The Killing Hour

‘Just keep thinking about the shotgun. Keep thinking about what it can do to you. Now hurry up, or are you waiting for an invitation?’


I turn around. My view shifts from the shotgun and the man behind it back to the car and the cabin beyond. This must be where Landry went when he left me alone before. Though calling it a cabin is a fairly generous term. It has the minimum number of walls required to hold up a ceiling and be labelled a building and looks to be the size of a small one-bedroom house. The walls are warped and knotted, made from a mixture of woods. The side wall I can see is made from weatherboards, while the wall closest with the glass sliding door is constructed from plywood and fence pales and plenty of sealant. The roof is made from tin and rust. Without any guttering to catch and drain the rain, a small moat has formed around the cabin. A wooden porch extends a metre from the sliding door and the roof extends above it. The glass part of the door is covered in grime but isn’t broken or cracked. Pine needles stick to the glass all along the bottom. The metal runners have darkened with mud and rust. It’s hard to imagine anybody dragging these pieces out here in their car and constructing this small home away from home. Hard to imagine some do-it-yourselfer walking through a scrap yard and coming across these bits of wood and tin and getting the final image of this cabin in his mind.

I walk past the car and climb up onto the porch. It creaks beneath my weight but I don’t fall through. Inside the air is just as cold. The rain yells on the roof but I can’t see any signs of leakage. There are two rooms. We’re standing in the main one. The walls aren’t lined – same plywood, same fence pales, with just a few bits of framing, mostly old fenceposts. Dark plastic sags in the middle just beneath the roof, probably from a small build-up of rain that has drained through the rust holes in the tin.

Landry closes the sliding door, locking out the rain and any hope I have of getting out of this place alive.

‘Sit down,’ he says, pointing me to a large, extremely worn soft chair. Its fading pattern of yellow flowers doesn’t make it look even remotely comfortable. Nor do the worn gashes with escaping foam and protruding springs. I fall into it. The broken framework pulls my body right to the back so my feet come off the ground. I rest my handcuffed hands in my lap. I can smell pine and mildew. Three lanterns provide light, but not much of it. Their glass shells are dotted with mould. Landry sits in an opposite chair. Next to him on the floor is a duffel bag. Inside, I assume, are his original clothes.

An oval rug in the centre of the floor is stained with mud and animal hair. The open fireplace is made from brick and cinderblock with a chimney that is a long metal tube not much wider than my leg. At the moment it’s set with blocks of wood and yellow newspaper but hasn’t been lit. Landry either likes the cold or doesn’t plan on being here long.

He rests the shotgun across his legs then sighs. No possible way can I get to him before he gets to his gun. I figure that’s the whole point. He looks tired.

‘Nice place,’ I say.

His hands clutch the Mossberg tightly. ‘Jesus, why in the hell do you have to keep on being so smart? Can’t you take anything seriously?’

I shake my head. ‘I wasn’t being smart. I just meant it seemed like a nice place to come to, back to nature, you know, away from everything. And believe me, I’m taking this seriously.’

It’s hard not to stumble over my sentences as I ramble. I’m scared. I know it and he knows it. So far it’s all we have in common. He lets go of the shotgun, leans back into his chair and starts nodding.

‘This isn’t my place. It belonged to a killer. I caught him. It’s a while back now.’

‘Did you give him a trial too?’

‘Jesus, Feldman.’

‘You’re making a big mistake. I didn’t kill anybody, and if you give me the chance to …’



‘Shut up, okay? Do you know how many times I’ve heard guys like you tell me they’re innocent? I don’t need to hear it from you. All I want to hear from you is a confession.’

‘Look, I know how you feel, I can understand …’

‘You can’t understand anything, Feldman, you really can’t. I’m sick,’ he says, and slowly he shakes his head. ‘I’m sick of dealing with all of this. Sick of people who kill for the hell of it, just for fun. I see these people go to jail, I see them released and then I see them reoffend. They’re predators, and that will never change. They’ll always be among us. Their faces change, but their thoughts never do. They live among us doing what evil men do. I thought I’d seen everything. You like this cabin?’ He looks around it as if he’s seeing it for the first time. ‘This useless shack in the middle of nowhere – you want to know what it was built for?’

‘I don’t think I do.’

‘He brought his girlfriend out here when she no longer wanted to be his girlfriend. Any guesses as to why he’d do that?’