Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

We drive through town, and for the first time I’m able to see past the Garden City postcard image and see Christchurch for what it really is. People are getting killed here every few weeks. Last year it was the Christchurch Carver, then the Burial Killer, there have been bank robberies, revenge killings, people being thrown off roofs. It’s a building statistic that everybody seems to be keeping a secret. It’s becoming a part of modern-day life just like rising gas prices and global warming and terrorism, and we just sit back and accept it because nobody is showing us an alternative.

In the distance, on the Port Hills, the sun glints off house windows. Some reflect the sun and look like they’re on fire. Others look as though a giant tub of glitter has been spilled over them. Teenagers go up there at night in their souped-up cars and pour diesel over the roads so they can do burnouts and impress their friends before killing and dying-these are the boy-racers of the world, our next generation, and sometimes that scares the shit out of me. Some of these kids I teach. Some of them you know are going to make something of their lives-they’re going to do good, they’re going to help people or change the world, provide art and love and make little people with other good people-then there are those destined to hurt, to cause pain, to end up behind bars.

Daytime and the hills are filled with mountain bikers and paragliders and the husks of incinerated stolen cars, patches of landscape cordoned off with yellow police tape where some poor kid is getting peeled off the asphalt. It happens. It happened to one of my students last year. Speeding in cars was all a bit of a laugh. His friends, other students of mine, kept saying he always wanted to die young. That he died doing what he loved. That’s one of the dumbest phrases I’ve ever heard. He may have loved speeding, but I’m sure he didn’t love his car crushing all around him, didn’t love the fireball that burned flesh from bone. He didn’t love screaming. He didn’t die doing what he loved at all.

We reach the highway I was driving down when the Sunday night Old World collided with the Monday morning New World and created the Real World. Just after the turnoff I pull the car over by the pasture with the trees and the grass and the shallow graves that were meant to be. I kill the engine. The hot sun has burnt away most signs of the rain. We have enough light for maybe another hour.

“What are we doing here?” Jo asks. It’s the first time she’s spoken since we got into the car.

I nod toward the trees in the distance. “This is where it all happened.”

“You want to go in there?”

There are only a few cars on the highway behind us. I could probably dig a grave a few yards from the road and nobody would notice. Or care. I wonder how much evidence has been washed away over the last few days. A strong heat wafts through the window and it smells like mown grass. My clothes are sticking to me. Out there is a patch of ground that may or may not be covered in blood. Pieces of clothing are out there too. I had come along the other night, I had been a savior, a knight in shining Honda. Cyris had offered me to join in on the fun, but I wanted a different sort of fun.

“I guess not,” I tell Jo. “I just wanted to show you.”

I start the car and pull away, heading for home. The conversation doesn’t start back up. I slow down a little as I get nearer my street. I head to my house and pull up the driveway.

“I want you to come in with me.”

“What for, Charlie? I thought we were going to sit outside and watch, and watching from the driveway isn’t going to work. We need to be further down the street. Plus we’re still in your car. That’s not really that useful.”

“I just want to check it out. I want to see if he’s been here.”

“Have fun.”

“You’re coming with me.”

“Fine.”

I step outside and circle the car to open her door. She climbs out and I put my hand on her shoulder. I’m expecting her to start screaming, but she doesn’t. I open the gate and the first thing we see is my back door yawning wide open-splintered pieces of wood where the lock once was have twisted away. I think back to Kathy’s door, then to Luciana’s. Neither of theirs were forced or pried open.

“Who did this?” Jo asks.

“Who do you think?”

All the curtains inside are drawn. Did I leave them like this? The air inside isn’t as stagnant as yesterday, thanks to the back door being broken open. Cyris wasn’t thoughtful enough to smash the windows to let the air circulate. Apart from the door nothing seems out of place. The living room is relatively tidy and I can’t see anything damaged.

“We should contact the police,” Jo says, and something in her voice is more convincing than anything else she’s said today, and I realize why that is-up until now she didn’t believe me. “Unless. .” she says, but doesn’t finish it.

“Unless what?”

“Nothing,” she says.

“You were going to say unless I did this myself, weren’t you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“You still don’t believe me,” I say, my voice raising.

“I didn’t say that. You said that.”

“Goddamn it,” I say, shaking my head.

I lead the way into the lounge. I’m expecting to see torn curtains, the TV tipped over, the sofa and chairs shredded, but there’s no evidence he even came in here. I move to the windows. The sun has nearly gone and so has the blue sky. The clouds from this morning are back. They’ve appeared from nowhere and in the distance they look black. Within half an hour it’s going to pour down.

“You have photos of us up on the walls,” Jo says.

“Yeah. I guess I do.”

“Probably not the best thing to do if you’re dating,” she says.

“You’re right,” I tell her. “It’d be stupid if I was dating.”

“You’re still wearing your wedding ring.”

I look down at my hand. Yeah, so I am. I shrug, feeling a little embarrassed.

“Charlie. .”

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says. “Just. . just nothing.”

We pass the bathroom and I think back to when I stood outside the bathroom door at Luciana’s. I remember opening it and seeing the most grisly thing I’d ever seen. Of course that scene would almost repeat itself fifteen minutes later.

There are no corpses behind the bathroom door and no damage either. We check the spare bedroom and once again everything’s intact. We double back and check the bedroom on the right, the room I use as a study.

And here is the evidence of vandalism I was thinking I wouldn’t find. Only this is nothing as menacing as the drains blocked with rags and the faucets turned on full so the house is flooded. This is not as vulgar as large body parts drawn on the walls with paintbrushes. This is time-consuming. It has taken effort.

The computer monitor lies on the floor. Several crevices run the length of the plastic casing and there’s a hole in the middle of it. It looks sad down there. The keyboard has fared no better: it has been twisted and bent and several of the keys have popped off from the pressure and are scattered like misshapen dice. My laser printer has been tossed aside. It has gouged out a hole in the wall and a black puddle of toner has spilled onto the carpet. Of the two bookcases the first has been tipped over so that it lies on an angle with books crushed beneath it, their pages and covers bent and torn. The second bookcase is upright, but the books have been removed and the covers ripped away. A pile of loose pages has been stacked next to it.

Straight ahead beneath the window in a black cabinet is a small stereo system. The covers have been removed from the speakers and the cones pushed in and ripped. The front of the stereo has been smashed in, damaged by the computer lying at the foot of the cabinet. The stereo is on and some of the lights work-most of the display doesn’t. Hissing comes from the speakers, but no music, and the CD player is making a soft clicking noise over and over like a metronome. The TV I have in here is lying on its front on the floor. The antenna, twisted on the floor next to it, looks like a tool somebody would break into a car with. The remote control is next to it. Each of the rubber buttons has been stretched and torn out. The batteries have been removed and crushed with what seem to have been teeth. Behind the TV my aluminum garbage bin has had the sides and lid kicked in, denting any reflection it once offered. Its contents, only paper and plastic, have been littered over the rest of this mess. My small collection of die-cast cars, all classics from the fifties and sixties, haven’t been smashed underfoot, but the doors, the bonnets, the wheels, and the trunk lids have all been removed. The cars are still on the shelves, on the drawers, on my desk, but the broken accessories are in individual piles on the floor, one for different parts, down there like confetti.