The Killing Hour (6 page)

She makes a good case. Jo isn’t the sort of person to deceive me, not after all we’ve done together. Our lives were entwined – we were lovers, best friends, and I’ve kept the knot in place by kidnapping her. It’s time I started trusting her. Only the last twelve hours have destroyed all of that. I’ve taken all of those years we’ve known each other and poisoned them with paranoia and fear.

‘Look, I’ll bring you back some breakfast, okay? I promise. Then we’ll talk.’

I can’t take her with me because if the police showed up at her house last night then her picture may already be circulating in the news. I can’t take her with me because if I was in her situation I’d be doing what I could to escape. She doesn’t resist as I tie her to the bed. I turn on the TV. It hums for a few seconds – the picture comes and goes and then settles. The top right corner of the tube is purple as if a magnet has recently rested there. There’s an old black-and-white movie on. It’s about vampires. They’re being chased by bad acting and poor directing. I recognise none of the actors but all of the lines. I leave the TV on for Jo and hang up the ‘do not disturb’ sign on my way out.

The café is one of those small Mum and Dad places that probably gets more business from nearby factories than from the motel. It seats around twenty people inside and another seven or eight out. The smell of coffee and bacon makes the warm atmosphere inside even more appealing. I wish I could stay all morning. The rooms are painted orange and red and there’s enough hardwood from the floors to the furniture to the edging around the ceiling and walls to make an ark. I’m served by a short waitress in her late forties with a haircut that should be in a museum. She smiles as she takes down my order. A nametag on her uniform says her name is Dot but sometimes nametags lie. She brings me coffee that’s on a par with the cup I had at the motel. I realise I’m as nervous as hell. Does anybody here know who I am? I order bacon and eggs. The bacon is slightly overcooked just the way I like it. The eggs too. I must look like a competitive food eater as I shovel them into my mouth. I buy some food to go and pick up a newspaper on the way back.

The first thing I do is untie Jo. While she eats we study the front page. The police have released more details. They mention that Luciana was found by a work colleague, Kathy by a neighbour. Both husbands have been questioned and released. Luciana’s husband was in Auckland with his new partner at the time. The article mentions the pair’s separation, says the husband is gay. Kathy’s husband, Frank, also has a solid alibi.

The van outside Luciana’s house was found with the key snapped in the ignition. Luciana’s car, a dark blue Ford, was found abandoned several kilometres away. The police have a lead on a vehicle they’re looking for – a dark blue – or possibly dark green – stationwagon. Cyris’s? I’m not sure. I read the sentence over and over and each time I breathe a sigh of relief that nobody is mentioning me or my car.

I read the article twice more, then I go deeper into the paper where a related article has been written by a different journalist. I read this but don’t learn anything. I go back to the front page and read the headlines again. Something in them doesn’t quite gel but I can’t put my finger on it. I look through the paper searching for any mention of Jo but there’s nothing. Then I even read my horoscope. It says forces in my life are conspiring to change my future but isn’t any more specific.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Jo says, ‘that if this Cyris guy is after you he’s going to come for you at night, right? He does his thing at night, and he wouldn’t risk anything during the day.’

She’s sitting on her bed and I’m sitting in the kitchenette and we’re both staring at the carpark and watching the rain.

‘I guess that makes sense. Why? What do you have in mind?’

‘First of all, you need to contact the police.’

Unbelievable. ‘I’m not going to the …’

‘I didn’t say go to them. Now are you going to shut up and listen or not?’

‘Get to the point.’

‘You know things about Cyris, important things that the police don’t know. You said they wouldn’t know about the paddock, well, you could tell them to search there. You could tell them everything you know by writing a letter and sending it anonymously.’

I think about what I would put down. I would tell them how it was me who broke the key found in the van but I wouldn’t mention I was the one who smashed Luciana’s phone so the police couldn’t be called.

‘It’s a good idea, Charlie.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘Did he see your car?’

‘No doubt there.’

‘And we both need to call in sick at work.’

Christ, I haven’t even thought about that. I wonder how many students were sitting around yesterday celebrating the fact I didn’t show up. I wonder if I still have my job.

‘Then what?’

‘If he’s looking for you, Charlie, where’s the first place he’s going to go?’

The answer is simple. ‘You want to head back to my house?’

‘Why not? He saw your car, he would have noted your registration plate to figure out where you live. I’m saying we need to stake it out.’

Staking out my own house. Considering everything else that has happened this week this new development doesn’t seem strange to me. ‘I guess it’s a logical progression.’

‘Oh, it definitely is, for him and for us. And that has to be our plan. That, and figuring out a way to catch him when he does show up.’

‘How are we going to do that?’

Jo pushes away her empty plate and sips more of her bad coffee. ‘That’s what we need to work out.’

9

Another day, another dollar. And already it’s going badly.

It started with waking up and having no appetite. It moved on to him hovering over the toilet for ten minutes fighting the waves of nausea the pills were supposed to fight for him. The day he’s been dragged into has been built with bad weather. He hates rain more than he hates the heat. His packet of cigarettes was empty and the plug on his coffee machine was broken. The thought of stripping the wires and poking them directly into the mains became even more appealing when he factored in the chance of being killed. In the end he had to settle for drinking warm water, and when you’re stumbling through this world in a dozing stupor trying hard to wake up, trying hard to stay focused with both cancer and cancer-fighting poison running through your system, water simply doesn’t cut it. Apparently slapping himself hard doesn’t work either.

On the way to work he stopped at a service station to buy an instant cup of coffee, but the machine there was out of order and he wondered if it was a world-wide event. He traded the idea of buying caffeine for purchasing a packet of cigarettes. When he got to work somebody had taken his parking space. The coffee machine inside was working, but then he found a crack in his mug – after it had leaked all over his pants.

