The Kill Clause

41

SINCE HE FIGURED Bear would have deputies all over Dray’s for the night, Tim cabbed back and checked into a shitty motel downtown, a few miles from his old apartment building. He’d be able to scout the Acura first thing in the morning and maybe reclaim it.

The bedspread smelled like shaving cream. He called her from the Nokia, knowing they couldn’t be set up to trace it. “Andrea.”

A sharp intake of air. “Bear said you’d been shot. They found blood, bandages in the bathroom when they flushed you out.”

“Superficial. It’s nothing.”

She heaved a sigh that kept going and going. “Say it again,” she said. “I thought I might not…Say my name again.”

He hadn’t heard relief like that in Dray’s voice since he’d phoned her from base after a deployment to Uzbekistan went a week over. “Andrea Rackley.”

“Thank you. Okay. Deep breath.” She followed her own instructions. “Now, you want the bad news or the bad news?”

“Start with the bad news.”

“I got nothing and more nothing. ‘Danny Dunn’ didn’t put out. And I’m oh for twenty-three on black PT Cruisers in the area. None of the licenses checked out. Not a one.”

Tim felt his last flicker of hope gutter.

“That and the damn safety-deposit key took me all day today. Good thing I don’t have to work for a living. I’m hitting a few more banks first thing tomorrow, so we’ll see.”

Tim tried to keep the disappointment from his voice. “When you talked to Bear, did he mention why my name isn’t out to the media?”

“The service isn’t salivating at the prospect of the press. And the district office isn’t eager to follow LAPD’s nosedive in public esteem. I’d guess they’re determined to keep it in the family until they nail your ass. Let the out-of-towners take the heat for now. Plus, it’s not as though you’re a live threat to kill innocents. You’re just after them.” She snickered. “The Vigilante Three.”

“Let the animals kill each other.”

“Something like that. Or maybe they know you stand a better chance than they do at tracking down your team before things get even more out of hand.”

“Then why are they kicking down my door?”

“Tannino’s got his ass to cover. And the service’s. A lot of due diligence getting thrown around.”

“He must regret ever laying eyes on me.”

“I don’t know. Bear claims Tannino’s upset that he couldn’t protect you more on the Heidel-Mendez shooting. He knows it was a good shooting, and he knows you got hung out. He admires the way you went, Bear says, that you threw in your badge like an old-schooler. Gary Cooper all the way. But he thinks that’s what pushed you over the edge, especially after Ginny. He feels partially responsible, the dago softy.”

Tannino’s decency, in the midst of all this, moved him. But if the full-force ART entry on Tim’s apartment was any indication, it wouldn’t buy him an extra inch when the cards were down.

“I need some help, Dray. See if you can pull some cash out of our account for me. A couple grand.”

“I’ll do it first thing. Hell, I’m spending the morning running around to banks, not like it’s out of my way.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m your wife, stupid. It’s part of the deal.”

The sheets smelled of dust, and the pillow was so soft his head parted the feathers, angling uncomfortably to the mattress.

He awoke with a cramp that stretched from his neck down through his rib cage. The showerhead coughed and spit lukewarm water. A swirl of stray hairs clogged the drain. The towel was so small Tim had to strain his shoulders to dry his back.

He took his time determining that the area was clear before approaching the Acura, which was parked where he’d left it, several blocks from his old building. He drove it swiftly out of the immediate area, pulled into an isolated parking lot, and wanded the car down with an RF emitter he pulled from the war bag in the trunk in case a transponder had been installed. To quell his concerns, he took apart the wand, in case the ESU geeks had installed a device within the emitter itself, a move he might have pulled on one of his better days. Nothing.

He wasn’t surprised the car was clean-there was nothing to link the Acura to him, his now-defunct false identity, or the apartment building-but at this stage of the game, reassurance was a needed ally.

Once on the freeway, he was careful to obey the speed limit. After parking a good five blocks away, Tim crept up on the house, surveying it from all angles.

Like a dog to his vomit.

In the driveway Mac tinkered under the hood of his car, greasy rag protruding from his back pocket. Palton and Guerrera were about thirty yards up the road at the curb, looking conspicuous as hell in an ’89 Thunderbird that listed left. They were doing dick to avoid getting eye-fucked because they knew, as did Tim, that he’d be an idiot to come here. They were sitting on the house simply because most of the time, as a deputy marshal, that’s just what you did-covered your bases and tried to stay awake.

