The Kill Clause

by Gregg Hurwitz

  His face was another matter. The flesh all around his right eye was scraped up, leaving what looked like a bloody pirate patch. Tim had to scour out the dirt and bits of gravel with a washcloth.

  After putting on a fresh shirt, he used his new outgoing phone to check his old Nokia voice mail. Dray had left a message saying she was still working the leads, no luck yet. The message’s time stamp reminded him that Bowrick had just thirty-six hours left before the recovery center required a reassessment or put him back out on the street.

  Lying back on his bed, he exhaled deeply and let his muscles relax.

  The Stork, clearly aware of cell-phone-tracking technology, had probably orchestrated the call from Studio City. With his help, Robert and Mitchell had walked Tim into a well-orchestrated trap. It had not occurred to him what a strong team the three made, even without him—the Mastersons providing operational muscle and strategy while the Stork played technological puppet master.

  He vowed not to underestimate them again.

  He popped four more Advil and fell into a deep, sound sleep—no nightmares, no images of Ginny, no thoughts of Dray, just a blank white corridor of unthought. He woke abruptly after nightfall, sweaty and still veiled in a dream haze. The room was dark, the alley below surprisingly peaceful. The needling question as to what had awaked him sharply from so deep a slumber helped clear his head. His shoulder pulsed impatiently, eager to heal.

  He sat up in bed, his legs hanging off the mattress in front of him. He felt constrained in his clothes, which had sleep-shifted around him. His watch showed 9:13 P.M. He stood and went to the window. At the end of the alley, a dark car waited, visible through the steam of the broken pipe. The passenger door opened, but no dome light went on.

  Bad news.

  Tim turned back, facing the door across his dark apartment.

  The slightest scuffling sound in the hall. The pinpoint scratch of dog nails against floor.

  Tim thought, How?

  His eyes tracked down to the doorstop wedged hard beneath the door, then up to the decoy knob that he’d detached completely from the surrounding jamb. With excruciating slowness, he reached behind him, slid the window open.

  A shattering impact shook the apartment. The entire doorknob, propelled by an unseen battering ram, flew from the frame, striking the floor once and smashing into the wall beside Tim. The door itself, pinned by the doorstop, bent in but did not swing open.

  From the flurry of shouting, Tim could somehow discern distinct voices—Bear and Maybeck, Denley and Miller. He leapt through the window onto the fire escape as the door splintered and gave way behind him. Immediately the alley below lit with headlights—the car he’d spotted before and another at the south end. As he flew down the ladder, they screeched forward, closing on the fire escape from either side.

  The hammering of boots through his apartment above seemed to vibrate the entire building. The deputies were yelling “Clear” as he hit the third landing, and then he could make out Bear’s deep rumble of a voice hurling profanities. Ignoring his throbbing shoulder, Tim slid down the ladder to the second landing. Two spotlights angled up from the cars in the alley blanketed him, moving with him. Raising an arm to shield his eyes, he ran to the outfacing bathroom window, the flimsy landing shaking with his steps. It was still screenless, still inched open.

  He threw it open and, using the landing overhead, swung himself in. He hit the toilet hard. When he shoved out through the bathroom door, two bodies jerked upright in bed, startled faces and flying paperbacks bathed in the light of dueling reading lamps. He was through the living room in a flash and out into the hall.

  Flashing blue and red reflected in the windows at either end of the corridor—LAPD backup. The door to Room 213 was unlocked, as he’d left it. He sprinted through the apartment, out the living-room window onto the fire escape. The alley on this side of the building was too narrow to accommodate a car, but sure enough a vehicle was waiting thirty yards down on the main street. Good work, Thomas and Freed.

  He slid down the ladder and hung from the bottom rung, his shoulder screaming, his feet dangling a few inches from the ground. He dropped and hit the ground running. Down the alley two car doors opened and closed, and for a brief moment he and Thomas and Freed were sprinting directly at each other. In the lead, Thomas stopped, raising his shotgun. Freed pulled up at his side as Tim froze, hands half spread, staring down the bore from about thirty yards. Water dripped from a leaky pipe to Tim’s left. Freed’s head rotated slightly, just enough for his eyes to fall on Thomas, questioning, then Tim sprang forward, running toward them again. Thomas shouted, thighs flexing, shotgun firming at his shoulder but not firing.

