The Kill Clause

3

BEAR pulled up to the curb, and Tim moved to get out, but Bear grabbed his shoulder. It had been a silent ride home. “I should have stopped you. Stepped in. You were in no shape to make that kind of decision.” He squeezed the wheel.

“It wasn’t your responsibility,” Tim said.

“It’s my responsibility to do more than stand around while my partner maybe kills some mutt in a moment of justifiable rage. You’re a federal agent, not some yokel deputy.”

“The boys just got a little fired up.”

Bear struck the steering wheel hard with the heels of his hands, a rare display of anger. “Stupid pricks.” His cheeks were wet. “Stupid, stupid pricks. They shouldn’t have dragged you into it. They shouldn’t have jeopardized the investigation.”

Tim knew Bear was turning his grief to anger and throwing it at the nearest target, but he also knew he was right. Tim spoke to the words, because he knew if he touched the grief right now, he’d come apart. “Nothing happened.”

“It’s not done happening yet.” Bear wiped his cheeks roughly. “And we don’t know what those idiots did before we got there, how well they secured the scene. They weren’t looking for accomplices. They weren’t looking to build a case. It’s not like they were dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s for the DA. It’s not like they were expecting a trial.”

“They’re gonna have to be aboveboard now. After we’ve been there.”

“Great. So in addition to the case being tied to their competence or tremendous lack thereof, we are, too.” Bear shuddered hard, like a dog shaking off water. “Sorry, I’m sorry. You got enough on your plate.”

Tim managed a faint smile. “I better go check on my yokel-deputy wife.”

“Shit, I didn’t mean that.”

Tim laughed, and then Bear joined him, both of them still wiping their cheeks.

“Do you want me to…Can I come in?”

“No,” Tim said. “Not yet.”

Bear was still idling at the curb when Tim closed the front door behind him. The house was dark and empty. Two holes had been kicked through the living room wall, leaving jagged edges in the dry-wall. Though Tim had left Dray with two of her friends who’d come over to help with Ginny’s party, he was not surprised to find the house silent. When Dray was upset, she handled it alone. Another trait she’d learned from four older brothers and six years and counting on the job.

He passed through the small living room into the kitchen. The simple interior had been improved upon over the years by Tim’s meticulous attention. He’d torn up the floors and laid down hardwood in the halls and bedrooms and replaced the brass-plated and faux-crystal chandeliers with recessed lighting.

On the counter sat Ginny’s cake, uncut, the top puddled with wax. Dray had insisted on baking it herself despite her lack of prowess in the kitchen. It was uneven, sloping left, and the frosting had been applied and reapplied in a failed attempt at smoothness. Judy Hartley, their next-door neighbor and a recent empty-nester, had offered to assume baking duties, but Dray had refused. As she did each year on Ginny’s birthday, she’d taken the day off work to pore over borrowed cookbooks, determined and stubborn, pulling cake after cake out of the oven until she’d produced one she deemed acceptable.

Dray wasn’t there, though the cabinet where they kept the liquor stood open. The handle of store-brand vodka was missing.

Tim walked quietly down the hall to their bedroom. The bed, neatly made, stared back at him. He checked the bathroom-also no luck. He tried Ginny’s room next, across the hall. Dray was sitting in the darkness, the half-gallon bottle between her legs, the glow of a Pocahontas night-light discoloring one side of her face. On the carpet before her sat the cordless phone and her PalmPilot, the backlight still glowing.

Her face was gaunt, drawn in by grief. Three years ago she’d red-handed a fifteen-year-old kid fleeing a Ventura office building with an armload of laptops. He’d tried to throw down with a nickel-plated. 22, and she’d double-tapped him; when she got home, her face looked not quite so bad as it did now. Her head was bowed slightly, in thought or drunkenness.

Tim closed the door behind him, crossed the room, and slid down the wall beside her. He took her hand; it was sweaty and feverish. She didn’t look up, but she squeezed his fingers as if she’d been barely holding on for his touch.

He stared at Ginny’s twin bed. The wallpaper, unrestrained yellow and pink flowers now muted by the darkness, had been perfectly aligned so it didn’t mess up the repeat at the room’s corners.

