The Kill Clause

24

THE nextel chirped annoyingly, pulling Tim from the sweaty daytime sleep into which he had finally drifted. He rolled over on his mattress and grabbed the phone.

Robert’s Marlboro voice came too loud through the receiver. “Motherfucker hasn’t left the house since we got here last night. Spends all his time tinkering around in that basement downstairs, where they found all that voodoo shit.”

Tim rubbed his eyes hard, knowing it would leave them red and bloodshot but not caring. “Uh-huh.”

“His house is over by the garment district downtown. How far away are you?”

“About a half hour,” Tim lied.

“All right. Well, the Stork got us tapped in to his phone lines from a junction box up the street. Debuffier’s mother just called to remind his ass not to forget their lunch. Noon at El Comao. Know where that is?”

“Cuban joint on Pico near the Federal Building?”

“That’s the one. So he’ll be peeling out of here in about twenty minutes. I thought you’d want to swing by, take a sneak-and-peek through the house with us. Mitch is gonna bring some explosive sheet along in case we decide to set a charge now.”

“I made clear you were doing surveillance only,” Tim said.

“I know, I know, but we’re all getting the sense that Motherfucker stays bedded down. We just thought it wouldn’t hurt to have some explosives on hand, in case the…”

Mitchell’s voice in the background: “-optimal-”

“-opportunity arose. It might be our only window for a while.”

“No way. You just started surveillance yesterday. All we’re doing today is taking a look through the interior to get the lay.”

“All right, fine. We’ll just take a gander, then. Motherfucker’s at 14132 Lanyard Street. Oh, and Rackley? How are you gonna know where to find us?”

“I’ll find you,” Tim said.

“We’re blended into this block like a panther in the jungle, my friend. We’re-”

“Let me guess. Service van with tinted rear windows.”

A long silence.

“I’ll see you soon.” Tim hung up, slid his gun into his waistband, grabbed the Nextel but not the Nokia, and headed for the door. He paused with his hand on the knob. Backtracking, he retrieved a pair of black leather gloves from the bag beside his mattress. With lead stitched into the lengths of the fingers and positioned strategically across the bands of the knuckles, the gloves could put horse-kick power behind a simple punch. Tim threw them into his pocket and headed downstairs to his car. Once he got to within a mile of Debuffier’s house, he pulled over and idled at the curb.

Both sides of the street were lined with garment sellers’ stalls, elongated rooms jammed into the same structure like piano keys. Many of the booths had roll-up, storage-style doors, opening the entire storefronts to the sidewalks. The district had a Third World feel to it-drab functionality and cheap, raw product offset by bright colors and excess. A young boy burrowed into a chest-high heap of Dodgers shirts. Enormous spools of fabric were propped against walls, doorways, tables. A mound of moccasins spilled out onto the curb. The air smelled of candy and burnt churros.

Wheelbarrows, parked trucks, and exhaust crammed the street. A guy with comb-mark-stiff hair strutted past, wearing a sweatshirt with a peeling Versace emblem, his pinky intertwined with that of a girl holding a purse proclaiming Guci-marked down one c.

Bastard offspring of the city of varnish.

The guy threw Tim the stink-eye, probably figuring he was checking out his girlfriend, so Tim looked away to defuse matters. A young man with a bushy beard came by, T-shirts draped over his arm. He caught Tim looking and held up a sample. The shirt featured Jedediah Lane’s head midexplosion, under a bloodred caption that read TERRORISM BLOWS. Tim studied the photo as if it contained some inscrutable secret or the power to pardon. For an instant he wasn’t sure whether the caption referred to Lane himself or Lane’s assassin. At the vendor’s approach, Tim shook his head, and the man moved on.

With laughing Mexican colors and a robust husband-wife team working the register, the stall beside Tim’s car drew his attention. It exclusively featured wedding-cake ornaments. Tim sat staring at the plastic brides and grooms of all shapes and ethnicities, feeling his temperature starting to rise, wondering how a marriage between two people who loved each other madly could feel as though it were slipping away.

With relief he saw that he’d passed the requisite ten minutes to put him at Debuffier’s at the specified time, and he drove off. He parked several blocks away and strolled around the corner. Chipped-stucco houses rose humbly behind cheap metal fences. Two kids with basketball players’ numbers shaved into the backs of their heads zipped past on elongated skateboards, catching air off a buckle in the sidewalk left over from the last earthquake. Rusted cars languished along the curb on both sides of the street, and-to Robert’s credit-there were a handful of service vans, which made sense given the block’s apparent demographics. The decals and signs were varied and colorful. Armando’s Glass Works. Freddy’s Industrial Cleaning. The Martinez Bros Carpet Care. Several of the eponymous entrepreneurs were spending their Saturday sitting on browning lawns, petting Rottweilers and drinking Michelob from the can. The unusually brisk wind carried the sweet-rot smell of lukewarm beer and old wood.