  Tim banked hard down the alley ten yards north of the fire escape and hurtled forward over boxes and fences with a nearly out-of-control momentum, the noise of his pursuers following him. After two forced turns, he came out on Third, only a half block from his building, practically skidding to halt himself. He flagged a cab and ducked into the backseat. An opera singer wailed from both speakers, her voice piercing and wobbly.

  “Go. That way.”

  The cab driver pulled out sharply. “I can’t flip a U here, pal.”

  Tim slid low in the seat as the cab passed the front of his building. Two cop cars were parked at the entrance, flanking the Beast, which idled at the curb. Bear’s broad frame was immediately evident among the other Arrest Response Team deputies, cut from the headlights’ glow like a dark statue. Joshua stood facing him, wearing a plush bathrobe, shaking his head. They did not look his way as the cab passed.

  “Get to a freeway,” Tim said. “The 101. Hurry up.”

  The cabbie waved a meaty hand dismissively, his other busy keeping time with the aria, sweeping back and forth as though spreading butter on toast.

  One block away, a block and a half. Tim felt no abatement of his unease. When they turned the corner onto Alameda, he experienced the suffocating sensation of moving into an ambush, his second in less than twenty-four hours. The city seemed to pull in and around him—random, disparate movement suddenly given direction and meaning, a car here, a bystander’s turned head, the glint of binocs from a passing apartment building—and Tim thought again, How? How are they still on me?

  Behind the wheel of a dark Ford sedan parked curbside, a face glowed with the light of a GPS screen. Coke-bottle glasses, pasty skin—the archetypal electronic-surveillance geek. Tim’s eyes tracked up a telephone pole, spotting a cluster of cell-site tubes.

  Beaten at his own game. Somewhere, through his quickening alarm, a phrase rose into consciousness: the Revenge of the Nerds.

  Several blocks away, the whine of sirens became audible, closing in.

  Tim dug in his pockets, pulling out the Nextel and the Nokia. The Nokia was certainly clean—he’d just gotten it, and no one had the number. The Nextel’s top button glowed green, showing a good connection to network.

  The cab was surrounded by trucks and cars and two other taxis. The cabbie accelerated to make a green light, and they started up the ramp to the freeway, the other lanes and traffic peeling off. Tim leaned out the window and took his best shot, tossing the Nextel through the open back window of the taxi beside them as it drifted away, its lane veering right.

  The cell phone struck the sill and bounced in, landing in the lap of a surprised matron wearing an excess of makeup. Oblivious, Tim’s cabbie turned up the radio and kept humming, kept conducting. Tim twisted in his seat, looking out the rear window. A wall of vehicles with blaring sirens swept right, hard, just before the exit, following the other taxi and closing in hard. Down on the patchwork streets below, he made out the flashing lights of two vehicle checkpoints he’d narrowly missed.

  It wasn’t until they’d passed two exits without any sign of a tail that he relaxed.

  He had his weapon, loaded with six bullets, his Nokia phone, the clothes on his back, and a little over thirty dollars in cash. The rest of his stuff was in the trunk of the Acura, which he’d go
back for tomorrow, if the area was clear. He’d signed the lease on his apartment as Tom Altman, so that meant his bank account was either frozen or soon would be. He had the cabdriver drop him off at an ATM and succeeded in pulling out six hundred dollars—the maximum withdrawal.

  He walked up the block and made a call from a phone booth. Not surprisingly, Mason Hansen was in the office.

  “Working late?”

  A long pause. “Rack, listen, I…Look, they told me what was going on. I had to…”

  “They pulled my phone number from the records of the cell phone you sourced for me, didn’t they? And you confirmed it for them.” A cop car drove by, and Tim turned away, hiding in the phone booth like a down-at-heel Superman. “You knew mine was the number dialed at 4:07 A.M.”

