The Killing Hour

I stuff the gag back into Jo’s mouth.

The room is small and cosy and very simple. The walls have been painted cream. There are no paintings, only a calendar from three years ago strung up on a nail bashed into the mortar between two of the concrete blocks. A door closes off a small bathroom with a small window that doesn’t open. The kitchenette has utilities dating back thirty years. There’s a TV, the remote to which is bolted onto the bedside dresser. The dark blue curtains are pulled shut, hiding the lack of view. The carpets are cheap and look like they get waterblasted every other month. The cigarette burns in the bedspread and on the carpet match the ones on the dresser.

Jo doesn’t struggle too much when I tie her to the bed. I don’t tell her that I would do anything to protect her because she won’t believe me. I use towels to bind her arms and legs and wrap the motel’s phone cord around her waist and the bed. Back on my own bed I kill the lights and wonder if I ought to be killing myself. I feel sick to my stomach and my heart is racing. I wipe an arm across my forehead and it comes away sopping wet. I lie down but I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again. The neon from the sign outside flickers around the edges of the curtains and makes the room glow red. I can hear it buzzing. I reach out and roam my fingers over the sticky buttons of the remote control. I stab at them until the TV blinks into life. A menu with a blue backdrop displays a list of movies I can choose from for an extra ten dollars. Most of them are adult. I remember reading a statistic once that the average time an adult movie is on in a motel room is seven minutes. That means they watch the start and get what they need around ten per cent of the way through. They don’t know what happens after that. Don’t know how it ends. Could be the actors all sit around drinking coffee and nobody would ever know.

I use the remote to steer away from the menu and go to the local channels. A TV evangelist appears telling us all that God’s strapped for cash, and how, with our credit cards, we can help Him out of his bind. Maybe the repo guy is after Him. Maybe Jesus has racked up some gambling debts. I skip channels until I find a news broadcast. It’s live from the scene. Kathy’s house is swaying around because the camera has zoomed in beyond the operator’s control. As yet the police have no suspects though they do have a few leads they’re confident will wrap the case up. Apart from the obligatory statements from the police, the report is similar to the one I didn’t want to watch earlier. Gone are rehashed interviews with family and friends. Added are pictures of the bodies being removed within black plastic bags. I turn off the TV and lie back, listening to the letters buzzing outside, all except for the K. The concrete block walls drown out the traffic noise but not enough of it.

We lie there surrounded by the sounds of the night. I can hear Jo shifting her body, trying to get comfortable. I don’t talk to her and she doesn’t mumble through her gag. I’m unable to switch off my mind. I can’t stop thinking about Kathy and Luciana and Cyris. I can’t stop thinking how the shape in the bodybag on TV was more than just a shape back when this day started. I can’t stop thinking about Jo. Things are bad. And as Monday sets about turning to Tuesday I have a feeling they’re only going to get worse.





7


Detective Inspector Landry looks out over the sea of cameras and reporters glued to the edges of Tranquillity Drive where this modern-day-Christchurch drama is unfolding. All the streets in this subdivision have similar names. Serenity Street. Harmony Drive. It’s as if the council sent in a psychiatrist tanked up on Prozac to name them all.

Watching the media, he thinks about his cancer. He decides that learning he was dying takes the award for worst day of his life, making this one the second. Cancer and the media – he hates them both. Thinking of the black death running through his veins makes him tired, irritable, and he suddenly has the desire to set fire to every camera and microphone within a kilometre radius. Everywhere he looks a reporter is talking to a camera or fixing their hair in front of a mirror. He wonders how attractive they’d look if he took them single file through the bedroom and showed them first-hand what rocked Charlie Feldman’s world.