On the north side of the street, Debuffier’s house loomed larger than its neighbors, a sprawling wooden abomination of no discernible architectural style. The porch’s arched entrance should have lent a warmth to the house, but the wood was fragmented, the splintered ends jutting out to add sloppy denticulation to the mouthlike hole. The roof, even more perplexing, was a cacophony of styles-here pitched, there hip-and-valley. Sitting importantly back from the street behind a lawn long since gone to dirt, the house itself was not so much large as complex-a collision, most likely, of the labors of rival builders over virtually unrelated phases of building.

Most of the parked vans’ side windows were tinted. Tim crossed to the north side of the street, opening up a better angle from which to glance back into the van interiors through the windshields, but the majority of the vans were partitioned. Freddy’s Industrial Cleaning looked most suspect. From how low it was sitting on the shocks, it was housing either heavy equipment or a few full-grown men. The Caucasian name didn’t help either.

Tim walked over, pretending to fumble in his pockets for the keys. He paused at the driver’s door, waiting. The clicking of the doors’ automatic locks told him he’d bet right. He slid into the seat, facing forward, and pretended to adjust the radio despite the fact that the neighboring yards were all empty. The van smelled of sweat and stale coffee, and the dash was high; Tim wondered if the Stork had trouble seeing over it when he drove.

He moved his lips only slightly when he spoke. “Not bad, boys.”

A crumpled VanMan Rental Agency receipt was wedged in the cup holder, beside a Big Gulp. Tim could just make out the name on the top line, written in the Stork’s shaky hand: Daniel Dunn.

Danny Dunn, Tim thought. An appropriate alias.

Robert’s voice, peeved and cracked from dehydration, lofted over his shoulder. “How the hell did you find us?”

“Just sniffed you out.” Tim removed his lead gloves from his back pocket and slid them on. “Have you switched the car out?”

“Yessiree,” the Stork said. “I brought the van first thing this morning.”

“Where’s the car you sat in last night?”

Robert’s gruff voice again. “I peeled out and returned it, then bused back. Relax-we’re all clear.”

“Good.”

“Debuffier left early for lunch, so let’s get on it.” A set of keys tapped Tim on the shoulder, and he took them and started the van. “His house is on a double lot, so it backs on the street one over. Pull around the block and park there-much quieter.”

“There’s a gap in the back fence begging to be utilized,” the Stork said.

“Where’s Mitchell?”

“Over there. He’ll meet us at the back door in five.”

Tim eased around the block. “Good vehicle,” he said. “Silent. Ordinary. Forgettable.”

“I’m glad you’re pleased with my selection, Mr. Rackley.” The Stork sounded incredibly proud of himself, almost gleeful. “I even took back the first van they rented me because it gave off a distinctive rattle.”

“Kind of like you,” Robert said.

Tim parked a few feet away from the triangular gap in the fence. The street was dead quiet, so he got out and pulled open the rear doors. Already wearing latex gloves, the Stork and Robert burst from the back, inhaling deeply and fanning their shirts. Robert ducked through the fence gap immediately. The Stork shouldered a black bag by the strap, staggering under its weight. Tim took the bag from him, slammed the rear doors, and ushered him through the fence.

Mitchell was crouching at the rear door, Robert at his side. Mitchell’s eyes lit on the Nextel’s bulge in Tim’s pocket, and he stood up violently. “Turn off the cell phone. Now.”

Tim and the Stork froze. Tim reached down and turned off the phone. “You have electric blasting caps on you?”

“That’s right.”

If Mitchell had electric blasting caps, Tim’s cell phone should have been nowhere in the vicinity. When induced, Nextels, like most mobiles, kick out an RF signal just prior to ringing, responding to the network and identifying themselves as operational. The induced current, sufficient to ignite an electric blasting cap, can set off a boom ball before the phone even chirps. Tim understood now why Robert hadn’t suggested they maintain phone contact during the entry.

Tim’s eyes went to the explosive sheet at Mitchell’s feet, a twenty-pound roll of place-mat-thick PETN, pentaerythritetetranitrate being a bitch to pronounce but easy to rip or cut, a stick of gum to C4’s Bubblicious. It peeked out from Mitchell’s det bag, olive drab, the shade of death.

