The Kill Clause

10

THE rain had resumed, as if to match Tim’s mood, and around dusk it had kicked up fairy-tale strong, battering the screen doors and palm fronds in the backyard. The windows rattled from occasional thunder. Tim sat quietly on the couch, staring at the blank TV that reflected back only the raindrops streaking down the glass sliding doors to his side. Dray worked on a scrapbook at the kitchen table behind him, trimming and inserting pictures of Ginny in a fury of scissors and pages.

Moving only his thumb, Tim clicked the remote, and the picture bloomed. William Rayner, UCLA’s ubiquitous social psychologist, appeared in the left box of a split-screen news interview with KCOM’s anchor, Melissa Yueh. The live feed featured him seated in a somber library, legs crossed. His silver hair and well-manicured white mustache added to his slightly dated but handsome appearance. On the bookshelves behind him stretched rows of his latest nonfiction bestseller, When the Law Fails. A consummate performer with as many enemies as admirers, Rayner was a Men Are from Mars cultural critic, in a camp with Dominick Dunne and Gerry Spence. “…excruciating feeling of impotence when someone like Roger Kindell is not brought to justice. As you know, such cases strike a personal chord with me. When my son was murdered and his killer set free, I fell into a terrible depression.”

Yueh gazed on with an expression of fudge-thick empathy.

“And that’s when my interest veered in this direction,” Rayner continued. “I conducted countless interviews, countless studies. I began speaking to others about how they view these shortcomings in the law and about how these shortcomings undermine efficacy and fairness. Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions. But I do know that when the law fails, the very fabric of our society is threatened. If we don’t believe that the cops and courts will see to justice, what alternative does it leave us with?”

Tim pressed the remote, and the TV blinked off. He sat in silence for a few minutes, then hit the button again. Yueh had now turned her attentions to Delaney, who looked uncharacteristically flustered. Tim hit the “on/off” button again and watched the raindrop shadows play across the blank screen.

“How could Delaney not have found out the guy was deaf?” Dray said. “I mean, he was deaf. It’s not like overlooking his eye color.”

“She was working off his old case file. He wasn’t deaf then.”

Another angry snip of the scissors sent a strip of paper fluttering to the floor. “He’s been arrested four times. You don’t think he knows his rights? He’s an expert on his rights. And why didn’t Fowler wait for a warrant? What am I saying?-of course he didn’t wait for a warrant. Of course he wasn’t careful about reading the rights or getting oral consent. He never thought Kindell was going to make it to trial. The case wasn’t dismissed because Kindell was deaf-it was dismissed because the last thing on any of your minds at the crime scene was securing the arrest properly, taking things slow and right.” She slammed the scissors down on the table. “Damn that judge. She could have done something. She didn’t have to throw everything out.”

Tim still did not turn to face her. “Right. Because the Constitution works selectively.”

“Don’t be smug and detached, Timmy.”

“Don’t call me Timmy.” He set the remote on the coffee table. “Come on, Dray-this isn’t productive.”

“Productive?” She laughed, a one-note bark. “I’m entitled to be unproductive for a day or two, don’t you think?”

“Well, I don’t feel like being in your line of fire right now.”

“Then leave me.”

He was glad he’d stayed turned away, so she couldn’t see his face. It took a moment for him to respond. “That’s not what I’m-”

“If you were going to go to Kindell’s house that night, then you should have killed him. Killed him when you had the chance.”

“Yeah, if only I’d snuffed Kindell, then our mourning process would be complete.”

Dray’s face tightened. “At least we’d have a little closure.”

“Closure’s a sham invented by talk-show hosts and self-help authors. Besides, Dray, you have a gun of your own. If you’re so unhappy with my decision, why don’t you go kill him?”

“Because I can’t now. There’s no opportunity. Plus, I’d be the first suspect. It’s not like how Fowler silver-plattered it for you. His weapon, at the scene. You plant a gun, claim things got violent, and that’s it. No phantom accomplices to plague us, no Kindell out there for the rest of our lives.” She slammed the scrapbook closed. “Justice served.”

Tim’s voice came low and even, and it held a stunning cruelty. “Maybe if you’d picked Ginny up from school on her birthday, you wouldn’t have so much blame to throw around.”

He didn’t see the strike until the fist was closing from the right. The blow knocked him off the couch, then Dray was on him, throwing wild punches. He kicked her away and rolled to his feet, but she bounced off her soft landing on the couch and charged him again. She led with a right, but he hooked her wrist with his left hand, locking her elbow with his right. Her momentum slammed her into the bookcase. Books and picture frames rained down on them. Something shattered.

Dray found her feet quickly and came at him. She fought like a well-trained deputy, which was, of course, logical, though this particular capability of hers had never before occurred to him. He tied her up in a wrist-lock hug so as not to inflict real damage on her, pinning her arms between them. They stumbled back, smashing him into the wall. He felt his shoulder blade punch through the drywall but held on. He pressed her backward, hooking her ankle with a foot and bringing her down hard on her back on the carpet. She struggled and cried out as he lay on top of her, his hips twisted to protect his groin, head lowered and pressed to hers so she couldn’t bite his face or head-butt him. He was an ice-cold fighter, all logic and strategy, against which blind rage didn’t stand a chance.

