The Kill Clause

by Gregg Hurwitz

  They all kept their picture frames turned in like mirrors; the Stork alone positioned his facing away from him. To Tim’s right, Dumone’s wife peered out from her still-present frame, gazing at the empty black chair before her. Not for the first time, Tim thought about what cheap props the photos were. Facile, like a gimmick for one of Rayner’s chat shows.

  Ananberg observed Tim silently from the seat beside him. She looked spent, strung out on an adrenaline hangover. They were all beaten up—Robert in particular. He still hadn’t raised his head. It had been a hellacious twenty-four hours, between the Debuffier execution and Dumone’s stroke. Only the Stork and Rayner, shielded by their inherent yet opposite superficialities, remained imperviously alert.

  Rayner took a sip of water. “I’d like to finish the media recap now.” A shuffling of papers. “On CNBC last night—”

  “The instant we became aware that Debuffier had a live victim in hand, the sole objective should have been rescuing her and saving her life.” Tim spoke with Dumone’s resolve and authority, and, as when Dumone spoke, the others were silent. “The only valid reason to kill Debuffier would have been as a necessary tactic to extract the victim, which it was not. I had injured him nonfatally—”

  Robert spoke slowly and vehemently. “I shot Debuffier because it was the quickest way to get to the victim.” He finally pulled his head up, revealing his face.

  “No. You shot him because you wanted to play hero.”

  “We voted he should be executed,” Mitchell said. “He was executed.”

  “There was no longer a need to execute him. He was committing a crime that could have put him away. We could have secured him and turned matters over to the proper authorities.”

  “Then we would have had to stay with him and gotten caught,” Robert said.

  “We do not kill people to avoid getting caught,” Tim said. “If covering your own ass is your primary objective, you don’t belong here.”

  “Come on,” Mitchell said. “The guy had a torture victim captive in his basement, for Christ’s sake. What are the odds that we’ll stumble into a situation like that again?”

  “These are not predictable situations. We never know what we’re going to stumble into.”

  “Then you should be grateful I thought to come prepared, since you sure as hell weren’t. You were busy riding my ass for bringing my det bag. Without it we wouldn’t have gotten through that door.”

  A laugh escaped Tim. “You hold that to be a well-planned, well-executed mission? You think you can take control operationally? With that?” He turned to Rayner—who wore a worried, atypically passive expression—and Ananberg, looking for support.

  “We met our mission objective,” Mitchell said.

  “The outcome isn’t the only thing that matters,” Ananberg said.

  “No? Isn’t that our argument? The ends justify the means?”

  Robert was gazing at the table, fingers drumming the granite; Mitchell had become the mouthpiece.

  “The means are the ends,” Tim said. “Justice, order, law, strategy, control. If we lose sight of that when we operate, the whole thing comes unwound. Results do not override rules.”

  “Look, what happened, happened—there’s no need to go pulling pins on a sweat grenade now. Robbie got a little fired up and jumped the gun on our basement entry—”

  “He was unpredictable, dangerous, and off his game.” Despite the heat the argument was generating, Tim had yet to raise his voice, a restraint Dray abhorred in him.

  “People fuck up sometimes.” Robert seemed unsettled and highly agitated. “No matter what happens, an operation can spin out of control. We’ve all had that happen.”

  “Calm down, Robert,” Mitchell said sharply—the first severe note Tim had heard either twin use with the other.

  “The guy was poking holes in her.” Robert’s voice, unusually high, shook from the memory.

  “We can’t act emotionally during a live operation,” Tim said. “An untimed entry like that gets us killed five times out of ten. We lose our angle, our element of surprise, tactics, strategy—everything.”

  Mitchell leaned forward, his jacket bunching tight at the biceps. “I understand.”

  Tim turned his stare to Robert. “He doesn’t.”

  Robert rose to a half crouch above his chair. “What’s your fucking problem, Rackley? We killed the prick. Instead of riding my ass for going in two seconds early, why don’t you think about what we did accomplish? Think of the puke off the streets, put down, never again eyeing a sister, a mother, a girl at a bus stop.”

