Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

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.

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 body bag 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.

Landry repeats the procedure from before. He parks outside the house and leans against his car, only this time he doesn’t give in to the temptation of another cigarette.

The night seems to have cooled off as far as it’s going to get-somewhere around ten degrees he guesses. This same time last year the evenings were half that. He can hear the waves in the distance. The house is a few blocks from the beach. The moon is hanging out over the water and he imagines the view out there must be pretty good. He can’t remember the last time he walked on a beach at night. Maybe he never has.

The house is a similar age to Feldman’s, only instead of brick it’s wood. Similar gardens, only more trees, and with a driveway that snakes up around the side of the house in a way that you can’t see the front door. He’s halfway up there when his phone rings. It’s Hutton.

“I think I have what you’re looking for,” Hutton says.

“Shoot.”

“Guy by the name of Francis Booth was found unconscious in the bathroom at a bar by the name of Popular Consensus. Hey, doesn’t your brother own that bar?”

“Yeah,” he says, and the story is starting to ring a bell. “So what happened?”

“The guy was taken to a hospital. Had a broken nose, broken cheekbones, a dislocated jaw. Says some guy went into the bathroom and beat the shit out of him.”

“Mugging?”

“No. Guy still had his wallet on him. Said he didn’t know the guy. Never seen him before. Nobody saw anything. Case is still open. You got something?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Thanks for the info,” he says, and before Hutton can ask any more questions, he hangs up.

So Feldman beat somebody up at a bar. Why? Something to do with his wife? Something to do with being jealous?

He walks the rest of the way up the driveway. Some of the cobblestones are loose beneath his feet, some of the branches from the shrubs and trees tug at his jacket. He peers through the garage window and can make out a car, but can’t tell what kind. He gets the same feeling he got from the last place, that it’s empty in here. He puts the theory to the test by knocking on the front door, waiting, then knocking again. Nothing.

At Feldman’s house he was happy to break in, but not here. This woman is not guilty, which makes breaking into her house something quite different. And he has no reason to think Feldman has come here.

Just for the hell of it, he turns the handle to see if the door is locked. It isn’t, which sets off a whole lot of warning bells. Houses have a feel when they are empty, sure, but they also have the same feel if the person inside is dead. He’s not sure why his mind jumps to that conclusion, but it does-that’s what twenty years of seeing bad stuff will do to you. He’s suddenly feeling convinced there’s a dead woman in here. The door swings open. He gets out his flashlight.