The Kill Clause

36

“THE DEAL’S ON.” Tim leaned against the payphone interior. He’d contacted Bear through the operations desk. “I’m still offering my cooperation. I don’t need yours.”

“Good, because you’re not getting it.” Bear’s voice sounded cracked and dehydrated. “Excuse my irritation, but I just finished vomiting.”

“You can be furious with me later-and you’ll be right to. But for now grab a pen and listen.” Tim talked quickly, alerting him to the mess awaiting him at Rhythm’s stash house and to the Stork’s involvement. The Stork would be better hidden than a Nazi in an Argentine forest; he wanted the service on it full bore.

When he finished, Bear said, “Listen. I’ll deal with you, like this, but you gotta understand something. Tannino ain’t gonna play ball on this one. He wants you, and the boys are tracking hard. I’m Tannino’s deputy. When he says fetch, I fetch.”

“I get it,” Tim said. “Play it both ways.”

The faint beat of a one-note chuckle. “No other way I can help you.”

“So help me.”

A long pause. “Not much in the way of evidence at Rayner’s house. His office had a bunch of surveillance shit on you-as you know-but not much else. Creepy to look at it. Speaking of, I didn’t know you had anxiety attacks after Croatia.”

“They weren’t att-” Tim took a deep breath. “C’mon, Bear. What else?”

“Kindell was safe and sound. He didn’t want to come in-doesn’t trust police custody, imagine that-and we couldn’t really justify it anyway, as he’s not looking like a target. And the big news-Dumone suck-started his revolver this afternoon in his hospital room.”

Though he’d braced himself for the news, it still took Tim a moment to speak again. “Is Tannino taking the case public?”

A long pause. “Tomorrow night.”

“How much of it? Am I gonna make the news?”

“That I will not answer.” Tim heard Bear hawk up some phlegm and spit. “I got work to do.”

“Fine. Do me one more favor.”

“I think we’re well over the limit already.”

“Ananberg had a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Damn fine dog. He’s probably trapped in her apartment right now, starving and full of piss. If the investigators find him, they’ll dump him at the pound. Go pick him up. You need the company anyway.”

Bear grunted and hung up.

Tim tried Robert’s and Mitchell’s Nextels again-immediate voice mail-then called the Stork and got a message saying the number had been disconnected. The Stork was too technologically savvy even to have the old Nextel in service; he’d shitcanned it already and moved on to a new phone.

The freeway was surprisingly empty at 11:30 P.M. Wisps of fog collected around Tim’s headlights. He exited and parked nearly four blocks from Erika Heinrich’s on the off chance someone else-deputy or hit man-was sitting on the house. It took him half an hour, but he cleared the two surrounding blocks, checking out parked cars, roofs, and bushes.

Erika’s bedroom window was not only uncurtained, it was open.

Kids.

Tim crept to the sill, just beneath one of the outswung shutters, and eased up for a look. Erika lay prone on a bright yellow comforter, flipping through a glossy magazine, legs bent up behind her, sandal dangling from a cocked toe. Alone.

Bowrick was a smart kid-he’d disappeared convincingly once before. Maybe he had a second safe house. If so, Tim hoped it was as well hidden as his first.

Watching Erika on her bed flipping pages and humming to herself, Tim vowed to find Bowrick before Mitchell or Robert could put a hole in his head that matched the one they’d left in Rhythm’s. It wasn’t that he had felt a softening of his disdain for Bowrick-though he had-but because he could not watch a seventeen-year-old girl in the safety of her own bedroom and not want the world to adhere to its obligations to her. Admirable piousness from a former deputy-cum-Peeping Tom.

If he talked to her, she’d convey his appearance to Bowrick, who would steer clear of her house. Tim wanted to see Bowrick, to convince him to leave the state or go into police custody. He didn’t want to scare him farther afield in the city, where the Mastersons might flush him out.

