The Killing Hour

Detective Inspector Bill Landry looks at his watch, then at the red numerals on the alarm clock. It disagrees with his watch by two minutes. He watches the last number change from an eight to a nine. The woman he’s come to see has now been dead a minute longer than she should have been. He’s struggling to stay focused. He badly wants a cigarette. Life isn’t the same unless you’re slowly ending it. He follows the shape of the dead woman’s face and locks his gaze on her milky eyes. She would agree. She would agree he needed coffee too.

He looks down at her hands, at her fingernails, wondering if any skin from her killer is trapped under them, wondering what she would have done differently the last time she had a manicure if she’d known so many people would be looking at them. He wonders just how much that manicure cost. Life and death and the details in between all have price tags. The cost of death starts out small. Like a fifty-dollar visit to the doctor. You begin throwing good money after bad. You try to chase away the cancer or one of a hundred other diseases that riddle your body and ride it down. Sometimes it isn’t even fifty dollars. Sometimes it’s only five. Or ten. A ten-dollar investment. A knife, for example. Or a pair of garden shears. They slice through skin and flesh quicker than any disease. There are expenses no matter what savages you. New clothes to replace the bloody ones. Smaller clothes to replace the ones that no longer fit your wasting body. Booze to calm the nerves. The family of the victim shops through glossy catalogues for coffins, choosing colour and craftsmanship and style, what’s in at the moment. The graveyard plot, prime real estate these days, adds to the bill, along with a new suit or a dress for the corpse. New clothes for the mourners. When the bad news comes from a cop rather than a doctor the expenses add up faster. One murder and the cash is flying around. Man hours. Court cases. Lawyers. News stories. People charging and making money from evil.

The day is cooling off. It certainly needs to. The air inside the house is thick – it tastes and smells like aging fruit. He can’t turn on the air-conditioning, can’t open any windows – not allowed to do anything that will alter the temperature of the house. The medical examiner and the forensic guys would all have fits. He moves over to the window, looks out at the slowly ebbing day and wonders if it will ever actually end. The neat backyard with its golden pebbles and expensive plants has been surrounded by yellow plastic evidence markers. With their black numbers they’re larger versions of the order discs he’s been given at pizza restaurants. He wonders if the same people make them or if they’re made to order.



The neighbouring house has the sun. It bounces off the dark blue steel roof and makes the lemons on the nearby tree look purple. He balls his hands into fists. The people in the townhouse are standing by their windows. They’re staring at him, their eyes wide and their mouths open as they watch in awe. He wishes he could arrest them. Wishes he could fire the guy who hasn’t got around to hanging large tarpaulins to block their view. He turns away in disgust.

He picks his way across the room, stepping carefully. There are several areas of dried blood, several signs of violence. It’s the same as the other crime scene.

The room has a definite woman’s touch – two vases of flowers, dreary paintings of romantic scenes, candles on the dressing table. The sort of thing his own wife had lying around when she used to be his wife. A collection of make-up and hair products is scattered beneath a mirror on the wall with smudges of hairspray on the glass. A hair dryer lies on the floor next to several pairs of shoes. A rubbish basket full of tissues and cottonbuds. A pair of slippers made to look like cartoon lion heads. A calendar showing vintage movie posters on the wall by the wardrobe. February shows a pissed-off 1933 King Kong on top of the Empire State Building, fighting off planes while holding his damsel in distress. No dates have been circled, no messages jotted down. Nothing to indicate a bad day was coming.