The Kill Clause

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “And what are those prenegotiated conditions?”

  “The kill clause dictates that the Commission be immediately dissolved. All remaining documentation—which we go to every effort to keep to a minimum—will be destroyed. With the exception of tying up loose ends, there will be no future Commission activity of any kind.” Rayner’s face hardened. “Zero tolerance.”

  “We’re well aware that the Commission places us on a slippery slope,” Ananberg said. “So we’re anxious to ensure that there will be no sliding.”

  “And if someone withdraws?”

  “Go with God,” Rayner said. “We presume that what passes here remains here, as it is equally incriminating to whoever elects to leave.” He grinned a smirky grin. “Mutual assured destruction makes for a nifty little insurance policy.”

  Tim did not return the grin but studied the practiced lines around Rayner’s mouth. William Rayner, vehement proponent of the insurance policy.

  Ananberg said, “The Commission would go on brief hiatus until we found an appropriate replacement.”

  Tim leaned back in the armchair so he could feel his Sig pressing into the small of his back. He gauged his angle to the door—not good. “And if I decide against joining?”

  “We would hope that, as someone who’s lost a daughter, you would appreciate our perspective and leave us to our work,” Rayner said. “If you were to contact the authorities, be advised there is no incriminating evidence on site. We will deny ever having had this conversation. And to say our collective words are greatly respected in the legal community is something of an understatement.”

  All eyes were suddenly on Tim. The ticking of the grandfather clock punctuated the silence. Ananberg went to the desk, turned a key, then removed a dark cherry box from one of the drawers. Tilting it, she opened the hinged lid, revealing a gleaming Smith & Wesson .357—service make—nestled in the felt interior. She closed the box and set it on the desktop.

  Rayner lowered his voice so it seemed he was addressing only Tim. “When people endure such a…bureaucratic betrayal as the one the courts handed you, as the one the U.S. Marshals Service handed you, they contend with it in different ways, most of them bad. Some get angry, some get depressed, some find God.” One of his eyebrows drew up, almost disappearing beneath the line of his hair. “What will you do, Mr. Rackley?”

  Tim decided he’d had his fill of questions, so he kept his eyes on Dumone. “How do they feel about taking a backseat? Operationally?”

  Dumone’s and Robert’s fidgeting broadcast that this was well-covered ground.

  The Stork shrugged and adjusted his glasses. “I got no problem,” he said, though no one had asked him.

  “They’ll deal with it,” Dumone said.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “They understand the necessity of bringing in a high-demand operator, and they’re reconciling themselves to the change.” Dumone’s voice gathered edge, and Tim could hear the tough Boston cop in it.

  Tim looked at Mitchell, then Robert. “Is that true?”

  Mitchell looked away, studying the wall. Robert had a slight upper lip, so when he smiled, his mouth was a sheen of teeth and hair. His voice came slick and sharp, like a scalpel. “You’re the boss.”

  Tim turned back to Dumone. “Call me when they’re reconciled.”

  Dumone’s shoes shushed across the rug as he approached. He stood over Tim, gazing down at him. His face, a blend of wear and texture, held in it a dark-tinted element of calm that Tim thought might be wisdom. “We’d like an answer now.”

  “We need an answer now,” Robert said. “Either this proposal strikes a chord with you or it doesn’t. There’s no thinking about it.”

  “This isn’t a gym membership,” Tim said.

  “Our offer terminates the minute you walk out that door,” Rayner said.

  “I don’t negotiate like this.”

  Now Mitchell—“Those are our terms.”

  “All right, then.” Tim stood and walked out.

  Rayner caught him outside near the gate. “Mr. Rackley. Mr. Rackley!”

  Tim turned, keys in his hand.

  Rayner’s face was red with the cold, and his breath was visible. His shirt had come untucked. He looked less smug out here, away from his first-among-equals reign in the library. “I apologize for that. I can be a little…firm sometimes. We’re just eager to begin our work.” He moved to rest his hand on the trunk of Tim’s car but stopped, his fingertips hovering an inch off the metal. He seemed to have a tough time manufacturing his next words. “You are our top choice. Our sole choice. We took a great deal of care in selecting you. If you don’t sign on, we have to start the search over—a long process. Take more time if you need it.”

