Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

“We all own our decisions. Don’t put that on yourself.”

“Of course. I’m being condescending. Maybe that’s what happens when you’re knocking on death’s door.” He coughed hard, and his face crumpled in pain.

“Want me to call a nurse?”

Dumone searched Tim’s face. “Leave me a bullet.”

Tim opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

“There’s nothing more for me to do here but waste away. And we both know that doesn’t suit me well.”

The blip of the monitor. The greenish glow across the pillow. Cold coming off the floor tiles.

Tim reached down and removed his. 357 from his hip holster. He released the wheel, slid out a single bullet, and deposited it in Dumone’s waiting hand.

“Thank you for not making me do the bullshit.”

“We’ve never done the bullshit.”

“Set this right, Tim. Get your answers.”

Tim nodded and rose. At the door he turned. Dumone lay quietly, watching him. He raised his right hand and tapped his forehead in a salute.

Before leaving, Tim returned the gesture.

•Tim drove into Westwood, winding past the row of dilapidated mansions with chipped fraternity signs and shirtless youths spraying party refuse from porches. It took him the better part of an hour to find a parking spot, even within one of the many campus lots. A quarter got you about seven minutes on the meter, a ploy worthy of his father. A change machine was graciously provided on every floor. Before he left, he’d deposited about nine bucks into the unit.

The UCLA campus was alive with students of all shapes, sizes, and ethnic backgrounds. A gargantuan woman in a muumuu and red pigtails was making out with a slight Persian man about half her size beneath a tattered poster advertising the Korean Independence Movement Day bash.

Diversity in action.

Tim entered the John Wooden Center and called information. An adenoidal voice informed him that Dr. Rayner’s office was on the first floor of Franz Hall.

A plaque announcing WILLIAM RAYNER was adhered to the last door on the corridor-the other professors, Tim noted, had respectfully availed themselves of a few lowercase letters. The translucent window panel was dark; no shadows moved in the adjunct professor’s office. A glimpse at the seam of light at the jamb showed that the last secretary out hadn’t bothered to key the dead bolt.

Tim pretended to peruse the grade postings, which were affixed beneath a photocopied Vanity Fair profile of the dearly deceased, until the hall was clear. Tom Altman, man of many resources, accommodatingly supplied a laminated driver’s license that made the shitty, state-issued latch bolt play hide-and-seek.

Tim closed and locked the door behind him, passed an assistant’s desk, and entered the larger room in the back. