Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

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.

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.

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.