The Kill Clause

by Gregg Hurwitz

  He sat up, .357 leveled. Despite his fall, he had the advantage now; his bullet had to have ruined Robert’s .45.

  Robert was standing perfectly still, about fifteen yards off, partly shielded by a stack of metal plates. Just watching him.

  Tim’s glance dropped from Robert’s pink eyes, to his confident mouth—too confident for an unarmed man being gun-faced—to the rising globe of his biceps as his hand turned over, revealing the end of a remote detonator. Shifting farther behind the stack of plates so he was only a half man peering out, he nodded once at Tim, indicating something. Tim glanced down and realized that the brick pinching his hip was not a brick at all but a block of C4, the first of many spread around the monument’s base at four-foot intervals.

  Mitchell’s body lay sprawled about ten feet to Tim’s left, his det bag several feet closer where Robert had pulled it when he’d prepped the C4. Of course Robert would have primed the explosives—he’d still thought Tim was up in the monument.

  Tim’s head snapped up, and he fired once, but Robert anticipated his move, ducking behind the metal stack. The shot sparked off the steel. Tim braced himself for the explosion, but none came.

  Instead came Robert’s rough voice. “You took Mitch’s head, you motherfucker. Took it clean off.” The words wavered and blurred.

  Tim glanced at Mitchell’s body, a blur above the neck. Next to it lay Robert’s rifle, partially buried in red dirt. A scattering of tools had fallen from Mitchell’s bag. Spray-on glue. Needlenose wire clippers. The tiny shining cylinder of a nonelectric blasting cap, pushed into the earth. Tim picked up the blasting cap, rubbing its smooth side with his thumb.

  LAPD would be here soon—the lit tree had to have been visible for miles—but Tim heard no sirens.

  Robert’s rifle—no bullets. The .45—out of commission.

  He doesn’t want to detonate the whole hundred-foot monument, Tim realized. He wants to shoot me, but he doesn’t have any bullets left.

  Tim turned the blasting cap in his hand and slid it down the bore of his .357, leading with the well end. It fitted barely, touching the metal on all sides. He needed something to jam it in place. He looked frantically around him for an appropriate-size object, knowing it was only a matter of seconds before Robert made his final demands. Nothing in the dirt around him. He leaned forward to dig through the mound of debris, and a spasm of pain racked his stomach.

  The slug.

  Tim’s fingers scurried over the front of his bulletproof vest, finding the small mushroom of lead from the Stork’s gun. A jagged little nine-millimeter.

  It went hard down the gun, sharp edges digging grooves in the smooth metal bore. He used the tip of Mitchell’s needlenose wire cutters to snug it in place. He lowered the .357 into his lap, praying that Robert wouldn’t notice the altered weighting of the spiked barrel, since he was accustomed to a .45.

  Robert’s face resolved from the shadows on the far side of the stack of metal. “One click of this button and you’re done. The only question is, do you want me to blow up this memorial with you?”

  “No,” Tim said. “I don’t.”

  “Toss me your gun.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  The detonator jerked up, clenched in Robert’s hand beside his face. “Toss me your fucking gun.”

  Tim threw the gun. It landed in the dirt a few feet from Robert’s boots. Robert stepped forward and took it, aiming at Tim with a shaking hand. The portable radio scanner swayed on his belt, long turned off. “Get up.”

  Tim struggled to his feet, favoring his left leg.

  Robert’s eyes pulled back to his brother’s body. A tear gathered on his lower lid but refused to fall. “I have a mind to take some time with you.”

  Tim staggered a bit to keep his balance on his good leg.

  “But I’m not an animal like you. I wouldn’t put your wife through the pain of having nothing left but a mangled corpse.” With the gun Robert gestured to Tim’s torso. “Take off your vest. I don’t want to fuck up your face.”

  Tim pulled off his jacket and unstrapped his vest. The Velcro pulling loose sounded like cloth ripping. He dropped the vest in the dirt and faced the gun. From his angle he could see the scratches in the bore.

  Robert beckoned him forward with the barrel, and Tim stepped from the cover of the monument, weaponless and bleeding and weak. The throw of ground outside the scaffolding seemed desert-barren. There was nothing to cut the wind.

