the Kill Clause (2003)

by Gregg - Rackley 01 Hurwitz

  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."

  Chapter 42

  WHEN TIM TURNED off Grimes Canyon Road onto the snaking drive to the burned-down house, he felt a thrumming start in the void where his stomach should have been. He pulled to a stop on the overgrown concrete foundation where the house used to stand, dead weeds crackling beneath the wheels.

  Ahead, the stand-alone garage stood at the base of the small eucalyptus grove. At night it conveyed a sort of dilapidated grandeur, like a forsaken Southern mansion, but in the bright and unflinching daylight, it looked pathetic and distinctly unmenacing. Tim pulled on his gloves, his bulletproof vest, then approached.

  The dirt-clouded windows had grown almost opaque. The garage door creaked up on rusty coils. The first thing that struck him was the odor, damp and dirty, the smell of water left stagnant and then drained. The busted water pipe had deposited swirls of silt on the greasy concrete floor.

  Same ratty couch. Same hole in the far wall, no longer plugged by Ginny's underwear. Same enveloping dankness.

  But no Kindell.

  The side table had been knocked over, the cheap particleboard splintered down the middle, throwing up spikes of wood. One of the couch's cushions had been upended, the fabric split across the front like a burst seam. Crusty yellow stuffing protruded from the rip. The lamp lay shattered on the floor, the bare lightbulb still miraculously intact.

  The mark of a brief struggle.

  Tim placed his gloved fingertips on a dark spot on the couch, then smeared the moisture off the leather onto the white Sheetrock of the rear wall so he could discern its true color. Blood red.

  A carton of milk lay on its side on the counter, a thread-thin tendril of fluid leaking from the closed spout. Tim righted the carton. Almost empty. He stared at the pool of milk on the floor, about four feet in diameter. He watched its drowsy expansion, gauged it had been at it for at least half an hour.

  They'd taken Kindell somewhere. If they were merely going to kill him, they would have done it here. Isolated, quiet, rural. The stand of eucalyptus would have gone a long way toward stifling a bullet's report.

  There was another plan in the works.

  As Tim headed out, a white seam in the freshly exposed couch-cushion stuffing caught his eye. He walked over and tugged on it. His daughter's sock emerged.

  A tiny thing, not six inches heel to toe, a ring of circus-color polka dots around the top. His daughter's sock. Stowed away in a ripped cushion like a dirty magazine, a bag of pot, a wad of cash. In this place.

  His legs were trembling, so he sat down on the couch, gripping the sock in both hands, thumbs pressed into the fabric. The small room did a drunken tilt, a jumble of sensations pressing in on him. A waft of paint thinner. Milk dripping from the counter. A tingling in the scab over his eye. The smell of the embalming table, of what had remained of his daughter at the end.

  He pressed his hand to his forehead, and it came away moist. His knees shook, both of them, uncontrollably. He tried to stand but could not find the strength in his legs, so he sat again, clutching his daughter's sock, shaking not with rage but with an unmitigated longing to hold his daughter, a longing that ran deeper than sorrow or even pain. He had not been braced, had not anticipated the need to shield these vulnerabilities, and the tiny white sock with its foolish dots had soared right through his fissures and struck him deep.

  After ten minutes or thirty, he made it out into the pounding sun, across the scorching foundation to his car. He sat for a moment, trying to even out his breathing.

  He had some trouble getting the key into the slot. He turned over the engine and drove off.

  On the freeway he picked up the pace, accelerating until the speedometer pushed ninety, putting miles between himself and the killer's shack. Both windows down, air conditioner blasting. It wasn't until he roared past the First Street exit that his breathing returned to normal.

  He pulled over and called Dray, reaching her at the station.

  "They took Kindell."

  The pause seemed to stretch out forever, then it stretched some more.

  Her laugh, when it came, sounded like a cough. "What are they doing with him?"

  "I don't know. If I could just get a lock on one of their residences."

  "Big 'if.'"

  "I was almost there. I can't believe the Stork's car didn't pan out. If the damn footage was clearer, I could have gotten the plate number."

  "Wait a minute. Footage. What footage?"

  "The security recording. I found his car on a security tape I took from a video store."

  "Was it day or night? When the footage was shot?"

  "Night."

  "What was the lighting?"

  "What?"

  "The lighting. How did you see the car?"

  "I don't know. A streetlight, I think. Why does this matter?"

  "Because, genius, if the streetlight was sodium-arc, it would make a blue car look black on film."

  Tim's mouth moved, but nothing came out.

  "Hello? Are you there?"

  "How do you know that?"

  "Security-systems Secret Service course at Beltville last spring. Did you forget that in addition to being a domestic goddess, I'm a highly proficient investigator?"

  "You got half of that right."

  "Go check the streetlight. I'll start running the blue PT Cruisers, call me with the confirm."

