The Kill Clause

27

“WE’RE JUST FINISHING up the media recap, Mr. Rackley,” Rayner said when Tim entered the conference room. Rayner stood at the head of the table, a thick manila folder laid open before him on the granite surface, press clippings protruding messily.

“If you ever pull a move like you pulled this morning on TV without our collective and express approval, I’ll-”

“You’re not in charge here,” Rayner said. “Why should I have to listen to you?”

“Mutual assured destruction. That’s why.” Tim stared at Rayner until Rayner looked away, then slid into his chair. “Your comments were unsubtle and reckless. Don’t do that again, or anything like it. If something shows up in the press, I’ll know if it smells like you. Before we act, we agree on matters here. That’s an inviolable rule.”

The others were present, but without Dumone there seemed an imbalance. Some element of gravitas had been lost. Before, they’d been a commission; now they were just six pissed-off people in a room.

They all kept their picture frames turned in like mirrors; the Stork alone positioned his facing away from him. To Tim’s right, Dumone’s wife peered out from her still-present frame, gazing at the empty black chair before her. Not for the first time, Tim thought about what cheap props the photos were. Facile, like a gimmick for one of Rayner’s chat shows.

Ananberg observed Tim silently from the seat beside him. She looked spent, strung out on an adrenaline hangover. They were all beaten up-Robert in particular. He still hadn’t raised his head. It had been a hellacious twenty-four hours, between the Debuffier execution and Dumone’s stroke. Only the Stork and Rayner, shielded by their inherent yet opposite superficialities, remained imperviously alert.

Rayner took a sip of water. “I’d like to finish the media recap now.” A shuffling of papers. “On CNBC last night-”

“The instant we became aware that Debuffier had a live victim in hand, the sole objective should have been rescuing her and saving her life.” Tim spoke with Dumone’s resolve and authority, and, as when Dumone spoke, the others were silent. “The only valid reason to kill Debuffier would have been as a necessary tactic to extract the victim, which it was not. I had injured him nonfatally-”

Robert spoke slowly and vehemently. “I shot Debuffier because it was the quickest way to get to the victim.” He finally pulled his head up, revealing his face.

“No. You shot him because you wanted to play hero.”

“We voted he should be executed,” Mitchell said. “He was executed.”

“There was no longer a need to execute him. He was committing a crime that could have put him away. We could have secured him and turned matters over to the proper authorities.”

“Then we would have had to stay with him and gotten caught,” Robert said.

“We do not kill people to avoid getting caught,” Tim said. “If covering your own ass is your primary objective, you don’t belong here.”

“Come on,” Mitchell said. “The guy had a torture victim captive in his basement, for Christ’s sake. What are the odds that we’ll stumble into a situation like that again?”

“These are not predictable situations. We never know what we’re going to stumble into.”

“Then you should be grateful I thought to come prepared, since you sure as hell weren’t. You were busy riding my ass for bringing my det bag. Without it we wouldn’t have gotten through that door.”

A laugh escaped Tim. “You hold that to be a well-planned, well-executed mission? You think you can take control operationally? With that?” He turned to Rayner-who wore a worried, atypically passive expression-and Ananberg, looking for support.

“We met our mission objective,” Mitchell said.

“The outcome isn’t the only thing that matters,” Ananberg said.

“No? Isn’t that our argument? The ends justify the means?”

Robert was gazing at the table, fingers drumming the granite; Mitchell had become the mouthpiece.

“The means are the ends,” Tim said. “Justice, order, law, strategy, control. If we lose sight of that when we operate, the whole thing comes unwound. Results do not override rules.”

“Look, what happened, happened-there’s no need to go pulling pins on a sweat grenade now. Robbie got a little fired up and jumped the gun on our basement entry-”

“He was unpredictable, dangerous, and off his game.” Despite the heat the argument was generating, Tim had yet to raise his voice, a restraint Dray abhorred in him.

“People fuck up sometimes.” Robert seemed unsettled and highly agitated. “No matter what happens, an operation can spin out of control. We’ve all had that happen.”

“Calm down, Robert,” Mitchell said sharply-the first severe note Tim had heard either twin use with the other.

“The guy was poking holes in her.” Robert’s voice, unusually high, shook from the memory.

“We can’t act emotionally during a live operation,” Tim said. “An untimed entry like that gets us killed five times out of ten. We lose our angle, our element of surprise, tactics, strategy-everything.”