  Even across the table, Tim picked up a hint of alcohol on his breath. “The point of this, of us, is not merely to kill. Do you understand that?” Tim waited impatiently, glaring back at Robert. “If not, get out.”

  Tim found himself thinking about what angle he’d take on a jab if Robert came across the table at him. Mitchell rested a hand on Robert’s shoulder and pulled him gently back down into his chair. The Stork’s head was bent; he rubbed his thumbnail with the pad of his forefinger, an annoying, repetitive gesture that called to mind autism.

  Robert’s voice was so low it was barely audible. “Of course I get it.”

  Tim fixed him with a stare. “Why the face?”

  “What?”

  “You shot him in the face. That’s a highly personal kill shot.”

  “Your blowing up Lane’s head I would hardly label dispassionate,” Rayner said.

  “Lane’s head shot was strategic to ensure the safety of those around him. This was specifically not. You’re supposed to aim at critical mass. If the gun kicks high, you still get the neck. A chest shot has more stopping power, too, especially with a big guy.”

  Rayner’s eyebrows were raised, frozen in an expression of distaste or respect.

  “So I shot Motherfucker in the face. What are you saying?” Robert was flushed, the muscles of his neck pulled taut.

  “You’re not starting to enjoy this, are you?”

  Robert stood up again, but Mitchell yanked him back down. He stayed in his chair, eyeing Tim, but Tim turned to face Mitchell. “And what’s this about a rare explosive wire linking the explosives?”

  “It’s media horseshit. I use standard wires. There’s no way they could link them.”

  “Well, someone in forensics knows the two executions are linked and leaked that fact, with a slight skew, to the media. How do they know? And so quickly? It had to be the explosive.”

  Mitchell grew finicky under Tim’s glare.

  “That wasn’t a commercial blasting cap, was it, Mitchell?”

  “I don’t use anything commercial, not for a key component. Don’t trust it. I make all my own stuff.”

  “Great. So could forensic analysis determine that the initiation portion of your homemade blasting cap was similar to the earpiece device? This is LAPD bomb squad we’re talking about, not some Detroit Scooby-Doo with a magnifying glass.”

  “Maybe.” Mitchell looked away. “Probably.”

  “Who gives a shit anyway?” Robert said. “It doesn’t affect anything.”

  “I give a shit, because if it happens and we didn’t plan it, that’s bad news. There’s a reason we voted against a communiqué”—an angry eye toward Rayner—“not that we’d want to claim this mess anyway. The bomb squad matching the two explosives is going to bring the heat, and we don’t have room for missteps.”

  Tim leaned back in his chair, weathering the Mastersons’ aggressive stares. “Let me make something else clear, since you two seem so eager to run and gun: You don’t have what it takes to lead this kind of operation.”

  Robert and Mitchell coughed out identical snickers. “Mitch blasted the door,” Robert said. “I was the number-one man through.”

  “And I was the one who jumped in and saved your ass when you missed three shots, tripped down the stairs, and got tossed like a Nerf ball by Debuffier.”

  The muscles of Robert’s face had tightened, compressing his cheeks i
nto sinewy ovals.

  “I run the show operationally,” Tim said. “My rules. Those were the conditions. And since it’s clear none of you have given any thought to defining our operational rules, how’s this: You have none. I’m the sole operator on a kill mission. You will not be on-site when a hit goes down. That’s just how it is.”

  “Let’s talk about this,” Rayner said. “You’re not solely in charge here.”

  “I’m not negotiating these terms. They stand, or I walk.”

  Rayner’s lips tightened, his nostrils flaring with indignation—the spoiled prince used to getting his way. “If you walk, you’ll never get to review Kindell’s case. You’ll never know what happened to Virginia.”

  Ananberg looked over at him, shocked. “For Christ’s sake, William.”

  Tim felt his face grow hot. “If you think for a minute that I’d stay here and participate in a venture of this severity to get my hands on a file—even a file that could help solve my daughter’s death—then you’ve underestimated me. I will not be blackmailed.”

