The Killing Hour

by Paul Cleave

  “I’m curious-if you didn’t hear me the first time I knocked on your door, how did you know you were answering it after my second?”

  I open my mouth to answer, but can’t come up with anything. He smiles, but it seems he doesn’t really want an answer. He saves me from the awkward moment by taking me into another one.

  “Who hit you?” he asks.

  I raise my hand to the bump on my forehead. It stings on contact. I try not to wince, but fail. Gets me every time. “Nobody hit me.”

  “Walked into a door, did you?”

  “A tree.”

  “Wouldn’t be the same tree that broke into your house?” The detective twists his head and points his thumb at the back door. “Who broke in?”

  “I don’t know. I only just got home.”

  “Anything taken?”

  “No.”

  “Damaged?”

  “Just the door.”

  “Why would a man who comes home to find his house has been broken into not call the police?”

  “I was about to,” I tell him, trying to figure out if he’s here because of Jo, or because of Kathy and Luciana.

  “Would you like me to help you look through your house?” he asks.

  “No, no. That’s fine,” I tell him, and I know he’s driving at something.

  “You said you just got home. From school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I rang your school today, Mr. Feldman. They said you weren’t in.”

  “I took the day off, but I had to go pick up some work.”

  “Where were you on Sunday night?”

  “Sunday night? Umm, let me think.” I run my hands through my hair trying to look like I’m trying to remember. Trying to act as though Sunday night was no different from any other night. Nothing to make it stand out. “I was at my parents’.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Just catching up. You know what it’s like.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  I shrug. “Not sure. Maybe somewhere around eleven o’clock, give or take.”

  “Where did you go when you left?”

  “Home.”

  “You came straight here.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And went straight to bed.”

  “I had a shower first.”

  “Anybody see you?” he asks.

  I shrug. “My shower isn’t outside.”

  “Did you spend the night alone?”

  “That’s right,” I say.

  “You’re sure you came straight home?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Uh huh. Well, I guess that pretty much sums it up,” he says, but he doesn’t make any attempt to get up. He just sits there, staring at me, maybe pissed off because I haven’t offered him coffee, or because he thinks I’m a cold-blooded killer. He hasn’t put his pad away.

  “Good.” I lean forward and start to stand.

  “Just two more questions.”

  “Just two?”

  “First, why haven’t you asked me why I’m here?”

  I sit back down. “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t ask what I’m investigating. All these questions. It’s like you already knew. You just opened the door and resigned yourself to the fact that I was here to arrest you. I’ve seen that look many times, Mr. Feldman. It’s the look of somebody who was hoping they wouldn’t get caught, but aren’t surprised they have been. I saw it in your face. You didn’t ask what I wanted because you thought I was here to take you into custody for murder. You didn’t go through the whole routine of trying to figure out why a detective inspector would show up on your doorstep late at night wanting to ask you questions. An innocent person would have. Or a good liar. Your problem, Mr. Feldman, is that you’re neither.”

  It’s buzzword time. “That’s crazy.”

  He stops tapping his finger and points it at me. “Have you ever heard of Camelot Drive?”

  I know what’s coming and can’t see a way out of it.

  “Mr. Feldman? Just a yes or no will do.”

  “No,” I answer quickly.

  “The body of a young woman was found there yesterday morning. But you know all about that, don’t you?”

  “Sure, it’s been on the news. Everybody knows about it. Does that make everybody a suspect? Unless you’ve got-”

  “Why would we think of you as a suspect?”

  This guy is annoying. I have the urge to tell him to stop playing games. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

  “But you must have done something to think that we would regard you as a suspect.”

  “Look, if you’ve got a point here maybe you should get to it.”

  He nods. “Fair enough,” he says. Then he follows that up. “You knew those women.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “So if we take your fingerprints and DNA, we’re not going to get matches to those at the scenes?”