  “I intend to.”

  Tim pulled out into the street. When he glanced into his rearview mirror, Rayner was still standing in front of the house, watching him drive off.

  13

  AS TIM TURNED into his cul-de-sac, he spotted Dumone leaning against a parked Lincoln Town Car at the far curb, arms crossed, like a waiting chauffeur. Tim pulled up beside him and rolled down his window.

  Dumone winked. “Touché.”

  Tim glanced around to see if any of the neighbors had taken note of them. “Touché yourself.”

  Dumone gestured to the backseat with a tilt of his head. “Why don’t you come for a ride?”

  “Why don’t you get off my street?”

  “I wanted to apologize.”

  “For being rude?”

  Dumone’s laugh was worn, and it crackled around the edges like an old LP. “Christ no. For underestimating you. That hard-sell, tough-cop bit. At my age I should know better.”

  Tim’s lips pressed together in a half grin.

  Dumone jerked his head again. “Come on. Hop in.”

  “If it’s just the same, why don’t you take a ride with me?”

  “Fair enough.” When Dumone pulled his frame into Tim’s passenger seat, he let out a textured groan like a bellows collapsing. He removed a Remington from his hip and a small .22 from an ankle holster and set them in the center console. “Just so you can listen without being distracted.”

  Tim drove a few blocks, pulled into the deserted back parking lot of Ginny’s old elementary school, and killed the lights. Dumone’s chest jerked with a held-in cough. Tim gazed out the windshield so he could pretend for Dumone’s sake he didn’t notice.

  “This that school where those three teenagers went on that shooting spree?”

  “No,” Tim said. “That was at the other Warren, a high school south of downtown.”

  “Kids shooting kids.” Dumone shook his head, grunted, then shook his head again.

  For a while they watched the unlit school in silence.

  “When you get on in life,” Dumone said, “you start viewing the world a bit differently. Your idealism doesn’t die, but it’s mitigated. You start thinking, hell, maybe life’s just what we make it, and maybe our job is to leave this place a little better than it was when we came in. I don’t know. Could be all old-man disconnect. Maybe that poet was right, that youth holds knowledge and everything we learn as we get older takes us away from it.”

  “I don’t read poetry.”

  “Yeah. Neither do I. The wife…” Even in the dark his eyes shone jarringly blue, the blue of newborns and summer skies and other things discordant and mawkish. He worked at a hangnail, his head down-bent, skin texturing in rough folds beneath his chin. He reminded Tim of an old lion. “You see, Tim—is it all right if I call you Tim?”

  “Of course.”

  “To try to find meaning, give meaning, to shape things and people for the better, you have to navigate through a gray zone. And to do so you need ethics. You need to be even and just. You are both.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Rayner is vain, and dumb in the ways vanity makes you, but he’s also brilliant. And he’s extremely competent at reading people and cases.”


  “And Robert?”

  “You have a problem with Robert?”

  “He just seems a little”—Tim searched for the most displeasing adjective he could conjure—“nonlinear.”

  “He’s a great operator. Loyal to a fault. Some of his connections are a touch loose, but he always falls in.”

  “He and his brother don’t seem particularly eager to play betas to my alpha.”

  “They need to learn from you, Tim. They just don’t know it yet. They felt their operating skills were sufficient. They didn’t see a need for you, but me, Rayner, and Ananberg made clear we weren’t willing to free them up or even review cases without someone like you in place. We need this thing to run not just well but seamlessly. And you’re really the only candidate within our reach who has the skill set to make that happen.”

  “How did you determine that?”