“Can’t you follow instructions?” Tim tried to keep anger from his voice. “I made extremely clear you were to do nothing but surveil.”

“And we haven’t. I happened to have the bag with me-”

“We’ll deal with this later.” Tim nodded to the door. “What’s the situation here?”

Mitchell returned to his anthropologist’s crouch by the knob. “It’s a tough one. Outswinging with a latch protector, so we can’t work the credit-card slide.”

The Stork set his hands on his hips, then gestured Mitchell aside with an impatient flick of his hand. “Move.”

Adjusting his glasses, he leaned forward for a closer look at the lock. He brought his face to within inches of it, tilting his head like a predator inhaling scent. He spoke softly, with a singsong cadence, a girl talking to her favorite doll. “Restricted-keyway tumbler lock with reinforced strikes. Aren’t you a pretty one? Yes, you are.”

Tim, Robert, and Mitchell’s exchange of amused looks was cut short when the Stork reared back, his eyes still intently focused on the lock but his hand extended as if beckoning a waiter. His plump fingers snapped. “Bag.”

Tim swung the bag down to his feet. The Stork’s hand rustled within and removed a can of spray lubricant. He inserted a thin extension tube into the nozzle and directed the spray toward the cylinder. “We’ll just lubricate you up, won’t we? That’ll make things easier for us.”

Next he reached for a pick gun. The tool, with its pull-handle trigger that set a thin protruding tip in continuous motion, resembled an electric hand drill or an elaborate sexual device. Fisting the unit, the Stork slid the tip into the lubed lock and initiated it, working a complicated angle through a precise series of clutchings and readjustments. He set his ear to the door, presumably to listen to the pins jumping above the shear line, his other hand gripping the knob. His mouth was shifted to the right, clamped down on his lower lip. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was in the company of others.

“There you go, darling. Open up for me.”

There was a shift in the noise of the pins, a click indicating a sudden symmetry or resonance, and the Stork’s other hand moved lightning-fast, twisting the knob, which gave up a half turn.

He looked at the others with a satisfied and slightly worn-out grin. Tim half expected him to light up a cigarette. The Stork’s smile faded quickly as he leaned forward, setting his shoulder against the door.

“Wait,” Tim said. “What if there’s an ala-?”

The Stork shoved the door open.

The insistent beeping caused Tim’s mouth to go dry, but the Stork calmly walked over to a keypad on the wall and punched in a code. The alarm ceased.

They entered, pistols drawn, and listened for any signs of movement in the large chamber of the house. Mitchell and Robert had matching Colt. 45s, single-action semiautos that require cocking before the first round can be shot. They fire with only three pounds of trigger pressure instead of the fifteen a double-action demands. The big-bore guns were powerful, hairtrigger, and illegal, not unlike both brothers.

“How did you lift the code?” Tim whispered.

“I didn’t. Every alarm company’s got a reset code.” The Stork pointed to the emblem at the base of the keypad. “This one’s an Iron-Force-30201.”

“As simple as that?”

“Yessiree.”

They stepped through a small room containing a broken washing machine and into the kitchen. Food-caked plates and soggy boxes. Mustard yellow linoleum peeling up at the edges. Endless empty rum bottles and a thin layer of crumbs covering the countertops.

A faint tinny echo sounded somewhere in the house, slightly animated, almost vocal. Tim’s hand shot up, flat, fingers slightly spread, a point man’s patrol warning. The others stood perfectly still. A minute of silence passed, then another. “Did you hear that?”

“No, nothing,” the Stork said.

“Probably the pipes knockin’.”

“Let’s get moving,” Tim said, his voice still lowered. “Stork-get back outside. A two-tap horn alert if he happens to come back early.”

“He did leave early.”

“That’s why you’re gonna keep an eye out for us.” Tim waited for the Stork to scurry outside. “Safe the house and meet back here in two minutes. I’ll take the upstairs.”

“Look,” Robert said, not bothering to whisper, “we’ve been on the house all night, all morning. There’s no one else-”

“Do it,” Tim said. He disappeared through the doorway toward the front of the house, moving through several rooms stuffed with oddities-boxes of auto calendars, overturned tables, stacks of bricks. A pile of bright fabric curled around the base of the stairs; Debuffier had probably bought it on garment row. Tim searched the upstairs rooms, which reeked of backed-up plumbing and incense. All the mirrors had been covered, draped in swatches of colorful cloth. Debuffier either fancied himself a vampire or feared his own reflection; from his booking photo, Tim would’ve put money on the latter. Each room was empty and uninhabited; the master bedroom was probably downstairs. Tim took care not to leave footprints where dust had collected more heavily on the floor.