Aside from the obvious detail out front, the house looked clear. Tim withdrew and reapproached through the backyard, sliding through the rear door. The smell of stale pepperoni and fresh coffee. Blankets and bed pillow still on the couch-Mac, concerned friend with the ulterior motive. Two pizza boxes on a new Ikea coffee table. Tim stared at the impostor, probably the first of many. The master bedroom was empty. The coffee-table box sat in the middle of Ginny’s room, discarded, making all too evident that no one lived in the space anymore.

Tim found Dray at the kitchen table, silhouetted against the drawn blinds. Before her sat a canary yellow file and Tim’s boom box. A tape rasped lethargically in the player, the speakers emitting a grainy whisper that showed the recording had ended. Dray sat at an angle, hunched right as if recoiling from intense heat or bracing herself for a blow. One arm she’d wrapped around her stomach; the other clamped it tightly in place. Her face had gone white, save for her trembling lips, which were a wan red. She looked more or less as she had when she’d taken the news of Ginny’s death from Bear, the instant before she’d hit her knees in the foyer.

Just beyond the knuckles of her quaking right fist gleamed the brass safety-deposit key.

He approached on numb legs, on deadened feet.

Her head pivoted like a robot’s; her eyes pointed at him but took no note of his presence. Her hand extended to the boom box, pressed “stop,” “rewind.”

Tim turned aside the file’s vivid cover. The public defender’s interview notes were on the top. He scanned them quickly-same stabbing words.

The victim was the client’s “type.”

Client claims to have taken an hour and a half with the body after death.

He turned to the deflating fifth page, but in place of what he’d read before appeared: Client claims he was contacted at night by a man at his residence. Man was well built, blond, mustached, wore a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. Client knows nothing else about the mystery man.

Or imaginary friend-the PD’s annotation slyly read.

Client claims man showed him photos of the victim and maps and schedules regarding the victim’s movement from school to home. Client was to kidnap victim, then take her back to garage shack for a later sex “show.” Client and mystery man agreed on date and meeting time for “show.” Mystery man never appeared again.

Another single-sentence scrawl in the margin. Story thin, no corroborative evidence-deafness stronger route for prelim.

A prickly rage was fighting its way north from Tim’s gut, forcing itself up his throat. It emerged in a horrified exhale, something between a grunt and a cry.

Rayner had doctored the notes before giving them to Ananberg to copy-knowing, perhaps, that she’d leak them to Tim. Either way he’d never planned on Tim’s seeing anything but the expurgated version that indicated that Kindell had acted alone.

The glossy surveillance photograph underneath took Tim’s breath from his chest. A nighttime shot of Kindell, leaving his shack wearing only a T-shirt, his naked thighs stained with blood.

Ginny’s blood.

Tim stepped back violently from the table and leaned over, hands on his knees. He retched a few times, the muscles under his rib cage straining, but he brought nothing up. Sweat fell from his brow, spotting the floor.

The tape deck clicked, signaling the end of the rewind.

Dray reached out, hit “play.”

“Hello?” Rayner’s voice.

“This a secure line?” Frenzied breathing. Panic. Robert.

“Of course.”

Tim pictured the sleek recorder by the phone on Rayner’s nightstand, generating another insurance policy that Rayner could lock away in a safety-deposit box.

“He killed her. He fucking killed her.” Gagging noise. “Cut her to pieces, the fucking retard.” Robert’s high agitation matched the description of the anonymous caller who reported Ginny’s body’s location.

Rayner’s breathing quickened. He managed a single breathy word. “No.”

“The whole thing’s fucked. I didn’t-fuck-didn’t sign on for a little girl to get…Christ, oh, Christ. He was just supposed to hold her here and wait. Not lay a finger on her.”

“Calm down. Is Mitchell there?”

The phone being fumbled, then Mitchell’s voice, dead even. “Yeah?”

“Did you leave any evidence behind?”

“No. We haven’t even approached the shack. We’re up on the road above the canyon, our staging point for the entry. When we got here, we saw him inside, through the binocs. He was already at work on the body.”

Dray emitted a little noise from deep inside her chest.

Robert in the background. “He was supposed to do nothing to her.”

“Quiet down,” Mitchell hissed. Then, to Rayner, “I figured our little rescue-and-execution plan was out the window, so we aborted the mission.” Rustling. “Hang on, hang on. Here he comes. He’s stepping out. Stork-get the lens on him.”

The click of a high-speed camera. Tim’s eyes returned to Kindell’s glossy, blood-smeared thighs, his throat constricting. The photo was date-stamped-February 3. The top one of a stack of at least twenty. Tim felt as though his heart had shattered, and any move he made caused the jagged edges to dig further into his insides.

