Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

“We aim to please.”

“Funny, I never would have thought street justice was your style.”

“It isn’t. But my old style was found wanting. At least to some people.”

“How’s the new one fit?”

“A little tight in the shoulders, but I’m hoping I’ll adjust.”

“You tailor the suit to the man, not vice versa.”

He reached over and patted her down casually with one hand. She wasn’t hiding a weapon beneath her bulky sweatshirt. “What are you doing here?”

“Just keeping an eye on things. I like to have the creep under my thumb.”

The dim flashlight bobbed inside the garage, then a fierce rattling broke the silence.

“What the hell’s going on in there?” Tim said.

“I rerouted his mail to a drop box. I got his credit-card numbers, his telephone, gas, and power account numbers, then I canceled everything. It’s petty and small, but it makes me feel better.”

Tim extended a fist to her, which Dray matched. They knocked knuckles, a modified high five they used only on the range or the softball diamond. Dray leaned into him slightly, touching at the hip, the elbow. He pressed his lips to the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair. They sat for a bit in silence.

“You get anything new on the case?”

She shook her head. “I’ve pretty much run out the leads. I wanted to see if you’d gotten your hands on that case binder.”

“No, it’ll be a while, unfortunately.”

“We’ll have to wait, I guess.” Her face crinkled. “It’s wrecking me. The waiting. Bracing to find out something even more awful, or maybe to not find out anything at all.”

They stared at Kindell’s shack for a few moments. Tim bit his lip. “I hear Mac’s been hanging out at the house.”

The gap opened up again between their hips. Her mouth tensed. “The house was empty and haunted.”

“You trying to hurt me, Dray?”

“Is it working?”

“Yes. You didn’t answer my question.”

“Believe it or not, everything I’m going through isn’t about you. Mac is staying on the couch because I’m scared of the dark right now, like a little girl. I know, pathetic, but you’re certainly not around to help me with the problem.”

“Mac has a thing for you, Dray. Always has.”

“Well, I don’t have a thing for Mac. He’s staying as a friend. No more.” She reached over and took Tim’s hand, keeping her left hand wedged in her pocket.

A sudden dread gut-checked him. “Take your hand out of your pocket, Dray.”

Unwillingly, she withdrew her hand. Her ring finger was bare. A deep-lit pain took hold in Tim’s chest and spread out and out, brushfire-fast. He turned away, looking at the house of the man who had consumed his daughter, but Kindell had quieted within and could provide no distraction.

Dray’s lips quivered ever so slightly, the pre-quake warnings of anger, of self-loathing, of sorrow-a triple cocktail with which Tim had recently grown familiar. Her face, gloomy and frozen in a halfcringe, matched nothing he’d ever known of her. She knuckle-scratched the top of her nose, a gesture she made when distressed or deeply sad. “I feel like you don’t want me anymore, Timothy.”

“That’s not true.” His voice rose a bit with the inflection, but it was just him and Dray and a deaf man at thirty yards.

“It’s too hard for me to wear it right now. I’ve looked at that ring every day of our marriage, first thing when I wake up, and it always made me grateful.” Dray seemed small and vulnerable sitting in the darkness, her arms hooked across her knees the way Ginny used to hold hers when she watched TV. “Right now it just reminds me of your absence.”

He plucked up a weed by its roots and tossed it. Its mud-caked cluster of roots hit the foundation a few feet away with a satisfying splat. “I have to see this through. The Commission. Get my hands on that case binder. I can’t do that if I’m living at home, in plain sight. It puts me at too much risk. It puts you at too much risk. I need to protect Ginny at least in her death, so the men who did this…” When he raised his hand to wipe his nose, he saw it was trembling, so he lowered it into his lap and squeezed it, squeezed it hard.

“Timothy.” Her tone approached pleading, though for what, he did not know. She started to reach for him but withdrew her hand.

It took another minute or so before he could trust his voice again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I haven’t said her name in a while.”

“It’s okay to cry, you know.”

Tim bobbed his head a few times, an intimation of a nod. “Right.”

Dray stood up, dusted off her hands. “I don’t want to not see you right now,” she said. “I don’t want to not have you in my life. But I understand why you have to do this for you, for us. I guess we just wait and hold on and hope what we are is strong enough.”

He couldn’t take his eyes off her hand, her bare finger. The hole that had opened up in his chest continued to dilate, claiming his lungs, his voice.

Something fluttered nearby, settled, and began to chirp.

Dray turned and started the long walk back to the road.

•Halfway home, Tim pulled over and sat, hands on the wheel, breathing hard. Though it was February-cold, he had the AC on high. He thought of his waiting apartment, its barrenness and bleak functionality, and realized how ill equipped eight years of marriage had left him for being alone. He pulled Ananberg’s address out of his pocket and studied the edge-ripped slip of paper.

Her apartment building in Westwood was security-intensive- controlled access, double-locked glass front door, security cam in the brief stretch of tile that passed for a lobby. Turning from the camera, Tim ran a finger down the directory beside the call box outside and was not surprised to see the numbers listed by last name, not apartment number. He punched the button and waited as the metal speaker harshly projected a buzz.

Ananberg clicked on, sounding wide awake though it was nearly four in the morning. “Yeah?”

“It’s Tim. Tim Rackley.”

“First and last name. How wonderfully unassuming. I’m in 303.”

A loud buzzing issued from the heavy glass door, which Tim yanked open. He took the elevator up. The third-floor carpet was clean but slightly worn. When he knocked lightly on Ananberg’s door, he heard soft footsteps, then the sounds of two locks and a chain being undone. The door swung open. Ananberg wore a thigh-length Georgetown T-shirt. One hand held a thick-necked Rhodesian Ridgeback at bay by the collar, the other gripped a little Ruger, the muzzle of which she was using to scratch her leg.

“You should check the peephole. Even if you just buzzed someone up.”

“I did.”

He knew she was lying, as he hadn’t seen the darkness of her eye through the lens. The dog moved forward and nuzzled his nose moistly into Tim’s cupped hand.

“Impressive. Boston usually hates people.”

“Boston?”

“I inherited him from an ex-boyfriend. Harvard asshole.”

She turned and headed back into the oversize studio. Past the kitchenette, diminutive dining table, and TV-facing couch, two bureaus cordoned off the sleeping area, which was no more than a full-size bed wedged beneath the room’s single large window. She snapped her fingers, and Boston trotted to a fluffy disk of a dog bed and lay down. The pistol she slid into the right bureau’s top drawer.

She stepped closer to the bed, leaving them a few steps’ space. They eyed each other across a frayed throw rug. Crossing her arms, she lifted her T-shirt off over her head. Her body, thin and wonderfully shaped, was unexploited by weights or vigorous training. Modest, firm breasts rose above the in-curve of her stomach. Her gaze held the sapient matter-of-factness of examining nurses and prostitutes. It was frank and distressingly genuine, a sad, doleful ritual in a sad, doleful apartment.