The Kill Clause

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “So you help two thugs shoot his daughter in the eye. Sounds like justice to me.”

  Bowrick laughed, high-pitched, his voice breaking, tears still running. “There ain’t no way back from something like I did, but I tried to set my shit straight. Tried to get my accounts balanced before I meet the Big Guy.” He nodded at Tim’s gun, wiped one cheek hard. “Let’s find out if I did.”

  Tim firmed his lips, lined the sights, but his trigger finger still disobeyed him. All five feet eight inches of Bowrick winced and trembled. Tim slid the gun back into his waistband and rose to leave.

  Both doors splintered in simultaneously. Balaclava hoods lowered, Robert and Mitchell burst into the room, guns leveled, Mini Mag-Lites strapped to their right forearms, shooting thin beams of light parallel with the barrels of their .45s.

  “Everything okay?” one of them said. He nodded at Tim reassuringly as the other stutter-stepped toward Bowrick, gun-facing him.

  Tim’s rage flared hard. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

  “You took awhile. We thought something might be wrong.” Tim recognized the coarser voice as Robert’s, which meant Mitchell was the one closing hard on Bowrick. An abrupt aggression role reversal that was mind-baffling but gut-logical. That Mitchell had appeared was an inexcusable breach of conduct; that Robert was present was worse. Tim’s mind went immediately to the lies surrounding the digital transmitter’s appearance in his watch. Maybe the Commission had always played by its own rules behind his back.

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Good,” Mitchell said. “Then let’s do him and split.”

  Bowrick had back-stepped to the desk, his head ducked in anticipation of the shot. His thin arms crossed his chest, hands outspread over the balls of his shoulders.

  “No,” Tim said.

  Mitchell regarded him in disbelief, his eyes two white-shining orbs beneath the black fabric of the hood. “What?” The gun inched over, aimed now somewhere between Bowrick and Tim. “We’re doing this whether you like it or not.”

  Before he could think, Tim’s hand was down and through the draw. He center-sighted on Mitchell’s head and saw Mitchell’s sights staring him back in the face. Robert swung his gun at Tim, then back at Bowrick, agitated in the unfamiliar role of mediator. “Let’s calm the fuck down here. Let’s calm down.”

  Bowrick’s eyes were closed, his head still recoiled. Tim eased slowly over until he stood between Mitchell and Bowrick, squinting against the light of the Mini-Mag. When he leaned back, he felt the heat of Bowrick’s fear emanating from less than a foot behind him. He kept his eyes on the muscles of Mitchell’s forearm, reading them. His finger lay on the side of the gun parallel to the barrel, just outside the trigger guard, ready to flick and squeeze at the slightest prompting.

  “Move. I’m not fucking around here. Fucking move!” Mitchell pulled his gun sharply right and fired, the bark matched by a flash of flame at the barrel. The bullet bit out a chunk of closet frame. Bowrick muttered something low and fearful behind Tim. Robert was yelling, but right now it was just Tim’s eyes and Mitchell’s eyes peering out from the depths of dark wool, locked on each other.

  Tim stayed perfectly still, gun trained on Mitchell’s head. “If you make one more movement with your gun hand except to lower your weapon, I will shoot you.” He spoke softly, but he knew Mitchell heard every word, even over Robert’s yelling. “Believe me, you don’t want to exchange bullets with me at close range.”

  They faced each other over their respective barrels.

  Finally Mitchell rode the hammer forward and half spun his gun so it sat sideways in his hand, uncocked. He slid it into a hip holster and thundered out the rear of the house, boots pounding on the floor. Tim looked at Robert and jerked his head toward the door. Robert took a deep breath, then holstered his weapon and jogged out after his brother.

  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.

  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 mile
s 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 facedown 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.