the Kill Clause (2003)

by Gregg - Rackley 01 Hurwitz

  Tim half turned to keep an eye on Bowrick, then slid his own gun back into his waistband. Bowrick slid down to the floor, milk-pale and trembling, his eyes and nostrils red at the rims. His teeth were chattering.

  "You're gonna want to leave. Right now. Don't wait for them to come back." Tim's footsteps broke the near silence. The rear door hung crooked on its frame, and Tim pushed past it and into the shitty backyard.

  He was almost to the fence line when he heard Bowrick retching. He stopped, exhaled deeply.

  A minute and a half later, Bowrick emerged, stuffing crumpled bills into his pocket, wiping his nose on his sleeve. He started when he saw Tim waiting, still wearing the hood; he turned to run but stopped when Tim made no motion.

  "Oh. It's you. I just...I just called a buddy, gonna pick me up in five minutes." Bowrick's eyes darted nervously to the yard's perimeter, which Tim had been scanning assiduously. "Will you wait with me till he shows?"

  Tim nodded.

  Chapter 32

  TIM HAD BARELY exited into Moorpark when he noticed the flashing lights behind him. He eased over to the curb. It was a sheriff's car, not CHP, but on the off chance he didn't know the deputy, he turned on the dome light and kept both hands in sight on the wheel.

  The deputy angled the spotlight into his rearview, so he squinted as the dark form approached. He waited for the knuckle tap, then rolled down his window. Dray leaned over, resting both hands on the sill, smirking. "License and registration." She took note of his expression. "What's wrong?"

  "I need to talk to you."

  "I figured. I pulled you over before you raced home and got into it with Mac."

  "Are you solo?"

  "Yeah. Why don't you follow me. Let's get off the road."

  Tim followed her car. Eventually they pulled off onto a dirt road that crested the top of a little canyon, then rolled a few meters, gravel crunching under the wheels. Tim got out and joined Dray, sitting on the hood of her car. He'd forgotten how well she wore her uniform. Down below, a wedge of eucalyptus and a freestanding garage took shape in the darkness. Through a dimly lit window, Tim could see Kindell's figure stooping and rising, as if moving items from the floor to a counter, and he was simultaneously surprised and not surprised that they had wound up here.

  "He had a water pipe burst in there last night." Dray's lips pressed together until they whitened. "Don't know how that could've happened. Unfortunate thing is, the place isn't code, so he's got no one to complain to." She clicked her teeth and turned to him. "What's going on? You look like hell."

  "I couldn't go through with an execution. Today. At the last minute I just couldn't..."

  Dray laced her fingers and rested her cheek on the points of her knuckles, regarding him. "Who was it?"

  "Terrill Bowrick."

  She whistled, let the sound fade slow. "You guys don't screw around. Straight to the scum A-list."

  "Mitchell gun-faced me when I pulled the plug on the operation."

  "What'd you do?"

  "Stared him down. He left furious, but he left."

  "Why couldn't you go through with it?"

  "When I confronted Bowrick, I saw his remorse. I saw him, not just a person who committed a crime I couldn't understand." Though the night was cool, he felt the tingle of sweat across his back. "And he looked a lot like me."

  Dray made a noise deep in her throat. "When I shot that kid, the first thought I had the minute I cleared leather, just as I was aiming and being aimed at--it wasn't about life or death or justice. The only thought I had was that he was the handsomest kid I'd ever seen. And I shot him. And he's dead. And that's that. Procedure, rules, a deadly-force clause that I trusted in--those are the only things that let me quit prying at myself from time to time."

  She gestured to Kindell's distant shadow in the window, bending and hauling. "I've come slowly to see you did the right thing. By not shooting Kindell that night. I can't say I don't relish the sight of him suffering, but I've put some miles between me and Ginny's death, and the picture resolved a bit. Like this..." She waited, head cocked like a dog zeroing in on a sound too distant for human ears. "The law isn't individual. Its aim isn't to redress loss--it's separate from loss, really. It's not there to protect individuals but itself." She nodded, as if pleased with how the sentiment had formed itself into words. "The law's selfish, and that's just how it's gotta be."

  "Why all this clarity now?"

  "You don't ask why clarity comes, you just hope it does."