  “Your colleagues came in with warrants. What was I supposed to do?” His voice picked up anger. “And you didn’t exactly come clean with me either. You’re in deep shit.”

  “You can stop your trace. I won’t be on long enough.”

  In the background Tim heard the faint chirp of another line—probably Bear calling in. He was about to hang up, but Hansen’s voice caught him.

  “Uh, Rack?” A nervous pause. “You’re not gonna come after me, are you?”

  The note of anxiety in Hansen’s voice shot straight through Tim, leaving him wobbled. “Of course I’m not going to hurt you. What do you think I am?”

  No answer. Tim hung up.

  His palms had gone slick with sweat, a reaction his body reserved not for fear or strain or even sadness, but for shame.

  41

  SINCE HE FIGURED Bear would have deputies all over Dray’s for the night, Tim cabbed back and checked into a shitty motel downtown, a few miles from his old apartment building. He’d be able to scout the Acura first thing in the morning and maybe reclaim it.

  The bedspread smelled like shaving cream. He called her from the Nokia, knowing they couldn’t be set up to trace it. “Andrea.”

  A sharp intake of air. “Bear said you’d been shot. They found blood, bandages in the bathroom when they flushed you out.”

  “Superficial. It’s nothing.”

  She heaved a sigh that kept going and going. “Say it again,” she said. “I thought I might not…Say my name again.”

  He hadn’t heard relief like that in Dray’s voice since he’d phoned her from base after a deployment to Uzbekistan went a week over. “Andrea Rackley.”

  “Thank you. Okay. Deep breath.” She followed her own instructions. “Now, you want the bad news or the bad news?”

  “Start with the bad news.”

  “I got nothing and more nothing. ‘Danny Dunn’ didn’t put out. And I’m oh for twenty-three on black PT Cruisers in the area. None of the licenses checked out. Not a one.”

  Tim felt his last flicker of hope gutter.

  “That and the damn safety-deposit key took me all day today. Good thing I don’t have to work for a living. I’m hitting a few more banks first thing tomorrow, so we’ll see.”

  Tim tried to keep the disappointment from his voice. “When you talked to Bear, did he mention why my name isn’t out to the media?”

  “The service isn’t salivating at the prospect of the press. And the district office isn’t eager to follow LAPD’s nosedive in public esteem. I’d guess they’re determined to keep it in the family until they nail your ass. Let the out-of-towners take the heat for now. Plus, it’s not as though you’re a live threat to kill innocents. You’re just after them.” She snickered. “The Vigilante Three.”

  “Let the animals kill each other.”

  “Something like that. Or maybe they know you stand a better chance than they do at tracking down your team before things get even more out of hand.”

  “Then why are they kicking down my door?”

  “Tannino’s got his ass to cover. And the service’s. A lot of due diligence getting thrown around.”

  “He must regret ever laying eyes on me.”

  “I don’t know. Bear claims Tannino’s upset that he couldn’t protect you more on the Heidel-Mendez shooting. He knows it was a good shooting, and he knows you got hung out. He admires the way you went, Bear says, that you threw in your badge like an old-schooler. Gary Cooper all the way. But he thinks that’s what pushed you over the edge, especially after Ginny. He feels partially responsible, the dago softy.”

  Tannino’s decency, in the midst of all this, moved him. But if the full-force ART entry on Tim’s apartment was any indication, it wouldn’t buy him an extra inch when the cards were down.

  “I need some help, Dray. See if you can pull some cash out of our account for me. A couple grand.”

  “I’ll do it first thing. Hell, I’m spending the morning running around to banks, not like it’s out of my way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m your wife, stupid. It’s part of the deal.”

  The sheets smelled of dust, and the pillow was so soft his head parted the feathers, angling uncomfortably to the mattress.

  He awoke with a cramp that stretched from his neck down through his rib cage. The showerhead coughed and spit lukewarm water. A swirl of stray hairs clogged the drain. The towel was so small Tim had to strain his shoulders to dry his back.

