Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

“I don’t like the authorities much, Timmy.”

Tim forged through thirty-three years of hard-built instinct, opening himself up to the intense vulnerability that came in expecting something, anything from his father. “I’ve never come to you before. Ever. For a job, for money, for a personal favor. Please.”

His father sighed, affecting regretfulness. “Well, Timmy, things have been tight lately, and I only have so many favors to call in. I gotta spend them wisely.”

Tim’s mouth had gone dry. “I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important.”

“But your important, you see, isn’t necessarily my important right now. It’s not that I don’t want to help you out, Timmy, it’s just that I have some problems of my own and some priorities of my own. I’m afraid I don’t have any extra favors to call in right now.”

“Any or any extra?”

“Any extra, I suppose.”

Tim bit the inside of his lip, took it to the verge of pain for a few moments. “I understand.”

His father traced the edges of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger, as if smoothing a goatee. “The lawman come to the con man for help. I believe that’s what they call irony.”

“I believe you’re correct.”

His father stood up, smoothing his pant legs. Tim followed suit.

“Give my regards to Andrea.”

“I’ll do that.”

At the door his father straightened his arms, showing off his jacket. “Like my new church suit, Timmy?”

“I didn’t know you went to church.”

He winked. “Hedging my bets.”

ALL the medical examiner’s rooting through Ginny’s body produced no essential physical evidence. There was extensive vaginal tearing, but no signs of semen. A condom had been used-identified as a Durex Gold Coin from the lab workup of the lubricant residue-but no matching or discarded condoms had been logged at Kindell’s house or at the crime scene. On the seventh day the medical examiner finally released the body. Because of the severity of Ginny’s assault and the ME’s thoroughness, Tim and Dray had no choice but to arrange a closed-casket service, which suited them anyway.

They paid for the funeral from Ginny’s incipient college fund.

The service was mercifully brief. Dray’s four brothers showed early, tall and refrigerator-wide, packing flasks of bourbon. They circled up like a football huddle in the parlor, shot Tim criminating looks, and wept. Bear sat alone in the last pew, his head lowered. Mac came with Fowler and didn’t miss a single opportunity to be at Dray’s side. They kept their distance from Bear.

Dray wore a gray coat over a black dress, and carried herself gracefully despite her visible exhaustion.

Tim’s father appeared late, slender, well groomed, and smelling conspicuously of aftershave. He kissed Dray on the cheek-she received him warmly for once, clutching his hand-then nodded somberly at Tim. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Tim said.

After awkwardly reaching and rereaching for each other, they managed a dour embrace. Tim did his best to avoid his father for the rest of the service, and his father seemed to find the unspoken arrangement equally acceptable.

The burial itself took place at the Bardsdale Cemetery in a wet breeze that left the mourners’ clothes damp and uncomfortable. The mud collecting around the base of Tim’s dress shoes reminded him of that on Kindell’s boots-the stain of guilt. Tim contemplated whether he wore it now for withholding retribution against his daughter’s murderer.

His father left midway through the ceremony. Tim watched his solitary form make its way down the grassy hill, shoulders not squared with the resoluteness that ordinarily so defined his father’s posture, and his father.

On the drive home Tim jerked the car to the side of the road and hunched over the wheel, his breath hammering through him. He used to wake up this way a few times a month upon his return from Croatia, flooded with images of mass graves, but he’d not before experienced such claustrophia in the daylight. Dray reached over, rubbed his neck lovingly, patiently. The sensation of constriction departed as suddenly as it had started. He sat staring numbly at the road, the rise and fall of his shoulders still pronounced.

“I wanted to give her things I never had. A stable home. Support. I wanted to teach her ethics, respect for society-things I was never shown, things I had to find on my own. Now that’s gone. I lost the future.” He blew out a shaky breath. “What’s the point now? To make another mortgage payment? To get up for work another day, go to sleep another night?”

Dray watched him, wiping her cheeks. “I don’t know.”

They sat until Tim’s breathing returned to normal, then drove home in silence.

Waiting for them on the doorstep was the morning paper, still unread. The cover photo featured Maybeck and Denley throwing high fives outside Room 9 of the Martia Domez Hotel as two cops carried off a body bag on a stretcher. Both deputies were smiling, and Denley’s glove was smudged with blood, probably from checking Heidel’s pulse inside. The headline read: U.S. MARSHALS CELEBRATE DOWNTOWN BLOODBATH. Without a word Dray walked the paper to the curb and dumped it in the recycling bin.

In the middle of the night, Dray’s keening from the bedroom awakened Tim on the couch. He walked back to the bedroom and found the door locked. She answered his soft knock between sobs. “I just n-need…to do this alone for a while.”

He returned to the couch and sat, her sobs reaching him muffled through the walls.

To respect Dray’s need for space, Tim took to brushing his teeth and showering in the other bathroom, near the garage, entering the bedroom only to get clean clothes. On the coffee table beside the couch, he put an alarm clock and a reading lamp. Marshal Tannino had asked him to take a few days while things cooled down, so Tim tried to keep busy, working out, doing small repairs around the house, trying to limit the time each day he spent feeling sorry for himself or basking in his unrequited hatred of Kindell.

He and Dray ate at different times so as not to overlap in the kitchen, and when they passed each other, their eye contact was short and uncomfortable. Ginny’s absence loomed large in the house, a growing shadow that fell between them.

If Tim had bothered to turn on the TV or read the newspaper, he would have seen that the Heidel shooting had captured that hottest spotlight of all, the attention of the L.A. media. Highlights from the trial of Jedediah Lane-the right-wing extremist thought responsible for releasing sarin nerve gas at the regional office of the Census Bureau-occasionally bumped the shootings from the front page, but Tim’s story proved to have surprising staying power. Phone calls from the press trickled in at first, then reached a fevered pitch. Soon Tim could glean whether it was a press call based on how firmly Dray put the phone down. Tim raised the issue of getting a new number, but Dray, unwilling to concede another change no matter how small, wouldn’t have it. Mercifully, no media made the trek to their house.

Tim was to give a statement for the shooting review board the day before Kindell’s preliminary hearing. He awakened early and showered. When he entered the bedroom, Dray was sitting on the bed, her hands in her lap. They exchanged polite greetings.

Tim walked to his closet and gazed inside. His three suit jackets were center-vented so his pistol would never be exposed at his hip. All his shoes were lace-up; he’d learned the hard way about loafers his first time walking the fenders on a Protective Services detail on a muddy afternoon.

He dressed quickly, then sat on the bed opposite Dray to pull on his shoes.