On the drive home, Tim listened to the radio to see whether there was any breaking news about the Commission or himself. There was not. The service would guard their information, deploying it when strategic. The command post in the Federal Building would probably go full steam through the night, with everyone from Tannino to the assistant U.S. Attorney to Analytical Support Unit reps lost in a haze of coffee fumes and speculation.

His building was deathly silent. Off the lobby Joshua started humming to himself with vibrato and shuffling through some papers in his ersatz office. Tim paused about ten feet from the door, eyeing the keys on their pegboard hooks behind Joshua’s desk. Most of the apartments had been rented, but Tim took note of the few remaining keys: 401, 402, 213, 109.

Joshua looked up and waved, a simple raise of his hand that Tim returned. He wondered if Bear had told the truth about the press conference or if Tannino was going to leak the news early.

“Any good true-crime stories on TV?”

Joshua shrugged. “They’re regurgitating the same pap about Jedediah Lane.”

On the elevator ride up, Tim mused on the gloom that moved through buildings such as this. People either running from something or on their way down in the world. And Joshua was the gatekeeper; he exhibited not only sadness but the morose authoritativeness derived from extensive exposure to sadness. Like a mortician. Like a cop.

Once upstairs Tim took apart his doorknob and spread the parts on a towel before him. Sitting back on his heels, he dialed yet again and pressed the Nextel to his cheek as he worked.

He got a ring.

“So,” Mitchell said.

“So,” Tim said.

A long pause, broken only by the faint sound of Mitchell’s breathing and the rustle of his mustache against the receiver.

“You’ve been keeping busy,” Tim said.

“We have a plan for this city. Always have. And we’re not letting the Rayners and Ananbergs stand in the way anymore.”

“Clearly.” Tim waited but got no response. “You and Robert cut quite a wake.” Mentioning the Stork would dull a possible tactical advantage. “I saw Rhythm. Or what’s left of him.”

The beat of silence gave away Mitchell’s surprise. “You wouldn’t be coming after us, would you, Rackley? We were gonna cut you a break, leave you be. Part of us figures we owe you.”

“I also saw the three other guys you killed-”

“Crack dealers and gunrunners.”

“-including the kid you shot in the back.”

“Oh, come on. Can you really tell me a kid hanging out in a crack house with Rhythm Jones would ever have been anything but a burden to society?”

“Probably not. But, you see, you can’t punish someone before they commit a crime. The Constitution’s quite specific about that.”

“Don’t wrap yourself in the flag. We’ve seen what you’ve done, you fucking hypocrite.”

“I’ve wised up.”

“Yeah? To what?”

“Punishment is not justice. Vengeance is not a way to grieve. And whatever justice is, it isn’t ours to administer.”

“Maybe not. But I’ll tell you this-something crossed over in me when I saw that girl in Debuffier’s basement. When I held her in my arms, watched her die. Well, we’re done with it. We’re done with school shooters and child molesters and terrorists. There are more people behind bars in this country than who live in the entire state of Hawaii. We’re losing the war, my friend, in case you haven’t noticed, and Robbie and I are gonna launch a counterassault. We’re gonna put the plan into overdrive. And we don’t need votes or case history or any of that bullshit.”

“That was never the deal.”

“Never the deal? You’re the one who broke up our party. You defaulted on your responsibility, your obligation to the Commission. We voted on Bowrick. We found him guilty. The kill clause, Rack, or don’t you remember? It goes into effect the instant a member of the Commission breaks any protocol. Who broke the rules first? Who broke protocol by not executing Bowrick as we’d ruled?”

“I did.”

“You bet your ass you did. So now anything goes. Our agenda moves forward with you dead or alive.”

A jiggle of the screwdriver, and Tim removed the latch bolt from the doorknob assembly. “Anything goes? Including shredding Kindell’s file?”

A chuckle. “Yup. We offered to help you with that motherfucker. We could have found out who was in on it with him and cleaned them both up. You could have been on board with us. But, no, you were too good for us. So it only makes sense you wouldn’t want any part of that case binder now. Hell, you don’t want to dirty your hands with that, Your Honor.”

