Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

He stops thrashing the briefcase, swings his arm back, and throws it high in the air. It hits the roof of the supermarket and doesn’t come back down. He leans over the bin and starts shaking it, pulling it from side to side, wrenching it back and forth until it tears from the bolts, leaving jagged holes in the bottom. He holds it high above his head for a few seconds, then throws it at the supermarket doors. It bounces off with a metallic thud, the dents in it stopping it from rolling away once it hits the ground. He picks it back up and throws it harder. This time the glass cracks. The third throw gets it through the glass doors. The alarms are instant.

He walks back to my car, clutching his stomach, and when he pulls his hand away I can see it’s red. He’s bleeding. He leans against the car and watches the supermarket.

I turn around and study the service-alley gate. Ten feet tall and made up of chain-link wire. I’m sure I can scale it without being heard over the alarm. I do just that, climbing it like a large spider. I follow the alley until it circles toward the back entrances of the shops in the mall. I scale another fence and hit the ground in some industrial section, perhaps an auto body shop-it’s too dark to tell exactly. Then over another fence and into somebody’s backyard. I climb into a park, and start to circle my way back toward my car. By the time I get there two police cars are in the parking lot, but probably no Cyris. With thousands of dollars in the car I’m lucky not to be walking home right now. I guess it’s a school night for all those joyriders out there. I do a U-turn, pissed off that I let Cyris get ahead of me, but what could I do? Wait for him to stop breaking glass doors then run after his car?

I keep my foot on the accelerator, hovering between thirty and forty miles per hour. I can’t afford to be too late. Cyris already has ten minutes on me and I doubt he took his time driving to Frank’s. I also doubt there’s anywhere else in the world he’d be going right now.

I wonder if I’m already too late.

There’s no other traffic, no reason to stop at any red lights. Cyris sure wouldn’t have. He’s fueled with rage just as I was fueled with despair the other night. I’ve raced these lonely streets before, but the fuel that has me speeding is different from the mix that burned through my veins on Monday. I don’t get lost on my way to Frank’s house, not like Monday morning, and when I turn into the street the first thing I see is the silver Mercedes still parked on the side of the road. Maybe it’s purely for show.

I drive past Frank’s house and glance in. Lights are burning inside, but I can’t see his Mercedes. It’s probably in the garage. I pull up two houses further down. My Honda isn’t here, at least not that I can see. Either Cyris has been and gone or he isn’t coming. I kill the engine, kill the lights, and wait. I look around the street for any signs of life, but it seems like life on this expensive street has died since I was here earlier. I look at my watch. It’s nearly one o’clock.

I stroll over to the house, knowing that slow movement attracts less attention. I don’t pause at the cobblestone walkway, I stroll up it as if I live there. The front door is open. That’s not good. No signs of forced entry. Coming here is tearing open a recent memory.

I step forward and stand on the threshold of the hallway. On the threshold of Monday’s memory. On the threshold of a new horror to come. I stand still and listen, but there’s nothing, so I take a few more steps and repeat the same procedure and get the same result. I put my hands in my pockets where they’ll be safe from touching anything. I could just turn away and read about it in tomorrow’s paper, but I need to see this. I want to see this-to see what has been done to the man who orchestrated the deaths of two beautiful women.

The lights are glowing in the lounge and it’s here that I find him, lying on his stomach with his head twisted, his arms spread in front of him, the carpet beneath soaked in blood. My breath catches at this sight and I suddenly realize why. I have killed this man and the feeling doesn’t make me feel sick or guilty. I have killed him, not directly, but as surely as if the metal stake protruding from his chest was placed there by my hand. I step closer and kneel down. The anger I feel toward him hasn’t diminished at all just because he’s dead. If anything I actually feel like kicking him. I’m not sure what that says about me, and I’m not sure I really want to know.

Frank has that distinguished look you see in middle-aged doctors on TV. His wire-rimmed glasses have been knocked askew, his eyes are open and reveal irises that are more yellowish then green. He wears a grim look on his face that death is managing to hold in place, a look that tells me the end didn’t come easy. There is a thin line of blood and drool slipping from the corner of his slightly open mouth. The edge of a piece of paper is sticking from between his lips. I reach forward and grab hold of it, and when I pull, his mouth doesn’t even move, but his lower lip is dragged forward, his suddenly revealed teeth giving him the smile of a skull. The hundred-dollar note is damp. I unscrew it, my fingers getting wet. I read the message I wrote across it earlier. Come near me and I’ll have you killed.

I hide it in one of my many pockets, then jam my hands into two of the others. I turn around, studying the room. Expensive furniture and expensive gadgetry and nice paintings. . I guess it’s true when they say you can’t take it with you, even though with his arms spread it sure looks like Frank’s giving it a go. I call out for Kathy, but she doesn’t answer.

“You deserved worse,” I say to Frank, and Frank doesn’t answer. He doesn’t concede the point, or argue it. He just lies there looking pissed off, and I guess I can’t blame him. “You probably think I ought to be feeling sorry for you,” I tell him, “but I don’t have it in me. You got off easy. Way too easy.”

I turn my back on Frank. Tomorrow he’ll be all over the papers in the same way his wife was. The cops won’t know what to make of it. First Kathy, then Frank, both of them stabbed in the chest with a metal stake. They’ll track Frank’s movements, and I wonder where that will lead, and can’t imagine them coming to the conclusion that Frank paid off a hit man who turned around and killed him. They’ll be looking for Landry too, and perhaps they’ve already found him-though I don’t see how. Unless the current has swept him free of that fallen tree and he’s on his way to where people go swimming or fishing or hiking.

I drive home. I stay under the speed limit. I’m in no hurry to be anywhere. I pray Cyris isn’t taking his disappointment out on Jo and figure he can’t afford to. In fact figuring he can’t afford to is the only thing keeping me sane. He’s lost his payment from tonight and won’t risk losing the fifty grand he thinks he’s getting from me tomorrow. I knew the risk when I wrote out that note; of course I thought I’d be able to follow Cyris first to Frank’s and then to Jo. I wasn’t expecting him to take out his rage on a supermarket. I was expecting to be sitting in my car waiting for him. When I decided to leave that note for him, well, I didn’t know at the time if that was a good idea or a bad one-it just seemed like the thing to do. Right and wrong can only be decided by how Jo is being treated.

There is little in the way of traffic. None on my street. There’s a big black cat sitting in the middle of my driveway, which plays chicken with my car before deciding there can only be one winner and scampers off over the fence. I load the money into one of the plastic bags from the supermarket where I shopped earlier today. I head inside and brace a chair beneath the handle of the back door in an attempt to lock it. It’s getting close to two o’clock, which, for me these days, is actually somewhat of an early night. I stand in the kitchen drinking a glass of water and I stare out the window at the dark sky, and for once I will be asleep before seeing the purple light of the killing hour. Dawn will arrive and I won’t see it. Evil will be here and I have a really bad feeling that I’m yet to see its best work.