The Killing Hour (5 page)

I use the remote to steer away from the menu and go to the local channels. A TV evangelist appears telling us all that God’s strapped for cash, and how, with our credit cards, we can help Him out of his bind. Maybe the repo guy is after Him. Maybe Jesus has racked up some gambling debts. I skip channels until I find a news broadcast. It’s live from the scene. Kathy’s house is swaying around because the camera has zoomed in beyond the operator’s control. As yet the police have no suspects though they do have a few leads they’re confident will wrap the case up. Apart from the obligatory statements from the police, the report is similar to the one I didn’t want to watch earlier. Gone are rehashed interviews with family and friends. Added are pictures of the bodies being removed within black plastic bags. I turn off the TV and lie back, listening to the letters buzzing outside, all except for the K. The concrete block walls drown out the traffic noise but not enough of it.

We lie there surrounded by the sounds of the night. I can hear Jo shifting her body, trying to get comfortable. I don’t talk to her and she doesn’t mumble through her gag. I’m unable to switch off my mind. I can’t stop thinking about Kathy and Luciana and Cyris. I can’t stop thinking how the shape in the bodybag on TV was more than just a shape back when this day started. I can’t stop thinking about Jo. Things are bad. And as Monday sets about turning to Tuesday I have a feeling they’re only going to get worse.

7

Detective Inspector Landry looks out over the sea of cameras and reporters glued to the edges of Tranquillity Drive where this modern-day-Christchurch drama is unfolding. All the streets in this subdivision have similar names. Serenity Street. Harmony Drive. It’s as if the council sent in a psychiatrist tanked up on Prozac to name them all.

Watching the media, he thinks about his cancer. He decides that learning he was dying takes the award for worst day of his life, making this one the second. Cancer and the media – he hates them both. Thinking of the black death running through his veins makes him tired, irritable, and he suddenly has the desire to set fire to every camera and microphone within a kilometre radius. Everywhere he looks a reporter is talking to a camera or fixing their hair in front of a mirror. He wonders how attractive they’d look if he took them single file through the bedroom and showed them first-hand what rocked Charlie Feldman’s world.

He puts his hand in his pocket and clutches the piece of evidence that is keeping him calm. So far he’s the only person who knows about it. He hasn’t told anybody about the bloodstained piece of paper because when he’s surrounded by news vans and reporters he knows a media leak is highly possible. Already they seem to know more than they ought to.

The cancer has been demanding all day that he makes this his last case, and finally he’s starting to listen. Anyway he’s going to be busy over the next six months, his days filled up by slow dying. He wants to finish his career on a high note. He wants what he’s never had in his eighteen years in the police force – appreciation, recognition, respect. He wants to close this case by himself. What the hell else does he have to look forward to? He lives almost alone, his only companions a pot-plant cactus and a disease. His biggest expenses are the two poisons he pumps into his body – the chemo and the cigarettes. One will keep him alive for a while longer. The other will keep him serene.

He takes his hand off the plastic bag and peels his shirt away from his body, letting some air flow beneath it. He can’t remember ever sweating this much. He isn’t sure whether it’s the heat, the cancer or the medication. At night the sweats are cold. This used to be his favourite time of the day because normally he’d be sipping a beer and watching TV. Now he’s one statistic trying to solve another. In the distance a dog is barking, and a few moments later it is joined by another and another.

The voices around him fall silent as two men carrying a stretcher leave the house and walk carefully towards a black stationwagon. He can almost hear the cameras rolling. The shape of her body pushes at the sides of the bodybag. The bag looks too small. This woman was full of life, she had dreams and memories, she had a career, she had a husband. It makes no sense that a woman with so much can fit into a black zippered bag so small. He wants to look away but can’t. None of them can. They all stand transfixed, silent as they pay their respects to the victim and promise they will find who did this.

Once she is loaded into the stationwagon they all turn away and carry on working. Landry smears more sweat away from his face with his palm. Dozens of tiny insects fill the air in front of him. He swipes a hand through the little bastards and a gap appears in the middle, then the cloud reforms itself. Where death goes the insects and bugs are quick to follow. That’s the nature of nature. He’s thankful that the sun has gone but it’ll be back tomorrow as strong as ever. He closes his eyes and pictures his body covered in melanomas. The spots look like small bee stings.

