Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

“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.”

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.

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.