The Kill Clause

25

AS TIM PULLED through Rayner’s front gate behind the van, he was not surprised to see Ananberg’s Lexus with its Georgetown license-plate frame. The gate whirred, rotating closed behind them, folding them protectively into the large rise of the Tudor stage set. Robert stumbled out first, trudging for the house, and the Stork followed, his face drawn and bloodless. Mitchell seemed almost to glide behind them, steady and light on his feet. Tim parked and brought up the rear, a sheepdog herding toward the stone front step, but before they could arrive, Rayner opened the door, his eyes swollen and bloodshot, Ananberg up on tiptoe behind him.

Rayner seemed not even to notice the walking-dead appearance of the crew advancing on him. He started to speak but had to clear his throat and start over. “Franklin’s at the VA hospital. He’s had a stroke.”

•They sat spread out evenly across the chairs and sofas of the study, as if needing a buffer from proximity. Tim and Rayner had played unelected spokesmen, swapping information with flat, toneless, just-the-facts-please-ma’am sentences.

Robert hurried to get down a few bolstering bourbons. He drank without hesitation, pausing only to suck ice. A different type of postop drink. The Stork drank milk through a straw-Tim guessed his palate abnormalities made drinking from a glass difficult for him. The Stork had settled down significantly now that the immediate threat had passed; his odd detachment seemed to make him impervious to trauma.

Ananberg kept glancing at the still-moist stain on the front of Mitchell’s shirt.

Robert looked exceedingly weary. He shook his head, his eyes glazed with grief. “I can’t believe the old man had a stroke.”

Tim thought of his morning meeting with Dumone, the quiet apartment filled with the smell of stale carpet.

Rayner sat leaning forward in his charcoal glen-plaid suit, gold cuff links peeking out from the sleeves. The thin white band of his mustache looked fake. “I got the news and called over about an hour ago. The nurse wouldn’t put him on to talk. I guess he wasn’t in full control of his faculties and speech. No visitors tonight. I’m getting him transferred to the VIP floor at Cedars first thing tomorrow. We can have more control there.”

“Of his mouth?” the Stork asked.

“Of his care.” Rayner’s annoyed gaze lingered on the Stork. “Franklin has an older sister, but he asked she not be contacted. He doesn’t want her flying out, fussing over him.”

“Unmarried,” Ananberg said, by way of explanation.

The ensuing silence was broken only by ice clinking against glass and the slurp of milk through the Stork’s straw.

“I think we could all use some time. What do you say we take the rest of the weekend off, meet Sunday night?” Rayner said.

Robert’s eyes were focused on absolutely nothing, as if they were peering down an endless well. An alcohol blush had bloomed on his face; now that he’d started drinking, Tim wondered if he’d be able to stop.

Mitchell sat with his hands folded in his lap, the points of his thumbs touching. His arms he held tight to his sides, giving him a compact, focused bearing. His eyes had narrowed, almost to a squint, as though he were running net-explosive-weight calculations in his head. He was supremely calm, almost relaxed.

Tim looked uneasily from one brother to the other, his anger and disgust growing. “Take some time off? This isn’t a church committee-we have matters to discuss.”

Rayner cleared his throat, clasped his hands piously. “Let’s not start pointing fingers here. I know the execution went badly-”

“No,” Tim said. “The execution did not go badly. It aspired to go badly.”

“I have to agree with Tim’s assessment,” Ananberg said. “This was a mess.”

“You weren’t there,” Robert said.

“That’s exactly irrelevant. This blows up, we all go to jail.”

“Look. Things were complicated. We didn’t mean for it to go down that way, it just happened.”

“Well,” Ananberg said, “who happened it?”

All eyes settled on Robert, except Mitchell’s, which tracked the pendulum of the grandfather clock. Robert tilted his glass at Tim. “Rack fucked up, too.”

“Amen to that,” Tim said. “I should have set firm ROEs. We have strict procedures in place here. We need strict procedures in the field. There are gonna be some new rules.”

“Like what?” Mitchell asked.

“Not now,” Rayner said. “We’re in no shape to talk about anything.”

“When we come back, we’re discussing this,” Tim said. “At length.”

Rayner stood and flared his hands down the fabric over his thighs, smoothing wrinkles. “Monday at eight.”

When Rayner passed him, Tim was surprised to see genuine grief in the downturn of his mouth.

•The TV was murmuring in Joshua’s office, so Tim decided to forgo the elevator and sneak up the back stairs. His apartment waited. Mattress. Desk. Dresser. He pulled the child-size desk chair to the window and sat with his feet up, breathing exhaust through the screen, listening to someone yelling in the Japanese restaurant across the alley. It was remarkable how much angrier anger seemed when conveyed in an Eastern tongue.

He checked his Nokia voice mail-two messages. The first was Dray. Her voice, recognizable to him in so many indescribable subtleties, moved right through him. She was doing her best to soften her tone, make it more feminine, which meant she was regretful and wishing to convey affection.

“Tim, it’s me.” A long, crackling pause. “There are, uh, some forms here that need joint parental signatures. To cancel Ginny’s medical insurance. Dissolve what’s left of her college fund. Crap like that. If you could…If you could stop by sometime, that’d be great. I’ll be around tomorrow. Or I could leave them on the kitchen table, if you want, and you could do it when I’m at work. But I’d rather that…that…” A sigh. “I’d really like to see you, Timothy.”

Bear’s startlingly gruff voice broke Tim’s momentary lapse into happiness.

“Rack. Bear. How about a fucking phone call?”

He got Dray’s machine, so he left a message, then called Bear. Bear said he’d like to see Dray, too, so Tim agreed to meet him at the house tomorrow at noon.

He got into bed, since he had little else to do. Because of the brightness of the downtown street and the inadequate city-issue blinds, darkness didn’t really happen in his apartment. Night was a slightly altered attitude toward the hours, no more. It lacked lethargy.

As a preemptive strike against the images he’d found beneath the coroner’s sheet, Tim tried to imagine Ginny in a peaceful pose, but everything came back trite and inauthentic. In life she’d never reclined peacefully in dandelion fields; there was little reason for her to do so now. His mind returned again and again to Debuffier’s bullet-split face, to the death they’d dealt him and the lives he’d be unable to take in the future. There was a cheapness to the killing; it lacked righteousness. It was like gaining a fortune through inheritance.

Lane was dead and Debuffier was dead and Ginny couldn’t have cared less.

After a while Tim found the emptiness of the room bad company. When he turned on the news, Melissa Yueh’s face peered out, gleeful and tainted with a red, almost sexual excitement. “The city is heating up again after another execution of a suspected criminal, Buzani Debuffier. Debuffier was shot and killed immediately after apparently committing a violent torture/murder.”

“Violent torture/murder” seemed redundant to Tim, but then he wasn’t selling ratings. Footage rolled of guys in Scientific Investigation Division windbreakers poking through the debris at Debuffier’s. “…LAPD won’t disclose if they believe the case is related to the Lane assassination, but inside sources indicate that bits of rare explosive wire were found inside devices at both scenes-”

Feeling his stress ratchet up another notch, Tim flipped the channel. Leave It to Beaver flickered out at him in black and white. June scrunched Beaver in a hug, and the Beav closed his eyes. The scene was cloying to the point of repugnance, but Tim left it on.

He fell asleep to it.