You can either choose to do nothing or choose to do something, and either way it’s the wrong thing. ‘She wasn’t the one in trouble.’

‘Jesus, Charlie, are you saying you were with both of these women from the news?’

‘Look, it’s not like I chose any of this.’

It was dawning on me that the fluid on Luciana’s chest was actual blood. Like that B negative or O positive stuff that drips out of dead people. It gave her credibility, so when she pointed out my side window with hands that were bleeding and shaking and told me her friend Kathy was out there being held by a crazed lunatic I had no reason not to believe her. There was no time to get the police. I moved the car so I was out of sight of the trees. I twisted my body and pocketed my keys then told her to stay where she was. She asked if I had a weapon. All I had was whatever was in the boot of my car. That turned out to be a car jack, a spare wheel, a bike rack, a tyre iron, and no shotgun. I settled for the tyre iron. It was cold and heavy and boosted my confidence.

The night was twenty degrees but each of them cold as I strode from the car. I wanted to be Action Man but I felt more like the actor nobody recognised in an old
Star Trek
episode – Crewman Random who went away with Captain Kirk but never came back.

Monday was twelve minutes old when I stepped into the paddock. It was about to become longer. Elastic hours. Even now, sitting opposite Jo, they’re still stretching.

4

All Landry can do as the two detectives talk to him is nod and nod even though he hardly hears them. His mind is elsewhere, not with the words but with the pictures. He closes his eyes and he can see both women. The pictures are exposed perfectly and full of vibrant and violent colours. They’re real Kodak moments.

He realises he’s just been asked a question and nods slowly, wondering what he’s just answered. The detective who has spoken turns away, and within seconds the other follows suit. Alone, he turns his back to the house and leans against his car. The air is cool but his skin still feels hot.

The sun is falling from the sky and nighttime is nearly here. He can hear a dozen lawnmowers closing out the day in the distance. Music is booming from a neighbour’s house, the sort of generic pop every teenager is recording these days for every other teenager. He remembers a time when he used to love suburbia, but now it’s just another body count. The neighbours have gathered on their front lawns to watch the show. They’re thinking the circus has just come to town. And it’s free. They’re inviting family and friends over. With neighbours like this, murder will always stay in fashion.

The street is being canvassed, but the questions come mostly from the neighbours –
What happened?, Do you know who did it?,
and most of all,
Tell me all the gory details.
Everybody questioned wants a piece of the action. They want a story they can tell at work or on the golf course.
Hey, Frank, guess what? Those two chicks that were blood-letted during the week? Hand me that nine iron. Well, you’re never going to believe this, but I knew one of them.
It makes them Mr Popularity for half a week. It makes them the centre of attention. Makes them wish their neighbours were getting killed more often.

He stands in the street and absorbs the sounds and the smells and the sights. He loves summer, but not this summer, and not in this city. He dreams of summer in another country with beaches of white sand, and without blood patterns, where the only crime would be some fat son of a bitch in a thong blocking his light. Is that such an insane thought? Is he crazy for wanting that life? Soon this murder will be nothing but a statistic, a passing sensation. People will wake up and go to work like any other day. They’ll work nine to five and earn a paycheque. They’ll mow lawns, cook dinners, men will come around and take away the rubbish. These two women should be remembered for ever, and it should never be forgotten their lives were stolen away from them.

He can’t wait to get his hands on Feldman. No doubt there’ll be the same sorry bullshit about how he was molested in kindergarten and how his parents wouldn’t buy him a sandpit and he simply couldn’t repress the rage any longer. He’ll feel mighty bad about it so he’ll apologise profusely, leaving the judge with no other option but to blame society. In the end it all adds up to a short jail term.

He pulls his cigarettes from his pocket and looks at the warning on the side of the packet telling him they all taste like cancer. His stomach starts to growl. He thinks of what his doctor told him less than a week ago about kicking the habit. It came with the news that it was time for him to put his affairs in order.