  “Was it you or Mitchell who met Kindell that night at his shack? Gave him the intel dump on Ginny…when she walked home, what route she took?” Tim’s throat clogged with disgust. “Told him she was his ‘type’?”

  “Me,” Robert said, his eyes red and morose. “It was me.”

  He pulled the trigger.

  Tim dropped to a crouch, covering his head with his arms.

  The blast was loud and surprisingly sharp, and when Tim looked up, Robert was gazing at him as if nothing had happened, his right arm extended as before, except his hand was blown off.

  Robert’s eyes found the splayed end of his stump, a pulled-weed tangle of roots, and then blood spurted from the left side of his neck where a piece of shrapnel had blazed a groove through his carotid artery. He fastened his good hand over the side of his neck but only succeeded in splitting the stream between his fingers.

  Tim rose slowly and approached him.

  Robert raised his injured arm again and stared at the wound, its gaping permanence, as if he still couldn’t believe it. Blood streamed from his neck down his good hand, dripping from his elbow now. His eyes were wide and child-vulnerable, and Tim felt his breath catch in his throat.

  Robert staggered back a step, his arm flaring for balance, and Tim took it and eased him to the ground. He stood over him, gazing down. Robert’s legs and arms started jerking, and quickly he couldn’t keep his hand pressed over the hole in his neck.

  He bled out in the dirt.

  Tim stood for a moment in the space between the sprawled bodies of the twins. His voice was steady by the time he called Bowrick. “It’s clear. Come get me.”

  He pulled the Gurkha blade from Robert’s sheath. As the Lincoln made its way up the hill, headlights glaring intrusively and throwing the bloody tableau into shadowy relief, Tim left Robert’s body and limped over to meet it. Bowrick pulled to a stop, his elbow resting half out the window like a trucker’s. He killed the engine, and the car sat dense and immobile in a swirl of reddish dust.

  “Pop the trunk,” Tim said.

  Kindell had gone quiet, but at Tim’s voice he started shifting again. The trunk yawned open, and there he was, curled between an empty gasoline can and the spare.

  Kindell, who couldn’t fix a fuse but could rape and slaughter. Kindell, who would forever own the privilege of seeing Ginny last, of being there when the light blinked out in her eyes. Kindell, the ultimate patsy.

  “Lee me alone. Please lee me alone.”

  Bowrick was out of the car behind Tim now, arms crossed, watching.

  Tim grabbed the rope binding Kindell at the wrists and ankles and hoisted him out. Kindell screamed as his shoulders stretched back in their sockets, then again as he hit ground. He strained to peer back over his shoulder, the clammy skin of his face quivering. His cheek was bruised, and one nostril was clogged with dirt.

  He lay for a moment with his forehead touching the ground, saliva stringing from his lower lip. He was panting and making throat noises like an animal cornered after a grueling chase.

  “Doan you urt me. Doan you dare.”

  Tim pulled the knife from his back pocket and crouched. Kindell let out a shriek and tried to wriggle away, but Tim pinned him with a knee between his shoulder blades.

  He cut him loose and stood back up. Kindell continued to weep into the dirt.

  “Get out of here,” Tim said, though he knew Kindell couldn’t hear him.

  He shoved him with his foot, and Kindell looked up at him, fear finally draining from his face.
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  Tim enunciated clearly. “Get. Out. Of. Here.”

  Kindell scrambled to his feet and stood rubbing his wrists, disbelief doing a slow fade from his eyes. “Thank you. Thank you. You aved my life.” He stumbled toward Tim, hands extended in gratitude. “I’m orry I illed your daughter.”

  Tim struck him hard in the face, his knuckles grinding teeth. Kindell yelped and went down. He lay panting, drooling blood, his eyes wide and unfocused. His front tooth hung by a bloody thread from his gums.

  “Get the fuck out of here.”

  Kindell pushed himself to his feet and staggered a bit, staring blankly at Tim.

  “Get the fuck out of here!” Tim took a menacing step forward, and Kindell turned and scurried away. Tim watched his loping, irregular run, watched him trip once or twice on his way down the hill. A few moments after Kindell disappeared, he realized he was shivering, so he retrieved his jacket from the ground.