Robert and Mitchell were waiting for Tim in the kitchen.

Tim’s watch showed 12:43. “Clear?”

“Except for the basement door,” Mitchell said. “Solid steel set in a steel frame. Locked.”

“We’ll get the Stork on it in a minute.” Tim snugged the. 357 against the small of his back. “Let’s take a slower turn through the ground floor. Focus on details so we can draw up a full blueprint of the place later.”

Another sound, a metallic moan, this one undeniable. Tim felt his stomach constrict, his mouth cotton. He inched in the direction from which the sound had come, through the other doorway, the twins just behind him.

“What was that?” Robert asked.

Mitchell adjusted the strap of his det bag, which was slung over his shoulder. “Sounds like a furnace straining.” His tone was unconvincing.

Tim turned the corner into a back hall that dead-ended in a bathroom and came face-to-face with the enormous steel rise of the basement door. Its placement within the drywall indicated that it had been newly installed. Tim tapped it lightly with a knuckle-solid and thick as hell. Leaning forward, he placed his ear to the cold steel but got back nothing except the quiet hum of the water heater. The hall was dark-pink, flowery curtains had been pulled shut over the single window overlooking the side yard.

“Robert, run out and get the Stork. Tell him I want through that door into the basement.”

12:49. If Debuffier had left early, he’d have been gone an hour now. His transit time to the restaurant was at least ten minutes, so he’d likely be home within ten or fifteen minutes, depending on how much he disliked spending time with his mother. As Tim waited tensely, Mitchell sized up the door with a breacher’s imprecise precision, spread fingers pressing into the steel as if it would give.

Struggling under the weight of his bag, the Stork returned with Robert. He thunked down the bag, gave one glance at the large bolt of the door lock, and proclaimed awfully, “That’s a Medeco G3. I’m not tangling with her.”

Another sound, paradoxically guttural and high-pitched, issued faintly through the door. Tim noted from the sheen of sweat across Mitchell’s forehead that the sound was having the same unnerving effect on him.

Half-moons of sweat had darkened Robert’s T-shirt under the sleeves. “Probably just some mumbo-jumbo crap. A tied-up lamb or some shit.” His thumb flicked nervously back and forth across his forefinger, as if trying to make a cigarette materialize.

“I could blast the door,” Mitchell offered.

“No way,” Tim said.

Mitchell had one of the blasting caps out of his pocket and was working it in his hand. “I want to know what’s down there. That’s where they uncovered all the weird shit on the house search.”

The Stork’s mouth shaped into his crescent of a smile. “I could let Donna have a look around.”

Robert’s and Mitchell’s brows furrowed with humorous synchronicity. “Donna?”

“Bust her out,” Tim said. “Whatever she is.”

“Whoever she is.” The Stork removed a shoebox-size unit with a protruding black-plastic-coated rod and a blank liquid-crystal TV screen the size of a Post-it. The rod, a flexible fiber-optic minicam, had a fish-eye lens embedded in the tip. He clicked a switch, and the screen reflected back their three drawn faces in a washed-out blue light.

“Big deal,” Robert said. “It’s a Peeper-we’ve all used ’em. It’ll never fit under the door. Gap’s not big enough.”

“That’s not Donna.” The Stork extracted a tiny Pelican case from the bag and laid it lovingly open. Inside was an incredibly slender rod, almost a black wire, that ended with a wafer-thin rectangular head. “This is Donna.”

He removed the Peeper’s protruding rod and screwed Donna in its place, pausing to knead a knot from one arthritic hand. The head slipped under the door effortlessly, and they caught an up-close glimpse of a dead mouse bunched on the splintering wood of the top stair. The screen blinked out, then back on. “Come on, baby.” He looked up at them apologetically. “She’s a little finicky.” His hands were shaking, and he flexed and unflexed them, grimacing. He tried to clutch the thin rod and exhaled hard in frustration.

“We got it from here,” Tim said. “Leave her with us, go post out back. Remember, two-tap the horn.”

“But-”

“Now, Stork. We’re unprotected in here.”

With a sad parting look at Donna, the Stork hoisted his bag and retreated. His footfall was so silent that when he turned the corner, it was as if he’d vanished.