  Dumone’s lips set in a manner to suggest mild annoyance. “Rayner found you after Ginny’s death—he’d been putting together profiles of all-stars in the L.A. law-enforcement community. Running psych assessments and whatever other mad-scientist crap he gets up to at that office of his. Once he zeroed in, the boys went to work gathering intel as best they could. The more we saw, the more we liked.”

  “Who’s to say ‘the boys’ will fall in under my command?”

  “Because I’ll tell them to.”

  “They’re afraid of you.”

  “No. Respectful. Intimidated, maybe. I met them right after their sister’s death, helped them find a way through some of their grief. Not the grief-group couch-lay crap, but the real deal. How I handled it. Cops. How cops deal. You help someone when they’re raw like that, they never forget. They’re always grateful. And they might look up to me a bit more than I deserve. They’re different from you, different from me, even. They need guidance. I keep them close at hand, keep an eye on them.”

  “Sounds like a case of keeping your enemies nearer.”

  “An overstatement,” Dumone said. “They’re solid men.”

  “For what you’re proposing, they need to be more than that.”

  “No. They need a leader.” He coughed again, moistly, into a fist. “A new leader.”

  “That might not be a role I want.” Tim reached for the keys and turned the engine over.

  “I know. That’s why I chose you.” Dumone sighed heavily but without theatricality. “What none of the others understand is that joining the Commission for you would be a sacrifice, not a release. You’d have to be willing to renounce your values, your righteousness. You’d be vilified by precisely the kinds of organizations and individuals you’ve always valued.” He reached over and tapped two knobby fingers against Tim’s chest. “And even worse, you’d feel a hypocrite in your own heart. But in calmer moments, when flag waving and slogans no longer seem quite so weighty, you’ll also realize that you took direct action that had direct results. It’s tough to lead the way when you’re standing on a soapbox, even if that soapbox is platinum or sterling or made of the wood of the True Cross.” He shifted noisily to face Tim, bearing his weight on his hip. “If you do this, there will be fewer girls raped, fewer people murdered. And maybe at twilight, in our final reckoning, that’s all we’ll really have to hold on to.”

  It struck Tim that in the respect Dumone so naturally commanded, in his gravity and acumen, resided a deep moral authority, and that any hope for justice apart from and beyond the law resided precisely in such integrity embodied in like individuals.

  “When someone is mugged, raped, killed, society is the victim,” Dumone continued. “Society has a right to assert its position. We don’t represent the victims, we represent our community. We can be that voice. What you want to try to accomplish, it can be done here.” He smiled, warmly, and it attenuated the pain in his eyes. “Something to think about at least.”

  •“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Dray leaned over the table, her eyes the same cornered-cat intensity they were when she lifted weights or ran. A piece of popcorn fell from the fold in her sweatshirt; she’d just gotten back from a Meg Ryan movie with Trina, the most girlie of her friends and the only one with whom she indulged her occasional appetite for maudlin movies and pedicures and other things she thought unbefitting a POST-certified female range master with a hundred-fifty-pound bench press.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Tim leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms.

  The wind kicked up outside, whooshing off the east side of the house, making the dimly lit kitchen seem a small and quiet place of shelter.

  “Have you talked to Bear about this?”

  “Absolutely not. I’m not talking to anybody.”

  “Why me?”

  Tim felt a sudden pressure in his face. “Because you’re my wife.”

  Dray grabbed his hand. “Then listen to me. These people are preying on your pain. Like a cult. Like some screwed-up self-help group. Don’t let them make your decisions. Make your own.” Her tone held an anomalous note of pleading.

  “I am making my own. But I’d rather act within some context. With some element of order. Of law.”

  “No. The institutions we’re part of are the law. What they’re creating, in there, is not.”

  “And what you and Fowler were advocating? That was lawful?”

  “At least it was authentic. At least I don’t need a roomful of fat men to tell me what to do.”

  Tim pursed his lips. “They’re not all fat.”