Dray was thrashing and cursing a blue streak, but he kept his head lowered, repeating her full name like a chant, urging her softly to calm herself, to breathe deep, to stop struggling so he could release her. Her face was hot, sticky with sweat and tears of rage.

The storm had subsided, giving way to a shower. Only Tim’s murmuring, punctuated by Dray’s expletives, broke the soft pattering on the roof. Five minutes passed, or twenty. Finally, convinced her anger had spent itself, he released her. She stood. He gingerly touched the skin around his eye, swollen from the sharp blow she’d dealt him. Breathing hard, they faced each other across a wash of shattered glass and fallen books.

The doorbell rang. And again.

“I’ll get it,” Tim said. Not taking his eyes from Dray, he backed slowly to the door and opened it.

Mac and Fowler stood on the doorstep, arms crossed. Mac was wearing Fowler’s smaller deputy hat perched atop his head like a beanie, and Fowler wore Mac’s, the brim down over his eyes. An old trick for responding to domestic-violence calls-get ’em laughing.

Fowler tilted back the hat and saw that no one was amused. The cast of his face changed as he regarded the damage in the house. “We, uh, got a complaint from Hartley next door. You guys fighting?”

“Yeah,” Dray said. She wiped the blood from her nose. “I was winning.”

“We have everything under control now,” Tim said. “Thanks for stopping by.” He started to swing the door closed, but Fowler got a foot in.

Mac peered past him at Dray. “Are you okay?”

She made a limp gesture with her arm. “Dandy.”

“I’m serious, Dray. Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“None of us wants a report filed,” Fowler said. “Can we leave you two without you going at it again?”

“Yes,” Dray said. “Absolutely.”

“All right.” Fowler looked from Dray’s face to Tim’s. “I know you’re going through some hard-core shit right now, but don’t make us come back here.”

Mac’s gaze shifted to Tim, his expression changing from concern to anger. The scene didn’t look good, Tim knew, but he couldn’t help resenting the accusatory edge in Mac’s eyes.

“We’re not kidding, Rack,” Mac said. “If we hear so much as a yelp out of this house, I’m hauling you in myself.”

They shuffled back to their car, hunching in the rain. Tim closed the door.

“It’s not my fault I didn’t pick her up.” Dray’s voice cracked. “Don’t fucking lay that on me. There’s no way I could have known.”

“You’re right,” Tim said. “I’m sorry.”

She wiped her nose again, leaving a dark stain on her sweatshirt sleeve, then walked past him out the front door. Standing out in the rain, she turned to face him. Her hair was pasted to her cheeks, her chin smeared with blood, and her eyes were the most exquisite shade of green they’d ever been. “I still love you, Timothy.”

She slammed the door so hard that a painting slipped from the wall at Tim’s side, the frame breaking on the hard tiles of the entry.

He walked back through the wrecked living room, grabbed a chair from the kitchen table, and spun it around to face the rain splattering against the sliding doors. He sat, leaning forward until his forehead pressed against the cool glass. The storm had resumed with added fury. Stray palm fronds littered the backyard. Ginny’s bicycle lay on its side on the lawn, one of the training wheels spinning listlessly in the wind. The darkness seemed to have a malignant consistency, drawing itself around the house like a shroud, but Tim recognized the perception as little more than his own self-flagellating need for gloomy, second-rate imagery.

The wheel continued to spin, its rusty shrilling audible even over the sound of the rain. Its banshee cry underscored each betrayal of the past two weeks. It was as though an altered light had been cast across Tim’s life, revealing its order for precisely what it was: scaffolding lending false form to chaos. He had no daughter to assure him a future, no vocation to moor him, no wife to confirm his humanity. The stark unjustness of his losses struck him. He’d done everything to uphold his contracts with the world, and yet he’d been set adrift.

He lowered his face into his hands, inhaling the moisture of his breath. The chair made a screech when he shoved back. He drew in a deep lungful of air, and it hitched twice, caught on the raised edge of a sob.

The doorbell rang.

He felt an overwhelming relief. “Andrea,” he said. He jogged across the living room, almost slipping on a book.

He threw open the front door. A man’s shadowy form stood at the far edge of the porch, rain tapping down on his slicker. A dark green southwester curled down around his face, hiding it in darkness. His posture was slightly stooped, almost indiscernibly so, an indication of age or the dawn of some illness. A strobe of light flickered across him, illumination lent by an unseen lightning bolt, but it revealed only the band of his mouth and chin. A rush of thunder permeated the air, sending its vibration up through Tim’s feet.

“Who are you?”

The man looked up, water falling in tendrils from the sloped brim of his vinyl hat. “The answer,” he said.