Mitchell leaned forward, his jacket bunching tight at the biceps. “I understand.”

Tim turned his stare to Robert. “He doesn’t.”

Robert rose to a half crouch above his chair. “What’s your fucking problem, Rackley? We killed the prick. Instead of riding my ass for going in two seconds early, why don’t you think about what we did accomplish? Think of the puke off the streets, put down, never again eyeing a sister, a mother, a girl at a bus stop.”

Even across the table, Tim picked up a hint of alcohol on his breath. “The point of this, of us, is not merely to kill. Do you understand that?” Tim waited impatiently, glaring back at Robert. “If not, get out.”

Tim found himself thinking about what angle he’d take on a jab if Robert came across the table at him. Mitchell rested a hand on Robert’s shoulder and pulled him gently back down into his chair. The Stork’s head was bent; he rubbed his thumbnail with the pad of his forefinger, an annoying, repetitive gesture that called to mind autism.

Robert’s voice was so low it was barely audible. “Of course I get it.”

Tim fixed him with a stare. “Why the face?”

“What?”

“You shot him in the face. That’s a highly personal kill shot.”

“Your blowing up Lane’s head I would hardly label dispassionate,” Rayner said.

“Lane’s head shot was strategic to ensure the safety of those around him. This was specifically not. You’re supposed to aim at critical mass. If the gun kicks high, you still get the neck. A chest shot has more stopping power, too, especially with a big guy.”

Rayner’s eyebrows were raised, frozen in an expression of distaste or respect.

“So I shot Motherfucker in the face. What are you saying?” Robert was flushed, the muscles of his neck pulled taut.

“You’re not starting to enjoy this, are you?”

Robert stood up again, but Mitchell yanked him back down. He stayed in his chair, eyeing Tim, but Tim turned to face Mitchell. “And what’s this about a rare explosive wire linking the explosives?”

“It’s media horseshit. I use standard wires. There’s no way they could link them.”

“Well, someone in forensics knows the two executions are linked and leaked that fact, with a slight skew, to the media. How do they know? And so quickly? It had to be the explosive.”

Mitchell grew finicky under Tim’s glare.

“That wasn’t a commercial blasting cap, was it, Mitchell?”

“I don’t use anything commercial, not for a key component. Don’t trust it. I make all my own stuff.”

“Great. So could forensic analysis determine that the initiation portion of your homemade blasting cap was similar to the earpiece device? This is LAPD bomb squad we’re talking about, not some Detroit Scooby-Doo with a magnifying glass.”

“Maybe.” Mitchell looked away. “Probably.”

“Who gives a shit anyway?” Robert said. “It doesn’t affect anything.”

“I give a shit, because if it happens and we didn’t plan it, that’s bad news. There’s a reason we voted against a communique”-an angry eye toward Rayner-“not that we’d want to claim this mess anyway. The bomb squad matching the two explosives is going to bring the heat, and we don’t have room for missteps.”

Tim leaned back in his chair, weathering the Mastersons’ aggressive stares. “Let me make something else clear, since you two seem so eager to run and gun: You don’t have what it takes to lead this kind of operation.”

Robert and Mitchell coughed out identical snickers. “Mitch blasted the door,” Robert said. “I was the number-one man through.”

“And I was the one who jumped in and saved your ass when you missed three shots, tripped down the stairs, and got tossed like a Nerf ball by Debuffier.”

The muscles of Robert’s face had tightened, compressing his cheeks into sinewy ovals.

“I run the show operationally,” Tim said. “My rules. Those were the conditions. And since it’s clear none of you have given any thought to defining our operational rules, how’s this: You have none. I’m the sole operator on a kill mission. You will not be on-site when a hit goes down. That’s just how it is.”

“Let’s talk about this,” Rayner said. “You’re not solely in charge here.”

“I’m not negotiating these terms. They stand, or I walk.”

Rayner’s lips tightened, his nostrils flaring with indignation-the spoiled prince used to getting his way. “If you walk, you’ll never get to review Kindell’s case. You’ll never know what happened to Virginia.”

Ananberg looked over at him, shocked. “For Christ’s sake, William.”

Tim felt his face grow hot. “If you think for a minute that I’d stay here and participate in a venture of this severity to get my hands on a file-even a file that could help solve my daughter’s death-then you’ve underestimated me. I will not be blackmailed.”