  Tim nodded, then nodded again. "Clarity came tonight when I saw Bowrick in my sights. I don't know where I've been the past two weeks."

  Dray let her breath out through clenched teeth. "I fuck up fast and hard, but you're always cool. Always level. So much so, if you're left alone, you can talk yourself into anything. I mean, what were you hoping the Commission would give you?"

  He thought hard, but the answer stayed dumb. "Justice. My justice."

  "Like against a fascist census? Like voodoo protection from evil spirits? Like against school bullies?"

  "Point taken. Hypocrisy realized."

  "Everyone thinks they can own justice, but you can't. It's not a commodity. There is no 'my' justice. There's just 'Justice' with a capital J."

  "Is breaking into Kindell's house and busting his water pipe 'Justice' with a capital J?"

  "Hell no. It's just vandalism." Her eyes, pristine green, hid a glimmer. "I said I had clarity. I didn't say I had maturity." She let out a soft laugh, then her face hardened the way only hers could--mouth drawing taut and chiseling out her cheekbones, squaring her jaw. "Don't think I'm sitting here in judgment of you because I've managed to string together a few thoughts in the past twenty-four hours. I'm not."

  They sat for a few moments with the night breeze and the eucalyptus branches scraping overhead. "I can't do it anymore," Tim said. "The Commission."

  "Because it's getting out of control?"

  "No. Because it's wrong."

  The sound of Kindell tripping and splashing echoed in the canyon, then faded into cricket-broken silence.

  "They've been double-playing me from the beginning. I'm getting out, and I'm taking Kindell's files with me."

  "What if they won't give them to you?"

  "I'm getting out anyway."

  "Then we'll never know what happened to Ginny."

  "We'll find some other way if we have to."

  Tim slid the unregistered .357 from his hip holster, released the wheel, and spun it so the bullets fell one after another into his palm. He handed Dray the bullets, then the gun.

  He got into his car. When his beams flashed past Dray, she was still sitting on the hood, staring out at the dark of the canyon.

  Rayner's front door was open, sending out a shaft of light into the night. As Tim pulled nearer, he saw that the driveway gate had been pried from its tracks and shoved open, its end post describing an arc in the concrete. Tim left the Beemer across the street, hit a jog, and slipped through the gate.

  Groaning issued from inside. Tim approached the front door fast, painfully aware of his lack of weapon. At the base of the foyer stairs, Rayner lay on his back, propped up on one elbow, his shoulders and head resting against the newel post.

  Tim saw blood on his face, his chest.

  Tim stepped onto the porch, and Rayner jerked back, startled, until he recognized him. A path of blood led from the conference room, terminating at Rayner's resting place--he'd dragged himself across the foyer. A phone perched in an alcove at the base of the stairs remained well out of his reach.

  Tim stopped before the doorway and made an interrogative gesture.

  Rayner's voice came jerky and weak. His upper lip was split, right through his white mustache, and his bathrobe was torn on the right side. "They're gone now."

  He raised a blood-soaked bathrobe sleeve, a pajama cuff protruding, and pointed with a weak, tremulous hand toward the far side of the foyer.

  Tim leaned forward and saw Ananberg's body sprawled f
acedown near the door to the library. The excruciating angle of her limbs--one arm bent backward at the elbow, her right leg caught beneath her so her hips rose in an awkward tilt--made clear she was lying as she'd fallen. Her cream chemise was spotted with blood.

  Tim entered cautiously and used his elbow to shut the door so he wouldn't smudge whatever prints may have been left on the door handle. He inhaled deeply, caught a whiff of explosive residue. His thoughts were stampeding, a swirl of furious movement.

  He crossed to Ananberg and checked her pulse, though he already knew. A fall of sleek hair blocked her eyes. Tim wanted her to brush it away with the heel of her hand, rise sleepy-eyed, and crack wise about his startled expression, his shirt, a flaw in his logic. But she just lay there, inert and cold. He pulled her hair out of her face for her, ran his fingertips gently down her porcelain cheek. "Damnit, Jenna," he said.

  He glanced through the open door of the conference room. Despite his limited view, he saw that the picture of Rayner's son had been thrown on the floor. One of the paper shredders was jiggling and giving off a repetitive whine, stuck on something.

