Five Minutes Alone by Paul Cleave

before Smith himself was released. Guy’s name is Jamie Robertson.”
    “Bevin Collard,” he says, and he remembers the case, and he remembers Collard had a brother. He writes the name down with a pencil. Using a pad and pencil is very old school. “You have known addresses for him?”
    “No, but his parole officers will,” she says, and she gives him the details. “Would you like me to send a copy to your department?”
    “That would be great.”
    “Consider it done.”
    He considers it done then thanks her for her time. He uses his phone to go onto the Internet. He looks up Bevin Collard and refreshes his memory. Bevin, along with his brother Taylor, were sentenced nine years ago for raping a woman by the name of Linda Crowley. The case was assigned to Detective Inspector Bill Landry. Landry told him about it. It had happened at the victim’s house. They had worn masks and they had come in on a Saturday morning while her husband was playing cricket. The brothers shaved Linda’s head and broke both of her arms and raped her in front of her six-year-old daughter, Monica. Landry said every night for a week Peter Crowley would wait for Landry after work and beg him to have five minutes alone with the men who had done this. Landry kept giving him the same answer. No. It didn’t work that way.
    Bevin was released twelve months ago. His brother, Taylor, was released eighteen months ago. He rings the parole officer, identifies himself as Detective Inspector Theodore Tate. He asks for the last known address of Bevin Collard. One minute later he has it.
    He taps his pencil against the pad. He’s tired. He used to take caffeine tablets in his old life. Wake-E tablets. They used to help. Then they helped a little less and he had to keep taking more. The old life ended in June with a bullet. He was tracking the Christchurch Carver. He tracked him to a church, and there was a firefight. People died, including the serial cop killer Melissa X, but not before she shot him. The Carver got away, and the Old Him got abullet in the head. It entered and never came out. It’s still in there, lodged down deep. It’s why, the doctors have told him, he can’t taste anything anymore. It’s why he can’t feel anything. It’s why he doesn’t care. One day that bullet will switch off his lights and he’ll be dead before he hits the ground. And that really doesn’t bother him. Why should it? Not caring is the only advantage to having a bullet stuck in his head.
    The doctors told him it will happen any day. Or in a year. Or ten years. Or twenty. Was there anything they could do? No. How high were the risks if they tried to remove it? Too high. The surgery would kill him—that was almost guaranteed. Almost? Well, if he survived the cutting he would lose so much brain function he would barely be alive anyway. It was a lose-lose situation. They told him to be careful. Don’t get into a fight. Don’t crash your car. Don’t get drunk and fall over.
    He reads more about Linda Crowley. Fourteen months after her attack, Linda Crowley took as many sleeping pills as she could get hold of, washed them down with a sixty-dollar bottle of red wine, and said good-bye to the world while her daughter was at school and her husband was at work. Landry told him Peter Crowley started coming to the station again after that, asking for his five minutes. He offered him money. Landry said one evening Crowley followed him home, knocked on his door, and handed him a briefcase with twenty-eight thousand, six hundred and eight dollars in it. “It’s all I have, but it’ s yours—just give me my five minutes.”
    But Landry couldn’t give them to him. He sent him home.
    Landry may have said no, but the Five Minute Man can say yes.
    He looks the husband up in the phone book and sees he’s still living at the same house. He remembers the name of the street because he was with Landry when they attended to the suicide. It wasn’t the same house the attack