Robert and Mitchell crowding around him, Tim worked the wire, trying his best to angle the unseen lens. They took in the basement in vertiginous flights as the lens swept back and forth. The screen blinked off again.

“Goddamnit, Donna,” Tim said, “work for me.” As soon as he realized, with needling embarrassment, that he’d personified and pleaded with a minicam, the screen bloomed anew, and he found himself thinking that maybe the Stork had something. His prognostication of a bleary future-himself and the Stork double-dating twin upright vacuums bedecked with wigs-was quickly interrupted by the steady basement view his firmer grip on the wire granted.

A stretch of stairs, maybe ten, leading down into a cold concrete box of a room. Urns and drums were scattered about, as well as dribbles of red and white powders. From atop a mound of melted wax protruded a chorus of still-lit candles, reflected back in a mirror leaning against the wall. In the middle of the room sat a refrigerator/freezer, the freezer compartment above. Feathers were strewn across the floor, lending it a fuzzy, organic texture like a tight-stretched hide. A single wobbly and scarred table held a few more candles, two headless roosters, and an incongruous pencil sharpener. It was hard to picture Debuffier sitting down here puzzling over the Sunday crossword.

Robert exhaled tensely. They all started when the sound-now even more clearly a moan-rose again into faint audibility. The jerk of Tim’s hands brought the inside of the door into view, along with the thick steel bolt thrown through hasps drilled into studs on either side. No kicking down that door.

Relinquishing Donna to Mitchell, Tim stood, frustrated. He fingered aside the clingy pink curtain and peered into the side yard. Partially in view, the Stork was flattened against the far fence in a position of cover halfway to the van. Hiding.

Tim snapped back from the window. “Let’s go, let’s go.” He yanked Donna out from under the door, tucking the entire unit under his arm like a football. The det bag already looped over his shoulder, Mitchell followed Robert down the hall. Their best evac path was through the kitchen and out the back door.

Leading the twins, Tim entered the kitchen just as Debuffier’s shadow fell across the laundry room through the window of the back door. With a violent flare of his hand, Tim gestured a retreat, but the key had already hit the lock. Robert and Mitchell ducked into a closet, and Tim rolled beneath the kitchen table just as Debuffier yanked the door open and stepped inside.

An empty rum bottle, knocked by Tim’s shoulder, tilted, but he snatched it, stretched over himself in an awkward, twisting supine position. A grumbling filled the kitchen as Debuffier fussed over the alarm, presumably to see why it didn’t go off. Then he crossed the kitchen, his enormous legs drawing into upside-down view, size-seventeen black loafers halting mere feet from Tim’s head. A stack of mail hit the table with a slap. Debuffier wore no socks; the dark strips of his ankles were just visible between his shoes and the frayed bottoms of his jeans. Tim’s breath pushed a flurry of crumbs into a two-inch roll beneath the table.

Debuffier’s hand swung down into view, holding-of all things-a carton of pencils. Then he trudged out of sight, down the dimly lit back hall. Tim heard the enormous basement door swing open, then closed. The dead bolt slid home, then Debuffier’s footsteps down the stairs came rumbling silently through the kitchen floor into Tim’s cheek.

Tim rolled out just as Robert and Mitchell were emerging from the closet.

“Let’s di-di-mau,” Robert hissed.

Before Tim had time to turn, the sound came up through the floor-boards as if suddenly enhanced, liberated, an echoing, distinctly human groan. The three men froze in the kitchen.

Tim wanted to say, “We go”-the words were almost out of his mouth when they evanesced, and Robert and Mitchell fell into silent line behind him, heading into the house interior.

Tim had Donna unwound and ready by the time they reached the door, and he slid her through the gap. Debuffier had draped black sheer cloth over the mirror and tied a white handkerchief over his head. Wearing overalls with no undershirt, he stood with his back to the door, stooped slightly, his enormous shoulders rippling with some unseen motion. Whirring. Pause. Whirring. Pause.

Tim barely had time to realize that he was sharpening pencils when a tinny human voice echoed in response, it seemed, to the whirring. “God no. God, God no.”

All three men stiffened, but there was no one else in sight in the small screen. Tim swung the lens, taking in the entire basement, but it was empty, save the tureens and bricks and feathers now kicked up and swirling. They remained on all fours above the small TV screen, blind men searching for a dropped penny.