  But Dray’s face held no levity. “I never told you this, because you’re vain enough already. And even though I love it, your vanity, I don’t think it needs any help. But the pride you took in being a deputy marshal, it was infectious. I love the way you talked about it, like a calling, like you were a priest or something. And I bought into it, that energy. The marshals who have no hidden agenda, not like the Feebs or the Company. The marshals who are there for the raw enforcement of federal law. Upholding individual constitutional rights. Keeping abortion clinics open. Escorting black first-graders to school in desegregated New Orleans.” Her face held an atypical note of shyness before it returned to a harder cast. “And so this thing with this house in Hancock Park, I just can’t believe that you, who swore to uphold and protect the courts, would consider it.”

  “I’m not a deputy anymore.”

  “Maybe not, but this…Commission”—she nearly spat the word out—“it has no checks and balances. If you want some outlet for your rage, at—at Kindell, at Ginny, at yourself, I understand that. Believe me, I do. But take a real one. Go shoot Kindell and face the music. Why build all this…scaffolding around it?”

  “It’s not scaffolding. It’s justice. And order.”

  Dray’s expression shifted to a weary exasperation, a look he had grown to anticipate and dread. “Tim, don’t be impressed with straw ethics and ten-cent words.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “So if no accomplice pops up and you rule against Kindell, you get to kill him.”

  “Justly. He’ll have had a trial—one that focuses only on his guilt, not procedure. And if we uncover evidence that an accomplice was involved, I could always elect to leak that information into the right hands and have Kindell and the accomplice prosecuted. Remember, there’s no double jeopardy, since Kindell never went to trial. It’s not about getting him killed, it’s about having Ginny’s murder addressed.”

  “And where will this magical evidence come from?”

  “I’ll have access to the PD and DA investigative reports. And Kindell probably shared with his PD what went down that night. Let’s just hope it’s indicated somewhere in the notes.”

  “Why not go to the PD directly?”

  “There’s no way a PD would betray confidentiality to me. But Rayner’s got the inside line on that file. And that file might get us closer to the accomplice.”

  “It sure as hell isn’t the straightest distance between two points.”

  “We never had the option to take the straightest distance. Not judiciously.”

&
nbsp; “Well, I’ve been poking around the case a bit already. Peeks took the anonymous call the night of Ginny’s death—he was the deputy working the desk. And he said the caller sounded highly agitated, really upset. It was his gut that it wasn’t an accomplice or someone who could be in on it. Just a hunch, but Peeks is pretty buttoned-down.”

  “Any description of the voice?”

  “Nothing helpful. You know, male adult. No accent or lisp or anything. Might’ve just been what it was.”

  “Might’ve been a good performance.” Not until he felt the wave of disillusionment did he realize how much he’d been hanging on his accomplice theory. “Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe I misinterpreted. Maybe it was just Kindell.”

  Dray took a deep breath and held it before exhaling. “I’ve been debating having a little chat with Kindell.”

  “Come on, Dray. The PD would have advised him strenuously not to say a word about the case—a new confession could open him up again.”

  “Maybe I could get him to talk.”

  “What, are you gonna beat it out of him?” He was all reason and circumspection right now, but the thought had occurred to him with alarming frequency.

  “I wish.” She grimaced. “No. Of course not.”

  “All talking to Kindell will do is alert his accomplice—if there is one—that we’re looking. And then the accomplice will know we’re coming, and he’ll cover his tracks or disappear. And you’ll wind up with a restraining order slapped on you. What we have going for us is the fact that no one knows we’re exploring this.”

  “You’re right. Plus, if you idiots end up taking him out, I’d be a key suspect if word leaked I’d visited him.” She laced her fingers and reverse-cracked her knuckles. “I ordered the preliminary-hearing transcripts from Kindell’s previous cases.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “As a citizen. They’re public record. Evidently the stenographer doesn’t type up the actual trial transcripts unless the case gets appealed, but the prelim hearings should be enough for me to get a handle on the specifics. I debated contacting the LAPD detectives who worked the cases, seeing what they had in their logs, but there’s no way they’d talk to me. Not after interfacing with Gutierez and Harrison, and not given who I am.”