  “That’s right,” I tell him. “I was never there,” I say, thinking I should come clean. I should tell this man everything that happened. I decide not to. If Landry were sure of himself then he would be arresting me, not questioning me.

  “How well did you know them?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “I thought you only had two more questions for me.”

  “That was until you started lying. You’ve never seen or spoken to either woman?”

  Again I shake my head. “I’m not lying,” I tell him. “I don’t know either of the women, I’ve never seen them before in my life, so if you have anything to back up what you’re-”

  Landry stands up and tucks his notebook into one pocket, and from another he produces a plastic ziplock bag. Inside is a small pad. He holds it toward me and I reach up to take it. “You don’t need to hold it to read it,” he says.

  I move closer toward it. It’s the pad on which Kathy wrote my details, only that isn’t the page that’s on the top. Sherlock Landry has used a pencil to rub over the page beneath it. My name and phone number have appeared, and with them any chance I have of talking my way out of this. The top page to that pad is in my bedroom. I try to explain this, but my mouth has gone dry and I feel as if somebody has poured glue down my throat. All I can do now is take my chances with the truth.

  “I can explain,” I tell him, the words coming out slowly.

  “I think it’s in your best interests to explain at the station, where you can have a lawyer present,” Landry says.

  “I, um, I. .”

  He pulls his handcuffs from behind his back. Maybe they were clipped to his belt or inside a pocket. Then he pulls out a gun. He keeps it pointing at the ground. “Turn around, Mr. Feldman.”

  “You’re arresting me?”

  “What other choice do I have?”

  “You could arrest the right person. I didn’t kill anybody!”

  “We’ll discuss it at the station. Where you can have a lawyer present.”

  “No, no, this is all wrong. All wrong,” I repeat.

  “Come on, Mr. Feldman. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

  They’re similar to the words I’ve been using with Jo, and on the receiving end they don’t sound good at all. I put my hands out in front of me and start waving them around in tiny circles. “No, no, please, wait a second, let me explain.”

  He raises his gun. He points it right at my face. “Turn around, Feldman,” he says, missing the Mr. “Don’t make me ask you again.”

  I turn around and put my hands behind me. A few seconds later the cold bracelets click into place.

  “What’s this?” he asks.

  I turn back and face him. He’s holding the envelope with my story inside. “It’s the truth.”

  He tears it open and drags the loose pages out. After a quick skim through he pushes them back into the envelope. “Unbelievable,” he says. “I knew you were with those two women.”

  “You have to read the whole thing,” I tell him. “I was trying to
help them, not kill them.”

  He raises a finger to his lips. “No more talking, Feldman. How about you tell me about the box you have in your bedroom?”

  “What? You were in my house?”

  “The box,” he says. “Tell me about it.”

  “I don’t know what’s in it. Cyris left it here.”

  “Cyris. The man from your confession.”

  “It’s not a confession. It’s an account of what happened.”

  “We’ll see about that,” he says, as if it’s all up to him. “Let’s go.”

  He pushes me ahead of him. He gets me outside and tells me to wait for a few seconds, then disappears into my bedroom. I look down toward Jo, but can’t see her. I think about running, but there’s no point. I wouldn’t make it far. Landry comes back out. He’s holding up a wooden stake.

  “Want to explain this?” he asks.

  “It’s because-”

  “Shut up, Feldman,” he says.

  “I thought you-”

  “I said shut up.”

  He stays a few feet back as we walk down the hallway and out to his car. His car is an unmarked, four-door sedan. The reflections of the streetlight off the side windows look like two moons. He ushers me into the backseat, twists me sideways, undoes the handcuffs, and reattaches one cuff to the handgrip above the door. He pulls out another set of handcuffs and attaches my other hand to the same handgrip. It doesn’t seem like standard protocol, but I guess that’s because this isn’t one of those police cars with a metal grille separating the prisoner from the driver. Plus he’s alone.

  He gets into the driver’s seat. He needs to know about Jo.

