The Killing Hour

CHAPTER EIGHT

Landry repeats the procedure from before. He parks outside the house and leans against his car, only this time he doesn’t give in to the temptation of another cigarette.

The night seems to have cooled off as far as it’s going to get-somewhere around ten degrees he guesses. This same time last year the evenings were half that. He can hear the waves in the distance. The house is a few blocks from the beach. The moon is hanging out over the water and he imagines the view out there must be pretty good. He can’t remember the last time he walked on a beach at night. Maybe he never has.

The house is a similar age to Feldman’s, only instead of brick it’s wood. Similar gardens, only more trees, and with a driveway that snakes up around the side of the house in a way that you can’t see the front door. He’s halfway up there when his phone rings. It’s Hutton.

“I think I have what you’re looking for,” Hutton says.

“Shoot.”

“Guy by the name of Francis Booth was found unconscious in the bathroom at a bar by the name of Popular Consensus. Hey, doesn’t your brother own that bar?”

“Yeah,” he says, and the story is starting to ring a bell. “So what happened?”

“The guy was taken to a hospital. Had a broken nose, broken cheekbones, a dislocated jaw. Says some guy went into the bathroom and beat the shit out of him.”

“Mugging?”

“No. Guy still had his wallet on him. Said he didn’t know the guy. Never seen him before. Nobody saw anything. Case is still open. You got something?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Thanks for the info,” he says, and before Hutton can ask any more questions, he hangs up.

So Feldman beat somebody up at a bar. Why? Something to do with his wife? Something to do with being jealous?

He walks the rest of the way up the driveway. Some of the cobblestones are loose beneath his feet, some of the branches from the shrubs and trees tug at his jacket. He peers through the garage window and can make out a car, but can’t tell what kind. He gets the same feeling he got from the last place, that it’s empty in here. He puts the theory to the test by knocking on the front door, waiting, then knocking again. Nothing.

At Feldman’s house he was happy to break in, but not here. This woman is not guilty, which makes breaking into her house something quite different. And he has no reason to think Feldman has come here.

Just for the hell of it, he turns the handle to see if the door is locked. It isn’t, which sets off a whole lot of warning bells. Houses have a feel when they are empty, sure, but they also have the same feel if the person inside is dead. He’s not sure why his mind jumps to that conclusion, but it does-that’s what twenty years of seeing bad stuff will do to you. He’s suddenly feeling convinced there’s a dead woman in here. The door swings open. He gets out his flashlight.

“Hello?”

Nothing. He steps inside. “Hello?”

Still nothing. He flicks on the flashlight. He’s in a dining room. Nothing looks out of place. He moves further in. The headset to the phone is sitting on the floor, the cable torn from it. That same cable is a few feet away near the oven. He crouches down over it. There’s a knot in the middle, and the ends have been cut by a knife or by scissors. At some point this cable was used to tie something up. Or somebody. He goes through the house, searching it room by room, feeling relief with every room that doesn’t have a dead body in it. There are no signs of a struggle. The bedroom is a mess, clothes have been pulled out from the wardrobe, probably packed away into a suitcase. Did Jo run, or was she taken? The cut cable suggests the latter. But why take her and pack stuff for her?

He walks back into the dining room. Technically, he doesn’t know anything bad happened here. It looks that way-but it may not be. Feldman may not be responsible for any of this. Could just be she packed some stuff and left. But the phone cord? Maybe the phone is faulty. No matter how he looks at that, the only explanation is a bad one. There’s no handbag. No car keys. No purse. But there’s a cell phone on the kitchen table. There’s the piece of cable, and the car in the garage, and an unlocked front door. He picks up the cell phone. He goes through and finds Charlie Feldman’s number. He calls it. He gets a message saying the number is no longer in service.

He walks back down to his car. He pulls his cell phone out of his pocket. He needs to call this in. As much as he wants to get his hands on Feldman by himself, this case has now also become about Jo Feldman, and he needs the police looking for her. Only he can’t do that without explaining why he was here. And anyway, he doesn’t know something has happened to her.

And, if it has, then whatever has happened has happened.

He puts his phone back into his pocket. This might be about to get a lot more complicated than it should have been. He pulls away from the curb. Holding on to the evidence the way he did, well, he’s already too deep now. He can’t tell anybody what’s happened, and he can’t back away. He has to stay committed.

He’ll find Feldman, he’s sure of it, and if Feldman is the one who took Jo, then he’ll find her too, and everything is going to be okay. That’s what he tries to tell himself, but the same twenty years he’s had of seeing bad stuff are now telling him that may not be the case at all.