The Killing Hour

by Paul Cleave

  “I hope so too.”

  Back outside Landry lights up a cigarette to help keep the demons at bay. This used to be his favorite 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.

  He gets his phone back out of his pocket. He calls the station. Ends up chatting to another detective. Detective Inspector Wilson Hutton. Hutton is the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to leave with your wife, not because he’ll try and sleep with her, but because he might try and eat her. He’s at least a hundred pounds overweight, and Landry has often wondered how the guy is managing to keep his job. He gives Hutton the dates he learned from Charlie’s emails.

  “There anything reported from around that time?”

  “Care to narrow it down?” Hutton asks.

  “Something from a bar. A bar fight maybe?”

  “Any names?”

  “No.”

  “Has this got anything to do with the double homicide?”

  “Nothing. Just curious about something, that’s all.”

  “Give me ten minutes,” he says.

  He gets into his car. Feldman is on the run, but he’s sure the guy will come back. Guys like that always do when they figure out they have nowhere else to go. It won’t be tonight. But Landry will find him, and if he doesn’t find him tomorrow, then he’ll come back here every night until he does. He spends ten seconds coughing hard enough for his chest to feel like it’s on fire. He flicks the cigarette-this one half-finished-out the window and is tempted to send the rest of the pack with it, but temptation gives way to sanity and he hangs on to them. For now.

  He gets out his notepad. He’d jotted down the details of Feldman’s parents and the wife he’s separated from. He figures it’s too late to ring the parents, but he gives the wife a call. She doesn’t answer. He gets out a map from the glove compartment and looks up her address. It’s less than ten minutes from here. He figures he can swing by her place on the way home. She might have an idea where a guy like Feldman might run.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I get halfway into my car when I stop. With every passing second I become more and more convinced that by coming here, I’ve put Jo in danger. Last night was one big display of what a crazy man can do, and if nothing else, Cyris was a whole lot of crazy. Will he come looking for me?

  I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t see how he can know who I am. Except he saw my car, he could track me down from the registration plate. Kathy had my details too. I gave her my name and phone number-what happened to that piece of paper? Could Cyris have found it? Okay-so he can figure out who I am. There’s every chance he will come looking for me and, by extension, he could look for those I love. I need to warn my parents. Need to warn my friends.

  I carry on walking to my car. I need to go to the police. Of course I do. Will they believe me? I stand by what I said to Jo. If they don’t believe me, they’ll certainly convict me. And if the evidence is there to prove Cyris exists, how long until they act on it? I could go in there and within fifteen minutes there’ll be a manhunt for Cyris. Or I could go in there and sit in an interrogation room for the next twenty-four hours while Cyris is on the loose killing more people.

  I need to find him. Need to stop him. Need to make him pay for what he did. And while that’s happening, Jo needs to leave town for a few days. I head back to the front door.

  I’ve known Jo eight years. We were married for six, five and a half of those happily. We’re still married now, technically. She’d never betray me. She’d never turn me in. But we’re in the Real World now and trust isn’t a quality I can hope for. Yet it’s one I cling to when I step back inside and find Jo hanging up the phone.

  “What the hell?” I say, closing the door behind me, resisting the urge to slam it.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she says, “but it’s not what you think. I was calling a friend.”

  “Who?”

  “Somebody you don’t know. I hung up before they answered.”

  “A boyfriend?” I ask, hearing the jealousy in my voice and annoyed at myself for it.

  “It’s none of your business,” she says.

  “You were calling the police, weren’t you.”

  “No.” I want to believe her, I really do. “You promised you’d leave,” she says.

  “How much did you tell the police?” I ask.

  “It wasn’t the police,” she says. “First of all you come here and. .”

  “How much, Jo? Are they on their way?”

  “Stop shouting, Charlie.”

  “I’m not shouting! How much did you tell them?”

  “I haven’t said a word. I told you nobody answered.”

  I move over to the phone. Jo steps back from it. I twist it so I can see the display. It’s lit up because it was just in the process of being used. It shows a 1 and another 1 on the display, and then it goes dark and the 1s disappear. She was two thirds of the way to calling for help. Jo grabs at the phone, but before she can snatch it up I push her away. She stumbles into the kitchen bench and falls. When she looks up at me her eyes flash with tears and anger and as bad as I’ve felt all day, seeing her on the floor like that makes me feel even worse. I let the phone go so it dangles on its cord, reaching the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, moving toward her. “I didn’t mean. .”

  “Get out, you bastard. I can’t believe you did that, but I guess that makes me stupid, doesn’t it. I should have known.”

  “Yeah? Why?” I ask, but I know why. Because of that night six months ago.

  “Just get out,” she says.

  “I’m sorry, Jo. I was just trying. .”

  “Get! Out!”

  No, no, this is wrong. All wrong. I just need to convince her of that. I put my hands out in a warding-off gesture, an I have no rabbits hidden up my sleeve gesture. “I’m sorry, Jo, I’m stressed, that’s all, I’m stressed.”

  “Get the hell out, Charlie.”

  “Jo. .”

  “I want you to leave,” she says.