Debuffier turned, his face powdered in white streaks. Testing the point of a pencil with the pad of one huge finger, he crossed to the refrigerator and swung open the top door of the freezer. A woman’s head, framed perfectly by the box of the freezer, gaped out at the room, her mouth stretched wide and screaming. Alive. Sweat-darkened wisps of hair lay pasted down across her forehead. What appeared to be open sores dotted her face. Her head had been fit through a hole cut into the partition between fridge and freezer.

Debuffier slammed the top door shut, muffling the piercing screams, and opened the refrigerator door. The woman’s body was curled into the lower unit, shivering and naked, also covered in small circular wounds. From her clawing feet to the abbreviated stretch of her neck, she seemed to hang suspended in the deadening white glow of the refrigerator light, the formaldehyde float of a primordial creature on a scientist’s shelf.

Debuffier bent over, reaching for the soft flesh above her collarbone with the pointed end of the pencil. He shifted his massive weight, blocking their view of the woman, then the screaming ratcheted up a level, the sound numbed, like the woman’s head, in the tomblike box of darkness, disassociated from the body, the inflicted torment, the world.

Robert stood up, trembling, in full-body drench. He drew his gun and aimed at the lock. Before Tim could respond, Mitchell grabbed Robert’s wrist and said in a harsh whisper, “No. We don’t get through that lock with a bullet.”

As Robert came increasingly unwound, Mitchell seemed to grow more collected; nearly two decades’ experience defusing live bombs served him well in the face of an active horror.

Sweat streaked in great droplets down Robert’s temples. “We do not walk away.”

“No,” Tim said. “We don’t.” He turned and snapped his fingers, his voice a loud-whispered rush of urgency. “Ten-second hold, boys. Focus. New game plan, new priorities. I call 911. We blast through the door. We neutralize Debuffier, nonlethally if we can. We secure the victim. Then, if we have the luxury, we consider our own position.”

Mitchell dug through the det bag, his razor knife out, a blasting cap having magically appeared, held between his teeth so his hands were free. He pulled the explosive sheet out and unrolled it a few turns. Working with rapid efficiency, he sliced out a disk of PETN, leaving behind a cookie-cutter hole.

Tim jogged into the kitchen before turning on his cell phone, so as not to trip Mitchell’s blasting caps. Stretching his T-shirt across the receiver, he spoke in a scratchy voice. “I have a medical emergency at 14132 Lanyard Street. In the basement. Repeat: in the basement. Please send an ambulance immediately.” He snapped the phone shut, turned it off, and headed back down the hall.

The screaming reached an unbelievably high pitch, drawn thin and fine like a silver wire. Unshaken, Mitchell dug a can of spray-on glue from the bag, misted the back of the disk, and slapped it on the door over the lock.

“God oh God stop please stop.”

Robert was moving from foot to foot in an odd kind of hot-coal dance, as if alleviating the burn from the screams, his face colored with rage and excitement. “Move it move it move it move it move it.”

Mitchell ripped off a strip of explosive sheet and dropped the blasting cap from his mouth onto it. As Tim stretched the protruding wires down the hall, Mitchell finished priming the sheet, sandwiching it around the blasting cap and sticking it to the door. Driven by the screams, Robert and Mitchell followed Tim around the corner, Mitchell clutching a nine-volt in the vise of his fist. Tim handed off the wire ends to him.

Robert was breathing too hard, his nostrils flaring. “Do it. Do it. Do it.”

Tim had to dispense with his whisper now, to be heard over the woman’s screams. “Now, listen. We need to do this right. I’ll be the first through the-”

“Please. Please. Oh God please.”

Robert seized the wires from Mitchell and touched them to the battery. Tim had time only for an instinctual reaction, opening his mouth so his lungs could vent and flex air, preventing the possibility of rupture in the face of the overpressure. The house seemed to jump with the explosion, drywall dust clouding the air, and already Robert was up and running for the stairs, weapon drawn.

“Shit!” Ears ringing from the sharp-edged ping of metal rent, Tim stood and followed Robert in a sprint. Robert had already thrown the door open and disappeared through the haze of dust down the stairs, no backup, no strategic entry. Tim heard the blast of three erratic shots, and he shouldered hard against the now-jagged door frame at the top of the stairs, his elbows locked, his. 357 downpointed, Mitchell closing fast from behind.

