The Killing Hour

CHAPTER FOUR

Landry doesn’t even get half a block before he has to bring the car almost to a stop. The first barrier to get past is police cars and tape that’s been put up to cordon off the scene. The next barrier is the hundred or so reporters beyond it. With all the killings over the last year, he’s surprised journalists are still taking an interest. He has the windows down and can smell sausages and steak on a barbecue from a nearby yard. Music is booming from a neighbor’s house, the sort of generic pop every teenager is recording these days for every other teenager. He remembers a time when he used to love suburbia, but now it’s just another body count. The neighbors have gathered on their front lawns to watch the show. They’re thinking the circus has just come to town. And it’s free. They’re inviting family and friends over. With neighbors like this, murder will always stay in fashion.

The police cars pull back and make room for him to pass through. The station wagon with the body in it has pulled up behind him. The sun is falling from the sky and nighttime is nearly here. He closes his eyes for a few seconds, and he can see both women. The pictures are exposed perfectly and full of vibrant and violent colors. They’re real Kodak moments.

He realizes he’s just been asked a question from one of the reporters. Well, not quite asked, more yelled than anything. Then other questions are coming his way. He rolls the window up, but the yelling continues. He can see the street being canvassed. Tranquility Drive. That’s the name of the street 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. He’s been in enough of these situations to know what questions are being asked, and to know it’s a six-to-one ratio. For every question a cop asks, they themselves are asked half a dozen in return.

Did you see anything suspicious? would be returned with What happened? Do you know who did it? Tell me all the gory details. Was there a lot of blood? Do you suspect her husband? Was she having an affair? Everybody questioned wants a piece of the action. They want a story they can tell at work or on the golf course. Hey, Jimmy, guess what? Those two chicks that were blood-let during the week? Hand me that nine iron. Well, you’re never going to believe this, but I knew one of them. Crazy, huh? Now watch this shot. . It makes them Mr. Popularity for half a week. It makes them the center of attention. Makes them wish their neighbors were getting killed more often.

Makes Landry angry just thinking about it. It makes him want a cigarette.

He reaches for his pocket, but of course there are none there. He threw them out five days ago.

A week ago he was miserable, alone, and without long-term goals, but he still had plenty of time to change that. He had two failed marriages and a mortgage he couldn’t afford. Thirty minutes sitting with the doctor changed everything. Now he’s racing to his grave. The smoking will help him get there quicker, but quitting isn’t going to give him his life back, so why bother? It seems pointless not to enjoy every one he can fit in before his spring funeral. Jesus, forty-two is too young to be sitting in your doctor’s office with your hands gripped tightly against the armrests and your skin itchy from your clothes and damp with sweat. It’s too young to be told you’ve just drawn the short straw in the cancer lottery. Too young to feel your stomach turn upside down with the news that you’re going to die. He listened quietly and he asked all the right questions and got all the wrong answers.

Chemo wasn’t an option. Landry had had heart problems a few years back. His body wasn’t strong enough to have one poison fighting another poison within him. He had six months tops. That’s what the doctor gave him. And that’s if he gave up the good life of smoking. Once that figure was out there, a calmness came over him, and suddenly the fear and anxiety he’d had disappeared. He was a man who knew his fate. He went through the seven stages of grief all in about sixty seconds, bypassing a bunch of them and coming straight to acceptance, then he stood up, thanked his doctor, and left. It was time to put his affairs in order. He got home and backpeddled somewhat on that grief list, settling on anger.

He’s angry with himself for smoking for so damn long. Other people smoke forever and get away with it. He smokes for twenty years and now that gun he’s been holding against his head has gone off. He’s angry at life. Angry all the justice in his world was pissed away so long ago. Angry that the real cancer comes in the form of people like Charlie Feldman. Why the hell can’t God start correcting His mistakes?

The police finally make a path through the ocean of journalists for him to drive through. Cancer and the media-he hates them both. Suddenly he has the desire to set fire to every camera and microphone within a half-mile 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 firsthand what rocked Charlie Feldman’s world.

When he’s past the journalists he winds the window back down. The air is cool, but his skin still feels hot. He isn’t sure if it’s from the black death running through his veins, or the anger. When he tries to turn his mind to calmer thoughts, he struggles. Everything in his world is darker now.

They’ve ruled out burglary-cash and jewelry have been found at each scene. Trace evidence has been vacuumed from each of the rooms as well as the road and the driveway-carpet and clothing fibers and hair. There’s plenty of blood to process. It’ll all take time. Every piece will strengthen the case against Feldman. Yet all of it’s irrelevant. Only one piece of evidence really matters-the pad he found beside the victim’s bed with Charlie Feldman’s name on it. The top sheet of the pad was clean. That was impossible, unless it wasn’t really the top sheet, but was in fact the second one down. The original top sheet had been removed after the woman was killed.

One reason for that would be if the killer didn’t want what was written down to be read.

Landry had done one of the world’s simplest tricks-he had run the side of a pencil over that sheet and read the impression left behind. That’s where Feldman’s name came from.

He has to pull over a few minutes later when he suddenly feels nauseous again. He comes close to throwing up, but this time is able to resist it. This is now all part of the cancer merry-go-round. That and the weight loss. He can hear a dozen lawn mowers closing out the day in the distance. He’s far enough away from the crime scene now to pull out his phone and spend a few minutes on the Internet.

He finds an online phone directory, looks up Charlie Feldman’s name and matches it with the phone number he found on the pad, and a moment later he has Feldman’s address. Best way to find out for sure why Feldman’s name was removed from that pad is to go and ask the man himself. See what he has to say.