  “Why? So you can not call the police again?”

  “So what are you going to do, Charlie? Are you going to kill me too?”

  Her comment isn’t a physical slap, but I react as though it is. I stammer for a few seconds, trying to say something that will convince her that she’s safe, but is she? “How can you think I killed them?”

  “What am I supposed to think?”

  “You’re supposed to trust me.”

  She smirks at that and I don’t blame her. “Trust you? You must be pretty far gone if you think I should trust you after this. So what are you going to do now? Kill me, or stay here and monitor who I call?”

  “Come on, Jo, stop overreacting.”

  “Stop shouting. I’m sick of you shouting.”

  Well, I’m sick of people dying. I’m sick of seeing blood. I’m sick of being chased by Evil and spoken to by ghosts. I’m sick of guilt resting like a bowling ball in the pit of my stomach. I hate that I no longer have any control in my life. I hate this Real World, the killing hours that make up the days. I think I have the justification to scream and shout until my throat is raw.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout,” I say, not realizing I had been. “All I want is for you to believe me.” I try to keep my voice low and steady. As if I’m talking to a woman on a ledge.

  “I believe you, Charlie. Is that it? Does that make you happy enough to leave?”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “No, I really do. It’s just come to me now. So you can leave.”

  I reach toward her to help her up and she flinches away, and in that movement I see myself through her eyes. Suddenly she believes there are monsters in this world, and I’m one of them. I look away, unable to face her. For a moment I think of last night, the highs and the lows, of which there were both. Incredible, inc
redible highs. Sick, ravaging lows. One of those lows came when I finally decided to do more than just stand and watch. I ran from the tree line to confront Cyris. I ran and the only thing I did successfully was step on the flashlight and lose my balance. Seconds after I hit the dirt, Cyris started hitting me. That was another low point. He was hitting me and telling me how stupid I was for trying to save a dead woman.

  She’s like a baby, he said, and I was trying to ward off his blows, flying through a windshield that hasn’t landed yet. Another punch. Another struggle. He got me in the side of the head. Got me in the shoulder. Surely you can see that, he said, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t see any windshields. Any babies.

  “I think you might be in danger,” I tell Jo.

  “You have a talent for seeing the obvious.”

  “You need to come with me.”

  “No.”

  “Please. He’ll come for you. I know it.”

  “You need to leave, Charlie. You need help. Professional help.”

  I reach back out to help her up. This time she takes my hand. “You need to go somewhere for a few days,” I tell her, “and you can’t call the police.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she says, “and the first thing I’m going to do is call the police. For your own benefit, Charlie. That blow to your head has done more damage than you think.”

  “What can I do to convince you?” I ask.

  “Pushing me wasn’t a good start, Charlie.”

  “There’s nothing I can say?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “In that case, I’m sorry.”

  “What for?” she asks.

  I push her to the floor and we struggle, but I’m heavier and stronger and more determined to save her than she is to save herself. It’s the only way. It makes me sick, but not as sick as if Cyris were to find her. I pull the phone cable out and use it to bind her hands and feet. She stops struggling. I gag her with a hand towel. Action Man has taken the wheel and he’s steering me right past morality and into an abyss. I take a step back and look down at her shaking body. I spend the next thirty seconds almost untying her and the following thirty convincing myself this is for the best. For both of us. She isn’t safe by herself. Not now. I pack a suitcase full of her clothes and dump it in the backseat of the car along with her handbag.

  I try to get Jo to her feet, but she refuses to stand. I’ve bound her arms behind her so I pull up on her wrists and the pain in her shoulders forces her up. I cut the cord by her feet. She tries to pull away from me, knocking over a dining table chair on the way to the door. I straighten it back up. I tighten my grip and lead her out to the car.

  “It’ll be easier for us both if you cooperate, Jo. Otherwise I’ll put you in the trunk. Come on, Jo. Help me out here, okay?”

  She doesn’t help me out. I force her into the trunk and tie her feet back together. I feel exhausted. I also feel like that stranger is still living in my body. I’m watching my real self in this Real World and not enjoying the ride. With the suitcase in the car it feels like we’re going on holiday.

  I roll down the window. The air is cooling down, but still has a warm edge to it. It’s hard to imagine being in danger in the tranquility of this night. I hear banging against the roof of the trunk, but try to shut it out. I want to be with that tranquility, I want to feel it inside me, but that’s not possible. It may never be possible again. It was tranquil last night too, up to a point.

  I rub my fingers across the bump on my head. It was just after Cyris, his breath on my sweating face, asked me if I wanted a piece of the action that I thrust my head forward and felt his nose explode beneath my forehead. That was one of the high points.

  The windshield of the car shimmers and I dig my fingers into the tears and wipe them away. From the back of the car Jo beats out a steady rhythm. We head west and pass through the central city. Monday nights have little traffic and even less foot traffic. Nobody can hear Jo making trunk music.