  “Listen, I need to tell you about-”

  He turns around to face me. “This is quiet time,” he says. “You say one more word while we’re still driving I’m going to put a bullet in your head. I’ve seen what you’ve done, Feldman, and I suggest you believe me.”

  “But-”

  He points his gun at me. “If you don’t believe me, Feldman, just say one more word.”

  I believe him. He faces forward. He starts the car and we pull away from my house, leaving Jo tied up in my car watching for Cyris.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It started with the notepad. Then with the bloody shorts. The confession. Feldman’s wife missing. The lying. The wooden stake. There’s no way of shifting all those pieces into different positions and still not getting them to match. It’s undeniable. Irrefutable. It’s like the cancer running through his body-it can’t be forgotten.

  Landry changes gear and speeds up. He wishes he could keep his mind off the cancer if only for a moment, but he can’t. The cancer isn’t changing how all those pieces fit into place, but it’s changing how he’s looking at them. It’s changing the way he’s looking at everything. He glances at his hands and sees them still shaking. He knows it isn’t nerves. He’s following through with the plan. The alternative is to take Feldman down to the station. He’ll be charged. He’ll go to court. He’ll be found guilty, or he’ll be found insane. With all that cutting and severing, insanity seems to be the way the jury will go. So Feldman will go to a psychiatric institution. He’ll get pills and he’ll get counseling and five or ten years after Landry has been rotting in the grave Feldman will be back on the streets.

  Life is unfair. Death is unfair. Feldman will kill again. That’s the way the justice system works. Nobody is saying it’s perfect. They’re just saying it’s the best they’ve got. What else can they do? Execute the guy?

  Execute the guy?

  Well that’s what all this is about, isn’t it? It’s why he kept that notepad to himself. It’s why he packed his gym bag with different clothes and boots. It’s why he has a shotgun in the trunk of the car. It’s why he knows about Feldman and Schroder doesn’t. If life was fair Feldman would be the one with a death sentence scheduled to start this winter, not him. Feldman would be the one with lost times and last thoughts flooding his mind.

  He doesn’t even think about doing the right thing now. He’s happy to follow where his thoughts are leading. Has been happy to follow them all day. Tonight he’s going to find justice for the three dead women-for Kathy, Luciana, and Jo. Because Jo is dead. He’s sure of it. Not sure enough to have shot Charlie already-he’ll work on that soon. After a career in the police force and living with cancer for a week he’s come to realize that being a cop is all about correcting God’s mistakes.

  “Where are we going?” Feldman asks.

  “Have you forgotten what I told you?”

  “We’re heading out of the city. You’re not taking me to the police station, are you?”

  “No,” he says, and what this is leading to isn’t murder, not really, not in the same sense of the word that Feldman is a murderer. It’s more like an exchange. A two-for-one bargain. He can’t save Kathy or Luciana, but he can save the next girl. That can’t be a bad thing. Not really. It can’t be a bad thing to live with. And perhaps Jo is that next girl.

  “Where are we going?” Feldman asks.

  “You need to shut up,” he says.

  “Are you going to kill me?” Feldman asks.

  “Maybe.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Feldman says, his voice panicky now. “I know you think I did, but I didn’t.”

  “You’ll get your day in court,” he says.

  “I thought you just said-”

  Landry pulls over. Feldman shuts up. Landry turns around and points the gun at him. “One more word, Feldman, and this ends right now. Nod if you understand.”

  Feldman nods.

  “You’ll get your chance to talk,” he says, “but not here and not now. But soon. When we get where we’re going. You say one more word before then and your brains are going to paint the back of my car, and neither of us wants that, do we,” he says, knowing how much cleaning that would take. Not from experience-but he’s seen gunshot wounds to heads before and knows what can happen.

  Feldman shakes his head.

