Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

“Justly. He’ll have had a trial-one that focuses only on his guilt, not procedure. And if we uncover evidence that an accomplice was involved, I could always elect to leak that information into the right hands and have Kindell and the accomplice prosecuted. Remember, there’s no double jeopardy, since Kindell never went to trial. It’s not about getting him killed, it’s about having Ginny’s murder addressed.”

“And where will this magical evidence come from?”

“I’ll have access to the PD and DA investigative reports. And Kindell probably shared with his PD what went down that night. Let’s just hope it’s indicated somewhere in the notes.”

“Why not go to the PD directly?”

“There’s no way a PD would betray confidentiality to me. But Rayner’s got the inside line on that file. And that file might get us closer to the accomplice.”

“It sure as hell isn’t the straightest distance between two points.”

“We never had the option to take the straightest distance. Not judiciously.”

“Well, I’ve been poking around the case a bit already. Peeks took the anonymous call the night of Ginny’s death-he was the deputy working the desk. And he said the caller sounded highly agitated, really upset. It was his gut that it wasn’t an accomplice or someone who could be in on it. Just a hunch, but Peeks is pretty buttoned-down.”

“Any description of the voice?”

“Nothing helpful. You know, male adult. No accent or lisp or anything. Might’ve just been what it was.”

“Might’ve been a good performance.” Not until he felt the wave of disillusionment did he realize how much he’d been hanging on his accomplice theory. “Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe I misinterpreted. Maybe it was just Kindell.”

Dray took a deep breath and held it before exhaling. “I’ve been debating having a little chat with Kindell.”

“Come on, Dray. The PD would have advised him strenuously not to say a word about the case-a new confession could open him up again.”

“Maybe I could get him to talk.”

“What, are you gonna beat it out of him?” He was all reason and circumspection right now, but the thought had occurred to him with alarming frequency.

“I wish.” She grimaced. “No. Of course not.”

“All talking to Kindell will do is alert his accomplice-if there is one-that we’re looking. And then the accomplice will know we’re coming, and he’ll cover his tracks or disappear. And you’ll wind up with a restraining order slapped on you. What we have going for us is the fact that no one knows we’re exploring this.”

“You’re right. Plus, if you idiots end up taking him out, I’d be a key suspect if word leaked I’d visited him.” She laced her fingers and reverse-cracked her knuckles. “I ordered the preliminary-hearing transcripts from Kindell’s previous cases.”

“How did you do that?”

“As a citizen. They’re public record. Evidently the stenographer doesn’t type up the actual trial transcripts unless the case gets appealed, but the prelim hearings should be enough for me to get a handle on the specifics. I debated contacting the LAPD detectives who worked the cases, seeing what they had in their logs, but there’s no way they’d talk to me. Not after interfacing with Gutierez and Harrison, and not given who I am.”

“How long will it take to get the transcripts?”

“Tomorrow. Court clerks don’t quite snap to when it’s not an official request.”

“It looks like we’re both being unofficial.”

“You can’t put this in a category with what you’re considering. Don’t even try.”

“Everything’s imperfect, Dray. But maybe the Commission can be closer to justice than what we’ve gotten. Maybe it can be that voice.”

“You really want to rededicate your life to this? To hate?”

“I’m not doing it because of hate. The opposite, actually.”

She drummed her fingers on the table, hard. Her hands were small and feminine; her delicate nails recalled the girl she had been before she put on a sheath of muscle and enrolled in the academy. Tim had met her only after she’d become a deputy. At his first Thanksgiving with her family, when her older brothers had proudly and with some silent element of warning shown him Dray’s high-school yearbook, he’d hardly recognized the pixie face in the photos. She was now bigger and more powerful, and she’d taken on a toughened sexuality. The first time they’d gone to the range together, Tim had watched her from the shade of the overhang, her hips cocked, holster high-riding her hip, a squint drawing her cheek high and tight beneath a water-blue eye, and he’d thought for not the first time that she’d been spun from the daydream of some sugar-buzzed, comic-book-gorged adolescent.

Her lips were pursed, perfectly shaped, and chapped. Gazing at them, he realized that he wanted them not to be dry from crying, and in that he felt the depth of his continued love for her. He had told her about Rayner’s proposal because she was the second leg on which he moved forward through life, and that reality, that trust that had been forged and built upon through eight solid years of their marriage, held true regardless of circumstance or even estrangement.

“Come here,” he said.

She stood and trudged around the table as he scooted his chair back. She sat in his lap, and he leaned forward, pressing his face to the bare fan of skin revealed beneath the back collar of her stretched T-shirt. Warmth.

“I know you feel like you’ve lost so much so quickly. I do, too.” Dray shifted in his lap so she was looking down at him across the bulge of her shoulder. “But there’s more we can lose.”

Tim ached with an uncharacteristic fatigue. “I’m tired of sleeping on the couch, Dray. We’re not helping each other here.”

She stood abruptly and walked a half turn around the kitchen. “I know. I’ve got all this…all this anger. When I pass the bathroom, I see her on her stool brushing her teeth, and in the backyard I see her trying to get that damn kite untangled, the yellow one we got her in Laguna, and every time I get that ache, I’ve got a need to blame someone. And I don’t want us to keep on tearing at each other in the middle of all this. Or worse, I don’t want us to go numb around each other.”

Tim rose and rubbed his hands. A childish urge gripped him-to scream, to yell, to sob and plead. Instead he said, “I understand.” His throat was closing, distorting his voice. “We shouldn’t stay on top of each other if we’re winding up hurting each other in small, spiteful ways.”

“But a part of me feels like we should. I mean, maybe that’s something we need to do. Hate each other. Slug it out. Fight and scream until the blame’s gone and there’s just…us.”

He could see in her eyes that she knew otherwise, that she was just trying to convince herself. “I can’t fight that kind of fight,” he said. “Not against you.”

“I can’t either.” She shook her head, roughly, like a child. The chair creaked when she sat again. She dipped her head and let out a sigh. “If you’re gonna do this thing, with those men, you’re gonna need a safe house. Because I’m not getting implicated in it.”

“I know.”

“That crew sounds pretty geared up on surveillance.”

“They are. And I don’t want their eyes on you or this house. I’m gonna be in it pretty good with the criminal element, too, and I won’t put you one inch at risk if one of my targets catches wind of me coming.”

She sighed, the heel of her hand sliding from cheek to forehead. “So where’s that leave us?”

They faced each other across the kitchen, both of them knowing the answer. Tim finally mustered the courage to say it. “We need some time off anyway.”