But Rayner was already backpedaling into his polished-gentleman persona. He hadn’t dropped his guard before, but the picture beneath it was as nasty as Tim had imagined. “I didn’t mean to imply anything of the sort, Mr. Rackley, and I apologize for my phrasing. What I mean is, we all have aims we’re seeking to forward here, and let’s keep our eyes on the ball.” He cast a wary glance at the Mastersons. “Now, how would you like to handle matters operationally so you’re comfortable?”

Tim took a moment, letting the pins and needles leave his face. He met Mitchell’s eyes. “I still may need you. And you.” He nodded at the Stork, as if the Stork gave a damn. “For surveillance, logistics, backup. But I handle target neutralization alone.”

Mitchell’s hands flared wide and settled in his lap. “Fine.”

Ananberg’s eyes tracked over one chair. “Robert?”

Robert ran a knuckle across his nose, studying the table. Finally he nodded, glaring at Tim. “Affirmative, sir.”

“Excellent.” Rayner clapped his hands and held them together, like a delighted Dickensian orphan at Christmas. “Now, let’s get back to the media recap.”

“Fuck the media recap,” Robert growled.

The Stork clasped his hands and raised them. “Here, here.”

Rayner looked like the teacher’s yes boy who’d just had his test tubes stomped by the class bully. “But the sociological impact is certainly relevant to-”

“Bill,” Ananberg said. “Get the next case binder.”

Rayner huffily pulled his son’s crestfallen image off the wall and punched buttons on the safe, issuing a steady stream of words under his breath.

“Wait,” Mitchell said. “Are we voting without Franklin?”

“Of course,” Rayner said. “The binders don’t leave this room.”

Robert said, “Then conference him in.”

“He could be overheard talking in his room,” Ananberg said. “And we don’t know if those phone lines are secure.”

“He gets exhausted pretty quickly,” Rayner said. “I’m not sure if he has the focus or stamina right now to pay these deliberations the meticulous attention they demand.”

“I say we wait for him to recover,” Tim said.

Rayner faced them, his hands trembling slightly. “I spoke to his doctor at length today. His prognosis… I’m not sure that waiting for hisrecovery is the wisest idea.”

Robert blanched. “Oh.”

Mitchell got busy scratching his forehead.

Shock turned to sadness before Tim could get a handle on it. It took him a moment to regain his composure, then he nodded at Rayner to move ahead.

Rayner grabbed a binder and tossed it on the table. “Terrill Bowrick of the Warren Shooters.”

On October 30, 2002, three seniors at Earl Warren High had gotten into a sixth-period altercation with the starting lineup of the school basketball team. They’d retreated to their vehicles and returned with ordnance. While Terrill Bowrick stood guard at the door, his two coperpetrators had entered the school gymnasium, where they’d fired ninety-seven rounds in less than two minutes, killing eleven students and wounding eight.

The coach’s five-year-old daughter, Lizzy Bowman, who’d been watching practice from the bleachers, had caught a stray bullet through her left eye. Greeting Angelenos on their doorsteps Halloween morning was a front-page photo of her father on both knees, clutching her limp body-a reverse Pieta for the new millennium. Tim remembered vividly how the coach’s jersey had borne a blood imprint of his daughter’s face, a crimson half mask. Tim had set down the paper, dropped Ginny off at school, then sat in his car in the parking lot for five minutes before walking to his daughter’s classroom so he could see her again through the window before leaving her.

The two gunmen, lean stepbrothers bound by a perverse codependence, had claimed there had been no premeditation. Their father was a pawnbroker-they’d been transporting the weapons between two of his stores, just happened to have dueling SKSs and four mags in the trunk when they’d lost their cool. Second-degree murder at worst, their defense lawyer claimed, maybe even a push for temporary insanity. A foolish argument, but good enough to get past your average foolish jury.

The prosecutor, unable to play the brothers off against each other and faced with wrathful media and a community hell-bent on vengeance, had realized he could roll Bowrick with a grant of immunity. Bowrick, a second-time senior who’d just stumbled across the threshold of his eighteenth birthday and thus was sweating heavy, could testify that they’d planned the shooting in the preceding weeks, thus establishing premed and giving the prosecution an express train to murder in the first. The stepbrothers, also not Oppenheimers in the classroom, were legal adults as well.