Robert’s voice in the background. “God, oh, God. The sick motherfucker.”

“Listen to me,” Rayner said. “The plan is off. Get the hell out of there.”

Mitchell’s voice came, cool and sly like a knife. “We can still use this. For the candidate.”

That’s me, Tim thought. The candidate.

“What are you talking about?” Rayner asked.

Mitchell, already calculating, maintaining a bone-chilling serenity. “Think about it. ‘A strong and personal motivation’-isn’t that what you said we’d need to flip him? Well, William, I’d say we’ve just been outdone.”

Rayner’s tense breathing across the mouthpiece.

Robert’s raised voice. “We gotta tell Dumone.”

“No,” Mitchell said. “He’d go ballistic that we even thought about doing something like this. Plus, we gotta keep him clean for the candidate. The way this worked out, we don’t have to tell Dumone anything at all.”

The way this worked out, Tim thought. The way this worked out.

“No one breathes a word of this to Dumone. He’d have our asses. Or to Ananberg.” The media-polished, in-charge Rayner, rearing his well-groomed head. “This isn’t what we planned, but Mitchell’s correct. It’s a tragedy, but we might as well bend it to serve our aims. Get the hell out of there, and we’ll regroup in the morning, get a new strategy.”

“Out,” Mitchell said.

The tape continued to spin; the speakers kept up their staticky hiss.

Tim raised his eyes to Dray’s, and they stared at each other, the world seeming to screech to a halt. There were just her bangs, damp-pasted to her forehead, the heat in his face, the pain-no, agony-in her eyes that he knew mirrored his. She cracked open her dry lips but took a moment to speak. When she did, the sound seemed to shatter the hypnotic spell of the whispering spool.

“You asked Dumone what they had to gain by killing Ginny,” she said. “The answer’s simple-you.”

The door to the garage opened. Dray quickly hit the “stop” button on the tape deck and flipped the file shut, hiding the photo of Kindell. Mac came in, wrench hooked through a belt loop, T-shirt stretched tight across his chest. A stalactite of sweat stained the front collar just so, as if a wardrobe stylist had sprayed it on. He looked up and froze.

Tim nodded at him.

“Rack, you can’t be here, man. People are…they’re looking for you.”

“I’m leaving.”

“You’re putting Dray at risk.” His eyes shifted to Dray. “And what are you thinking?”

Dray’s head went on warning tilt. “Mac-”

“You’re an active deputy.”

“Mac, don’t push this,” Dray said. “Leave us alone.”

“No, I’m not gonna leave you alone. He’s a wanted-”

“I’m asking you to give us a minute.”

“This is idiotic, Dray. You can’t harbor a suspect in your house.”

Dray’s eyes seemed to contract to shiny dark points. “Look, Mac. I appreciate your being here for me. But I’m talking to my husband right now, and I think it might be time for you to leave.”

Mac’s face loosened, his mouth hanging slightly ajar in post-slap shock. In his indignation his features had arranged themselves somehow more gracefully, providing a window into some private reserve of dignity.

He nodded once, slowly, then eased from the room with a near weightlessness, light and forward on his feet. A moment later his car turned over in the driveway and the whine of his engine rose and faded away.

Dray sighed, digging the heel of her hand into her forehead. “Well, if I know one thing about Mac, it’s that he wouldn’t sell you out. He’s loyal to a fault.”

“He has no reason to be loyal to me.”

Her eyes picked over his face. “To me, Timothy.”

Tim pulled the tape from the deck and tapped it against his palm. Mac’s brief intrusion had forced them both to recover their composure; Tim was scared to open the file again, to see the photo of his daughter’s blood smeared across pale thighs. His mind drifted to Robert’s frenzied charge down the basement stairs at Debuffier’s. Robert’s agitated words back at Rayner’s afterward: People fuck up sometimes. No matter what happens, an operation can spin out of control. We’ve all had that happen.

“It was a mission that went to shit,” he said. “They were gonna bust in, shoot Kindell, and play the big heroes to me. I can hear the sales pitch-here’s a guy who was gonna rape and kill your daughter, skated on three priors due to loopholes in the law. The guy was your neighbor, in a school zone, no one monitoring him. Except us. We saved your daughter’s life, kept her from being raped. Not the law. Come see what we’re about. We have a plan that’s gonna open your eyes.”

“Those animals,” Dray said softly. “Even if it had gone right, can you imagine what it would have done to Ginny? Being kidnapped? Being held? Having a man shot before her eyes?” Steam was curling from the cup of coffee to her side, and she ran her hand through it. “No decency. There’s just not a fucking ounce of decency in men who would take those risks with a little girl’s life.”