  Rayner's voice rasped at him. "Call 911."

  Tim had already flipped open his cell phone. As he demanded an ambulance to the address, he peeled back Rayner's bathrobe. Tattered fabric fluttered around the gaping wound in his side. One of his ribs was visible, a white sheen in the rich, dark glitter.

  When Rayner spoke, Tim could see that his front teeth were both chipped, and he knew it was from having a pistol rammed into his mouth. "They dragged us out of bed...tried to get me to open the safe. I wouldn't." He raised a hand, let it fall. "Jenna tried to fight...after I got shot.... Robert lost his cool...snapped her neck with atwist of his hand, just like that.... Jenna, Jesus...poor, proud Jenna..." He tugged at the burnt edge of his robe, his fingers tense and pinching. He was dying, and they both knew it.

  Tim's head buzzed with disbelief. "They're ruthless."

  "Without Franklin around to reign them in anymore..."

  "What did they take?"

  "The not-guilty case files. Thomas Black Bear...Mick Dobbins...Rhythm Jones. And they took Terrill Bowrick's." His voice was warbling now, growing weaker.

  Even through his heightened concern, Tim felt a stab of relief that Kindell's binder had been left behind.

  "I tried to stop them.... If they kill indiscriminately.... it will ruinwhat we are...my doctrine..."

  "Were there any other files in there? The ones you were reviewing for the second phase?"

  "No." Rayner double-blinked and looked back at Tim unsteadily. "Nothing."

  The four stolen binders contained weeks, maybe even months, of man-hours. They had the complete details of the police investigations. Locations, addresses, relationships, habits. Endless trails for locating the accused.

  Essential intel for planning a series of hits.

  "I'm calling the authorities, getting them on the trail."

  "Absolutely not. You...can't. An investigation...the media.... It'll destroy my message.... my name...my legacy...."

  Rayner's arrogance and pride still drove his every thought, even here, even on the cusp of death. His mouth was slightly ajar, enough so Tim could see the protrusions of his chipped front teeth. His gums were rimmed with blood. Tim had no good answer for why his store of disdain was greater for Rayner than even for Mitchell or Robert--for anyone, in fact, save himself. The reek of shamelessness, perhaps. His father's scent.

  "Robert and Mitchell aren't interested in naming names...." With great effort Rayner tilted his head forward off the post to look at Tim directly. "If we leave them be, they'll leave us be...."

  "There are innocent people at risk of being killed."

  "We don't know that." Rayner's eyes were a jumbled mix of desperation and stifled panic. When he spoke again, the wound in his upper lip spread, a seam between two flaps of skin. "The kill clause...Mr. Rackley...or did you forget? The Commission is...dissolved."

  "The kill clause also states we have to tie up loose ends. You don't consider this a loose end?"

  The whirring of the paper shredder continued in the background with maddening regularity.

  "I'm a professor of social psychology...a prominent advocate.... Don't undo my life's work. Don't ruin what I've tried to"--he lurched forward, racked with pain--"accomplish here because of those two...maniacs. They're not our business.... What they do nowisn't part of what we were.... The press will pollute everything...." His eyes tearing, Rayner pressed a hand to his side in a futile attempt to stanch his bleeding. He looked desperate and utterly crestfallen. "Please don't drag...my name through the mud...."

  "Robert and Mitchell are going to kill people we ruled not guilty. We're part of this. We set it in motion. We own responsibility for whichever way it spins."

  Rayner's face was going white. He made a sound of disagreement, a sharp exhale turned to a fricative against his teeth.

  "I'm protecting those people," Tim said. "That's more important than your reputation."

  Rayner rolled his head back and laughed, a soft, crackling chuckle that chilled Tim. "You say this to a dying man. You're an idiot...Mr. Rackley. You'll never know what happened to your daughter.... Youdon't have the faintest idea...."

  Tim stood abruptly, his heart hammering. "You know what happened to Ginny?"

  "Of course. I know everything...." He was wheezing, expelling words in great exhales. "There was an accomplice.... I know who.... I found out...."

  The puddle of blood grew beneath Rayner, spreading along the seam at the base of the bottom step. His taunting was concise and vicious--Tim felt the words like a stiletto prying in a wound.