The prosecutor slid the immunity grant past the media by pointing out that Bowrick was the least culpable co-conspirator and that his participation had been the least egregious. He slid it past his division chief by making clear that Bowrick, a twig of a kid with a lame arm and a limp, could play to jury sympathy and that all the evidence to prove up the premed was circumstantial. By providing independent corroboration, Bowrick could shore up the case.

After Bowrick testified, the brothers were convicted and fast-tracked for capital punishment. Bowrick walked with a plea to a lesser charge-accessory after the fact-and was granted a deal for probation and a thousand hours of community service, no time served.

“So that’s what a school shooting buys you these days.”

Mitchell joined in Tim’s disgust. “About the same sentence you’d get for spray-painting graffiti on your neighbor’s shiny new Volvo.”

“Let’s bear in mind that he was only an aider and abetter,” Robert said. His eyes, glassy and loose-focused, betrayed the slightest identification with Bowrick, the outsider.

“Maybe he didn’t fire the weapon because he couldn’t hold it properly with an atrophied arm,” Tim said.

“And regardless, Robert,” Rayner said, “an aider and abetter is subject to the same sentence as those who actually perpetrate the crime.”

“Less the gun enhancements,” Robert said.

“No one needs the gun enhancements. It was a capital-punishment case.”

Robert tilted his head, a gesture of concession. “Right,” he said. “That’s right.”

“The case precedent is pretty clear on this one,” Ananberg said, “particularly for accomplices of this type. Aiders and abetters have gotten dinged on special circumstances for everything from lying-in-wait allegations to multiple-murder allegations.”

Bowrick’s booking photo sat faceup to Tim’s right, the border nudging his knuckles. Despite Bowrick’s attempt to approximate good posture, the flare of his dishwater-blond bangs barely notched the five-foot-eight line painted on the wall behind him. A jagged half-coin pendant dangled from a thin gold necklace. Sullenness pervaded his features. He didn’t have the confidence to give off surly; his was the pasty-white face of hope beaten down to unhappy submission. He was sullen like a kicked dog, like the kid picked last, like a deflowered girl after her lover’s too-hasty departure.

Ananberg backed them up, and Rayner led them through the case from the beginning. They started by scouring the evidence reports-admissible and inadmissible. Their evaluative capabilities had drastically improved as they’d grown more familiar with Ananberg’s procedure, leading to sharper focus, more incisive arguments, and a wider exploration of potentialities. The deliberations were all the more impressive given the divisiveness at the meeting’s outset.

When the final document had made its way around the table, Tim slid it into the binder and glanced up at the others. “Let’s vote.”

Guilty. Unanimous. Ananberg, who’d cast her vote last, crossed her hands on the table, her expression oddly content.

“There is one major complication,” Rayner said. “After he went state’s evidence, Bowrick went into hiding.” He spread his hands, Jesus calming the seas. “The good news is, he didn’t go into witness protection. Not formally. But he was getting death threats, his property vandalized. After someone tried to burn down his apartment, he switched his name and moved away. Only his probation officer knows where he is.”

“I’ll find him,” Tim said quietly.

“If he’s still under the thumb of his PO, he’s still laying his head somewhere in L.A.,” Robert said.

Mitchell’s fingers strummed on the table. Stopped. He looked at Rayner. “Can you pry where he’s staying from the PO?”

“Too messy,” Tim said before Rayner could respond. “Too many trails leading back to us.”

“We know he’s logging community-service hours,” Robert said. “Why don’t we run a check on what programs are up where, give a glance?”

“I said I’ll find him,” Tim said. “Without stoking any fires. I’ll take care of it quietly. You all sit tight and keep silent.”

Rayner was standing at the safe, his back to the others. Before Tim could move to rise, Rayner turned and let another black binder drop on the table. Tim’s eyes went past him to the last black binder in the safe. Kindell’s.

He wondered if Ananberg had even attempted to get him the public defender’s notes from Kindell’s binder.

Rayner followed Tim’s gaze behind him to the open safe. He smiled curtly, reached back, and closed it. Tim continued to find Rayner’s petty power plays galling, despite their transparency.

“What do you say we tackle one more case now while our brains are warmed up?”

Tim checked his watch. 11:57.

“I got nowhere to go,” Robert said.

Ananberg’s laugh, sharp and short, rang off the wood-paneled walls. “I don’t think any of us has anywhere to go. Tim, do you have to get home?”

