The Killing Hour

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The rain is pouring heavily on the tin roof. The inside of the cabin is damp, his skin feels clammy, his feet cold, and he feels sick at being in a place where such depravity took place. He feels sick too sitting opposite this piece of human trash.

He is starting to feel a little nauseous. When was the last time he ate? It takes him a few seconds to figure it out, which is a few seconds longer than it should have taken. It was the fries from before. He should have eaten the damn burger too. He’ll pick one up on the way home later. Maybe two or three of them.

The cabin felt just as damp last time he came out here, even though that was in the middle of summer. It’s amazing that after all these years his memory of the scene is so intense that he could almost close his eyes and use muscle memory to get around, his limbs knowing where to go. It just proves the worst thing you ever see will stay with you the longest. That girl in the bathtub died hard. Harder than anybody else he can think of.

Now that he’s here, he has to admit to himself that there are doubts starting to creep in. He’s never killed anybody before. He’s wanted to. Who hasn’t? As a cop, he’s wanted to do it more than most people. He’s had chances. There have been people he’s chased down that he could have put a bullet into, but chose not to. He’s annoyed that the anger that fueled him all the way out here seems to be disappearing. He needs to get it back. He thinks of the way Kathy and Luciana were cut open.

It helps.

It makes him feel once again he’s on the right path. Only problem is this path is pretty close to another path, one in which he thinks he should have just taken Feldman in to the station.

All he can do now is move forward. If he shows up at the station with Feldman now he’ll have to explain this little outing, and it’s going to look as though he withheld evidence just in case he felt like killing the suspect. Which is exactly what happened. And exactly what he’s going to have to do. Now. He could blame the pills and the cancer, but he’ll still be disgraced. He’ll lose his job. They’ll send him home and they’ll wonder how many other people he brought out here, or took to similar places. He’ll pass from this world to the next under a cloud of suspicion.

He pictures the two dead women. He pictures the contents of the cardboard box. He pictures the other cases he’s never been able to let go even long after they were solved. The fuel is coming back. He remembers the young woman floating facedown in the bathtub in this very cabin, her gray, wrinkled skin, her milky eyes. He thinks of other young women face down in alleyways and hallways and ditches and other bathtubs. Feldman’s as guilty as they come-he’s doing the world a favor by taking him out of it.

He hates Feldman. Hates his sarcasm. In the end it’ll be the smugness that’ll make his transition from judge to executioner easier to bear. As soon as Feldman admits what he did then he can happily. .

Happily?

That’s the wrong word. There’s nothing happy about this. This is the last place he wants to be. In six months when his sins are weighed up in whatever magical afterlife landscape he goes to, a large piece of him will still be back here.

He needs Feldman to confess, then he can get this over with. He needs that confession because it will come with a feeling of justice. With it, dying from the cancer will be easier to do.

Without it, he’s just one more bad man doing bad deeds.