The Killing Hour

by Paul Cleave

  Hutton leads the husband back outside. They avoid the bloody footprints along the way, prints that look like practice dance-step cutouts, which lead from the bathroom to the garage before disappearing. Landry stays in the hallway. The smell of vomit in here mingles with that of death and makes a cocktail that claws into his nose. The vomit is confusing. What person would be sick viewing their own handiwork? Guys like Feldman kill and torture and dismember for their own satisfaction-they do it because they enjoy it. It doesn’t make sense to do all of that, and then throw up.

  When he was here yesterday, before he went to the second crime scene, he didn’t know about Charlie Feldman. Now he can look at everything from a different perspective. He goes into the lounge. There’s an empty beer bottle on the coffee table that has been dusted for prints. Those same prints have been found in the bathroom-the owner of those prints took a shower here. The prints don’t belong to either of the women, or the husbands.

  Did Feldman make himself at home? Did he have himself a nice relaxing beer while torturing Luciana Young? There are also two wineglasses on the table. Each has been matched to one of the two dead women. So more likely the three of them sat down here at some point and shared a drink. And then what?

  On the driveway the cordless phone was found in pieces. Phone records show it was used to call the police, but within seconds the line was disconnected. Fingerprints on the phone match the fingerprints on the beer bottle. The same person who drank the beer and smashed the phone also tossed a set of car keys beneath the van found parked outside. If Luciana had gotten to that phone a few seconds earlier. . things could have been different. Life and death are often all about bad timing.

  The van has been towed to the forensics lab. It will be stripped down and examined to a minute detail. This morning it was reported stolen. The key was snapped in the ignition, the rest thrown beneath it. Feldman drove the van there, then took Luciana’s car.

  He spends an hour at the crime scene looking for any connection to Charlie Feldman, or even Jo Feldman, and finds nothing. He can’t find a connection to the school Feldman works at. The more he continues to search and find nothing, the more he becomes convinced Sunday evening was the first time these two women ever met Feldman. But why have him back here for a drink? Did they meet in a bar?

  He’s walking out to his car getting ready to drive back to the other crime scene when Schroder calls him.

  “Finding anything new?”

  Landry shakes his head out of habit, and says no.

  “Well I got something. I just got a report of Luciana Young’s car,” Schroder says. “How about I meet you there.”

  “Where?”

  Schroder gives him the address. “I’ll see you there in ten minutes.”

  He’s been driving for five of those ten minutes when it suddenly hits him-he’s driving in the direction of Jo Feldman’s house. Sure enough, the street he pulls into is only a block away. Schroder is already here, along with the Armed Offenders Squad-which consists of a dozen cops dressed in black body armor and carrying guns.

  “We’re canvassing the street,” Schroder says. “Gotta be careful,” he says, “whoever stole Luciana’s car may live here.”

  “It’s possible,” Landry says, but he’s thinking it would have been more possible if they had been one block over. Talking to the people on this street isn’t going to be worth a damn. “Or he had another car here that he switched with. Or stole one. Or walked. So what do you want me to do?”

  “Help with the canvassing,” Schroder says. “Then I need you to help me start working up a list of names and addresses. Somebody here must have seen something, and we’re not leaving until we’ve gotten in touch with somebody who did.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Not only is Jo surprised that Charlie has fallen asleep, she’s surprised it’s happened so quickly. He never used to be like that. Whenever they went to bed he’d often lie awake for an hour or more after she’d fallen asleep, he’d read or he’d stare at the ceiling, and then he’d complain about it the following morning. To fall asleep as easily as he has shows how exhausted he is. Back then there was always something comforting about falling asleep next to him, about falling asleep first-he made her feel safe. Protected. Funny how the world can turn on a dime. The man that made her feel safe is now the man she’s about to hit in the head with a wooden mallet.

  She spends the next two minutes watching Charlie. She’s seen it before, the way one hand rests on the pillow over his head, his shoulder looking like it’s going to be disconnected. There is the rare occasion where he will go to bed first, or she’ll come into the lounge to find him asleep in front of the TV. His face is tight, there’s a dream going on inside that head of his. He flinches a little, but there’s nothing to indicate he’s going to wake.

  Breaking the hacksaw blade earlier was no accident. She stretches out her fingers, then starts maneuvering her hand closer to her body, looking for the piece of blade she hid in the folds of the bedspread while Charlie was cleaning up the stakes and tools. Ideally she’d have kept it in her hand, but that was impossible. When she lay down, she aimed to sit on it to hide it, getting her hand as close to it as she could before Charlie tied her up. Now she’s starting to wonder if it was close enough. She pushes at the bedspread, stroking her fingers back and forth. The blade must be made from the same stuff as her car keys are-the kind of stuff that gets lost no matter where you put it.

  Charlie grunts. His body tightens. His lips part slightly and move. She’s never known him to talk in his sleep, and she pauses, waiting for it to happen now, but words don’t follow the gesture. She thinks he must just be on the border of cramping up when his body relaxes, he exhales loudly, and his mouth closes back up.