“I don’t have a home, remember?”

Robert’s mustache shifted and rose. “That’s right. None of us do, do we, Mitch?”

“No home, no family, no records. We’re ghosts.”

The Stork emitted a wheezy little laugh. “No taxes either.”

“Ghosts.” Mitchell grinned. “We are ghosts, aren’t we? We just come out of our graves now and then to take care of business.”

Tim nodded at the binder. “What’s the case?”

Rayner folded his hands atop the binder and gave a magician’s pause. “Rhythm Jones.”

“Ah,” Mitchell said. “Rhythm.”

It would be difficult to live in L.A. County and not have at least a passing awareness of the Rhythm Jones-Dollie Andrews case. An exrapper of modest acclaim, Jones was a small-time dealer with a propensity for turning out girls. His first name derived from the fact that he was always bouncing, as if to a private beat. According to street lore, his mother had named him in the crib. As an adult he threw off a sloppily endearing vibe, all fat smile and bopping head. Usually he wore a Dodgers jersey, hanging open to reveal the RHYTHM tattoo stenciled in Gothic across his chest.

For a few chance weekends in his twenties, he’d spun vinyl with the East Side DJ set, but he’d quickly found himself back in his hometown, South Central. Three years and two hundred pounds later, he was the go-to man for shitty rock and petite white girls who’d hook for a twenty or a spoonful of liquid nirvana. He was a notoriously vicious sex addict; his charges had been known to hobble into emergency rooms, towels crammed down both sides of their pants to stanch the bleeding.

He’d been indicted on two counts of possession for sale and one count of pimping and pandering, but due to a combination of dumb luck and cowed witnesses, he’d never been convicted.

Until Dollie Andrews.

Andrews was an off-the-bus Ohioan who’d taken the archetypal Hollywood header, from waitressing actress to back-alley blow-jobber. But she’d finally gotten her dream: After her body had been found smeared into Jones’s ratty couch, punctured with seventy-seven knife wounds, her modeling eight-by-tens had been released to a ravenous press, and her short-cropped towhead curls and the just-right width of her hips had etched her persona posthumously into the zeitgeist.

Jones had been found sleeping off a PCP high one room over; he claimed complete amnesia regarding the past two days. None of Andrews’s blood had been found on his body, his clothes, or under his nails, though a crime-scene technician had discovered traces in the pipes beneath the shower drain. The weapon, bearing a clean set of ten-point prints, had been recovered from a trash can outside. Motive? The prosecutor had argued sexual rejection. One of Andrews’s colleagues had captured her on camcorder wholesomely proclaiming she’d never give it up for black meat. In certain boxcars composing the train wreck of public opinion, this was known to pass for virtue.

To Jones’s immense disadvantage was the egregious ineptitude of his lawyer, an acne-faced kid just out of school whom the overburdened public defender had thrown to the wolves on the nothing-to-gain case. Given the circumstances under which the body had been found, several witnesses who claimed Jones had been stalking Andrews for weeks, and the unanimous testimony of two medical examiners that the stabber had been a forceful, right-handed male around five feet ten, Jones had been convicted by a jury after less than twenty minutes of deliberation.

The verdict had brought out the Leonard Jeffrieses and the Jesse Jacksons, who had proclaimed that, as a non-professional-athlete black male accused of killing a white woman, Jones wasn’t being given a fair shake. The resultant political pressures had accelerated Jones’s Writ for Ineffective Assistance of Counsel, which was granted.

Verdict overturned.

Meanwhile, some jackass in long-term record storage had misfiled the evidence and exhibits, which left the prosecutor with no forensic reports, no photos of the body to flash at the jury during the second trial, nothing more than the testimony of four white cops.

Verdict, not guilty.

The case files were discovered the following Monday, mistakenly filed under “Rhythm.”

Jones slipped out of sight, lost somewhere in the faceless obscurity of L.A. slums, protected from the heat of further inquiry by the generous parasol of double jeopardy.

As Rayner finished reviewing the specifics of the case, Tim’s eyes were drawn to the picture of Ginny, propped on the table before him. He glanced again at the other photos in sight-Ananberg’s mother, Dumone’s wife, and the Stork’s mother, an imperious-looking, heavy-set woman with an expression of disgruntled impatience common to pugs and Eastern European immigrants. This was their purgatory, Tim realized, to oversee deliberations about L.A.’s most vile crimes and criminals, to play silent chorus to a seedy drama. This was how Tim had chosen to honor his daughter.