Robert swept down the stairs as if floating, his gun raised. Debuffier had swung the refrigerator door all the way open so it was bent back against its hinges, revealing the stretch of curled and terrified flesh within; he crouched behind it, using it as a shield. A chunk of drywall from the blast had landed on the second-to-last step, enough to send Robert into a stumble. Debuffier sprang up, nimble and catlike, and rushed Robert, a blur of size and lean, dark muscle. Robert’s mass blocked Tim’s angle on a shot, so Tim continued his charge down the steps. Debuffier reached Robert before he’d regained his balance and swatted the pistol from his grip. Debuffier seized him, his massive hands nearly encompassing Robert’s rib cage, and hurled him up the stairs at Tim.

Robert’s shoulder connected hard with Tim’s thighs, sending him into a cartwheeling fall down the final three steps. Tim’s. 357 clattered off the side of the stairs, striking the concrete with a clang, and a numbness rang through his shoulder and hip that would later mean pain. He kept in his roll, trying to come up on his feet but landing jarringly on his knees, still hunched in a somersault crouch. The thick stock of Debuffier’s leg broke his vertical field like a pillar, and Tim swung hard and sharp for the knee, angling for a break but instead connecting with the dense muscle of the thigh. His lead-weighted fist landed with the solid pop of a dinner plate dropped flat on a bed of water, and Debuffier howled. A fist rose like a too-large sun, connecting with Tim’s crown. Tim felt the skin of his head pinch against the bone, saw a brilliant burst of light, heard Mitchell’s boots thundering down the stairs behind him, then he was up in the air, Debuffier’s hands crushing him at the shoulders, his feet dangling, a marionette under the appraising and pitiless eye of an Italian puppeteer. Debuffier’s breath wafted coconut and sour milk across Tim’s face.

Tim drove his head forward into Debuffier’s chin, heard a pleasing crack, and the hands relaxed, for just an instant. Tim felt himself lowered a few inches, his feet finding the ground again, and, as Debuffier’s hand reared back to deliver a paralyzing blow to the head, Tim rotated in, Green Beret style, a downstriking punch to the groin, quick and hard like a bear river-plunging for fish. The lead band across the back of his glove seemed to draw his fist down faster, harder, lending it a crushing momentum, and the line of his knuckles connected with the hard ridge of Debuffier’s pubic bone.

There was a single instant of perfect balance and stillness, then the world flooded back into motion-Robert yelling, a shrill banshee wail echoing within the metal box of the mostly closed freezer, the shattering yield of Debuffier’s bone as a skin-muffled crunch announced the instant and comprehensive fragmentation of his pelvis.

Debuffier’s animal bellow of pain found resonance in the concrete walls and came back from the four corners of the room compounded. The freezer door was mid-swing, the woman’s petrified expression flashing into view. His face an in-twisted vortex of pain, Debuffier half stood, one knee brushing the floor but not bearing his weight, his eyelids stretched so wide that the top curvature of his eyeballs was visible. His hands hung loose and open around his hips, frozen, as if contemplating how best to grasp a balloon filled with broken glass.

Mitchell thundered down the last few steps, but Robert had already found his pistol and was standing in full Weaver, head cocked, one eye closed.

Debuffier raised his hand. “No,” he said.

The bullet took off his index finger at the knuckle before sucking his head in around the hole opened up at the bridge of his nose. His body smacked concrete, a widening pool spreading beneath his head with oil-slick deliberateness.

A tureen lay on its side, draining soapy water.

Robert stood over him, feet spread, and discharged two more bullets into the pulpy mess of his head.

“Goddamn it, Robert.” Tim limped over to the refrigerator and swung open the freezer door. The woman’s face stared back, weak with terror, broken bits of lead visible in several of her sores. He saw where Debuffier had drilled holes in the sides of the freezer to provide ventilation. A weight belt had been fastened around her neck, tight beneath the chin, making her unable to duck out of the hole. One of her eyes had been punctured-it oozed a cloudy liquid that caked her lower lid.

She was weeping. “Oh, no. There are more of you. Oh, my God, I can’t.”

“We’re here to help you.” Tim reached for the weight belt, but she shrieked and turned for his hand, gnashing wearily. Mitchell and Robert were at Tim’s back, radiating horror and breathless silence.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m a U.S. de-” Tim stopped, struck by the illegitimacy of his presence. “I’m going to get you out and help you.”

Her face seemed to melt, wrinkling at the forehead. She cried in soft barks with her voice alone, not producing any tears. Tim reached slowly for the weight belt and, when she made no movement toward his hand, uncinched it.

Robert and Mitchell had the lower door open. When they touched her, she shrieked again, but they guided her quickly down and out and laid her on the floor. The smell of pus, panic sweat, and day-old meat rose from her body. Lying limp on the concrete, arms jerking, legs quivering, she began to keen-deep, split-open moans.