That’s why this summer is the worst of his life. It will also be the last. Six days ago he was miserable, without long-term goals, but he still had plenty of time to make them. Thirty minutes sitting with the doctor changed all of that. Now he’s racing to his grave. The smoking will help him get there quicker but quitting isn’t going to give him his life back, so why bother? It seems pointless not to enjoy every one he can fit in between the doctor’s warning last week and his eulogy coming up in the winter. Jesus, forty-two is too young to be sitting in your doctor’s office with your hands gripped tightly against the armrests and your skin itchy from your clothes and damp with sweat. It’s too young to be told you’ve just drawn the short straw in the cancer lottery. Too young to feel your stomach turn upside down with the news that you’re going to die and there isn’t a thing you can do about it except try the run-of-the-mill chemo that’s going to make you feel even worse and probably isn’t going to help because the cancer is too advanced. He got through it, he sat patiently and asked the questions the doctor was hoping he wouldn’t ask and in the end he got the figure he didn’t want to get. Six months. Tops. With chemo. And that’s if he gives up the good life. This whole last week he’s been trying to wake up. Now he just wishes he could go back to sleep.

He tucks the cigarettes back into his pocket. He’s angry with himself for smoking them for so damn long. Other people smoke them for ever and get away with it. He smokes for fifteen years and now he’s getting chemo – one poison to fight another. He’s angry at life. Angry all the justice in his world was pissed away so long ago. Angry that the real cancer comes in the form of people like Charlie Feldman. Why the hell can’t God start correcting His mistakes?

He pulls his notebook out and stares at the cardboard cover, trying to get his mind back on track. The pills he’s been prescribed to take care of the side effects of chemo aren’t helping. He feels nauseous every morning and tired every afternoon. And things are only going to get worse.

He flips open the notebook and glances at the small notes he’s jotted down. Blood has been found at the scene but only blood from the victims. The second scene has blood from both victims along with blood yet to be identified. The killer’s no doubt. It was found in the lounge and in the bathroom.

They’ve ruled out burglary – cash and jewellery have been found at each scene. Both victims have fingernail marks in the palms of their hands, indicating their fists were clenched tightly as they died. That means Charlie Feldman made them suffer. Trace evidence has been vacuumed from each of the rooms as well as the road and the driveway – carpet and clothing fibres and hair. They’ll take days to process and every piece will strengthen the case against Feldman.

Yet all of it’s irrelevant. Only one piece of evidence really matters – the pad he found beneath the victim’s bed.

5

Monday is ending and I’m as scared as hell. The air is heavy with hayfever – I can feel it crawling into the back of my nose. A light breeze comes through the open window but nothing is normal on this normal night because I know what’s really out there. I know about the Real World. I’ve seen some of its secrets, some of its pleasures, some of its evils. I glance at my watch and see I’ve been at Jo’s for an hour. My unfinished coffee is cold and its surface has developed a skin. The ghosts are back, and though I cannot see them I know they’re nearby. They always will be. I stand up and close the window.

Jo’s backyard begins to shimmer. The trees become Dali’s trees. The grass grows and turns brown. The flowers disappear and become patches of stinging nettle. Suddenly I’m back there trying to find a woman I didn’t know. I was halfway to the trees when she screamed. I ran forward, the keys in my pocket swinging back and forth. I put my hand down to mute them.

It’s easy to see where I went wrong. My first mistake was thinking I could help. I was still living in the same world where the tiny forest of trees had been planted, but the world they had grown into was the Real World. There were no flashing bells, lights or whistles to signify my crossing over, only darkness and a small forest where Death waited and Evil waited and where I would soon wait with them.

The screaming ended and I didn’t know why. I could hardly see a thing. Twigs snapped beneath my feet. Branches scraped my arms and tried to hold me back, tried to save me. My foot wedged beneath a root and I fell. The tyre iron bounced into the darkness.