  When he walked back, Bowrick stood watching him, his face impassive. “That guy killed your daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  Bowrick bounced his head in a nod. “If you’d have killed him, would it have felt good?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Bowrick spread his arms—an ironic suggestion of martyrdom and self-display—then let them fall. He hooked his thumbs in his pockets, and he and Tim stood squared off, like adversaries or lovers, the dust still settling around them, letting the silence work on their thoughts.

  Now, finally, came the distant scream of approaching sirens, and far down on the freeway Tim could see the glittering approach of blue and red lights, LAPD all the way.

  Bowrick walked over and got into the passenger seat of the Lincoln, where he sat patiently. Tim looked at the spilled bodies on the dirt, the monument.

  He climbed into the driver’s seat and spun around in the plateau, throwing dust and pebbles. His headlights flashed past the boulder at the monument’s base. The quotation chiseled into its flat side was now complete:

  AND THE LEAVES OF THE TREE WERE FOR THE HEALING OF NATIONS.REVELATION 22:2.

  45

  TIM WAS GRATEFUL the Mastersons had chosen a Lincoln, since there was no way he could have worked a clutch and the gas with one good leg. He coasted onto the freeway well before LAPD closed in on Monument Hill. The faintest edge of gold peeked above the horizon, enhanced by the inland smog.

  Bowrick rested Mitchell’s .45 in his lap. Tim took it and slid it into his hip holster. Its weight on his hip was comforting. After making the mistake of glancing at his reflection once, he did his best to avoid the rearview mirror.

  Fighting pain and light-headedness, he kept both hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road.

  Finally he eased to the curb and parked. Pulling his remaining money from his pocket—four hundreds—he handed it to Bowrick.

  Bowrick folded the cash into a pocket. “Thanks.”

  “I’m not your guardian angel. I’m not your big brother. I’m not gonna be the godfather to your kid. I don’t care about your problems or your issues. But if you’re ever in trouble—I mean real trouble—you find me. You’re not gonna slip up. Not after all this.”

  He got out and limped through Fletcher Bowron Square Mall, drawing strange looks from a few early-morning suits. Blood and sweat had left his shirt warm and sodden. Bowrick trudged silently a few steps back, one leg dragging behind, head lowered, hands shoved into his pockets. After a moment he sped up, his posture straightening, to walk by Tim’s side.

  Passing under the tile mural, they entered the Federal Building. The security guard at the entrance lowered his cup of coffee, his face blank with disbelief. “Deputy Rackley, are you…?”

  They walked past him. Thomas and Freed were bullshitting in the lobby, Freed thumbnailing a stain out of his Italian tie. Their faces pivoted wide-eyed at Tim’s approach. Tim grabbed Bowrick’s arm, presenting him. “This is Terrill Bowrick. I blew his cover. You help him.”

  He left them in stunned silence.

  Blood had worked its way down Tim’s leg into his shoe; it squished when he walked. He left bloody footprints on the tile of the second floor, all rights, a neat line of paisley.

  A secretary flattened herself against the wall, clutching a stack of papers to her chest.

  Tim pulled the .45 from his holster and dropped the magazine. It bounced on the floor. He shucked the slide, letting the round spin and rattle to a stop on the tile. Holding the unloaded gun limply by the barrel, he carried it away from his body, upside down, pointed innocuously into his hand. He’d left his jacket in the elevator so he could show his empty holster.

  When he pushed through the doors into the offices, the deputies’ heads snapped up. From the smell of coffee and sweat, they were pulling a double shift. Maybeck’s face went pale; Denley froze in a half crouch above his desk; Miller peered at him above a cubicle wall.

  Tim walked into Bear’s office, a small white box that recalled an unfurnished college dorm room more than anything else. Bear was poring over a stack of crime-scene photos from Rhythm’s house, a head-wound close-up on top. When he looked up, his shiny cheeks took a moment to still from the movement.

  Tim set the .45 on Bear’s desk and sat down.

  Bear nodded, as if in response to something, then removed a fat brick of a tape recorder from a drawer, set it on his desk, and turned it on. He hit a button on his phone and spoke into the speaker. “Yeah, Janice, can you send him over? Please tell him I have ex–Deputy Rackley in custody.”