  "I'm on my way."

  Fortunately, the streetlight was offset a good ten feet from the Cinsational Video front door, so Tim could stand gawking up at it without risking being spotted by the kid he'd robbed Saturday morning. He hadn't considered the fact that it was difficult if n
ot impossible to determine whether a streetlight housed a sodium-arc lamp during the day, when it was shut off. He'd pulled on a zippered jacket to hide his bulletproof vest, but his reflection in a passing bus's window showed he'd succeeded only in making himself look conspicuous and fat.

  A kid in a black hooded sweatshirt zipped past him on a skate-board, regarding him curiously. Tim waited for him to round the corner, then withdrew his .357, cocked it, and shot out the light. A puff of white powder emerged as the gas released, and then shards of glass tinkled on the sidewalk.

  Tim got back into his car and drove away, already dialing.

  Dray picked up on the first ring.

  "Yeah, it's sodium-arc all right."

  Tim waited patiently in a corner booth at Denny's, a Grand Slam breakfast sweating on the plate in front of him, though it was dinner-time. He scanned the front page of a discarded Sunday paper--MARSHAL VOWS TO STOP VIGILANTE THREE--picking up misleading background information on the players. A crime hot line had been established for phone-in tips. An LAPD spokesperson believed that the Mastersons financed the operations, using the money they'd received as part of their considerable settlement from the tabloid that had published the crime-scene photos of their murdered sister.

  Page two reported on a Baltimore car salesman who, inspired by the Lane and Debuffier executions, had shot two men attempting to hold him up. One of the muggers had been seventeen, the other was his fifteen-year-old brother.

  Tim skipped to the obituaries. Sure enough there was Dumone, wearing his Boston City Class-A's, looking stern, imposing, and--as always--slightly smirky, as if he were in on a joke lost on the rest of humanity. The cause of death was listed as terminal lung cancer, not suicide, and there was no mention of his involvement with the Vigilante Three. Tim wondered how Dumone would have felt having his eulogy appear in a paper publicizing Baltimore car salesmen emulating Charles Bronson.

  Flipping back to the front page, Tim studied the photos of the Vigilante Three. The Stork's, in all likelihood pulled from his FBI file, framed his rigid passport-style pose against a washed-out backdrop.

  His moral apathy and keenness for money made him a hell of a recruitment candidate--Rayner and Dumone had proved that once already. The good thing about greed is that it's a clean motive. It makes people predictable. Robert and Mitchell, driven by emotion, were a bit tougher to keep a leash on.

  Another ten minutes had passed, so Tim hit "redial" again. He could hear Dray typing in the background even as she spoke. "Deputy Rackley."

  "Me again."

  "The PT Cruiser comes in steel blue and patriot blue. Edward Davis, aka Danny Dunn, aka the Stork, has one in patriot blue. He picked a new alias for the registration--Joseph Hardy. Ha, ha. From the look of his driver's-license shot, Nancy Drew is more on the money."

  Tim sat up sharply, pushing away the plate of ripped-up pancakes. "Address?"

  "You were right about El Segundo. One forty-seven Orchard Oak Circle."

  Chapter 43

  SINCE THE STORK'S face had been plastered on every TV and doorstep in the state, his fleeing in the past two days would have been difficult. His distinctive features made a disguise unlikely, and nothing Tim had come across suggested that his technical proficiency extended into facial disguise. Tim figured he was holed up in his safe house, waiting for the media's ADD to kick in. Then it would be back to reports of shark attacks or terrorist cells, and he'd be able to slip on a plane to somewhere with lots of sand and umbrellaed cocktails.

  The house was isolated, as Tim had anticipated, located at the rear of a large lot covered with foliage. Positioned at the end of a three-house cul-de-sac, the Stork's place was set back in the shadow of a surprisingly steep hill, the unwelcome terrain of which had probably saved it from development. No address numbers nailed near the front door, adhered to the mailbox, or sprayed on the curb. The house to its right was for sale, the picture window looking in on a barren room, and a remodel had ravaged the house to the left, tearing it down to its pressure-treated skeleton.

  Crouching beside a construction Dumpster, Tim used a compact pair of binoculars to scan the foliage in the front yard. At least two security lenses peered out from leafy cover, craning on thin metal necks that had been spray-painted camouflage green. He picked apart the yard sector by sector. Another camera resolved from the foliage, and two motion sensors. The windows were barred internally, and the oversize front door looked to be solid oak. A gate blocked the backyard from view; a position up the hill would permit him a clear angle to the rear of the house.

  Dusk cast a graininess over the street, lending it the slight unfocus of gritty war footage and washed-out black-and-white photographs. Somewhere, miles away, the rumble of waves rose into audibility.