“…reasonable doubt,” Mitchell was saying. “It’s not no doubt. There’s never no doubt.”

But Ananberg held strong. “If someone were planning to frame him, it would be the perfect way. He’s a known drug abuser with countless enemies. Get him when he’s high as a kite, hack up a body in his living room, and voila.”

“Sure,” Robert said. “Forensic stab patterns are a breeze to fake. Especially seventy-seven punctures.”

Rayner’s head snapped up from the court transcript. “Oh, come on. We all know facts can be tailored. The public defender failed to produce a single expert witness for the defense.”

Robert’s hands were both spread on the table, white from the pressure. “Maybe there wasn’t one who could represent the defense’s version of the facts in…in-”

“-good faith,” Mitchell said.

“Please,” Ananberg said. “Expert witnesses are like whores, but more expensive.”

Rayner’s head jerked a bit at the simile.

Tim watched Robert closely. Robert’s fuse, for obvious reasons, was considerably shortened by murderers of women. Tim reflected on the firmness of his own conviction about Bowrick’s guilt and realized he held the same defensive rage for killers of children. Anger guarding trauma, ever vigilant. And-for purposes of the Commission-ever polluting.

“The verdict was overturned only because the evidence was misfiled and could not be presented.” The Stork flipped through the forensic report with one hand, and with his other he rubbed his thumb across the pads of his fingers, swift and ticlike. “It’s fairly conclusive.”

“This case was thrown out the first time around due to incompetent counsel,” Ananberg said. “By definition that means no respectable defense was mounted. There could have been considerations available that were never explored. Plus, the evidence is hardly damning-they found no blood whatsoever on his person. Seventy-seven stab wounds and no trace of blood on him? He was wacked-out on angel dust-I doubt he had the clarity of mind to burn his clothing and exfoliate with a loofa.”

Mitchell spoke very slowly, as if monitoring himself. “We have a body in his living room, a weapon bearing his fingerprints, and traces of the victim’s blood in his shower drain.”

“It is remarkably compelling physical evidence,” Tim said.

Ananberg regarded him, surprised, as if he were breaking some heretofore unspoken alliance.

“What the fuck do you want?” Robert said. “Live footage of the murder? If that evidence hadn’t been lost, this guy would’ve already been fried.” His voice was rising, his face starting to color. “He was caught dick deep at the crime scene, which happened to be his house. You’re overthinking this one, Ananberg.”

“He’s a pretty street-smart guy. And it’s such a stupid crime scene…” Ananberg shook her head. “The evidence doesn’t seemdamning to me. It seems convenient.”

They moved through the formal procedure swiftly, as it was obvious there would not be a unanimous decision. The vote went four to two; Rayner sided with Ananberg against the others.

“For fuck’s sake,” Robert said. “You’re letting the prick off the hook because of a bunch of stupid liberal bullshit.”

“This has nothing to do with politics,” Tim said.

Robert threw up his hands, bouncing forward in his chair so its arms knocked the table. The framed picture of his sister fell facefirst to the marble with a clap; Rayner’s water slopped over the side of the glass. “The guy’s a fucking sleazebag.”

“Which, last I checked, is not a capital offense.” Ananberg placed her hands palms down on the table, a vision of resolution. “I’m just not convinced he did it.”

Robert ran a hand through his bristling red-blond hair, leaving a flared Mohawk path like a dog’s raised hackles. He cocked back in his chair. His voice, low and muttering, held a startling element of malice. “If he didn’t, a nig like that’s guilty of something else.”

Tim leaned forward, chair creaking, willing his voice not to betray the full measure of his rage. “Is that what you believe?”

Robert looked away, his jaw clenched.

“Of course not,” Mitchell said.

“I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to your brother.”

When Robert turned back, Tim noticed that his eyes were strikingly bloodshot, pink veins radiating out from his pupils, leaving wakes in the white-sea haze of his sclera. “I didn’t mean it. It’s just after this thing, with Debuffier…I mean, the guy fucking kept her in a refrigerator.” He grabbed the fallen frame in front of him and smashed it down against the table once, twice, three times. His face dissolved, and he raised a hand to his eyes. Broken glass was spread across the table. His hand, cut from the glass, left a bloody smudge above one eyebrow. Mitchell reached over and kneaded the thick muscles of Robert’s neck.