  I pull into the parking lot of the Everblue Motel. Its design is similar to other motels that have been built where traffic is heavy and land is cheap-just two long rectangles of concrete block running perpendicular to each other. It’s hard to tell in the light whether the paint on the walls has faded in areas from the sun or darkened in the opposite areas from exhaust fumes. In between, strips of brown grass run parallel with the sidewalk. The sidewalk is chipped on the edges and patches of grass bleed between the long cracks. The neon b in Everblue has blown out. The rooms face away from the road. I count seven cars in the parking lot and nobody around. I stop outside the office. It’s lit by harsh fluorescent lights. I leave the engine running and the stereo turned up loud with the window open to help mask Jo’s sounds, even though sounds coming from a trunk are to be expected in a neighborhood like this.

  Pamphlets on touristy things to do in Christchurch line one wall. You can start the day by skiing and then go surfing in the afternoon. You can go skydiving or Jet Skiing or play one of thirty or forty golf courses. You can wake up one day and watch two women get killed then kidnap your ex-wife. It’s all part of the Christchurch experience. Slipped in among the pamphlets are leaflets from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons and medical clinics in the area, all offering to save us from something. A strip of flypaper hangs in the corner covered in a variety of insects, a few of which are still twitching. An electric fan with a bent propeller circulates slowly, the tip of the blade pinging against the grille every half second.

  I ring the bell and a man steps out from behind a greasy curtain with a piece of greasy chicken in his hands, and I’m grateful he’s wearing a black T-shirt instead of a fishnet wife beater. The T-shirt has You can never have too much duct tape written across it. He has tiny pieces of toilet paper stuck to his neck from a recent attempt at shaving. He starts talking in short, uncomplicated words either for his benefit or mine. He gives me the hourly charge for the rooms. I tell him I’m staying the night, and then I ask for a room with two single beds.

  He gives me a funny look. “You some kind of weirdo?” he asks.

  “Some kind, yeah.”

  I give him a false name and real cash because that’s all he’s expecting. He glances out at the car and doesn’t ask where the second person is, but a man in his position probably has a pretty good idea. His T-shirt sums it all up.

  I move the car up to the room and park between an old Toyota and an even older Ford. Both are painted white. One of the side mirrors on the Toyota has been broken off, maybe from an accident, maybe from vandalism. I carry my suitcase inside then come back outside for Jo’s. I head back and, making sure nobody is looking, I open the trunk. Jo doesn’t make it complicated for me to help get her out. I carry her inside and sit her down on the bed. I lock the door with the cheap dead bolt and slide the chain across.

  She muffles something at me. I remove the gag.

  “Think about what you’re doing, Charlie. It’s not too late. You can take me back home and I won’t tell, I promise.”

  She’s scared now. All that came earlier, she was angry and disappointed, I frightened her in those moments, but now she’s scared, scared of what I’m capable of. She genuinely sounds like she means what she’s saying.

  “I can’t do that, Jo. You’re in danger.”

  “Only from you.”

  “I just need you to spend a day with me so I can prove I’m not lying. Just a day. Then you can do what you want, okay?”

  “People don’t come back from the dead, Charlie.”

  I picture Cyris. He’s a big guy. Then I think about the knife I stabbed him with. It’s long and sharp. In my mind I see him standing sideways. The blade is next to him. I figure it out like one of those old-school science cartoons-This is Joe’s homicide. The knife goes in. The tip comes out the other side. I stabbed him, but I didn’t finish the job. If I had, Kathy and Luciana wouldn’t be haunting me.

  I stuff the gag back into Jo’s
mouth.

  The room is small and cozy and very simple. The walls have been painted cream. There are no paintings, only a calendar from three years ago strung up on a nail bashed into the mortar between two of the concrete blocks. A door closes off a small bathroom with a small window that doesn’t open. The kitchenette has utilities dating back thirty years. There’s a TV, the remote to which is bolted onto the bedside dresser. The dark blue curtains are pulled shut, hiding the lack of view. The carpets are cheap and look like the bodily fluids get water blasted off them every other month. The cigarette burns in the bedspread and on the carpet match the ones on the dresser.

  Jo doesn’t struggle too much when I tie her to the bed. I don’t tell her I would do anything to protect her because she won’t believe me. All I can do is show her. I use towels to bind her arms and legs and wrap the motel’s phone cord around her waist and the bed. Back on my own bed I kill the lights and wonder if I ought to be killing myself. I feel sick to my stomach and my heart is racing. I wipe an arm across my forehead and it comes away sopping wet. I lie down, but I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again. The neon from the sign outside flickers around the edges of the curtains and makes the room glow red. I can hear it buzzing. I reach out and roam my fingers over the sticky buttons of the remote control. I stab at them until the TV blinks into life. A menu with a blue backdrop displays a list of movies I can choose from for an extra ten dollars. Most of them are adult. I remember reading a statistic once that the average time an adult movie is on in a motel room is seven minutes. That means they watch the start and get what they need around ten percent of the way through. They don’t know what happens after that. Don’t know how it ends. Could be the actors all sit around drinking coffee and nobody would ever know.

  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. The police aren’t saying much. 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 a body being removed. I wish I’d never turned the TV on. I switch it back off and lie back, listening to the letters buzzing outside, all except for the b. The concrete block walls drown out the traffic noise, but not enough of it.