Tim thought about Ginny’s last few minutes of life, then about where he might have been at the corresponding times. Putting his weapon away in the gun safe when she was snatched from the street. Driving to the store for pink candles when the dismemberment began.

That he couldn’t give Kindell’s partner a face was an added torment, another mockery of his imagined control over his world. The notion of kinship to this end was beyond sickening-two men bent on the destruction of a child, two men joined in ripping apart a young body. He pictured Kindell’s dopey face and wondered if there was a special place in hell for child-killers. He indulged himself in imagined tortures. He had never been a religious man, but the thoughts found their way out from the darker recesses of his mind, the shadowed corners hidden from the light of reason.

Dray’s voice, calm, but hoarse from crying, forced him from his thoughts. “I was here alone tonight, this night, sitting with Trina and Joan and Judy fucking Hartley, getting the other kids off home, waiting to hear about the positive ID, calling our relatives so they wouldn’t have to hear it from…or read about it in…” She raised her head sluggishly, bangs sweeping over her eyes. She took another slug from the bottle. “Fowler called.”

“Dray-”

“Why didn’t you come to me?”

He wouldn’t have thought his grief would have left room for shame, but there it was, undiminished. “I’m sorry.”

The distance between them he registered as an aching in his stomach. He remembered how they’d fallen in love, hard and terrifyingly fast. Neither of them had ever learned to need as adults-both had endured childhoods that had disappointed them, punishingly, for relying on anyone-yet there they were, fixed on each other with an unyielding, constant focus, staying up all hours talking and pressing against each other in the flickering blue glow of the muted TV, driving across town to meet for lunch because they couldn’t make it from morning to evening without each other’s touch. Every detail of the first months shone with clarity-how he’d steer and shift with his left hand so he wouldn’t have to let go of hers with his right in the car after dinner, a movie, a night walk on the beach; the soft noise she made when she smiled, just short of a laugh; the way her face hurt when she blushed after a compliment-pins and needles, she claimed-and she’d have to massage out the bunched cheeks above the grin with her fingertips until he finally started doing it for her. Just last week he’d pulled her in for a slow dance when Elvis came crooning on late-night reruns; Ginny had alleged nausea and retreated to her bedroom.

And now he was in the same room with his wife but could barely sense her through the darkness, which had grown soupy, infused with hurt and foulness and stopped-up grief.

He struggled to find words, to reconnect. “I got the call. We were three miles away. I had to go, to see.”

“Okay. So you went.”

He took a deep breath. “And he confessed.”

She was trying to soften her voice, but he could hear the frustration in it. “Tim, you’re the father of the victim. You were illegally called to the crime scene to commit a vengeance killing. Explain to me how him confessing to you is the least bit useful.” She lowered the bottle to the floor with a thunk. “That man took our daughter and violated her. Took her apart. And you went to him, you risked the crime scene and the arrest, and then you let him walk away.”

“I think he had an accomplice.”

Her eyebrows rose and spread. “Fowler didn’t mention that.”

“Kindell said he wasn’t supposed to kill her, as if there had been some previous understanding between him and someone else.”

“He could have just been saying he didn’t mean to kill her. Or that he knew it was illegal.”

“Maybe. But then he started to refer to someone else-a he-but he caught himself.”

“So why aren’t Gutierez and Harrison looking into that?”

“They weren’t aware of it, obviously.”

“Are they looking into it now?”

“They’d better be.”

Ginny’s bedside clock emitted a soft chime, announcing the hour; the sound struck Tim sharp and unexpected, a stab to the heart. Dray’s face seemed to crumble. She quickly took another pull off the bottle. For a moment they’d indulged the illusion that they’d set aside the personal, that they’d been two cops talking.

Dray wiped tears from her cheeks with her sweatshirt cuff, which she’d pulled over her hand like a girl. “So the crime scene is muddled up, and now there’s a possibility that the killer isn’t the only killer.”

“That’s about right, unfortunately.”

“You’re not even angry.”

“I am. But anger is useless.”

“What isn’t?”

“I’m trying to figure that out.” He wasn’t looking at her, but he heard her take another gulp from the bottle.

“All your training-Spec Ops and Combat Engineering and FLETC-you should have known to prioritize under pressure. You should’ve known not to go there, Timmy.”