  He took his time determining that the area was clear before approaching the Acura, which was parked where he’d left it, several blocks from his old building. He drove it swiftly out of the immediate area, pulled into an isolated parking lot, and wanded the car down with an RF emitter he pulled from the war bag in the trunk in case a transponder had been installed. To quell his concerns, he took apart the wand, in case the ESU geeks had installed a device within the emitter itself, a move he might have pulled on one of his better days. Nothing.

  He wasn’t surprised the car was clean—there was nothing to link the Acura to him, his now-defunct false identity, or the apartment building—but at this stage of the game, reassurance was a needed ally.

  Once on the freeway, he was careful to obey the speed limit. After parking a good five blocks away, Tim crept up on the house, surveying it from all angles.

  Like a dog to his vomit.

  In the driveway Mac tinkered under the hood of his car, greasy rag protruding from his back pocket. Palton and Guerrera were about thirty yards up the road at the curb, looking conspicuous as hell in an ’89 Thunderbird that listed left. They were doing dick to avoid getting eye-fucked because they knew, as did Tim, that he’d be an idiot to come here. They were sitting on the house simply because most of the time, as a deputy marshal, that’s just what you did—covered your bases and tried to stay awake.

  Aside from the obvious detail out front, the house looked clear. Tim withdrew and reapproached through the backyard, sliding through the rear door. The smell of stale pepperoni and fresh coffee. Blankets and bed pillow still on the couch—Mac, concerned friend with the ulterior motive. Two pizza boxes on a new Ikea coffee table. Tim stared at the impostor, probably the first of many. The master bedroom was empty. The coffee-table box sat in the middle of Ginny’s room, discarded, making all too evident that no one lived in the space anymore.

  Tim found Dray at the kitchen table, silhouetted against the drawn blinds. Before her sat a canary yellow file and Tim’s boom box. A tape rasped lethargically in the player, the speakers emitting a grainy whisper that showed the recording had ended. Dray sat at an angle, hunched right as if recoiling from intense heat or bracing herself for a blow. One arm she’d wrapped around her stomach; the other clamped it tightly in place. Her face had gone white, save for her trembling lips, which were a wan red. She looked more or less as she had when she’d taken the news of Ginny’s death from Bear, the instant before she’d hit her knees in the foyer.

  Just beyond the knuckles of her quaking right fist gleamed the brass safety-deposit key.

  He approached on numb legs, on deadened feet.

  Her head pivoted like a robot’s; her eyes pointed at him but took no note of his presence. Her han
d extended to the boom box, pressed “stop,” “rewind.”

  Tim turned aside the file’s vivid cover. The public defender’s interview notes were on the top. He scanned them quickly—same stabbing words.

  The victim was the client’s “type.”

  Client claims to have taken an hour and a half with the body after death.

  He turned to the deflating fifth page, but in place of what he’d read before appeared: Client claims he was contacted at night by a man at his residence. Man was well built, blond, mustached, wore a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. Client knows nothing else about the mystery man.

  Or imaginary friend—the PD’s annotation slyly read.

  Client claims man showed him photos of the victim and maps and schedules regarding the victim’s movement from school to home. Client was to kidnap victim, then take her back to garage shack for a later sex “show.” Client and mystery man agreed on date and meeting time for “show.” Mystery man never appeared again.

  Another single-sentence scrawl in the margin. Story thin, no corroborative evidence—deafness stronger route for prelim.

  A prickly rage was fighting its way north from Tim’s gut, forcing itself up his throat. It emerged in a horrified exhale, something between a grunt and a cry.

  Rayner had doctored the notes before giving them to Ananberg to copy—knowing, perhaps, that she’d leak them to Tim. Either way he’d never planned on Tim’s seeing anything but the expurgated version that indicated that Kindell had acted alone.

  The glossy surveillance photograph underneath took Tim’s breath from his chest. A nighttime shot of Kindell, leaving his shack wearing only a T-shirt, his naked thighs stained with blood.

  Ginny’s blood.

  Tim stepped back violently from the table and leaned over, hands on his knees. He retched a few times, the muscles under his rib cage straining, but he brought nothing up. Sweat fell from his brow, spotting the floor.

  The tape deck clicked, signaling the end of the rewind.

  Dray reached out, hit “play.”