Mitchell shifted the phone, and Tim strained to make out any background noise but could not. The ensuing silence had the air of a standoff.

“You never answered my question,” Mitchell said.

Tim fitted the last puzzle piece of the altered doorknob in place. “Yes, I’m coming after you. Here’s another answer: Yes, I’m going to find you.”

Tim snapped the phone shut and set it down. He reinserted the knob without its latch bolt back into the front door. Though it looked perfectly ordinary, it was now just a freestanding core of metal, unattached to the jamb. He wedged a wooden doorstop tight beneath the gap, driving the end gently with a hammer so the solid-core door had no give or sway within the frame. Countermeasures against a battering ram.

He’d thought about picking up a motion sensor, but it would have been nearly impossible to hide in the bareness of the hallway. He made a note to look for a small IR unit he could angle beneath the door gap. He’d lay the beam diagonally to the knob side of the door, the side from which Mitchell preferred to pivot on a kick-in.

His window screen popped out easily. His fire escape looked down directly on the wide alley where backup cars would most likely be positioned to catch him in the event of a raid. He climbed silently down one level and stood staring into the apartment below his. Unlike Tim’s unit, it had a distinct bedroom and living room; the latter and a bathroom faced the escape. Putting his face to the living-room window, he noticed that the inside latch had a built-in lock. The bathroom pane was opaque, so he couldn’t see the inside mechanism, but the window didn’t budge under pressure.

The second-floor living room was equally secure, but the bathroom window had been inched open to let the room air. Tim slid it the rest of the way. No screen. He leaped up, grabbing the bars of the fire-escape landing above, and eased himself through the window. The toilet provided a nice step down to the cheap linoleum.

He eased the bathroom door open and stood, regarding the two bodies sleeping side by side in the master bed. His footsteps to the bedroom door were completely silent. He didn’t exhale until he reached the living room. The front doorknob was the same as his had been before he’d altered it-standard Schlage single-cylinder lock. He thumbed the embedded button until it popped out, then opened the door and stepped into the hall. The hall ran north-south-both end windows looked out onto busy streets. The stairwell was located at the north end.

Tim moved to 213, down three doors on the far side of the hall. He picked the lock quickly, not concerned about sound since he knew the apartment wasn’t rented. The empty room, like Dumone’s apartment, smelled of stale carpet. An amoeba stain in the far corner, the size of a garbage-can lid, might have been blood.

Tim walked to the window. The abbreviated fire-escape ladder ended six feet above an alley too narrow to accommodate a car. Ten yards north, another lane between buildings darted west.

Tim left, keeping the front door unlocked, and took the stairs down. He walked to the corner phone booth, flipping a quarter on the way. It came up heads four times in a row. He slotted it and called Mason Hansen. Tim had worked with him closely on several cases when Hansen had been a security specialist in the subpoena group for Sprint Wireless, and he’d kept in touch ever since Hansen had made the move to Nextel last October.

“Hello?” Hansen sounded worried, his voice thin and sleep-cracked.

“Is this line secure?”

“Jesus, Rack, call me at work tomorrow.”

“Is this line secure?”

“Yes. Christ, it’s my home number, I hope so. Are you back on the job already? I thought you took leave after the shooting.” Hansen whispered something to his stirring wife, and then Tim heard him walking into the other room.

“Are you on a cordless?”

“Yes, I-”

“Pick up a landline.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“Just do it.”

Various clickings. “All right. Now tell me what’s going on.”

“If I gave you a phone number, could you go back and pinpoint what localized cell sites it’s been tapping in to the network through?”

“Do you have a warrant?”

“Yes, I have a warrant. That’s why I’m calling you at home at three in the morning.”

“Back off the sarcasm. This seems sketchy.”

“Not for now. For now you’re just answering questions.”

“Well, the answer to your question is no. Do you have any idea how much data that would be? We’d have to keep records of the location of every cell phone at every moment in the entire nation.”

