Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

The detectives had the lights going hot, one of them always staying just out of Dobbins’s view, to his side, behind his back. Dobbins kept his head hung but tried to follow the detectives with his eyes, which peered nervously through the sweat-matted tangle of his bangs. His low-set ears protruded from his oddly rectangular head like opposing coffee-mug handles.

“So you like girls?” the detective asked.

“Yeah. Girls. Girls ’n’ boys.” When Dobbins spoke, his mild retardation was immediately apparent in his low register and plodding cadence.

“You like girls a lot, don’t you? Don’t you?” The detective raised a foot, placed it squarely on the small patch of metal chair exposed between Dobbins’s legs. Dobbins lowered his head more, tucking his chin into the hollow of his shoulder. The detective leaned forward, his face inches from the top of Dobbins’s head. “I asked you a question. Tell me about them, tell me about the girls. You like them? You like girls?”

“Y-y-yeah. I like girls.”

“Do you like touching them?”

Dobbins wiped his nose with the back of his hand, a rough, frustrated gesture. He muttered to himself. “Chocolate, vanilla, rocky road-”

The detective snapped his fingers inches from Dobbins’s face. “Do you like touching them?”

“I hug girls. Girls and boys.”

“Do you like touching girls?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah what?”

“I like touching girls. I…”

“You what?”

Dobbins jerked at the sharpness of the detective’s tone. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Strawberry, mocha almond fu-”

“You what, Mick? You what?”

“I, uh, uh, I sometimes pet them when they’re upset.”

“You pet them, and they get upset?”

Dobbins scratched his head above one ear, then smelled his fingers. “Yeah.”

“That what happened with Peggie Knoll? Is it?”

Dobbins cowered from the voice. “I think so. Yeah.”

After double-checking the file, Rayner paused the video. “That’s really the essential segment.”

“That’s no confession,” Tim said.

“Pretty weak,” Mitchell agreed. “I’ll grant you it wasn’t a confession, but I don’t think we need a confession here. I think the other evidence holds.”

“What other evidence?” Ananberg asked. “Seven impressionable children regurgitating implanted memories? A girl who died of an infection that was never conclusively linked to a molestation that was never proven to have occurred?”

“So let me get this straight,” Robert said. “We have seven little girls who testify individually that they’ve been molested by a retard groundskeeper, we have each of them acting out with puppets the sick shit the freak perpetrated on them, we have them each saying he molested their friend who’s now dead from a resulting infection, we have him on tape saying he likes to pet and hug little girls, and you don’t think this is an open-and-shut?”

Tim pictured Harrison outside Kindell’s, arms crossed. It’s an open-and-shut.

“No,” Tim said. “I don’t.”

Robert directed his scowl down the table. “Stork?”

The Stork’s rounded shoulders rose and fell. “I don’t really care.”

“If you’re gonna sit in this room,” Tim said, “you’d better care.”

“Fine,” the Stork said. “I think he probably did it.”

“Franklin?” Rayner asked.

Dumone shrugged. “We’re thin on physical evidence, especially with no indication of vaginal or rectal damage on any of the girls and nothing concrete linking the bladder infection and the molest.”

“Dobbins has got no criminal history,” Ananberg said. “No felonies, no misdemeanors.”

“That don’t mean shit,” Robert said. “A puke can start anytime.”

“It just means he’s never been caught for anything before.” Mitchell exhaled hard through his nose, irritated. “Sounds like you’ve made up your minds already. Why don’t we take a nonbinding preliminary vote to see if we’re just wasting our time in continuing our assessment here?”

Ananberg looked to Rayner with an arched eyebrow, and he nodded.

The vote went down four to three, not guilty.

The Stork looked typically indifferent, but Robert and Mitchell were having difficulty keeping their frustration out of their faces.

“We’re here to pick up the slack when the courts screw up,” Mitchell said. “When we fail to act, there’s no other recourse.”

“Acting is not always the right decision,” Tim said.

Robert’s eyes remained locked on the photograph of his deceased sister. “Tell that to the seven little girls who were molested and the dead girl’s parents.”

“The seven little girls who said they were molested,” Ananberg said.

“Listen, bitch-”

Dumone rocked forward in his chair. “Rob-”

“You might think you have the answers in here, with your studies and your Freudian bullshit, but you haven’t so much as set high heel on the real streets, so don’t you fucking tell me you know shit about who’s done what.”

“Robert!”

“Until you spend some time with these pieces of shit, you don’t know how they tick.” Robert jerked his head toward the TV. “That fucker just smells guilty.”

Dumone was standing now in a half crouch above his chair, hands on the table, arms elbow-locked, bearing his weight. “Believe it or not, your sense of smell isn’t the criterion for our voting. You can argue the merits, argue the cases, or you can hop a Greyhound back to Detroit and stop wasting our time.”

The room froze-Rayner’s glass halfway to his mouth, Ananberg midturn in her chair.

Dumone’s eyes burned with an uncharacteristic fury. “Do you understand me?”

Mitchell’s face was drawn. “Listen, Franklin, I don’t think-”

Dumone’s hand shot up, a crossing guard’s signal aimed in Mitchell’s direction, and Mitchell stopped cold.

Robert’s expression softened, his head ducking slightly under the heat of Dumone’s glare. “Shit, I didn’t mean it.”

“Well, don’t pull that crap in here. Do you understand me? Do you understand me?”

“Yes.” Robert raised his head but could barely meet Dumone’s eyes. “Like I said, it was nothing. I was just pissed off.”

“‘Pissed off’ has no place in our proceedings. Apologize to Ms. Ananberg.”

“Look,” Ananberg said, “I don’t think that’s really necessary.”

“I do.” Dumone kept his glare leveled at Robert.

Robert finally turned to face Ananberg. The emotion had burned itself out of his face, leaving behind an eerie calm. “I apologize.”

She laughed nervously, a single note. “Don’t worry about it.”

Silence descended over the table.

“Why don’t we take a little break before we tackle the next case?” Rayner said.

Tim stood on the half circle of Rayner’s back patio, gazing out at the elaborate back gardens. A few motion-sensor lights had kicked on when he’d stepped from the house, shining golden cylinders into the night and illuminating flurries of winged insects.

He heard the screen door rattle open and then close, and he smelled Ananberg’s perfume-light and citrusy-when she was still a few steps behind him.

“Got a light?”

Her hand hooked around his side and slid into the front pocket of his jacket. He grabbed her wrist, withdrew her hand, and turned. Their faces were inches apart. “I don’t smoke.”

She smirked. “Relax, Rackley. Cops aren’t my type.”

“That’s right. Teacher’s pet.”

She seemed genuinely pleased. “A sense of humor. Who’da thunk it?”

Her hair, fine and dark, looked as though it would be silken. Ananberg was Dray’s opposite-petite, brunette, flirtatious-and she evoked in Tim a distinct discomfort. He turned back to the dark sprawl of the gardens. Rows of box shrubs zigzagged before fading into darkness.