Everybody has been spoken to, at both crime scenes. Longer interviews will take place tomorrow. Every contact in the address and appointment books will be questioned. At the other house a witness reported seeing a white Honda parked up the driveway of the dead woman’s house in the early hours of the morning, but couldn’t remember the exact time and hadn’t noted the registration number. Nor did he feel the need to explain what in the hell he was doing looking up Luciana Young’s driveway in the middle of the night. Probably just being neighbourly.

Family members are being interviewed, some in their homes, others at the police station. Homicide investigations start with the boyfriend or husband and the spiral then grows wider. Nine times out of ten they’re the ones who committed the crimes. Was Feldman intimate with either or both of the victims?

He imagines the victim writing Feldman’s name and number before she died. Maybe she wanted to report him for something. Maybe she was humouring him into thinking she might call him for a date. Could be any number of reasons. Could be she actually liked the guy.

He watches the body driven away. The media part as the insects did only minutes earlier, then close back up as the stationwagon moves through. Tomorrow only about a quarter of these people will show up. In the kitchen he finds a phone book and looks up Feldman’s name and address.

Back outside he lights up a cigarette to help keep the demons at bay. As he drives through the media blockade, the camera lights blind him; by the time the journalists make way for him he’s already onto his second cigarette. His cellphone rings once on the way to Feldman’s house. It’s a return call from the Land Transport and Safety Authority confirming that Charlie Feldman owns a white Honda. He jots down the plate number. When he reaches the address he drives past before pulling over.

Feldman lives in a single-storey townhouse, twenty years old, maybe thirty. The lawns need mowing and the garden is in disrepair but the house looks like any other in the street, well kept and tidy. Most killers have pretty average lifestyles. Steady jobs too. Sometimes they’re even living the family life – white picket fence and a four-door sedan.

The curtains are closed and there are no lights. No car in the driveway. He finishes his cigarette, feeling his lungs relax. He thinks about the crowbar in the boot of his car. The effort to break open the back door would be minimal and, without a warrant, also illegal. That’s the problem with the law. Criminals break it all day long, but God-forbid a cop bends a rule. He’s standing outside the home of a guy who isn’t home, a guy who took the lives of two women, and there isn’t anything he can do about it.

He stubs the cigarette butt into the ground and walks over. He waits two minutes at the door after knocking loudly but nobody answers. He considers asking the neighbours if they’ve spoken to Feldman, but doesn’t want to risk them alerting Feldman that he’s wanted for questioning. He walks around the house, peering through the windows but can’t get an angle past any curtains. Back in his car he dials Feldman’s number on his cellphone. Nobody answers. The guy doesn’t even have a machine.

He either has to wait for Feldman to show up or go and get a warrant. At this time of the night the only judge he can find will be a severely pissed-off judge. Best to wait. The longer he waits the more evidence they can collect. He can see himself waiting here all night for nothing. Feldman is probably too nervous to return home. For now. He will come home, though, because he has a life to return to.

If they release Feldman’s details to the media the man will go into hiding. However there’s a simple way to get around that. He calls his contact at the paper then watches the house for another thirty minutes before driving home.

8

Tuesday morning and we wake up to rain. Warm rain. The type you get in summer and love to walk in. I turn on the radio and listen to a weather report. An old guy tells us to expect twenty-eight degrees. Tells us to expect more rain tonight. Tells us the twenty-eight degrees is going to drop to around ten. He doesn’t tell us what we should do if some guy is trying to kill us. I figure he’s just looking out the window and telling it like it is.

I have woken with a small headache, a dry mouth and the flavourless dregs of a dream. There’s no difficulty in separating the dream from reality – I only have to look over at Jo to know what’s really going on. I have abducted her. I have stolen her away from her life and in that action I’m starting to become the monster Cyris is. Though my dreams were full of death and murder I was a hero, yet from the moment I stepped out of my Honda I was a hero doomed to fail. I don’t even know what I am now.