From there it was a trip to the morgue where he had to stand in a cold white room surrounded by metal tables with canvas sheets draped over them, and on those sheets were saws and pliers and forceps and knives and other tools he couldn’t identify, all of them for cutting, cutting, cutting. He had to stand there knowing he would be coming back in winter and those same tools would open him up and place his black lungs on the same scales and into the same holding trays. He had run his finger along the edge of one of those trays: it was cold and unforgiving, just like the cancer. The coroner handed him a thick folder with several photographs of the wounds and lots of paragraphs and diagrams of exactly how the two women died. At the front of the folder a half-page synopsis summed up the photos and diagrams. He walked out of the morgue and threw it into the back of his car without opening it.

Back at the first crime scene the media activity in the street has died down. Maybe there’s been a massacre across town he hasn’t been told about. As much as he hates the media they still have their uses. His call last night had produced a false description of Feldman’s car in this morning’s newspaper. Feldman will read the paper because bastards like that always do. He’s probably even going to keep a scrapbook.

Stomach rumbling, Landry heads into the victim’s house wishing he’d been able to get his nutritional needs from a big breakfast rather than from tobacco. The smell of death has stained the carpet, as have several bloody footprints. The smell of death has stained his clothes too. He can smell it on himself. Or perhaps that smell is him.

The victim’s husband, after flying down from Auckland, had been through the house but all he could identify as missing were some clothes. Feldman probably changed after getting blood on his. Bloody footprints that look like practice dance step cutouts form an even path from the bathroom to the garage before disappearing. The smell of vomit in the hallway 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. For them to finish and be violently ill doesn’t add up. Hairs found on the headrest of the couch and in the drain-trap in the bathroom match the DNA of the saliva on the beer bottle and also the vomit. Did Feldman make himself at home? Did he have himself a nice relaxing beer while torturing Luciana Young? Was it the beer that made him sick? There were no traces of medication in the vomit.

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 along with others in the bathroom, living room, kitchen, garage and the keys found beneath the van. Landry knows who they belong to.

He thinks of the person who saw the Honda parked up her driveway. If only they’d looked out their windows later on during the night while Young was standing in her driveway trying to call the police. Life and death are all about bad timing.

Timing. Feldman’s car was seen up the driveway around two o’clock but the phone call to the police was made closer to five-thirty. Did Feldman come here, get preparations under way, take his car home, steal a van and come back, only to find that Young had somehow escaped and was on the phone to the police? Is it possible Feldman has a partner? Several pieces of evidence support the two killer theory. The footprints in the hallway, for a start. The two vehicles. The fact the women were easily overpowered.

Or is the van just a huge red herring, left behind deliberately?

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. Why would Feldman do that? By accident?

The phone. The vomit. The keys. The timing. Feldman had a shower here, he drank beer, he rested on the sofa. An empty glass on the bar has Kathy McClory’s fingerprints on it. Both women were here last night yet they died in their own homes. The only thing that makes sense is the bloody piece of paper in his pocket. He spends an hour at the crime scene then another hour talking to the immediate neighbours. He learns little but isn’t bothered by it.

The drive to Feldman’s house is refreshing. He parks further down the street than last night and kills the engine and looks down at his pants. Hopefully coffee doesn’t stain. He knows that blood does but beyond that he doesn’t have a clue.

He switches off his cellular phone. The last thing he needs is to be disturbed. Christ, there are so many detectives on the case nobody should miss him. He glances at his watch. It’s three o’clock. At least it’s stopped raining. He hates this city when it rains. The car windows are down slightly and the muggy air outside replaces the dry air inside. He hasn’t been on a stakeout for years and sitting here he remembers just how boring they are. Jesus, it would be easier to go and get a goddamn search warrant.

But what if Feldman makes his way home only to find a dozen patrol cars parked outside his house? The bastard will turn around and keep on driving. What Landry needs to do is find and arrest him, 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?

He’ll give it another day. Two at the most, but no longer. He can’t assume Feldman’s lust for blood and death has been quenched and that he won’t be out looking for new prey this week.

He adjusts his seat, opens a packet of peanuts and waits.

10

The motel smells of depraved acts she doesn’t want to think about. The air is sticky and warm. The bathroom looks like it gets cleaned about as often as the place gets painted. She’s desperate to get away from here, away from Charlie.

This side of Charlie is something she’s never seen, a side she didn’t know existed. She knows he isn’t going to let her go even if he doesn’t. She wants to believe him or, more importantly, believe
in
him, but his actions have made that impossible. How much he had to do with the two dead women she doesn’t know. The only thing she knows for sure is that she has to find a way to escape.

Convincing Charlie she wants to help was easier than she’d hoped, and she guesses that’s because of his need to believe her and no longer be alone. To keep his trust she must take baby steps, she must build up his belief that they can be a team. It’s hard to think how she ever loved him. Does she still love him? No. Nobody can love a killer.

Is that what he is? A killer?

Some of what he said makes sense but most of it doesn’t. Two women died and that part is true because it’s been on the news, but who killed them hasn’t been. Was Charlie really there? She hopes not. She really hopes not.

If he wasn’t there, then all he’s doing now makes even less sense. Maybe he’s the Cyris he keeps mentioning. Whoever he is, he’s definitely not the Charlie she knew.

She’s curious about how much of what he’s telling her he even believes. At first she thought he was telling the truth. One woman waved him down and he ended up saving them both. It sounded good, but if he really stabbed Cyris in the stomach then something still had to have happened to the two women. Did Charlie kill them?