The Killing Hour

I step back, taking Jo with me.

Cyris looks over and yells something. It’s indistinguishable over the loud rain, so heavy now it almost feels like hail. He points the gun at us and I figure he’s not such a dumb guy after all and I give him credit for reading my mind, though it isn’t that big a trick because trying to run is the only option worth looking at. He steps over Landry towards us. We back away, getting closer to the river. We’re going to have to jump for it. We’re going to have to climb into the freezing cold water and do whatever we can to avoid rocks and drowning and pneumonia and gunshots. I don’t know if Jo has come up with the same plan. I know she hates water and I know she can’t swim. I also know she isn’t bulletproof. What she needs to do is choose one plan over the other, and really it can be simplified down to two choices: living or dying. I don’t know how many times I’ve had that option this week. Living is turning out to be a hell of a lot of work and the alternative is starting to look tempting.

Cyris is grinning because that’s what guys like him do. The gun sways slightly as the wind pushes at him. The shotgun means he doesn’t need to be accurate – he can fire in our general direction and still nail us. I can’t see any way that he won’t pull the trigger before we’re in the water. I look down at Landry. He’s starting to move, but barely.

Cyris pumps the shotgun and we get ready to jump.





27


The pain in Landry’s arms and legs is so raw, so intense, that he can barely think. His throat is burning from all the screaming, and the gunfire has left a high-pitched whine in his ears that is eating right through the middle of his brain. He can feel his heart slowing down. He’s losing it. He doesn’t want to die. He’s made the biggest mistake of his life by coming out here tonight, and he’s going to pay for it in the biggest way possible. This is far from the justice he pictured hours ago, but in a way it’s justice nonetheless. He came out here with the thought that he was doing humanity a service. All he was doing was making a mockery of everything he believed in.

What a mistake.

Even though Cyris is here, he still isn’t entirely convinced of Feldman’s innocence. However he isn’t convinced of Feldman’s guilt either. If he were to choose …

He doesn’t have time to choose.

He hates that he’s spent the last week dwelling on his cancer. What a waste of time. The cancer doesn’t matter now, not out here, not in this shithole of a forest where people have died before him. His six-month wait has just jumped forward by six months.

As his eyes fill with blood the shapes moving in front of him turn as red as the landscape he sees them moving across. Everything is wet. The gunshot wound isn’t enough to kill him but the blood loss is. Trained paramedics couldn’t save him now. There’s no hope. Not for him. Maybe for Feldman and the girl.

He digs his fingers into the damp ground and twists himself towards Cyris. His killer is facing Feldman and the woman, the shotgun firmly in his hands. Landry uses his arms and his good leg to crawl forward. He starts to close the distance.

He reaches into his right pocket. Charlie took the keys to the handcuffs but not both sets. For as long as he’s been a cop he’s always carried a spare handcuff key in case his own cuffs were used against him. And now they have been. Hell of a time for it to happen. He curls his fingers around the key and pulls it out, then nearly drops it as he undoes the left bracelet.

He crawls closer to Cyris knowing this is the last thing he will ever do.





28


Cyris is shouting at them and Jo can make out the words ‘turn’ and ‘partner’, but she’s too cold and too confused to understand their meaning. She glances at the river but knows only drowning waits for her there. It looks black and cold enough to stop her heart, assuming it’s still beating when she hits the surface – which at this point is a big assumption. She should have trusted Charlie. Should have trusted herself because she wanted to believe him.

The policeman is crawling towards Cyris. His leg drags unmoving behind him, the knee a mess of blood and tissue and cotton fibres from his shredded pants. He has a determined look on his face. He’s working at the handcuffs. He gets one bracelet unhooked from one wrist. Then he makes one last lurch forward and latches the empty cuff around Cyris’s ankle. Both men yell out at the same time: Cyris in a loud ‘No’, and Landry in an even louder ‘Run’. Cyris stamps hard on the policeman’s hand. She sees the fingers buckle beneath his boots, and when Cyris steps away, the splintered fingers are splayed out like road signs pointing in all the wrong directions, but the handcuffs keep the two men joined. With his other hand the policeman throws the key into the darkness.

Cyris levels the shotgun down to the back of his head.