Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

“Absolutely nothing. But this is a bullshit perception game, as you’ll see if you’re ever so unfortunate as to reach my level. And the bullshit perception, because of that goddamn photograph, is that we’re a bunch of bloodthirsty, gung ho loose cannons. If we indicate the shooter is acquiring a heightened sensitivity to anger issues, we cut some of that perception, and the paper pushers at the Puzzle Palace can go back to their normal job, which is doing exactly nothing. In the meantime I get the pleasure of dealing with this on all fronts and of having to ask one of my best deputies-unjustly-to take some shit for us.” His grimace showed more regret than disgust. “The system at work.”

Tim stood up. “It was a good shooting.”

“Good shootings are relative. I know that what they’re asking is difficult, Rackley, but you have your whole career ahead of you.”

“Maybe not with the U.S. Marshals Service.” Tim unhooked his leather badge clip from his belt and laid it on Tannino’s desk.

In a rare display of anger, Tannino grabbed it and hurled it at Tim. Tim trapped it against his chest. “I am not going to accept your resignation, goddamnit. Not considering what you’ve been dealing with. Take some more time-administrative leave-hell, a few weeks. Don’t make a decision now, in these circumstances.” His face looked tired and old, and Tim realized how much it must have pained him to take the kind of company line Tannino himself had always despised and thought cowardly.

“I’m not going to do it.”

Tannino spoke softly now. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to. Everything else I’ll protect you on. Everything.”

“It was a good shooting.”

This time Tannino met his eyes. “I know.”

Respectfully, Tim laid his badge back on Tannino’s desk, then walked out.

ON TIM’S WAY home a white Camry emerged from the crush of midday traffic to inch alongside him. A flurry of movement drew his attention to the car’s backseat. A young girl wearing a yellow dress was pressing her face to the window in an attempt to horrify nearby drivers.

Tim watched her. She mashed her nose against the glass, pigging it upward. She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. She feigned picking her nose. Her mother looked over at Tim apologetically.

The car stayed more or less at his side, lurching and braking in time with him. He tried to focus on the road, but the girl’s movement and bright dress pulled his gaze back to her. Realizing she had Tim’s eye again, the girl fisted her straight blond hair out in Pippi Longstocking pigtails. She laughed openmouthed and unencumbered, as only children can. As she looked for a reaction in Tim’s face, her expression suddenly changed. Her smile faded, then vanished, replaced with uneasiness. She slid down in her seat, disappearing from Tim’s view, save for the top of her head.

By the time he got home, Tim’s shirt was spotted through with sweat. He entered the house and slung his jacket over one of the kitchen chairs. Dray was sitting on his couch, watching the news. She turned, regarded him, and said, “Oh, no.”

Tim walked over and sat beside her. Not surprisingly, the chirpy KCOM news anchor, Melissa Yueh, had taken up the shooting. A graphic of a gun appeared in the upper right corner of the screen, in front of a shadowy outline of two hands high-fiving. Tim’s own personal logo. Beneath it stretched SLAUGHTER AT THE MARTIA DOMEZ HOTEL in block letters.

“Did it go as bad as you look?” Dray asked.

“They want to let drop I’ve enrolled in an anger-management course, then desk-jockey me till the storm blows over. It lets them cover their asses without admitting to liability or guilt.”

Dray reached over and laid a hand on his cheek. It felt warm and immensely comforting. “Screw them.”

“I resigned.”

“Of course. I’m glad.”

An attractive African-American reporter came on-screen, soliciting the takes of passersby on the shooting. An obese man with a skimpy goatee and a backward Dodgers cap-the archetypal Man on the Street for the market and time slot-offered his opinion gladly. “The way I see it, a guy’s running from the cops like that, he deserves to get shot. Drug dealers, cop killers, man, I say we execute ’em before the judge’s gavel drops. That U.S. Marshal guy, I hope he gets away with it.”

Great, Tim thought.

Next a woman with vivid green eyeliner added, “Our children are safer with drug dealers like that out of the picture. I don’t care how the police get them off the streets, as long as they’re gone.”

“Look at those people,” Tim said. “No idea what issues are in play.” The bitterness in his voice surprised him.

Dray looked over at him. “At least you have a few allies.”

“Allies like that are more dangerous than enemies.”

“They may not be the most well spoken bunch, but they seem to have a grasp of justice.”

“And no grasp of the law.”

She shifted on the couch, arms weaving together across her chest. “You think the law adds up to justice, but it doesn’t. There are cracks and fissures, loopholes and spin. There’s PR, perception, personal favors, and cluster fucks. Look at what just happened to you. Was that justice? Hell no. That was a big, self-cleaning machine clanking forward, squashing you beneath it. Look at how the investigation went into Ginny’s death. We’ll never know what really happened, who was involved.”

“So you’re mad at me because…?”

“Because my daughter got killed-”

“Our daughter.”

“-and you were in a position-a unique position-to see justice served. And instead, you served the law.”

“Justice will be served. Tomorrow.”

“What if he’s not executed?”

“Then he’ll rot in prison the rest of his life.”

Dray’s face was flushed, frighteningly intense. She ground a fist into an open hand. “I want him dead.”

“And I want him to talk. To cough out what really happened when he’s on the stand. So we can know if there’s someone else out there, someone else responsible for our daughter’s death.”

“If you had just shot him, instead of asking him, then we’d never have been burdened with this mystery. This unknown. It’s awful. It’s awful not knowing and thinking someone out there, someone who we could know or could see on the street and not ever guess…”

Her face creased, and Tim moved over to embrace her, but she pushed him away. She rose to head back to the bedroom but paused in the doorway. Her voice was cracked and husky. “I’m sorry about your job.”

He nodded.

“And I know it was more than a job.”

•The early-morning rain had vanished, leaving behind a moist, stifling heat that permeated the courthouse. Tim’s head throbbed with exhaustion and stress. He’d spent the night fidgeting on the couch in a kind of unsleep, sweating off his frustration about the shooting review board and obsessing about the upcoming hearing. He pictured the little girl in the Camry, her arms pale and thin. Ginny’s face at the morgue when he’d drawn back the sheet. The wisp of hair trapped in the corner of her mouth. Her fingernail they’d found at the crime scene, loosed in some desperate act of clawing or crawling.

His own mind had become hostile, a treacherous terrain. There was less and less of it he could inhabit peacefully.

Dray sat beside him, rigidly forward, her arms crossed on the bench back in front of them. They’d arrived early and sat in the last row, awash in an unspoken dread. When Kindell had been led in by a young sheriff’s deputy and the shoddily dressed public defender, he’d looked neither as menacing nor repugnant as Tim had remembered. This disappointed him. Like most Americans, he preferred to see evil embodied unequivocally.