“Don’t call me Timmy.” He stood and wiped his palms on his pants. “Look, Dray, we’re both wrecked right now. If we keep this up, it’s not gonna go anywhere we want it to.”

Tim opened the door and stepped out. Dray’s voice followed him out into the cool hall. “How can you be so calm right now? Like she’s just another victim, someone you never knew.”

Tim halted in the hall and stood, his back to the open door. He turned and walked back in. Dray’s hand was over her mouth.

He ran his tongue across the points of his teeth and back, waiting for his breath to stop hitching in his chest. When he spoke, his voice was so quiet it was barely audible. “I understand how upset-how destroyed you are. I am, too. But don’t ever fucking say that.”

She lowered her hand. Her eyes were shell-shocked. “I’m sorry,” she said.

He nodded and withdrew gently from the room.

•In the bedroom Tim spun the dial on his gun safe, then removed a Spec Ops-issue p226 nine mil, his favored. 357 Smith amp; Wesson, a hefty Ruger. 44 mag, and two fifty-round boxes of nine-mil and. 44. He kept a broader ammo range on hand for his. 357, as it was his duty weapon; he opted for the wad cutters over the copper-jacketed rounds and the duty 110-grain hollow-points. The service issued the S amp;Ws with three-inch barrels, as they were often carried concealed.

When he entered Ginny’s room, Dray still had not moved. “I’m so sorry,” she said again. “What a fucking thing to say.”

He knelt, placed his hands on her knees, and kissed her on the forehead. It was damp. The sharp smell of alcohol lingered about her face. “It’s okay. What’s that they say about rocks and glass houses?”

Her lips pursed, not quite a smile. “Don’t throw glass houses if you live in a rock.”

“Something like that.”

“You need to go shoot.” She wasn’t asking; she was offering.

He nodded. “Come with me?”

“I need to sit here for a while and look at nothing.”

He moved to kiss her forehead again, but she tilted back her head and caught his lips with hers. The kiss was hot and dry and edged with vodka. If he could have crawled into it and lived there, he would have.

The garage housed Tim’s silver M3 BMW-a car confiscated by the service under the National Asset Seizure and Forfeiture Program-and his workbench. Tim threw his ordnance in the trunk and backed out, careful to dodge Dray’s Blazer, parked in the driveway. He drove to the outskirts of town, then turned onto a dirt road and followed it up a few hundred yards.

He pulled the car onto a flat dirt apron and left it running, angling the high beams downrange, where a cable stretched between two stakes, about five feet off the ground. Tim removed a stack of targets, a mix of color-coded Transtars and old B-27s, and strung them along the cable. Then he sat in the dirt, jammed the Sig mags, and readied the speedloaders for the wheel guns. Six bullets locked into the cylindrical base of each speedloader, tips sticking up like fangs, spaced to correspond with the caliber holes in the wheel.

He was left-eye dominant but right-handed, so he drew from a high-ride right-hip holster. Shoulder holsters were discouraged by the service because the cross-draw presented a hazard on the firing line, but Tim preferred the up-and-out anyway, not liking the time given up on a cross-draw. They didn’t call shoulder holsters widow-makers for nothing. He started with the Sig, doing some quick-draw plinking at three yards to warm up his reactive shooting. Then he moved to seven yards. Then ten.

His shooting was remarkably precise, having been learned in urban-warfare courses and perfected in Malibu’s Maze at Glynco. The aptly named shooting course features pop-up and swinging targets that prospective deputies attack with live ammo through a confusion of strobing lights, blaring music, and amplified screams. The vibe is so invasive, the surroundings so surreal, that grown men have emerged weeping. Once outside, deputies subdue actors playing felons; a Juilliard dropout had once gotten a little too method with Tim, jawing off and sinking his teeth into Tim’s forearm, and Tim had knocked him cold.

His breath misting in the sharp February cold of the higher altitude, Tim shot and shot. When he’d burned through the nine-mil ammo, he switched to his. 357 and toed the concrete ledge at twenty-five yards.

He struck a modified Weaver, a forward-leaning fighting stance, his feet shoulder width with his left leg forward. The landscape reflected his mood-the barren stretch of dirt and rocks, the twinning cones of the headlights boring through the night, brief throws of light in a vast, dismal universe. The paper targets alone picked up the glow, floating rectangles of white, bobbing like fruit on a tree. The emptiness of the dark opened him up like a gutted beast, and he stared into the void. All that stared back was a row of eyeless, two-dimensional combat silhouettes, fluttering on the cable.