  “Good,” he says, and he puts the gun back onto the passenger seat, puts the car into gear, and carries on driving.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  My wrists are hurting. I try to make myself more comfortable, but it’s impossible. Time starts slipping by. We skirt the edges of town where property looks rough, but is usually expensive because of its location. The loop starts to get wider. We begin hitting the outer edges of suburbs. Different economic diversities. Nice homes. Nice people. Bad homes. Bad people. We keep driving. We end up going west, right out of the city. Landry’s cell phone rings. He ignores it. A minute later it rings again, he looks at the display, then switches it off.

  There isn’t much in the way of traffic. Not much in the way of lighting. Just long, dark highways, boarded by long, dark fields full of crops and animals, all being grown so the rest of us don’t go hungry. Landry said that maybe he’s going to kill me, but I think he’s already made up his mind. He said I’ll get my day in court, and I think that that day is today. It’s tonight. It will be a court in the middle of nowhere, one where I plead not guilty and still end up hanging from a tree. I wonder how many others he’s done this to. I wonder if it’s standard practice, that Landry is one of many cops who think they’re doing the world a favor. And he would be-no doubt there-if he had the right guy.

  I keep looking out the window, trying to figure out where we’re going-as if it actually matters, as if the location is the relevant point here and not the fact that Landry is crazy. Twenty minutes pass silently. Landry keeps the same pace. I’m hoping he’s using the miles we’re putting between us and the city to good use, that he’s thinking things over and coming to the conclusion that he needs to turn around and take me back into the city. I need a lawyer. I need my chance to explain things. The hum of the motor and the slight clinking coming from my handcuffs are the only sound. I can’t lean back because the pull on my wrists is too strong. My lower back starts to get sore. The first drops of rain splash lightly on the roof, slowl
y at first, then it picks up until it becomes a constant thick patter. Landry turns on the wipers-wubwud, wubwud.

  Another twenty minutes go by and all I’m looking at are black hills. My back gets sorer. I get more scared. I want to say something, but I’m convinced if I try I won’t even get the trial he’s planning. It may be crazy, but that trial is still the only chance I have.

  We hit the hour mark. Are we ever going to stop? The rain is really heavy now. Ninety minutes and it’s just long, straight roads and no car lights ahead or behind us and I desperately need to take a leak. I close my eyes and ride it out in silence. It’s all I can do. The tires start bumping over a gravel road and we come to a skidding halt. Landry steps out, shifting the weight of the car so it bounces up slightly. He moves into the path of the headlights where he swings open a chain-link fence. I can hear its hinges squeak over the noise of the rain. They sound like a coffin lid being pried open. I have large, red indentations around my wrists visible under the car’s interior light. As the skin swells the cuffs get tighter.

  Landry comes back. There is water dripping from his jacket and ears. He glares at me, a look that suggests I’m to blame for everything that’s ever gone wrong in the world. He puts his seatbelt back on. We roll forward. He doesn’t close the gate behind him. The gravel peters out as the surface becomes dirt. The back wheels spin occasionally as they fail to find traction in the mud. The driveway becomes bumpier and painful because every small bounce is amplified through my wrists. We only drive five minutes before we come to another stop. He kills the engine. I can hear rain and I can hear each of us breathing. The headlights shine over the trees ahead of us. The dashboard lights shine over Landry, making his skin look orange. I peer out the window to my left. Only darkness. To my right is the same.

  Landry turns off the lights. We’re in complete darkness. He opens the door and the interior light comes on, making it difficult for me to look outside as my reflection continually gets in the way. He gets out and lets the door close behind him, but it doesn’t latch, so the light stays on. I stare at my reflection as if it’s another person who can help me, but it’s only somebody else who’s letting me down. Landry disappears. I keep glancing at my watch as if time is suddenly my greatest ally. My ass is sore, my back is throbbing, and my neck is stiff. My arms and legs are cramping, especially my shoulders. My headache is back. I have the urge to cry. I have the urge to scream at the world and tell it that it’s not playing fair.