  Maybe this is a mistake, she thinks, still unable to find the blade. This could be fate intervening, the universe telling her to hold off from doing anything stupid. Of course if the universe worked that way, then it didn’t work too well for Kathy and Luciana, and it sure as hell didn’t work well for her last night. Still, she is starting to get some control back. If she manages to cut through her bindings and then Charlie catches her, she’s going to undo all those baby steps. It’s a gamble. This could be her only chance to escape.

  Of course no matter how she looks at it, she still doesn’t think he’s capable of murder.

  Yesterday she wouldn’t have thought he was capable of kidnapping.

  She gets her hand closer to her body. Her wrist hurts as she flexes her hand back toward her arm, but she gets her fingers beneath her body and is able to roll a few inches upward. After a few moments of despair she feels the edge of the blade prick against the pad of her finger. She grits her teeth and holds back the urge to swear. She slips the blade into her fingers and moves it to her fingertips. She twists her hand and touches the blade against the towel. She has to make the decision. Getting to this point has taken longer than she wanted. If she starts cutting, and doesn’t get all the way through, he’s going to know she tried to escape and he will lose all trust in her.

  But what if this is her only chance?

  She looks over at him. He’s not breathing heavily. The dream he is in isn’t a deep one.

  She thinks about the traffic outside and is aware that any altercation out there, a car horn or the shrieking of tires, could be enough to wake him. Or the alarm Charlie set could be about to go off. She can’t see it because it’s angled away from her. It feels like she’s been tied up for ten minutes, but it could have been twenty. Or thirty.

  Her indecision suggests she’s already made up her mind. That she’ll hide the blade in her pocket and use it later. Only then she drags the blade across the towel. Once. Twice. Cut or not to cut? That’s the question. And she needs to hurry up and make up her mind.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The roads are getting thick with traffic. Landry hates traffic. Ten years ago he took his wife-no, his second wife-to London. They spent three weeks there. He didn’t like it. It
was too busy. You could lose hours in traffic. You could get up in the morning and drive half of the day and only have gone a dozen miles. He remembers coming back to New Zealand and vowing he’d never complain about the traffic here. Or the rain. Only both those promises were left in the dust, along with his second marriage.

  He makes it in to work, and now things are working better. His parking spot has opened up. He finds himself a coffee cup that hasn’t broken. He fills out a warrant. It’s a standard form in which he has to fill in the blanks. He writes in the address. He writes in the person of interest. The person of interest is a guy by the name of Desmond Important Person, and they want to search Desmond’s house. It’s not the guy’s real name, but he had it legally changed from Desmond Douglas seven years ago. In the years he’s been known as Desmond Important Person, he’s also seen the inside of a jail cell on three different occasions, once for burglary and twice for stealing a car. Douglas is nowhere to be seen, and unfortunately for him Luciana Young’s car happened to be parked two doors down from his house. With no other suspects on the street, Douglas has become somebody the police need to talk to. Landry knows it won’t lead anywhere-Douglas isn’t their man-but he’s happy with the distraction it will give Schroder and the others. Once he has the warrant, he can get back to doing what he hasn’t done yet-and that’s figure out where Feldman is.

  The drive to the courthouse from the police station takes ten minutes. He hands the warrant off to a registrar. He tells him it’s urgent. The normal turnaround for a warrant can be half a day. He tells the registrar he needs it in five minutes. Tells him there’s a woman who’s missing. The registrar, a guy in his early twenties with too much acne and not enough hair and not enough money to buy a nice suit, tells Landry he understands and goes off to find a judge to sign it. Landry spends the time pacing the halls, staring at a whole bunch of bad people who are going to be around long after he’s gone. It takes twenty minutes for the warrant to get signed.

  By the time he gets back out onto the street the traffic is so thick he actually uses his sirens just so he can clear a path through town. He switches them back off when he’s in the suburbs. At least the speeding woke him up.

  Schroder and the assault team are still where Luciana’s car was parked-only the car isn’t there anymore. It’s been towed down to the station as evidence. He hands the warrant to Schroder, and then he starts coughing, and then he notices his hands are shaking. All of it is real. Schroder notices the same things.

  “Look, Bill, you really do look like shit. Are you sure you shouldn’t be home?”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he says, coughing into his hand to press home the point.

  “We’ll search this guy’s house,” Schroder says, pointing toward Desmond Person’s house. “But, to be honest, burglary and car theft is a big step away from what happened to those two women. At the most you’ll find he probably stole the car and drove it here.”

  “His file says that’s what he used to do? Steal cars and bring them home?” Landry asks.

  “Well, no. But somebody brought it here.”

  From there Landry drives from suburb to suburb, doing what he can to avoid traffic along the way, until finally he’s back at Charlie Feldman’s house. It’s been years since he was last on a stakeout. It was with. . hell, it was with a guy by the name of Theodore Tate, a guy who used to be a cop, but then became a private investigator and then became a real pain in the ass before ending up in jail. For the last year Landry has been convinced Tate is the kind of guy who’s done bad things for what he thinks may have been good reasons, only. .

  Only shit. That’s exactly what he himself is becoming. Tate has killed people-more people than he’s let on, Landry is sure of it. Maybe Tate has cancer too.

