The Killing Hour

The street is being canvassed, but the questions come mostly from the neighbours – What happened?, Do you know who did it?, and most of all, Tell me all the gory details. Everybody questioned wants a piece of the action. They want a story they can tell at work or on the golf course. Hey, Frank, guess what? Those two chicks that were blood-letted during the week? Hand me that nine iron. Well, you’re never going to believe this, but I knew one of them. It makes them Mr Popularity for half a week. It makes them the centre of attention. Makes them wish their neighbours were getting killed more often.

He stands in the street and absorbs the sounds and the smells and the sights. He loves summer, but not this summer, and not in this city. He dreams of summer in another country with beaches of white sand, and without blood patterns, where the only crime would be some fat son of a bitch in a thong blocking his light. Is that such an insane thought? Is he crazy for wanting that life? Soon this murder will be nothing but a statistic, a passing sensation. People will wake up and go to work like any other day. They’ll work nine to five and earn a paycheque. They’ll mow lawns, cook dinners, men will come around and take away the rubbish. These two women should be remembered for ever, and it should never be forgotten their lives were stolen away from them.

He can’t wait to get his hands on Feldman. No doubt there’ll be the same sorry bullshit about how he was molested in kindergarten and how his parents wouldn’t buy him a sandpit and he simply couldn’t repress the rage any longer. He’ll feel mighty bad about it so he’ll apologise profusely, leaving the judge with no other option but to blame society. In the end it all adds up to a short jail term.

He pulls his cigarettes from his pocket and looks at the warning on the side of the packet telling him they all taste like cancer. His stomach starts to growl. He thinks of what his doctor told him less than a week ago about kicking the habit. It came with the news that it was time for him to put his affairs in order.

That’s why this summer is the worst of his life. It will also be the last. Six days ago he was miserable, without long-term goals, but he still had plenty of time to make them. Thirty minutes sitting with the doctor changed all of that. Now he’s racing to his grave. The smoking will help him get there quicker but quitting isn’t going to give him his life back, so why bother? It seems pointless not to enjoy every one he can fit in between the doctor’s warning last week and his eulogy coming up in the winter. Jesus, forty-two is too young to be sitting in your doctor’s office with your hands gripped tightly against the armrests and your skin itchy from your clothes and damp with sweat. It’s too young to be told you’ve just drawn the short straw in the cancer lottery. Too young to feel your stomach turn upside down with the news that you’re going to die and there isn’t a thing you can do about it except try the run-of-the-mill chemo that’s going to make you feel even worse and probably isn’t going to help because the cancer is too advanced. He got through it, he sat patiently and asked the questions the doctor was hoping he wouldn’t ask and in the end he got the figure he didn’t want to get. Six months. Tops. With chemo. And that’s if he gives up the good life. This whole last week he’s been trying to wake up. Now he just wishes he could go back to sleep.

He tucks the cigarettes back into his pocket. He’s angry with himself for smoking them for so damn long. Other people smoke them for ever and get away with it. He smokes for fifteen years and now he’s getting chemo – one poison to fight another. He’s angry at life. Angry all the justice in his world was pissed away so long ago. Angry that the real cancer comes in the form of people like Charlie Feldman. Why the hell can’t God start correcting His mistakes?

He pulls his notebook out and stares at the cardboard cover, trying to get his mind back on track. The pills he’s been prescribed to take care of the side effects of chemo aren’t helping. He feels nauseous every morning and tired every afternoon. And things are only going to get worse.

He flips open the notebook and glances at the small notes he’s jotted down. Blood has been found at the scene but only blood from the victims. The second scene has blood from both victims along with blood yet to be identified. The killer’s no doubt. It was found in the lounge and in the bathroom.

They’ve ruled out burglary – cash and jewellery have been found at each scene. Both victims have fingernail marks in the palms of their hands, indicating their fists were clenched tightly as they died. That means Charlie Feldman made them suffer. Trace evidence has been vacuumed from each of the rooms as well as the road and the driveway – carpet and clothing fibres and hair. They’ll take days to process and every piece will strengthen the case against Feldman.

Yet all of it’s irrelevant. Only one piece of evidence really matters – the pad he found beneath the victim’s bed.





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