Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

Tim started the saw again, and the Stork stepped forward, shrieking, tripping over a neat row of shoes beside the washing machine. His face was approaching tomato red. Tim starting cutting a line up the bulletproof glass, which yielded easily. He hit the wood of the top rail, and the saw’s buzz kicked into high. The blade had started to gum up; chain saws worked better on bulletproof glass, but they were significantly louder.

The Stork had pressed himself to the glass, inches away from Tim, pleading. Tim stopped the saw, changing the blade. “You helped set up my daughter’s death. You sat back and took pictures as she was being cut to pieces. I’m coming in. I’m making you talk. And I’m not going to sleep or eat or pause until the three of you have answered for the role you played.”

“Stop it! Oh, God, stop it!” The Stork pressed his hands and forehead to the bulletproof glass, leaving smudges. He was gasping now, the mist from his breath clouding the pane in splotches. His shoulders were shaking, his curiously flat nose a white stroke on his flushed face. He appeared to be crying. “I just want to be left alone. I can’t go out anyways, not since you released my name to the press. I won’t do anything. I won’t even leave the house. I just want to live here alone.”

Tim started the saw again and leaned forward.

The Stork’s face flicker-changed back to its usual inscrutable blankness-his performance was over. He leaned back, pulled a Luger from the back of his pajama waistband, and fired through the drilled hole of the glass directly into Tim’s upper stomach.

The force of the shot knocked Tim off the concrete step. He fell back another two paces and landed flat on the lawn. Despite the screaming pain, he forced a double roll to the side, putting him out of the limited range the hole permitted the Luger. He tried to cry out but could not, tried to suck air but could not.

His mouth open, he lurched and bobbed, his insides a dense knot of pain that permitted no breath. A guttural creaking emerged from his mouth, foreign to his own ears. He kicked and flopped like a fish on a boat deck. The Stork watched him with curiosity, occasionally knuckling his glasses back up into place.

“I wasn’t about to permit you to go to the authorities once you knew where I lived, Mr. Rackley. Surely you understand.”

Tim tried to fight his jacket off, still straining, still struggling, still locked up from neck to bowels. At once his insides spasmed and eased, and he drew in a hard cool breath and immediately fell to coughing. He pushed himself up on all fours, nearly hyperventilating, coughing and snorting and sucking air. Snot dangled from his nose, saliva from his lower lip. It felt as though someone had swung a wrecking ball into his gut.

Tim stood. The Stork watched with amazement.

Tim pulled off his jacket, grimacing to get each shoulder free, and the Stork saw for the first time the bulletproof vest beneath. His eyes bulged in a nearly comic show of fresh-started panic, and he emitted a weak scream. Turning, he ran back through the laundry-room door and slammed it. Tim heard bolts turning, chairs being slid.

He approached the door again with firm, angry footsteps. His throbbing stomach made itself known each second as he sawed down from the hole, through the bulletproof glass, through the bottom wooden rail. He kicked the door, and it parted, one half flying open, leaving a length of wooden stile, a thin strip of bulletproof glass, and the myriad locks perfectly in place in the doorjamb. He stepped through the gap, dragging his bag.

Three steps in, the solid laundry-room door stopped him. It was steel-reinforced, and both locks were Medecos, as Tim had guessed.

Behind it he heard the Stork’s panicked movements. “I’m sorry. You alarmed me, though, you really alarmed me. I have money here, lots of money. In cash. That’s how I keep it mostly. You can take…can take whatever.”

Tim popped the circular bit off the drill and fitted a carbide tip. The Medecos featured fortified ball bearings and hardened-steel inserts, which would render a normal bit all but useless.

Tim gripped the doorknob, and a jolt of electricity knocked him to the ground. He slid to a stop near the split back door, shaking his head, his tongue and teeth gone numb. He gripped his arm to stop it from shaking.

The clever bastard had wired an electric charge to the doorknob.

Tim stood up, leaning on the dryer until the spell of light-headedness passed. A faint nausea washed through him, then departed, leaving him only with the pain in his abdomen, a pulse that spread down to his bladder and up through his chest each time he inhaled.

The Stork had gone silent on the other side of the door.

Tim dug through the mound of footwear, tossing aside the Stork’s tiny sneakers, a worn pair of loafers. A street-hiking boot at the bottom, layered with rubber and stained with red dust, would do the trick. Tim slid the drill handle into the boot, gripped it as best he could, and used a lace to tie down the trigger.

At the drill’s renewed whine, the Stork’s frantic pleading started again. “Just give me fifteen minutes, and I’ll clear out of town. You’ll never see me again. Please.”

Tim aimed the carbide tip into the cylinder core directly over the keyway. Sparks flew out in a continuous firecracker blaze as the drill progressed, eliminating the lock pins, bringing the tumblers and springs down out of place. When he paused to wipe his heated hands on his jeans, they left red smudges from the dirty rubber boot. Gripping the drill through the boot made for slow going; by the time he’d finished the second lock, the drill chuck was steaming and his forearms were cramped.

He drew his pistol and kicked the door. It banged in, sending a propped chair spinning into the dining room. A severed lamp cord ran from an electrical outlet, its end stripped and duct-taped to the door-knob.

No sign of the Stork.

Tim heard whimpering farther back in the house, so he moved through the dining room toward the rear hall, elbows locked,. 357 extended. The house was cluttered. Three laundry baskets full of padlocks that had been shot and drilled. A row of key-cutting machines sitting side by side, each one a menacing confusion of arms, levers, teeth. Safety goggles hanging from buffing wheels. Soldering irons. Tackle boxes filled with switches and sockets and washers. A multi-antennaed apparatus with an oddly vital appearance.

Tim moved with extreme caution, assessing everything around him, looking for booby traps.

The Stork’s voice echoed down the hall at him. “God, don’t take me in. I couldn’t last in prison, a guy like me. Not for a second.” The words deteriorated back into unintelligibility.

A thin trip wire gleamed about eight inches off the hall floor, just before the turn. Tim took care in stepping over it.

The bathroom on the far side of the elbow was empty, as was the small opposing study. Tim sourced the faint moaning to the hall’s terminus. Another locked door, this one solid-core wood. Tim flattened against the wall to the hinge side of the door. When he ventured a hand and knocked, the moaning flared up into a shriek.

“Please just go. I’m sorry I tried to shoot you, Mr. Rackley. I can’t go with you and be arrested. I can’t.”

“Where did Robert and Mitchell take Kindell?”

“I won’t say anything. I’m not going to go to jail. I won’t go to jail. I swear I just-” His words cut off abruptly. Dead silence.

“Stork? Stork? Stork!”

No answer.

After another minute of silence, Tim shuffled his feet in place to see if he could draw fire. He smacked his heel against the door, but this brought no response either. His stomach ached. He might have broken a lower rib. The skin on the roof of his mouth still tingled from the shock. His shoulder throbbed.