  But Rayner was already backpedaling into his polished-gentleman persona. He hadn’t dropped his guard before, but the picture beneath it was as nasty as Tim had imagined. “I didn’t mean to imply anything of the sort, Mr. Rackley, and I apologize for my phrasing. What I mean is, we all have aims we’re seeking to forward here, and let’s keep our eyes on the ball.” He cast a wary glance at the Mastersons. “Now, how would you like to handle matters operationally so you’re comfortable?”

  Tim took a moment, letting the pins and needles leave his face. He met Mitchell’s eyes. “I still may need you. And you.” He nodded at the Stork, as if the Stork gave a damn. “For surveillance, logistics, backup. But I handle target neutralization alone.”

  Mitchell’s hands flared wide and settled in his lap. “Fine.”

  Ananberg’s eyes tracked over one chair. “Robert?”

  Robert ran a knuckle across his nose, studying the table. Finally he nodded, glaring at Tim. “Affirmative, sir.”

  “Excellent.” Rayner clapped his hands and held them together, like a delighted Dickensian orphan at Christmas. “Now, let’s get back to the media recap.”

  “Fuck the media recap,” Robert growled.

  The Stork clasped his hands and raised them. “Here, here.”

  Rayner looked like the teacher’s yes boy who’d just had his test tubes stomped by the class bully. “But the sociological impact is certainly relevant to—”

  “Bill,” Ananberg said. “Get the next case binder.”

  Rayner huffily pulled his son’s crestfallen image off the wall and punched buttons on the safe, issuing a steady stream of words under his breath.

  “Wait,” Mitchell said. “Are we voting without Franklin?”

  “Of course,” Rayner said. “The binders don’t leave this room.”

  Robert said, “Then conference him in.”

  “He could be overheard talking in his room,” Ananberg said. “And we don’t know if those phone lines are secure.”

  “He gets exhausted pretty quickly,” Rayner said. “I’m not sure if he has the focus or stamina right now to pay these deliberations the meticulous attention they demand.”

  “I say we wait for him to recover,” Tim said.

  Rayner faced them, his hands trembling slightly. “I spoke to his doctor at length today. His prognosis…. I’m not sure that waiting for hisrecovery is the wisest idea.”

  Robert blanched. “Oh.”

  Mitchell got busy scratching his forehead.

  Shock turned to sadness before Tim could get a handle on it. It took him a moment to regain his composure, then he nodded at Rayner to move ahead.

  Rayner grabbed a binder and tossed it on the table. “Terrill Bowrick of the Warren Shooters.”

  On October 30, 2002, three seniors at Earl Warren High had gotten into a sixth-period altercation with the starting lineup of the school basketball team. They’d retreated to their vehicles and returned with ordnance. While Terrill Bowrick stood guard at the door, his two coperpetrators had entered the school gymnasium, where they’d fired ninety-seven rounds in less than two minutes, killing eleven students and wounding eight.

  The coach’s five-year-old daughter, Lizzy Bowman, who’d been watching practice from the bleachers, had caught a stray bullet through her left eye. Greeting Angelenos on their doorsteps Halloween morning was a front-page photo of her father on both knees, clutching her limp body—a reverse Pietà for the new millennium. Tim remembered vividly how the coach’s jersey had borne a blood imprint of his daughter’s face, a crimson half mask. Tim had set down the paper, dropped Ginny off at school, then sat in his car in the parking lot for five minutes before walking to his daughter’s classroom so he could see her again through the window before leaving her.

  The two gunmen, lean stepbrothers bound by a perverse codependence, had claimed there had been no premeditation. Their father was a pawnbroker—they’d been transporting the weapons between two of his stores, just happened to have dueling SKSs and four mags in the trunk when they’d lost their cool. Second-degree murder at worst, their defense lawyer claimed, maybe even a push for temporary insanity. A foolish argument, but good enough to get past your average foolish jury.

  The prosecutor, unable to play the brothers off against each other and faced with wrathful media and a community hell-bent on vengeance, had realized he could roll Bowrick with a grant of immunity. Bowrick, a second-time senior who’d just stumbled across the threshold of his eighteenth birthday and thus was sweating heavy, could testify that they’d planned the shooting in the preceding weeks, thus establishing premed and giving the prosecution an express train to murder in the first. The stepbrothers, also not Oppenheimers in the classroom, were legal adults as well.

