The Killing Hour

‘The end of the line. You want to know how I know about this place? Not about the cabin, you already know that, but about this place right here.’

‘You walked the crime scene?’

‘Yeah, but we wouldn’t have come this far. Only we had to. Because the girl in the bathtub wasn’t our man’s first victim. She was his second. He led us here. We found his first in the caves behind you.’

I don’t like the idea of taking my eyes off the weapon but I follow his gaze and aim the torch where he’s pointing. The beam is swallowed up by the mouth of a cave that’s been there for ever.

‘Holes in there are so deep you can drop a stone and never hear it land.’

‘And a body?’ I ask.

‘It took us two days to find her and that was only because we were looking. Nobody will ever look for you. Not out here. You’re going to die, Feldman. You get to choose whether you want to meet your maker with a clear conscience.’

He takes aim. I can hear my heart beating, my stomach rumbling. My jaw throbs. My neck aches. I can hear the river and the rain. My bowels are clenching. My bladder is trying to let itself go. I feel like I want to yawn, scream, run, do a thousand push-ups. I suddenly have all this energy that deserves to have a chance of release. I deserve the chance to be a better person, to be somebody who will be missed. I picture my cold dead body lying on this cold dead ground. I’ll never be found. I’ll have a funeral with an empty coffin. I want people to say they miss me. I want a community in shock. I want the kids I teach to be disappointed I can teach them no more.

I think of Jo and wish I could tell her how I feel about her. I wish I could say I regret what happened. I wish I could warn her about people like Cyris. I wish I could protect her. She’ll go to the police and tell them the entire story. Will they know who killed me?

I’m standing in the rain beneath a storm-clouded sky, among the trees and the mud and the rocks, and this is no place to die.

I point the torch at his face but the bright light doesn’t blind him.

‘Goddamn you, Feldman. And God forgive me.’

I close my eyes. ‘Go to hell.’

The sound of the shotgun rips the night apart.





24


I can hear myself screaming.

The wet ground vibrates waves of cold into my spine. Death has chilled me. I continue to scream. I clutch my hands to my chest and can feel the blood soaking upwards, warm blood. It oozes between my fingers like water and slips down the sides of my chest like water, and several seconds later while the screaming continues I realise it actually is water, and at the same moment I realise it isn’t me screaming. I sit up and point the torch ahead of me. Landry is swaying back and forth, trying to keep his balance. The shotgun is in his right hand, the barrel pointing to the ground. His left hand is reaching around to the back of his head. Something moves behind him.

I dig my feet and hands into the slippery ground and push upwards. I stand and run as hard as I can at Landry. He sees me, raises the gun and pulls the trigger. My eyes flare red as the blood I’m about to lose surges past my brain, but the gun only clicks because it hasn’t followed the sound of a double crunch. That means even though there’s still ammo in the shotgun there’s no shell in the chamber – I’ve seen enough movies to know this. So nothing happens except this small clicking noise, which is the sweetest sound in the whole world. I hit him at full speed, first lowering my head and shoulder to make the most of the impact. I connect with his chest; the torch pops from my hands as the gun pops from his. My momentum drives him into a tree, his head snapping back into it.

I push myself away. The torch shines in my eyes for a few seconds before moving over to Landry. He looks totally out of it. If he’s really lucky I won’t turn the shotgun onto him.

‘I’ve never been so happy to see you,’ I say, turning towards Jo.

‘Don’t get happy yet,’ she says, crunching the shotgun and pointing it at me. It wobbles in the air as she tries to control it. She’s never held a shotgun before, but the mechanics are simple enough to figure out – pump, point, and shoot. She bends down and picks up the torch, it’s sitting next to the rock she hit Landry with. She moves the beam onto my face, making it difficult for me to see her. I want to hug her but I can’t because of the handcuffs. Anyway she’d probably shoot me.

She turns the torch back to Landry. Blood is running down the side of his neck and down the left side of his forehead.

‘We need to help him,’ she says.

‘Do we?’

‘Who is he?’ she asks.

I wonder. ‘A cop who finally saw too much. And got it all wrong.’



I don’t know how calm I’m sounding but Jo is looking at me as if I’m the one who’s got it all wrong. Perhaps I sound flippant, even dismissive. Yeah, just another trip into the woods. Yeah, just another psycho.

‘He thought you did it.’

‘Uh huh.’