“If you can’t get it done retroactively, then how about in the future? If I gave you a number, could you pinpoint the cell-phone location then?”

“Not unless you flash me a paper with a judge’s signature and we do the whole deal. Handheld units, mobile teams in the field-you know the routine.”

“I don’t have access to those kinds of resources. Not on this one.”

“What are you working?”

“I can’t talk about it.” Tim allowed himself a deep exhale. “I’ve been trying two numbers all day: 310-505-4233 and -423 4. I just got through to the first, so I know the phone is on, right now, sending locating bursts to ID itself to the network. You’re saying that does us no good?”

“I’m saying that does us no good unless you deploy a full-force authorized investigation. That’s not a favor I can pull out of a hat, even if I was willing to.”

Tim tried to dissipate his frustration and had a hard time of it. “Can you identify the cell site an incoming call came in through?”

“We don’t have the technology in place for that. Incoming calls are free on Nextel, so the system records on them are less precise. But we can put a tracer on outgoing calls, since those are logged by Billing. See what cell sites they’re pinging. We use it sometimes to track fraud charges. But it’s not actively regulated-we don’t have the manpower. Once we start it up, it spits out an update every six hours, and I can’t throw a wrench into that program without express clearance from above.”

“I can’t keep on top of the guy by myself. Especially on a six-hour delay. That’s why I called him now. Late at night I figure he’s bedded down at his primary location.”

“Well, starting tomorrow, I can give you his first-and-last.”

First call in the morning, last call at night. Usually made from the bedroom or close to it. Guys on the run don’t take the time to install landlines.

“Can you do anything more to-the-minute?”

“Not unless you give me more. Why didn’t you call me earlier? We could have gotten on the outgoing calls.”

“I didn’t get how the technology worked. Plus, I wanted to ascertain that at least one of the cell phones was active.”

“What, before you bothered me?” Hansen laughed. “Call me tomorrow, you bastard. At the office.”

The walk from the corner seemed longer than a block.

Tim rode the elevator up and used a pen through the gap beneath the door to push the stop back. Once inside he took a quick spin through the TV channels. KCOM ran a report regarding the ongoing Lane and Debuffier investigations but made no mention of recent developments.

Tim called his own old Nokia number and accessed his messages. Dray, worried. Two hang-ups-probably Bear or Marshal Tannino.

He reached Dray at home. She sounded tense and a bit breathless. “You’re all right?” Her voice cracked, just slightly, but he heard it.

“Yes,” he said. “Robert and Mitchell know now. You have to be careful. Keep an eye out for trouble.”

“I always do.”

“I don’t think they’d come after you-it’s not their MO-but you shouldn’t take any chances.”

“Agreed. You on the trail tomorrow?”

“First thing.”

“Check in and watch your ass.”

“I will.”

They hung up.

Tim sat and considered how to attack the case in the morning. The Stork was the weakest link-he was the one most likely to sell out to save his own ass, if Tim could find him and apply pressure. Tim thought of the receipt he’d noticed crumpled into the cup holder of the van the Stork had rented. Daniel Dunn. VanMan Rental Agency.

A solid lead, unless the Stork had planted the slip of paper there for Tim to find. Purposeful misdirection seemed unlikely, as Tim had found the receipt just prior to the Debuffier hit, when the Commission was less openly contentious.

He’d get on it first thing in the morning.

Exhaustion hit him all at once, as if it had been saving itself for an ambush. He hadn’t slept in nearly forty-five hours, and the brief alcohol-clouded slumber he’d gotten then, curled on Ginny’s bed, had been less than refreshing.

He lay on his mattress, examining the cottage-cheese ceiling. It reminded him of fresh-burned flesh. His thoughts pulled him back to Ginny on the coroner’s table, to the sight he’d beheld when he’d drawn back the hospital-blue sheet, to the sound the sheet had made being peeled.

There were more pleasant images he could have fallen asleep to, but then, he didn’t have a choice.