His right hand shot down, breaking his perfect stillness, and grabbed the pistol. As soon as the barrel cleared leather, he rotated it, punching it forward, his left hand already coming, grabbing his right at its junction with the butt. He lined the sights even as his arms were extending. His right arm locked, his left staying slightly canted. The trigger split the precise middle of the pad of his right index finger so he wouldn’t group high and right or low and left, and he applied quick, steady pressure through the double action, not anticipating recoil, not flexing too hard. The gun barked and a hole punched through the thoracic region of the Transtar, center mass. He fired five more times in rapid succession, regaining front sight focus between each shot almost instantly. The cordite still rising, he thumbed the left-side lever forward, releasing the well-lubed wheel. His left hand dug for the speedloader in his belt pouch as he tilted the gun back, the casings spinning to the dirt like brass hail. In a single smooth gesture, he angled the gun down and filled the wheel, the six new bullets sliding neatly into place. He got off six more rounds, Swiss-cheesing the five-ring of the Transtar before the empty speedloader hit dirt.

The wad cutters, ideal for paper punching, left behind satisfying gashes.

Mindlessly he repeated the routine, losing himself in it, distilling his rage into concise bursts of bullets and sending it outward. The anger departed slowly, like water leaving a tub; when it was gone, he tried to shape and fire away the residual sorrow in similar fashion but found he could not. He alternated static shooting with lateral-movement drills, firing until his wrists were aching, until the pads of his hands were chaffed from recoil.

Then he loaded the Ruger with long, slender. 44s and shot it until his thumb webbing bled.

•He came home a little after midnight to an empty house. The handle of vodka sitting on Ginny’s floor, significantly depleted, was the only trace of Dray. Her Blazer was still parked in the driveway, the hood cool.

Tim drove the six blocks to McLane’s, the semiauthentic Irish pub owned by Mac’s father, and parked among the Crown Vics and Buicks in the lot. The heavy oak door gave with a shove. Aside from a few hangers-on and the cluster of deputies and detectives in the back by the pool tables, the place was empty. Myriad mustaches. Antique police light bar mounted above the shelves of booze. Typical cop hangout. The bartender, a dandy with cuffed sleeves and a bristling Tom Selleck, looked up from drying glasses. “Sorry, pal, we’re closed.”

Tim ignored him, walking the length of the bar toward the circle of men in the back. Mac, Fowler, Gutierez, Harrison, and about five others. Dray was standing over them, bent at the waist, forearm cocked back ending in the accusatory point of her finger. For some reason she’d put on her uniform, even though policy was not to drink in the monkey suit. Enhanced with alcohol, voices were carrying.

“-dare you put my husband into that situation. Or at least you could have given me-your colleague-the courtesy of a phone call.”

“We thought he’d be able to handle it,” Fowler said.

“Because he’s a male?”

“No, because of, you know, the military stuff.”

“Military stuff, right. So he’s got no feelings.” She pivoted to face the detectives, swaying drunkenly. “What’d you find on the accomplice lead?”

Gutierez, the front man, addressed her like a politician-hands spread and calming, condescension masquerading as avuncular reassurance. “We’re looking into it. But we don’t think it’s as strong an angle as your husband does.”

“The conspiracy theorist,” someone muttered.

Fowler took note of Tim’s approach first, and then the others turned as well, everyone except Dray. “Let me tell you something.” Dray was slurring now. “You can throw shit at me all you want. But you say one more thing about my husband, I’ll knock your teeth down your goddamn throat.”

The bartender was out from behind the bar, following Tim, but Mac waved him off. “It’s okay, Danny. He’s with us.”

“Is he?” Gutierez said quietly. Two of the deputies eyed Tim and whispered something back and forth.

Tim addressed only his wife. “C’mon, Dray. Let’s get you home.”

Finally noticing him, Dray took a step and, losing her balance, sat down abruptly. Mac put an arm across her back to stabilize her, his hand resting on her shoulder. The others flanked her in their chairs protectively.

