He raises his gun. He points it right at my face. “Turn around, Feldman,” he says, missing the Mr. “Don’t make me ask you again.”
I turn around and put my hands behind me. A few seconds later the cold bracelets click into place.
“What’s this?” he asks.
I turn back and face him. He’s holding the envelope with my story inside. “It’s the truth.”
He tears it open and drags the loose pages out. After a quick skim through he pushes them back into the envelope. “Unbelievable,” he says. “I knew you were with those two women.”
“You have to read the whole thing,” I tell him. “I was trying to help them, not kill them.”
He raises a finger to his lips. “No more talking, Feldman. How about you tell me about the box you have in your bedroom?”
“What? You were in my house?”
“The box,” he says. “Tell me about it.”
“I don’t know what’s in it. Cyris left it here.”
“Cyris. The man from your confession.”
“It’s not a confession. It’s an account of what happened.”
“We’ll see about that,” he says, as if it’s all up to him. “Let’s go.”
He pushes me ahead of him. He gets me outside and tells me to wait for a few seconds, then disappears into my bedroom. I look down toward Jo, but can’t see her. I think about running, but there’s no point. I wouldn’t make it far. Landry comes back out. He’s holding up a wooden stake.
“Want to explain this?” he asks.
“It’s because-”
“Shut up, Feldman,” he says.
“I thought you-”
“I said shut up.”
He stays a few feet back as we walk down the hallway and out to his car. His car is an unmarked, four-door sedan. The reflections of the streetlight off the side windows look like two moons. He ushers me into the backseat, twists me sideways, undoes the handcuffs, and reattaches one cuff to the handgrip above the door. He pulls out another set of handcuffs and attaches my other hand to the same handgrip. It doesn’t seem like standard protocol, but I guess that’s because this isn’t one of those police cars with a metal grille separating the prisoner from the driver. Plus he’s alone.
He gets into the driver’s seat. He needs to know about Jo.
“Listen, I need to tell you about-”
He turns around to face me. “This is quiet time,” he says. “You say one more word while we’re still driving I’m going to put a bullet in your head. I’ve seen what you’ve done, Feldman, and I suggest you believe me.”
“But-”
He points his gun at me. “If you don’t believe me, Feldman, just say one more word.”
I believe him. He faces forward. He starts the car and we pull away from my house, leaving Jo tied up in my car watching for Cyris.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It started with the notepad. Then with the bloody shorts. The confession. Feldman’s wife missing. The lying. The wooden stake. There’s no way of shifting all those pieces into different positions and still not getting them to match. It’s undeniable. Irrefutable. It’s like the cancer running through his body-it can’t be forgotten.
Landry changes gear and speeds up. He wishes he could keep his mind off the cancer if only for a moment, but he can’t. The cancer isn’t changing how all those pieces fit into place, but it’s changing how he’s looking at them. It’s changing the way he’s looking at everything. He glances at his hands and sees them still shaking. He knows it isn’t nerves. He’s following through with the plan. The alternative is to take Feldman down to the station. He’ll be charged. He’ll go to court. He’ll be found guilty, or he’ll be found insane. With all that cutting and severing, insanity seems to be the way the jury will go. So Feldman will go to a psychiatric institution. He’ll get pills and he’ll get counseling and five or ten years after Landry has been rotting in the grave Feldman will be back on the streets.
Life is unfair. Death is unfair. Feldman will kill again. That’s the way the justice system works. Nobody is saying it’s perfect. They’re just saying it’s the best they’ve got. What else can they do? Execute the guy?
Execute the guy?
Well that’s what all this is about, isn’t it? It’s why he kept that notepad to himself. It’s why he packed his gym bag with different clothes and boots. It’s why he has a shotgun in the trunk of the car. It’s why he knows about Feldman and Schroder doesn’t. If life was fair Feldman would be the one with a death sentence scheduled to start this winter, not him. Feldman would be the one with lost times and last thoughts flooding his mind.
He doesn’t even think about doing the right thing now. He’s happy to follow where his thoughts are leading. Has been happy to follow them all day. Tonight he’s going to find justice for the three dead women-for Kathy, Luciana, and Jo. Because Jo is dead. He’s sure of it. Not sure enough to have shot Charlie already-he’ll work on that soon. After a career in the police force and living with cancer for a week he’s come to realize that being a cop is all about correcting God’s mistakes.
“Where are we going?” Feldman asks.
“Have you forgotten what I told you?”
“We’re heading out of the city. You’re not taking me to the police station, are you?”
“No,” he says, and what this is leading to isn’t murder, not really, not in the same sense of the word that Feldman is a murderer. It’s more like an exchange. A two-for-one bargain. He can’t save Kathy or Luciana, but he can save the next girl. That can’t be a bad thing. Not really. It can’t be a bad thing to live with. And perhaps Jo is that next girl.
“Where are we going?” Feldman asks.
“You need to shut up,” he says.
“Are you going to kill me?” Feldman asks.
“Maybe.”
“I didn’t do it,” Feldman says, his voice panicky now. “I know you think I did, but I didn’t.”
“You’ll get your day in court,” he says.
“I thought you just said-”
Landry pulls over. Feldman shuts up. Landry turns around and points the gun at him. “One more word, Feldman, and this ends right now. Nod if you understand.”
Feldman nods.
“You’ll get your chance to talk,” he says, “but not here and not now. But soon. When we get where we’re going. You say one more word before then and your brains are going to paint the back of my car, and neither of us wants that, do we,” he says, knowing how much cleaning that would take. Not from experience-but he’s seen gunshot wounds to heads before and knows what can happen.
Feldman shakes his head.
“Good,” he says, and he puts the gun back onto the passenger seat, puts the car into gear, and carries on driving.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
My wrists are hurting. I try to make myself more comfortable, but it’s impossible. Time starts slipping by. We skirt the edges of town where property looks rough, but is usually expensive because of its location. The loop starts to get wider. We begin hitting the outer edges of suburbs. Different economic diversities. Nice homes. Nice people. Bad homes. Bad people. We keep driving. We end up going west, right out of the city. Landry’s cell phone rings. He ignores it. A minute later it rings again, he looks at the display, then switches it off.
There isn’t much in the way of traffic. Not much in the way of lighting. Just long, dark highways, boarded by long, dark fields full of crops and animals, all being grown so the rest of us don’t go hungry. Landry said that maybe he’s going to kill me, but I think he’s already made up his mind. He said I’ll get my day in court, and I think that that day is today. It’s tonight. It will be a court in the middle of nowhere, one where I plead not guilty and still end up hanging from a tree. I wonder how many others he’s done this to. I wonder if it’s standard practice, that Landry is one of many cops who think they’re doing the world a favor. And he would be-no doubt there-if he had the right guy.