Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

“In the pasture you wrote about.”

“Things like this only happen to other people,” Kathy tells me, and she starts to fade.

“He forced her into a van, and that’s when she saw he had Luciana too. She was unconscious. She said that scared her the most.”

Kathy is nodding slowly, agreeing, fading quickly now.

“She said she knew at that point she was going to die.”

I try to imagine the terror she must have felt as Cyris forced her to walk through those trees, the horror of having Cyris carrying her unconscious friend with them. My fear of walking through those trees in the darkness later had been nothing in comparison. What would it be like to know you were being taken to your death? How would you feel knowing the rest of your short life would be lived out in immense pain and cruelty? I shudder at the thought of putting myself into her position. This is electric-chair material. Like being taken down a corridor there is no coming back from. I look at Landry’s bag and think of the Bible inside he told me was there. Could anybody in these situations really find comfort from one?

“He tied her up to a tree. He dumped Luciana on the ground. He didn’t know, but she had woken during the walk. He’d dumped her at the side of the clearing they were in. He was so focused on Kathy that he didn’t notice her inching away. Eventually she would run away and flag me down. As she was doing that, Cyris was telling Kathy that she was a mistress of evil. She said it was like being attacked by two different people. One moment he was calm, the next he was in a frenzy-only she was sure the frenzy was an act. She was positive he was calm the whole time.”

“An act? Even if I believed another man killed them, why would I believe he was acting in a frenzy just for the sake of acting? He had no audience.”

I tell him what Jo said. About an actor in a role. About him wanting the police to believe one thing when in fact it had been another. Then that scenario evolves a little. “Maybe he even only wanted to kill one of them, but by killing them both it looks more random, right? It looks like he picked two women and drove them into the woods to kill them in some ritualistic or crazed act. What if only one of them was a target? If he killed her then you would look for somebody more personal to the victim. Isn’t that how it goes? This way who do you look for? Some maniac?”

“And that’s what I found. You were Cyris when you killed them and you’re Feldman now that you got caught. You were right about the actor.”

“You’re wrong.”

He shakes his head. “There was a connection between the two, so I know you didn’t just pick their houses at random. You followed them first. Where did you first see them? The supermarket? The movies?”

“See? This is exactly what I said before. You’re not willing to hear anything that doesn’t fall in line with what you think happened.”

He holds his hand out and uncurls his fingers. The stake rolls out. It hits the ground and doesn’t bounce. It makes me jump. It makes me think of the way Kathy and Luciana died.

“Maybe you met them at a bar. They were friends out having a quiet drink, and you were the guy who kept hitting on them. In the end they figured out you wouldn’t leave them alone so they played along with you. You swapped names and numbers, only they gave you fake ones and you gave them your real one. You took it back after you followed them home and killed them.”

“There was no forced entry. How do you explain that?”

“Maybe you convinced them at the bar you were a nice guy and they took you home. Maybe they were drunk and asked you for a lift. You had your bag of tools in the trunk and you just couldn’t say no. They let you inside and the rest is obvious.”

He reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a packet of cigarettes. He removes one with his lips, starts to put them away, then holds them out to me as if to show he isn’t such a bad guy after all. I shake my head. I don’t tell him that those things will kill him. He shrugs, as if not accepting one of his cigarettes is undeniable proof I must be crazy. He lights it and sucks deeply, then breathes a mouthful of smoke into the damp air. It hovers above his head, but doesn’t drift.

“You cut off Kathy’s breast and took it home.”

“What?”

“What? You didn’t think I looked in the box?”

“I had no idea. I just assumed it was a head.”

Landry shakes his head. “You just don’t stop trying, do you?”

I feel sick. “It still doesn’t add up. You think one of them waited in the car while I killed the other?”

“You attacked one of them quickly and knocked her unconscious, then subdued the other. You probably left her tied up in the car.”

“That’s not how it happened.”

Kathy’s ghost has gone and Luciana’s arrives. She looks at me from where Kathy stood earlier, only she has no drink to hold. Instead she’s holding a towel to dry her wet, ghostly hair.

“She tried to call the police, but you had to stop her, didn’t you?” Landry says.

“What happened?” Luciana asks.

“I broke the phone.”

“I know,” they both say, but only Luciana carries on. “It was too late anyway, Charlie.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Did you kill Jo?”

“What? No,” I say. “How do you even know about her?”

“But you abducted her.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I thought.”

I shake my head. “No, it’s not what you’re thinking. I was trying to help her.”

“You were helping her by abducting her.”

“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the truth.”

“No, I don’t think you know just how crazy it really sounds. Where is she?”

“She was helping me find Cyris.”

“Let me get this straight. You abduct her, and she agrees to help you.”

“Like I said, I know it sounds crazy. But it’s true.”

“You have no idea how many times I’ve heard that during my career,” Landry says. “People think if they lead into a conversation by saying they know how crazy it sounds, that somehow it will make what they say more believable. But it doesn’t. It only makes them sound more guilty.”

“Well, she was helping me.”

“Bullshit.”

“She was in the car,” I tell him, and suddenly I realize what that means. “She saw you! She will have seen you, and she’ll be able to identify you to the police. You should take me back. Don’t make it worse for yourself.”

“You’re lying.”

I shake my head. “I’m not lying. Look into my eyes and tell me I’m lying.”

He looks into my eyes. “You’re lying,” he says.

It’s been a few hours since I tied Jo up. In that time she will have managed to work herself free, or in that time somebody will have walked past the car. If she worked herself free, she will have gone into a neighbor’s house to call for help. She couldn’t have driven anywhere because I have the keys-unless Jo has spent time over the last six months learning how to hotwire a car. Right now the police will be looking for me. She will have told them. The only problem is she won’t have told them where. And she won’t be able to have told them who took me. But it’s something. Knowing Landry may be found guilty of killing me isn’t much comfort, but it’s something.

“Tell me about Luciana,” he says, and as if on cue, Luciana reappears.

She slowly shakes her head at me exactly as she did on Monday morning. She finished drying her hair and offered me fresh clothes to replace the bloody ones I was wearing. She shook her head when I told her mine weren’t that bad and called me a typical male. She left me alone in the lounge to think, alone to drink my beer, and the beer had my head buzzing. Kathy was trying to call her husband. The next thing I knew darkness was my friend and in the darkness I thought about the offer Cyris had made me. I had fallen asleep. I woke to find Luciana crouching in front of me and my beer seeping into her carpet.