  Tim plotted a path up the hill, around the back of the house. He moved swiftly and evenly, ducking remembered camera lines of sight and IR beams. He had to acrobat his way through crossing motion-sensor fields near the side of the house, then it was free movement up the hill. He'd snugged his gun back into the hip holster so as not to worry about slippage.

  He lay on his stomach and studied the backyard in the dying light, disappointed that he'd left his night-vision goggles in the war bag in the Acura's trunk. The only good thing about the chest-high fence, topped with a Slinky of concertina wire, was that it adhered to residential zoning heights. With matching iron bars, the rear windows appeared to be equally impenetrable as those to the front. A virtual colony of security cams angled toward the back door like attentive prairie dogs. He picked up a motion detector over the back door, an ominously quiet doghouse blanketed in shadow, dog shit on the kidney-shaped lawn.

  Keeping a nervous eye out for Fido, he inched down the hill and zoomed in with the binocs on the back door, barely visible through the wide mesh of the security screen. Single pane framed with a thick wooden stile. Though he couldn't confirm it from this distance, it seemed the edges of the pane bore a dark strip, a Plexi-coating that would indicate bulletproof glass. A latch protector extended past the doorknob and overlapped the frame, guarding the bolt from a credit-card lift; that, and the visible hinges, meant the door was outswinging. The knob itself housed a series of locks with immense key slots, probably custom-made.

  He would have expected nothing less from the Stork.

  The bulletproof pane looked in on a laundry room and another locked door, this one solid. Two shiny circles on the second door suggested standard locks, probably pick-resistant Medecos. A shimmering of metal near the doorknob indicated a wraparound mag plate to reinforce against jimmying. Tim would've put money on both doors' having reinforced strikes, long screws to beef up the plates against a kick-in.

  He certainly had his work cut out for him.

  He was just pulling back when a light clicked on deeper within the house, revealing a dining table overburdened with keyboards and computer monitors and surrounded by a copper-mesh cage. The Stork shuffled into sight, wearing a pair of baby blue pajamas, entered the cage, and plopped down in front of the cluster of equipment.

  Tim lay in the darkness, his eyes resting on this man who had played a part in his daughter's dismemberment. He felt his heartbeat in his fingertips, his ears; his entire skin seemed to move to the heightened pulse. He pictured the Stork behind a telescopic lens, calmly focusing as Kindell stumbled out from his shack, Ginny's blood across his thighs to...what? Bay at the moon? Breath the crisp air? Catch his breath for continued sawing? The Stork wouldn't have cared; he'd have taken apart his camera lovingly, nestled its parts in foam, collected his paycheck.

  The Stork typed for a few moments, then paused to rub out knots in his cramped hands. Through the well-barred window, Tim briefly watched him resume work before withdrawing back up the hill.

  It took him nearly ten minutes to extract without tripping any alarms or crossing any lenses. He sat in his car a few blocks away, plotting, regretting he'd given up dipping tobacco again, since he felt like working something over physically to mirror the ac
tivity in his head.

  Though he was competent with a pick and a torsion wrench, he had none of the Stork's finesse or training. He didn't stand a chance against those locks.

  Finesse would have to go out the window.

  He paid cash at the Ace Hardware counter, spending most of what Dray had given him. The checkout woman, an old biddy with the rough hands of an inveterate gardener, whistled over a strapping coworker to help Tim get his purchases out to his car. Tim waved him off, loading up the equipment in an enormous black duffel bag he'd pulled from an overstuffed wire bin in Aisle 5.

  "Must be a hell of a project." The woman's breath smelled of Polident.

  Tim hefted the bag up on a shoulder. "Yes, indeed."

  Moving along the prescribed path through the Stork's front yard was trickier with the bulky duffel in tow, especially in the full dark of night. There was no way he'd get through the dueling motion sensors at the side of the house, and he didn't have the patience or tools to size out a mirror to bounce the IR beam back on itself. Instead he pulled a small shaving mirror from the bag, shattered it, and deflected the beam with a shard momentarily so he could smear Vaseline over the housing.

  After some tedious creeping and hauling, he reached his post in the hillside. The effort and the heavy vest left him damp with sweat. Down below, the Stork was still working away in his blue pajamas at the computer. He appeared to be talking to himself. After a few minutes Tim heard the shrill ring of a telephone, and the Stork picked up a cell phone from the table but seemed to get no response. He shook his head, realizing he'd grabbed the wrong line, and set the cell phone back down. Rising from his perch behind the monitors, he walked into the adjoining kitchen.

  Tim checked the bag to make sure everything was accounted for and well arranged, then began a silent descent to the back fence. He clipped a small canister of mace to his belt, checked his gun, and removed a length of blanket insulation from the bag. The Stork was visible in the kitchen, sitting on a stool, sipping juice through a straw and leaning to talk into the speaker of a wall-mounted phone. He fussed the cap off a bottle and took a few pills, continuing to massage his arthritic hands as he spoke.