“No,” Tim said. “There’s not.” He pulled a chair out and sat down heavily. It felt as if it had been months since he’d been off his feet. “They’ve been torturing me all this time, holding the case over my head, the accomplice. They knew all along. Having Kindell kidnap Ginny was just part of some…psychological equation Rayner was evolving to get me to join the Commission. And it worked.”

“You’ll find them,” Dray said. “You’ll make them pay for this.”

“Yes,” Tim said. “Yes.”

She nodded at his face, the bandage’s bulge under his T-shirt. “You’re okay?”

He touched his shoulder gingerly. “Yeah, it was nothing.”

She looked away, but not before he saw her relief. “Your face doesn’t look like nothing.”

“I wasn’t planning on getting by on my looks.”

Her lips pursed but did not form a smile. “At least you’re realistic.”

“I want you carrying all the time. Even in the house.”

Dray raised her sweatshirt to reveal the Beretta tucked into her waistband. “I hope to hell they do come after me. But I have a feeling they’re not gonna make it that easy.”

“Probably not.”

She hooked her hair back behind her ear, then stood and fingered the blinds. “You shouldn’t have come here. You’re too smart to pull this move.”

“Let’s be grateful they think so, too.”

“They’ve been out there feigning competence since yesterday morning. I told them we don’t talk anymore, but I think they knew I was lying.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Not all men lack perception.”

Tim handed her the tape. “Not a bad piece of leverage. A little creative editing by Rayner and it could hang all his accomplices.”

“Or at least keep them in line.” She took the tape and set it down quickly on the table, as if she didn’t want it touching her flesh.

“I shouldn’t stay long. I don’t want to put you at risk. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I…I need that money.”

“Of course. I pulled out a couple grand for you this morning. It’s in the gun safe.”

“Thank you.”

They sat quietly, unsure of what needed to be said, hesitant because the next words would likely signal Tim’s departure.

“I see you got a new coffee table. The box is, uh, in Ginny’s…”

“I can’t respect that room as hallowed ground forever. Living here, it puts you on a different timeline, maybe. At least for some things.” She looked away quickly, and he saw her face set, mad and little-girl stubborn. He remembered that he didn’t miss all parts of her. “You wouldn’t know.”

He let the remark skip off into inconsequentiality. “How’s security on Dobbins?”

“No way they’re getting at him. His hospital room is like Fort Knox. Where’s Bowrick?”

Bowrick’s confidential hold ending at midnight was another concern to add to his list. “They won’t find him.”

She took a sip of coffee, grimaced against the heat. “Why would the Mastersons stay here where everyone’s looking?”

“They hate L.A. because their sister was killed here, they hate L.A. cops because they handled their sister’s case poorly, and they hate the system here because the L.A. courts turned her killer free.”

“Where’s her killer now?”

“Shot to death.”

“Hefty coincidence.”

“That it is.” Tim cracked his knuckles. “They have a plan for the city. They have strong contacts here, know their way around. Plus the case files they stole-all L.A.”

“Now their motive for killing Rayner is a lot clearer,” Dray said. “Tying up loose ends. Keeping eyewitnesses off the books.” Her chest expanded, and then she sighed deep and hard, as if expelling something from her body.

“Yeah. They know there’s no hard evidence or charges would’ve been brought. They’re mopping up.”

Dray pulled her head back, as if she’d been struck. Exasperation and intensity colored her smooth cheeks. She spoke slowly, as if she were still trying to catch up to her thoughts. “There’s another loose end they’re gonna have to tie up.”

Tim felt his mouth go dry, instantly. An ocean rushing in his ears. Realization. Alarm. Stress.

He was on his feet, down the hall.

He was pulling ammo from the gun safe into a backpack when he became aware of Dray in the doorway. The roll of cash he’d wedged in the back pocket of his jeans. Dray studied his hands, the ammo.

“Take your bulletproof vest,” she said.

“It’ll slow me down.”

“May you die and come back a woman in Afghanistan.”

He stood, slinging the backpack over one shoulder. He started out, but she shifted in the doorway, blocking him. Her arms were spread, clutching the jamb on either side, the sudden proximity of her face, her chest, recalling the moment before a hug. He could smell her jasmine lotion, could feel the heat coming off her flushed cheek. If he’d turned his head, his lips would have brushed against hers.

“You’re taking the fucking vest,” she said. “I’m not asking.”