Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

“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.

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.