Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

“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.”