“Dumone is like a father to me,” Robert said. His lips were trembling. Tim waited for him to break, but he remained stubbornly on the edge between composure and grief.

“You need some time off from this,” Rayner said. “To get your perspective back.”

“No, no. Back to work. I need work.” When Robert looked up, his eyes were scared. “Don’t you do that to me.”

“You’re a liability to our aims,” Tim said. “You’re sitting it out for a while.”

Robert remained bent over the table, shoulders drawn forward and around so his trapezius muscles pulled high and hard around his neck. His head was raised, tilted up from his hunch like a pointing dog’s, his eyes bright. “You’ve been trying to cut me and Mitch out from day one. You of all people should understand our needing to be involved. To do more. Don’t tell us to sit back and let others handle it. You’re giving us the same bullshit answers your dad threw back at you when you went to him for help.”

Rayner jumped in angrily. “That’s enough, Robert.”

Off Tim’s expression, Robert looked away uncomfortably, maybe even a touch ashamed. “Yeah, that’s right, you forget. We know about when you went to him for help, and he turned you out. We were listening.”

Tim felt his pulse beating at his temples. He sifted through the anger, searching out a sharper vexation. “I was told you’d been listening to me since the day of Ginny’s funeral.”

Mitchell strummed his short-cut nails on the table. “Dumone already apol-”

“I went to see my father three days before that.” Tim faced the Stork, who was only now perking up to pay attention. “So how were you listening to me at my father’s?”

“Yes, well, I’m afraid I was mistaken when I told you that before. I ended up doing it a few days earlier. Broke in when you were at work and your wife went to the grocery store.”

Tim studied him closely, then Robert. He decided to believe them for the time being. “Listen,” he said, “we already have a guilty vote in on Bowrick. I’m handling it alone, as I pointed out earlier. Robert, you take some time off-and I mean off-and catch your breath. And be advised, when you come back, I’m not tolerating another word of your racist bullshit. Is that clear? Is it?” He waited for Robert to nod, a barely discernible tilt of his head.

“Then we’ll move to Kindell,” Rayner said. “And I’ve already embarked on the tedious process of selecting a second set of cases for our next phase.”

“One step at a time. Right now I need you all to leave.”

Rayner’s mustache twitched in a half smile. “It’s my house.”

“I need to sit alone with Bowrick’s file. Would you rather I ran copies and took them home?” Tim stared from face to face until the others rose and shuffled out of the room.

Ananberg lingered behind. She shut the door and faced Tim, sliding her arms so they were folded across her chest. “This is coming unglued.”

Tim nodded. “I’m going to slow things down, see what I can get on Bowrick, see how Dumone fares. I can handle this operation largely on my own. If I need to use Mitchell, I’ll stick him on surveillance and keep him well clear of any situation that might go hot.”

“Robert and Mitchell won’t settle for being your spy and errand boys for long. They’re obsessed. They’re all about black-and-white logic, no mitigating circumstances.”

“We need to keep phasing them out operationally so they’re permanently on the sidelines before we embark on the next phase of cases.”

“And if things don’t move the way we want them to?”

“We invoke the kill clause and dissolve the Commission.”

“Can you make this work without Dumone?”

Tim looked up at her. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m handling Bowrick myself. I can make sure it’s done right, then move on to Kindell.”

“You must be eager to get to Kindell.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

Ananberg removed a thrice-folded document from her purse and slid it down the length of the table. It stopped when it hit Tim’s knuckles.

The public defender’s notes.

“Rayner had me run a copy of this at the office. I accidentally made two. Put it in your pocket, do not look at it until you get home, and don’t ask me for anything else.”

Tim resisted the overwhelming urge to flip through the pages. As much as it pained him, he wedged the public defender’s notes into his back pocket. When he looked up, Ananberg was gone.

The sudden silence rankled him, and he tried to soothe his unease. He couldn’t risk Rayner’s walking in here and finding him examining the purloined documents, and he couldn’t leave abruptly after saying he was going to stay to study Bowrick’s file. He had to play it cool-he owed Ananberg that much.

He dimmed the lights overhead, then propped Bowrick’s photo up against Ginny’s frame. He stared at Bowrick’s discontented face for a long time before flipping open the binder.