The stillness among the trees carried his laughter to me and it took me a few seconds to realise it wasn’t directed at me. Behind the laughter came soft sounds of whimpering. I couldn’t see her but I knew how she looked. She would be bloody, her clothes torn and her skin grazed and ripped. It made me angry. I got to my feet and continued on until I came to the small clearing.

A torch leaning on the ground pointed at her. She was fully dressed, bound to a thick tree by thick rope. Her blouse was ripped open, revealing a bra with a broken strap. She wasn’t gagged but she wasn’t talking either.

The man had long black knotted hair, which covered the side of his face, and a tan that was comparable to a skeleton. He was a solid guy, maybe around two metres. On the ground was a satchel. He crouched and unzipped it. He pulled out a knife and tossed it in the air catching it by the blade. Then he dragged it from his fist so it sliced into him. He pumped his hand so that blood ran from the cut. Then he walked his bloody fingers over her face. He cut her remaining bra strap and the speed at which he handled the knife was frightening.

I was about to move forward when he started speaking, scratching at the side of his face with talon nails. He asked how she wanted it. She shook her head and tried pressing herself into the tree, tried to make herself invisible against the trunk. He grunted something, then bent down and returned the knife to the satchel before pulling out a metal stake and a hammer. I focused on his torch. It looked like it might weigh about the same as the tyre iron I’d lost. It was a long shot but it was all I had to work with.

He mumbled again before putting his hands on his hips and thrusting his pelvis forward. I felt an anger I’d never felt before building up inside of me. I wanted to hurt him. A lot. I felt like I was in some bizarre game show and up for grabs were all these prizes: heroism, fame, maybe even a movie. If I failed the fame would be unknown and short-lived, and I wouldn’t even be a dead hero. I would just be dead and the game-show host wouldn’t even pronounce my name correctly.

Then he started laughing. He told her she could scream all she wanted, that he wanted her to scream. He swore constantly. It was then that I heard his name. Cyris. It made me think of country singers and cowboy boots and bad haircuts.

‘You need to go to the police,’ Jo says, bringing her backyard into focus after I tell her what happened. I turn away from the window and stare at her. I’ve lost track of how many times she’s told me now. I just wish she could come up with a new angle. ‘You have no choice.’

I think about the way the bodies were found. I think about racing through the streets of Christchurch. ‘They won’t believe me.’

‘You think I do?’

‘Don’t you?’

Jo looks down at her coffee cup. It’s the kind of body language only a blind person could miss. Her cup is empty but there must be something awe-inspiring in it because she doesn’t look up at me for another minute. When she does her eyes are brimming with tears.

‘I believe you, Charlie. I believe you had something to do with their deaths.’

I move back to the sofa. My coffee hasn’t got any warmer. ‘Something to do with their deaths. That doesn’t exactly sound like you’re on my side.’

‘What am I supposed to think? You’ve come here out of the blue, you’re covered in cuts and bruises, you tell me you were with two dead women. You have to go to the police, Charlie, yet you’re avoiding it. It’s as though you’re deliberately making the wrong choice.’

Ah yes, the Real World. A world full of ghosts and monsters – and choices. I can’t go to the police because they’ll think I did it. Hell, even Jo thinks I did it. Cyris drove a metal stake into Luciana’s chest and then into Kathy’s. Somewhere during the night his insanity rubbed off on me.

I slam my coffee cup onto the table so that its cold contents splash me. ‘Are you deaf? Jesus, Jo, they’ll put me in prison.’

‘Calm down, Charlie.’

‘Calm down? I am calm!’

‘If you won’t call the police, I will,’ she says, getting up.

I put both hands out in front of me as if to ward off her suggestion. ‘I’m sorry, Jo, I’m sorry,’ I say, trying my best to sound it. ‘Please, don’t call them, okay? Please, not yet. Just let me convince you.’

‘Of what, Charlie? That this Cyris of yours exists? That you killed him too?’

And there lies the problem. There lies the reason for her doubt. I killed Cyris. I killed him but that didn’t stop him. Didn’t stop him at all. Not in the Real World because there bad things happen.