The Kill Clause

11

“I’Mnot big on pranksters, well-wishers, or rubberneckers,” Tim said. “Take your pick-the grieving father, the bloodthirsty deputy marshal. You’ve seen him now. Go back to your news station, your Rotary Club, your church, and tell them you gave it the college try.”

He moved to shut the door. The man raised a fist, ungloved and callused with age, and coughed into it. There was an immense fragility in the gesture that made Tim pause.

The man said, “I share your disdain for those types. And for many more.”

Despite the rain and the fluttering of his clothing around him, the man remained still, standing there like a PI cut from a dime novel. Tim knew he should close the door, but something stirred within him, akin to curiosity and compulsion, and he heard himself saying, “Why don’t you come in and dry off before you get on your way?”

The man nodded and followed Tim in, stepping over the fallen books and pictures without comment. Tim sat on the couch, the man on the facing love seat. The man took off his hat, rolled it like a newspaper, and held it in both hands.

His face was textured with age and sharply intelligent. Two vivid blue eyes stood out as the only points of softness in his rugged features. His hair, black given over to steel, he wore short and well trimmed. He displayed the kind of gaunt, confused musculature of a man whose body had changed rapidly with age; Tim imagined he’d once been a hulking presence. His hands rasped when he rubbed them together, trying to work some of the cold out of his broad fingers. Tim put him in his late fifties.

“Well?”

“Ah, yes. Why am I here? I’m here to ask you a question.” He paused from rubbing his hands and looked up. “How would you like ten minutes alone with Roger Kindell?”

Tim felt his heartbeat notch up a few levels. “What’s your name?”

“That’s not important right now.”

“I don’t know what kind of games you’re playing, but I’m a federal deputy.”

“Ex-federal deputy. And that’s beside the point. This”-his hands flared, indicating the room around them-“is just speculative talk. No more. You’re not plotting a crime or even commissioning one. The question is hypothetical. I have neither the means nor the intention to carry anything through.”

“Don’t con me. I don’t mind cruelty, but I hate a con. And believe me, I know every one in the book.”

“Roger Kindell. Ten minutes.”

“I think you’d better leave.”

“Ten minutes alone with him. Now that you’ve had time to think. Your marriage is on the rocks-”

“How do you know that?”

The man glanced at the sheets and bed pillows heaped beside Tim on the couch, then continued. “You’ve lost your job-”

“How long have you been watching me?”

“-and the man who murdered your daughter has been set free. Say you could get your hands on him now. Roger Kindell. What do you think?”

Tim felt something within him yield, giving way to anger. “What do I think? I think I would love to beat Kindell’s face into an unrecognizable pulp, but I’m not some jackass cop bent on street justice or a backwater deputy who can’t see farther than the end of his gun. I think I want the truth about what happened to my daughter, not just reckless vengeance. I think I’m tired of seeing individual rights trampled by people who are supposed to be upholding the law on the one side, and seeing mutts and pukes hide behind those rights on the other. I think I’m furious watching a system I spent my life fighting for fall apart on me and knowing there’s no better alternative out there. I think I’m tired of people like you who poke and pry and criticize and offer nothing.”

The man didn’t quite smile, but his face rearranged itself to show he was pleased with Tim’s response. He deposited a business card on the coffee table between them and slid it over to Tim with two fingers, like a poker chip. When Tim picked it up, the man rose from his seat. There was no name on the business card, just a Hancock Park address in plain black type.

Tim set it back down. “What is this?”

“If you’re interested, be at this address tomorrow evening at six o’clock.”

The man headed for the door, and Tim hastened to keep up. “If I’m interested in what?”

“In being empowered.”

“Is this some sort of self-help crap? A cult?”

“Christ, no.” The man coughed into a white handkerchief, and when he lowered his hand, Tim noticed specks of blood on the cloth. The man crumpled it back into his pocket quickly. He reached the front door, turned, and offered Tim his hand. “It’s been quite a pleasure, Mr. Rackley.”

When Tim didn’t shake his hand, the man shrugged, stepped out into the rain, and quickly disappeared into the haze.

•Tim did his best to straighten up the living room. He realigned the books, repaired one of the broken shelves with wood glue and C-clamps, then patched the holes in the walls with squares of drywall, which he fastidiously sized and inserted. His back felt out of whack from his fight with Dray, so he hung upside down a few moments from his gravity boots in the garage, arms folded across his chest like a bat, wishing he had a cityscape view rather than one of the oil-spotted garage floor. He unhooked himself from Dray’s pull-up bar, cracked his back, then returned inside and vacuumed up the shattered glass, going over the area twice to make sure he picked up all the slivers. Though he tried to ignore the business card on the coffee table, he was aware of it the entire time.

Finally he returned to the table and stood over it, studying the card. He ripped it in half and tossed it into the garbage can beneath the kitchen sink. Then he flicked off the lights and sat staring out at the rain working on the backyard, turning the neat garden to mud, scattering leaves across the lawn, pooling in black puddles.

Dray didn’t acknowledge him when she returned home hours later, and he didn’t turn around. He wasn’t even sure she saw him in the darkness. Her steps were heavy and uneven down the hall.

Tim sat a few minutes more, then rose and retrieved the ripped business card from the trash.