The Killing Hour

The room is covered in fingerprinting dust and dozens of empty plastic evidence bags. Spare gloves, notebooks and scene forms litter the floor. The medical examiner quietly ties paper bags over the dead woman’s hands and feet to protect any evidence beneath the nails. One of his kits sits nearby, containing a selection of scissors, blades, cottonbuds and needles. Small labelled containers containing specimens of hair, and fibres and blood are lined up evenly inside a larger plastic tray. There are inventories of items found in the house, dozens of scattered rubberbands, rulers and tape measures. It wasn’t this messy when he arrived. Now it’s starting to look like a whirlwind came through here. Just inside the bedroom door waiting to take the cause of that whirlwind away is a neatly folded bodybag.

A forensic examiner with a hairy neck and a nervous twitch is photographing the body; the whining and firing of the flash has been grating at Landry’s nerves for the last half-hour. He has two cameras around his neck, one a 35 mm, the other a digital. Every few minutes he needs to change film.

Landry picks up the victim’s address book, moves to the corner of the room, and starts going through it for the third time. Some of the people in here probably don’t even know yet what has happened. Others are crying on shoulders or into drinks, wondering why in the hell the world is such a shitty place.

Suddenly he’s had enough. Taking the address book, he makes his way out of the room, barging past other detectives in the hallway. They say something to him, but suddenly he has to get outside, now. He moves quickly down the stairs and heads for the front door. A radio jingle is caught in his mind, an ad for security systems. Would this women still be dead had she heard that ad? He fights the urge to start humming it.

He tugs at the collar of his shirt. The house is hot, so damn hot. Aside from the bedroom the house has no other signs of violence – no broken furniture, no bloodstains. The other crime scene is the same. No broken windows. No forced entry. Just two dead women and no reason why. That’s always the way.

He makes it outside and rushes around to the side of the house where he squats down and gulps in the cool evening air. From his pocket he pulls out two evidence bags. He puts the address book into one. Then, making sure nobody is watching, he holds the second bag over his mouth. The vomiting is over within a few seconds, and then he’s coughing the remaining dregs into the bag. He seals it and carries it to his car.

He can’t go back inside. Not yet. Probably not even again tonight. Normally he would go through everything, spend all day there – as long as it took. But normally he doesn’t have as strong a lead as he has this time. He puts the bag of vomit into the boot. He can imagine the hard time he’d get if one of his colleagues knew he’d thrown up. The address book he takes out of the bag and goes through once again, looking for any reference at all to Charlie Feldman, but there’s nothing. Which is strange. Because in a third evidence bag, this one tucked inside his jacket pocket, is a memo-pad he found beside the corpse. Landry wants very much to find out how Mr Feldman’s name could end up on a pad soaked with blood.





3


I pull up the driveway. A dozen or so of the paving stones wobble beneath the weight of the car, stones I wanted to cement back into place but never got around to doing so. I come to a stop in front of a garage with freshly painted black doors and shiny new handles. The house is fawn with black trim and a black concrete tile roof. I helped to paint it. A couple of the weatherboards at the bottom have rotted more since I last saw them. They’ll need replacing within the next year. I wonder who’ll do it.

The best thing I can do right now is back out of the driveway and never come back, and every muscle is telling me to leave but I can’t bring myself to walk away. I should catch a plane somewhere. Things might look different from a pilot’s point of view. All of my problems would fade away as we climbed towards the sun. I feel like I’m not really here, that this is all part of the same dream I’ve been having all day. I reach out and trail my hands along the weatherboards of Jo’s house. The wood is hard and smooth. When I reach the door I suck in a few breaths and bite down on my lip. This is crazy. I knock and my hand doesn’t pass through the wood. I don’t wake up.

Jo’s smile disappears when she sees me. She lets one arm fall to her side; the other she keeps up high on the side of the doorframe. Her greeting towards me doesn’t include the word ‘hello’. She has this look on her face that suggests she has just eaten a bad piece of chicken. I can smell freshly brewed coffee.

‘Hey, Jo, can I come in?’

‘What do you want, Charlie?’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘You think I care about what you need?’

‘Please. It’s important.’

She looks me over, studies the wounds on my face. Then she sighs as she reluctantly decides. ‘Make it quick.’

‘Can I at least come in?’

She sighs again, this time more loudly, then steps aside. When I’m in she closes the door and leans against it as if to block my exit. Jo’s a few centimetres shorter than me, a couple of years younger, but twice as mature. She has hazel eyes, soft until she frowns at me, which she’s currently doing. The tanned skin of her face is sprinkled with light freckles. Her hair has been cut, stopping just above her shoulders. Her body is toned and athletic from her visits to the gym. She looks better than the last time I saw her.

‘So no “How are you doing, Jo?” or “You look nice, Jo,” or “I’ve been missing you”?’