There was a point where I thought I was going to succeed. Cyris was on top of me, the hard ground was digging into my back, the night air was still and there were no signs of life outside of our small trio. I managed to throw my head up and crack my forehead into his nose and I used that momentum to push him backwards. I got to my feet and raced for the torch. He knocked me off balance before I made it and my tangling legs had me back on the ground within seconds. When Cyris brought his knife down towards me his intentions were clear, and in the weak edges of the torchlight I knew death wasn’t giving me up as a lost cause.

It all came down to luck then. I reached out with both hands, preferring to have my hand skewered rather than my chest. My arms straightened without encountering a thing because I’d thrown them too soon. They arced inwards and clapped together right onto the blade. Had I tried this deliberately I’d have had my fingers scattered over my chest. The knife slid between my hands harmlessly as my palms slowly gripped it. It kept moving until the hilt pressed against the tips of my fingers. I looked like I was praying.

I pushed my arms to the side to redirect his balance. The moment he began to topple I used my right palm as a hammer and nailed it into the base of his broken nose. It loosened his grip on the knife, and a fist into his face made him let it go entirely. There was no room for hesitation. I picked the blade up and plunged it ahead. The blade hit something hard before slowing down and it felt like I was pushing it through wet cement. I kept pushing until it came to a complete stop. For one moment we were frozen and then his mouth dropped open and the air that rolled out smelled like spoiled meat.

I dragged myself from beneath him and listened as his fingers slowly tapped out a death march against the handle. The silence then was complete, heavy and thick, an emptiness of sound that pushed into my ears and into my mind, crushing my thoughts. I had killed a man and it felt good.

I look over at Jo. She’s staring silently at me, looking me up and down. My clothes look like I’ve ironed wrinkles into them. The cuts on my face are slowly starting to heal.

I use the bathroom, then head into the kitchen. I start making coffee, hoping it will help dilute the weird feeling of waking up in a strange room and worrying about kidnapping and death. I untie Jo and take out the gag but she continues her silence. I don’t know what to say to her. I fight the urge to call out ‘sorry’ over and over as she uses the bathroom. She takes her suitcase in with her and when she comes out she’s changed into a T-shirt and a pair of cargo pants.

‘I made you some coffee,’ I say. She doesn’t bother to thank me as she picks it up. I sit well back in case she throws it in my face. ‘Look, I know that this must seem pretty weird …’

‘Weird? Jesus, Charlie, it’s gone way past weird.’

‘Sure, maybe you’re right, but …’

‘But what? But it’s going to be okay? Is that it? You tied me up and now you want me to be your friend?’

‘I wasn’t going to put it like that.’

‘Whatever. I’m hungry. Are you going to make me starve too?’

‘There isn’t any food here.’

‘Then let’s go get some.’

‘Why? So you can ditch me the first chance you get?’

‘I’ve had all night to think about it, Charlie, and I’ve decided to help you because I really think you could do with it. Maybe I feel like I owe you something, and maybe I’m remembering the way you used to be, or maybe I’m just as crazy as you are right now. Show me what you need to and at the end of the day it becomes my decision whether I stay or go.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘I mean it, Charlie. I promise I won’t try and get away. Just don’t tie me up any more, okay? We’ll go out, get some breakfast and then I’ll help you. But only for today. At the end you have to let me go. I think you owe me that. In fact I think you owe me that at the very least. I give you my full co-operation but you give me yours when the day’s over. And if I decide to go to the police at that point it’s my decision, not yours. Is it a deal?’

I wish I could believe she isn’t lying, because life would be a lot easier if she was with me rather than against me. ‘I don’t know,’ I say, and the funny thing is I really don’t. That’s what wanting to believe will do to you.

‘Charlie, you’ve been nothing but a bastard since you came around last night, but I know that’s not you, I know that’s not the real you, and I know that sooner or later you have no choice but to let me go. That means you have to start trusting me, right? For God’s sake, Charlie, you might as well start now. What do you think I’m going to do? Write a note on the bill for the waitress to send help?’