Mac’s free hand fluttered in a calming gesture. “Hey, Tim. No offense, huh? We thought it would be good for her to be out right now, given-”

“Shut up, Mac.” Tim’s eyes didn’t leave Dray. Her head was tilting. The others looked not many drinks behind her. Her eyes closed, she tilted her head into the cup of her hand. Tim bit down, the corners of his jaw flexing. “Andrea. Please let’s go.”

She moved to rise but only got so far as to lean heavily on the table.

Fowler picked up an empty shot glass, held it up like a scope, and eyed Tim through it. “Next time someone goes out on a limb for you, you might want to respect that,” he said, slurring slightly. “Me and Tito went out for you, man.”

Mac removed his arm from around Dray and stood up. Mac possessed effortless good looks, his hair tousled just so, day-old stubble touching his cheeks-Tim was all exertion and discipline by comparison.

“Listen guys, we’ve all had a long night here,” Mac said. “Let’s just take it easy.”

“Yeah, let’s go easy on the Medal of Valor winner,” Harrison said.

Gutierez snickered. Tim’s eyes shot over in his direction. Steeled by the others’ expectations and the row of empties on the table before him, Gutierez stared back. “Take a hint, pal. Your wife’s fine here. We take care of our own.”

Dray mumbled something angrily.

Tim turned and headed for the door. Behind him he heard a chorus of murmurs.

“-good at walking away-”

“-better keep moving-”

Tim reached the door and threw the dead bolt, which gave off a metallic clank. The bar fell silent. He walked back down the length of the bar, the few remaining drunks watching him from their stools.

He reached the cluster of deputies and turned to the bar, facing away from them. He removed his Smith amp; Wesson, still encased in its belt holster, and set it on the bar. His badge-heavy wallet followed. His jacket he hung neatly on a high-backed stool. He cuffed his sleeves neatly, two folds each.

When he turned, the deputies had sobered a few notches. He walked over to Gutierez. “Stand up.”

Gutierez shifted in his chair, leaning back, trying to look tough and unworried, and not succeeding at either. Tim waited. No one spoke. Another deputy took a sip of beer, set his bottle down on the table with a soft thud. Gutierez finally looked away.

Tim put his jacket back on, grabbed his gun and badge. He stepped around the table, but Dray was already rising to meet him. She leaned heavily on him, 135 pounds of muscle and gear.

He hooked an arm around her waist and navigated her to the door.

•He undressed her like a child, crouching to pull off her boots while she leaned on his shoulders. When he tucked her in, she threw the sheets back, sweating. He kissed her on her moist forehead.

She looked up at him, her face unlined and youthful in the dark. Her voice quavered. “What did he look like?”

Tim told her.

He wiped her tears, one cheek with one thumb, then the other.

“Tell me what happened. In the shack. Every detail.”

He told her, fighting back his own tears at times, wiping hers throughout.

“I wish you’d killed him,” she said.

“Then we would have lost our chance at the truth.”

“But he’d be dead. Gone from this planet. Eradicated.” More tears than Tim could keep up with. She took his hand, squeezing it in both of hers, letting her tears streak down her temples to the pillow. “I’m angry. So angry. At everything. Everyone.”

His throat was closing, so he cleared it once, hard.

“Are you gonna go to sleep?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

She drifted off for a moment, then opened her eyes. “Me neither.” She smiled sleepily.

“I’m gonna go watch a little TV. I don’t want to thrash around and keep you up.” He smoothed the hair gently out of her eyes. “At least one of us should get some sleep.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

He lay on the living room couch as if in a coffin, fully dressed, hands laced across his chest. He stared at the ceiling, trying to grasp the new realities of his life. He couldn’t get his mind around the monumentality of his loss. He was falling into darkness, with no idea of its depth. Canned laughter emanated from Nick at Nite at hypnotic intervals. He tuned out everything but its sound. Laughter still exists, he thought. If I need to remember that, I can turn on the little box and there it is.

Sometime around 3:00 A.M. Dray awakened him, trudging to the couch, trailing the comforter. She crawled on top of him and burrowed into his neck.

“Timothy Rackley,” she said, her voice soft and sleep-heavy.

He stroked her hair gently, then pulled it up and rubbed the soft nape of her neck. They slept entwined in a restless embrace.