Robert took three staggering steps toward the corner and leaned against the wall. He was crying, not loudly or with force, but matter-of-factly. Tears forged tracks through the drywall dust that had collected on his cheeks.

Someone had probably reported the explosion or gunshots; police units were likely en route already, in addition to ambulances.

Mitchell was holding the woman’s head tenderly in both hands, trying to smooth her stiff hair. He spoke to her with an eerie calm. “We killed him. We killed the motherfucker who did this to you.”

She began to convulse violently, limbs thrashing on the concrete, and Mitchell cradled her head so it wouldn’t bang against the floor. Just as quickly as it had gone into motion, her body went limp, save her right leg, which continued to twitch, one broken toenail scraping concrete. Mitchell was up in a crouch over her, ear at her mouth, fingers checking for a neck pulse. He applied a sternal rub, digging his knuckles into her breastbone, and when he got no response, he began chest compressions.

The woman’s head rocked slightly with Mitchell’s movement, her good eye slick and white, a porcelain egg. Tim stayed nearby, on his knees, ready to take over, though he knew, from some until-now-unrealized sense he must have acquired on blasted fields and in evac helicopters, that she was beyond reviving.

A few paces away, Robert was muttering to himself, fists clenching in quick, furious pulses. Streaks of sweat stood out on his shirt.

Mitchell stopped, arms bulging to stretch his sleeves. He stood and laced his fingers, bringing his hands to his belt. The more furious the activity, the calmer and more focused he grew. “She’s done. I’ll have the van waiting by the back fence.” He turned and headed up the stairs.

Robert ran over to the woman. “No. Take over, Rackley. Take over.”

Tim dutifully worked on her, but her mouth was cold and vacant against his, her body board-stiff, yielding upward around the union of his hands like cardboard pressed into carpet. Her lips had gone blue. He checked her carotid pulse again and got back only the dense coldness of marble.

Robert’s face was moist, a blend of sweat and smeared tears, and a high shade of red that looked as if it stung.

Tim got up, retrieved his pistol, and tapped Robert gently on the forearm. “Let’s clear out.”

Robert wiped his mouth. “I’m not leaving her.”

Tim placed a hand on Robert’s shoulder, but Robert knocked it off. The wail of a distant siren reached them.

“There’s nothing more we can do here,” Tim said. “We go now. Robert. Robert. Robert.” Robert’s head finally snapped around. He blinked hard and wiped the sweat off his forehead. Tim squatted and fixed him with a calm, steady gaze. “I’m not asking anymore. Move.”

Robert rose dumbly, a child following instructions, and made his way up the stairs.

The woman’s head was tilted back on the hard concrete, her jaw stretched open. Tim gently pressed her mouth closed before stepping over Debuffier’s humped body and moving upstairs. Mitchell had wisely cleared the equipment from around the twisted metal door. As Tim stepped out into the backyard, he heard vehicles screeching up to the front curb. Just past the gap in the fence, the van was waiting, door slid open, and he stepped up and in.

The twins sat in the rear, backs against the walls, Robert’s face flushed and combat-shocked, Mitchell’s shirt stained where he’d held the woman’s head. Tim yanked the door shut behind him, and they pulled out from the curb.

“You ever jump into the fray like that again,” Tim said, “I’ll shoot you myself.”

Robert didn’t show a flicker of response.

The Stork, sheet-white and sitting on a phone book to see over the high dash, glanced back over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…couldn’t go in. I was too scared.” Grimacing, he clutched his heart, bunching his shirt. “I got the car and waited for a sign, for someone to come out.” He fumbled in his pockets, pulled out a blue pill, and popped it.

“You did fine,” Tim said. “You followed orders.”

Robert clenched his sweaty bangs, his hair protruding in tufts between his fingers. “We could have gotten there earlier.”

“No,” Mitchell said.

“We could have…could have cut surveillance shorter. Just gone right in last night. She was there. She was in there the whole time.”

Tim looked over at Robert, but Robert wouldn’t meet his eyes-he was looking everywhere, nowhere.

“Don’t play ifs,” Mitchell said. “That’s a no-win game. It’s throwing yourself against a rock.”

A series of cracks in the road made the van thrum with metallic urgency.

Robert bowed his head forward, then smacked it back against the wall of the van, so hard it dented the metal out in a crater. His voice was still strained, his throat wobbly and constricted. “Christ oh Christ. She looked so much like Beth Ann.”

He leaned over and threw up into his fist.