Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

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 not 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.”

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.