  The idea of becoming Theodore Tate is a miserable one, but one he only has to deal with for six months. Maybe less. That stakeout they went on together was at least ten years ago. Normally stakeouts were boring. They were watching a clown. Quite literally. The circus had come to town, and some poor teenager had become brain dead after buying drugs from somebody that his buddy said worked at the circus. Suspect was a guy by the name of Mortimer Dicky, also known as Beeboop the clown.

  He spends a few seconds wondering if this is the right path. The Theodore Tate path. He could find and arrest Feldman and bring him into the station by himself, end his career with the people in this country loving him. And why the hell not? He deserves something other than the cancer for all his years of protecting the innocent, doesn’t he? Or he sticks with the Tate path. Make Charlie Feldman simply disappear. Magic.

  He’s always been a fan of magic.

  He reaches Feldman’s house. He knocks on the front door. No answer. He goes through the back gate and to the back door, which is open exactly how he left it. He goes inside. He puts on a pair of latex gloves. The living room looks the same. So does the kitchen.

  But things are different when he gets down to the other end of the house.

  Very different.

  The kind of different that makes him clench his fists and makes him angry. The kind of different that answers the question of what he’s going to do once he finds Charlie Feldman, while at the same time dismissing the question as to whether there was any chance Feldman was innocent.

  He spends ten minutes writing down every contact he can find that Feldman has. He walks back out of the house. His hands are shaking. He could probably wait inside hoping Feldman will return, but the way he can tell if a house is empty before approaching it, well, he’s not the only guy on the force with that skill. Same might go for Feldman. He doesn’t need any reason to scare the guy off. And if Feldman drives past and freaks, then he’s going to drive on, and Landry will never even know. So he decides to wait in his car.

  He’s not sure if Feldman is going to come back. He must have come back during the night and he must have noticed his house had been broken into. Damn it, he should have staked the house out last night. This could have been over by now.

  The day will be dark soon. He yawns again. He can’t help it. He adjusts his seat, opens a packet of peanuts, and begins calling the names on his list, starting with Feldman’s parents. He gets hold of the mother. No, their son isn’t in trouble. Yes, they’re just hoping he can assist in an investigation. No, it’s not important-something to do with one of his students who’s gotten into trouble. It turns out Feldman doesn’t even own a cell phone. The mother has no idea where Charlie may be-normally either at school or at home. Landry thanks her for her time. He can tell she’s worried. Then he hangs up.

  He carries on through the address book. If he’s lucky, Feldman might just return home, or somebody might have an idea where he can start looking.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The ghosts are back. They’re telling me this is no dream. I find it hard to believe.

  I’m with Kathy and Luciana and they’re alive again, but in this dream I don’t even know they’re supposed to be dead. Do they know? I try to ask, but the words don’t come out. Kathy is leaning into me, my arm around her as I help her leave the pasture the same way we arrived-alive and in one piece. Her other arm is around my shoulders, her hand digging into my upper arm hard enough to make a line of bruises. We leave Cyris and his tools and my tire iron behind. Kathy knows Luciana is alive because I’ve told her, and she smiles at me knowingly and without words tells me this is soon to be a lie. I don’t tell her she’s wrong.

  Luciana jumps from the car the moment she sees her friend and the two lock themselves in an embrace. It’s the embrace of close friends and even though I don’t know either of these women, I wish I was part of it. They hold each other tight and I look away, choosing to stare at my car instead, this car that I’m sick of seeing, this car that I want to trade in, but at the moment is the best damn car in the world.

  The two women break their embrace to include me in it, and no, they’re not ghosts, not yet-that’s still to come. For now they’re very much alive, alive and grate
ful and warm to touch, and when I open my mouth to warn them the words don’t come out. I try to tell them they mustn’t go back home, they mustn’t take me with them, but the dream is a memory and is deciding to stick to what is true, and therefore has only one path it can take.

  We pile into the car, Luciana in the back and Kathy next to me. I start driving to the police station. I make it a few hundred yards before Luciana says she’d like to go home first. Kathy agrees. They want to go home. They want to clean up. Put on some fresh clothes.

  “You can’t do that,” I tell them. “You can’t wash away the evidence.”

  Kathy nods. “That’s true,” she says. “Let’s at least go back to Luciana’s house and make a plan.”

  “A plan?”

  “We need a lawyer,” Kathy says.

  I don’t understand. “What for?”

  “Her husband, Frank, is a lawyer,” Luciana says.

  I feel jealous at this piece of information. It’s stupid. “I still don’t know why we need one,” I say.

  “Benjamin Hyatt,” Kathy says.

  The name sounds familiar. It takes a few seconds for it to filter through layers of memory. “The lawyer from the news?” I say.

  “Exactly.”

  I tell them it’s not the same thing. They agree, they tell me it’s different, but they also tell me the result is the same. The circumstances don’t matter as much as they should when it comes to the law. We still killed somebody, but of course it was more I than we. We debate the merits of going. We debate it for only a minute when Luciana points out we can discuss it back at her house instead. She tells me she needs a drink.