  "Go ahead...leak my name to the cops, the press...but...you'll never know...." Rayner's eyes steeled with a smug intractability, and Tim felt a quick rush of affinity for whichever Masterson had tried to smash through his expression with a gun barrel.

  Tim's voice came low and harsh, and it held a note of menace that surprised even him. "Tell me who else killed my daughter."

  Rayner grimaced, his teeth shining through the split upper lip. His spitefulness vanished, replaced with terror at death's final approach. His hand inched out, trembling, and gripped the cuff of Tim's pants.

  Tim stood over him, glaring down, arms crossed, watching him die.

  Rayner's body seemed to retract slightly, as if curling into itself, though it hardly moved. He looked up at Tim, floating in a sudden calm. "I loved my boy, Mr. Rackley," he said, and then he died.

  Tim stepped away, his pants pulling free of Rayner's fingers. He had little time before the ambulances arrived, and he'd be damned if he was going to leave without Kindell's case binder. Especially in light of what Rayner had told him.

  Following the trail of Rayner's blood, he entered the conference room, the whine of the paper shredder growing louder, and walked past the blast-blown victim photos on the immense table. Aside from some black scorching near the baffle, the safe was perfectly intact. The door hung slightly open, its lugs still extended in the locked position. Tim leaned closer, noting the frag scars, like little scratches, also near the baffle. He sniffed the air, twice, deep, waiting for the smell to navigate through his memory; it unlocked a box that had been closed since Somalia in '93. Fifty-grains-per-foot det cord.

  Mitchell had probably slid about two feet of detonation cord inside the baffle and stuck a blasting cap in the protruding end. The explosion would have overpressurized the air pocket inside the safe, flexing the door outward to the point that the locking lugs unseated themselves and the door popped. The metal baffle would have acted as a buffer, protecting the case binders beneath.

  That the door had snapped back to its original shape with no permanent damage was testament to Mitchell's precision and skill. Robert and Mitchell had opted for an explosive breach, which was louder and riskier than picking the safe. Tim hoped that meant they didn't have the Stork on board, the only one who could have accomplished the latter.

  Tim nudged
the door open with a knuckle. Only two binders remained--Lane's and Debuffier's.

  Kindell's was missing.

  Behind him the paper shredder continued its laments. Tim's eyes closed with the horror of the realization. He ran over to the shredder, banging into a high-backed chair and knocking it over. A single page had crumpled up in the machine, jamming the blades. Tim ripped it free, and the bottom half shot through, dissipating into tiny squares.

  Roger Kindell's booking photo, torn just below the eyes.

  Robert and Mitchell had shredded Kindell's file, and the secrets it held. The ultimate act of aggression, the final step in the power play, a declaration of war.

  The Mastersons were now operational.

  Tim stared at the half photograph, feeling his frustration grow to rage. The agony of all he had lost rattled through him, leaving him winded. He finally lowered the top half of Kindell's head into the whirring blades.

  He stopped on his way out only to retrieve Ginny's framed picture from the table.

  Chapter 33

  BEAR'S VOICE WAS ragged with sleep, gruffer even than usual. "What?" Tim threaded the needle between a Camaro and a semi on a two-lane slide to the freeway carpool lane, drawing a cacophony of bleating horns. Even in February the L.A. morning came on hard and relentless; the sun matched the explicitness of the town itself, all too eager to skip foreplay and be revealed.

  "You heard me. Those are the names and addresses. Do you have them?"

  "Yeah, yeah, I got 'em. What is the extent of your involvement in this?"

  "Call local PD, get cars to Mick Dobbins now. Put out a BOLO on Terrill Bowrick now. As I said, I don't have a current address for Black Bear--"

  "Thomas Black Bear's doing a nickel in Donovan for grand larceny."

  "Then don't worry about him. I have no current for Rhythm Jones either, so put out another BOLO. He's in grave and immediate danger. And get to William Rayner's before the bodies chill."

  "How are you caught up in this?"

  Tim was anxious for Bear to stop talking, call dispatch, and put out the Be on the Lookouts. "Yamashiro at five-thirty. I'll bring all the answers."