  He and Tim stared at each other.

  Finally Bear said, “I got the dog. He pissed on my carpet.”

  “The way you keep your place, I don’t blame him.”

  Bear nodded at Tim’s leg. “You need medical attention?”

  “Yes, but not immediately.”

  They stared at each other some more. Bear rubbed his eyes, the skin moving with his fingers. The wait was excruciating.

  Minutes later Marshal Tannino appeared, cutting off a few deputies pretending not to gawk at the open doorway. He stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and locked it.

  Bear indicated Tim’s leg. “He might need medical attention.”

  “Fuck medical attention.”

  “I’m fine, Marshal.”

  Tannino leaned against the file cabinet and crossed his arms, the glossy fabric of his suit jacket bunching at his shoulders. His eyes picked over Tim’s badly scabbed face, his soggy shirt, the blood-stiffened leg of his jeans. “What surprise do you have for us now? I’m guessing it has to do with a phone call I just got from Chief Bratton about two bodies found up on Monument Hill.”

  Tim started to speak, but Tannino’s hand flashed up angrily, his gold ring glittering. “Wait. Just wait. I heard a full account of your dinner with Bear on the twenty-eighth of February, which I still refuse to believe….” He paused, regaining his composure. “So maybe you’d better take this one from the top, because I’m gonna have to hear with my own two ears how my best deputy managed to land himself and this office in a pool of shit so deep it makes the Rampart scandal look like a small-claims dispute.”

  Tim started from the beginning, reiterating what he’d told Bear at Yamashiro. He told how the Commission had plotted the initial executions and how the Mastersons had gone on the warpath. He told how he’d discovered their role in Ginny’s death, how he’d tracked them, and how they’d died, ending up with his freeing Kindell and driving down here to turn himself in.

  A remarkably awkward silence punctuated the end of his story. Bear rearranged the photos on his desk. Tannino ran a hand through his dense hair and studied his knockoff loafers.

  Finally Tim said, “Marshal, sir, my leg’s going numb.”

  Tannino looked up at Bear, ignoring Tim. “Call the paramedics. Have him brought to County. Book him there.” He walked out, closing the door quietly behind him.

  His face drawn and weary, Bear picked up the phone and called for an ambulance.

  46

  A TH
REE-DAY STINT at the USC Medical Center Jail Ward got Tim’s leg back in working order. The bullet had missed all major vessels, which Tim had already surmised from the fact that he hadn’t bled out on Monument Hill. His right seventh and eighth ribs were bruised but not broken.

  Since Robert’s and Mitchell’s deaths had taken place on Monument Hill, they charged him with crime committed on federal property to keep the case, murders and all, in their backyard rather than turning it over to the state courts. Plus, Tim’s confrontation with Bear at Yamashiro was filed as assaulting a federal employee, another federal hook. The appointed PD pled him not guilty at the postindictment arraignment; Tim watched the proceedings glumly from a wheelchair.

  In the news Dumone’s name was mentioned only tangentially; evidently the “Vigilante Four” didn’t have the same ring. The nature of Tim’s involvement was kept under tight wraps, though that only seemed to whet the appetites of reporters and journalists.

  Tim’s new temporary residence, the Metropolitan Detention Center, was an adjunct to the Roybal Building, part of the cluster of buildings where he used to report to work. A high-rise with slit windows like squinting eyes, the detention area was cold and harshly lit, the lowest loop of Tim’s inferno. Since he was a former law-enforcement officer, they celled him separately on Eight North, not leaving him to fend for himself in the general population. His ward in the Special Housing Unit, consecrated by the likes of Buford Furrow, who’d shot up the North Valley Jewish Community Center, and Topo, Mexican mafia godfather, was bare and clean. A single bed and an unlidded stainless-steel toilet. No hot water. The ceiling was low, so he soon acquired a stoop.

  He wore a blue jumpsuit, a green windbreaker, and cheap plastic sandals that creaked. At 11:00 A.M. he had an hour for exercise, during which he could throw some weights around in the tiny pen or play basketball. Solitary H-O-R-S-E was less than invigorating; he usually just lifted and rehabbed his injured leg.