  The prosecutor slid the immunity grant past the media by pointing out that Bowrick was the least culpable co-conspirator and that his participation had been the least egregious. He slid it past his division chief by making clear that Bowrick, a twig of a kid with a lame arm and a limp, could play to jury sympathy and that all the evidence to prove up the premed was circumstantial. By providing independent corroboration, Bowrick could shore up the case.

  After Bowrick testified, the brothers were convicted and fast-tracked for capital punishment. Bowrick walked with a plea to a lesser charge—accessory after the fact—and was granted a deal for probation and a thousand hours of community service, no time served.

  “So that’s what a school shooting buys you these days.”

  Mitchell joined in Tim’s disgust. “About the same sentence you’d get for spray-painting graffiti on your neighbor’s shiny new Volvo.”

  “Let’s bear in mind that he was only an aider and abetter,” Robert said. His eyes, glassy and loose-focused, betrayed the slightest identification with Bowrick, the outsider.

  “Maybe he didn’t fire the weapon because he couldn’t hold it properly with an atrophied arm,” Tim said.

  “And regardless, Robert,” Rayner said, “an aider and abetter is subject to the same sentence as those who actually perpetrate the crime.”

  “Less the gun enhancements,” Robert said.

  “No one needs the gun enhancements. It was a capital-punishment case.”

  Robert tilted his head, a gesture of concession. “Right,” he said. “That’s right.”

  “The case precedent is pretty clear on this one,” Ananberg said, “particularly for accomplices of this type. Aiders and abetters have gotten dinged on special circumstances for everything from lying-in-wait allegations to multiple-murder allegations.”

  Bowrick’s booking photo sat faceup to Tim’s right, the border nudging his knuckles. Despite Bowrick’s attempt to approximate good posture, the flare of his dishwater-blond bangs barely notched the five-foot-eight line painted on the wall behind him. A jagged half-coin pendant dangled from a thin gold necklace. Sullenness pervaded his features. He didn’t have the confidence to give off surly; his was the pas
ty-white face of hope beaten down to unhappy submission. He was sullen like a kicked dog, like the kid picked last, like a deflowered girl after her lover’s too-hasty departure.

  Ananberg backed them up, and Rayner led them through the case from the beginning. They started by scouring the evidence reports—admissible and inadmissible. Their evaluative capabilities had drastically improved as they’d grown more familiar with Ananberg’s procedure, leading to sharper focus, more incisive arguments, and a wider exploration of potentialities. The deliberations were all the more impressive given the divisiveness at the meeting’s outset.

  When the final document had made its way around the table, Tim slid it into the binder and glanced up at the others. “Let’s vote.”

  Guilty. Unanimous. Ananberg, who’d cast her vote last, crossed her hands on the table, her expression oddly content.

  “There is one major complication,” Rayner said. “After he went state’s evidence, Bowrick went into hiding.” He spread his hands, Jesus calming the seas. “The good news is, he didn’t go into witness protection. Not formally. But he was getting death threats, his property vandalized. After someone tried to burn down his apartment, he switched his name and moved away. Only his probation officer knows where he is.”

  “I’ll find him,” Tim said quietly.

  “If he’s still under the thumb of his PO, he’s still laying his head somewhere in L.A.,” Robert said.

  Mitchell’s fingers strummed on the table. Stopped. He looked at Rayner. “Can you pry where he’s staying from the PO?”

  “Too messy,” Tim said before Rayner could respond. “Too many trails leading back to us.”

  “We know he’s logging community-service hours,” Robert said. “Why don’t we run a check on what programs are up where, give a glance?”

  “I said I’ll find him,” Tim said. “Without stoking any fires. I’ll take care of it quietly. You all sit tight and keep silent.”

  Rayner was standing at the safe, his back to the others. Before Tim could move to rise, Rayner turned and let another black binder drop on the table. Tim’s eyes went past him to the last black binder in the safe. Kindell’s.