Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

And he was struck also with the alarming needlessness of it all.

He rubbed his hands, studied his three pages of notes, and formulated a strategy. Bowrick had skillfully arranged his own relocation to duck threats and possible attempts on his life; he was going to be hidden smart and well. Normally Tim’s tracking resources were virtually unlimited. Each government agency, from the Treasury Department, to Immigration, to Customs, controlled an acronymous computer database or eight-EPIC, TECS, NADDIS, MIRAC, OASIS, NCIC-but they were all inaccessible now. To obtain information about Bowrick, Tim couldn’t call his rabbis at other agencies, his CIs, or his contacts inside companies. He couldn’t talk to anyone in person, nose around any locations, or leverage any snitches. He’d have to street-smart his way through, like a criminal, which he supposed he was.

He started with Bowrick’s last-known, reached the apartment manager, and pretended to be a bill collector. A long shot, but Tim knew to start with the ground-ballers. No forwarding information. But he did get the date Bowrick moved out: January 15.

Posing as a postal inspector investigating mail fraud, he called the gas, power, water, and cable companies and presented a gruff voice and a false badge number. He was amazed-as always-at how easy it was to elicit confidential information. Unfortunately, all Bowrick’s listings were for addresses prior to January 15; he had been smart and registered everything under his new name, whatever that was. Telephone was usually the most current listing, but the address Pac Bell had was for his last-known, and the number had long been disconnected.

Giving Ted Maybeck’s name and badge number-he figured Ted owed him one for throwing the infamous high five-Tim tried to talk his way through the DMV bureaucracy but got nowhere. DMV staff was either incompetent or tough; those displaying the latter trait were also well schooled on privacy policies. According to the case binder, Bowrick had no car of his own-his mother used to drop him off at school, which, Tim recalled, had made him the object of derision among other seniors. In fact, the majority of the student character testimonies had been scathing-all except for that of one girl, an Erika Heinrich, who’d pointed out the vicious bullying that Bowrick and the now-deceased gunmen had received at the hands of the basketball team.

Dead ends all around. Tim had fallen into the pursuit as if he were working up a warrant, and the sudden halt brought him quickly to frustration. He slid open the window and leaned into the slight breeze. He hadn’t realized how stifling the room had grown with the rising sun and his own body heat. He closed his eyes and thought about the police report, waiting for a piece of information to rise out of place and trip his thoughts. None did.

Tim thought of the slump of Bowrick’s shoulders, his caged-rat unappeal. He tried to imagine having a child capable of such destruction. Could even a parent love someone so cruel and odious? Could anyone?

Tim sensed a shift in instinct, a puzzle piece sliding and dropping into place. The jagged half-coin pendant that he’d seen in Bowrick’s booking photo-a lover’s necklace. Each party wore one piece of the same coin. Erika Heinrich’s character testimony suddenly stood out all the more. The one sympathetic account. The girlfriend.

Tim logged on and entered Erika Heinrich into Yahoo People Search and got two hits-a seventeen-year-old in Los Angeles and a seventy-two-year-old in Fredericksburg, Texas. The grandmother? One of Tim’s former saw gunners in the Rangers was from Fredericksburg, so Tim knew it was a predominantly German community-maybe that explained the k in the first name.

He located the more eligible Erika’s phone number on the screen and dialed. When a woman answered, he tried his best salesman voice, and it came out surprisingly well. “Is this Erika Heinrich?”

A voice edged with irritation. “This is her mother, Kirsten. Why, what’d she do now?”

“I’m sorry, we must have the names crossed in our database. I’m calling from Contact Telecommunications to let you know you’re eligible for-”

“Not interested.”

“Well, if you have family out of state, our rates are extremely competitive. Two cents a minute state-to-state, and just ten cents a minute to Europe.”

A weighted pause, broken only by mouth breathing. “Two cents a minute long-distance? What’s the catch?”

“No catch. Can I ask who you’re with now?”

“MCI.”

“And for local?”

“Verizon.”

“Well, we beat both MCI and Verizon by nearly four hundred percent. There’s simply a once-a-month twenty-dollar charge for-”

“Twenty-dollar charge? See, I knew you guys were all full of shit.” She hung up.

Tim had no phone book in his apartment, Joshua was out, and the corner telephone booth’s had been ripped from its cord. Two blocks down he located another booth, this one with the book intact. He flipped through and found the nearest Kinko’s, then picked another a bit farther away from his apartment. He called and got their number for incoming faxes, a service they provided for people without fax machines willing to abide the buck-a-page fee.

Back upstairs he called MCI and got a male customer-service rep. He hung up and called back twice before he got a woman. He softened his voice, trying his best approximation of pitiful. “Yes, hello. I’m hoping you can help me with a…with a somewhat embarrassing personal problem. I’ve just…um, been separated from my wife, our divorce papers went through last week, and, uh…”

“I’m sorry, sir. How exactly can I help you?”

“Well, I’m still responsible for paying my wife’s…” He let out a sad little laugh. “My ex-wife’s bills. Her lawyer just sent along her telephone bill, and it seemed…well, it seemed unreasonably high. I don’t mean to imply my wife is dishonest-she’s not-but I’m worried her lawyer is monkeying around a bit with the numbers. You know how lawyers can be.”

“I was divorced once myself. You don’t have to tell me.”

“It is…it is hard, isn’t it?”

“Well, sir, it’ll get easier.”

“That’s what people keep telling me. Anyway, I was wondering if you could fax me the telephone bill for review, just so I can make sure these numbers are accurate. If they are, of course, I’ll happily reimburse my wife, it’s just that-”

“If some lawyer’s giving you the markup, you want to know.”

“Precisely. My wife’s name is Kirsten Heinrich, and she’s at 310-656-8464.”

The sound of fingers flying across a computer keyboard. “Well, as much as I’d like to help you, I’m not permitted to turn over her records to unauthorized…” More typing. “Sir, this account is listed under Stefan Heinrich.”

“Yes, of course. That’s me.”

“Well, technically it’s still your account, so until she changes the name, I am authorized to grant you access to billing information. Which fax number would you like me to send your last statement to?”

“It’s actually my local Kinko’s-I lost my fax machine along with my new Saturn-and the number is 310-629-1477. If you could send the last several bills, that would be most helpful.”

With Verizon, Tim claimed to be Stefan Heinrich from the outset and asked for the last three months of bills to be faxed over so he could review what he believed were some false charges.

He ate lunch alone at Fatburger, giving the faxes an hour to trickle through the various bureaucratic chains of command, then drove over to Kinko’s and picked up the stack. Back at his apartment, he hunched over the pages with a yellow highlighter, looking for triggers, his tongue poking his cheek out in a point.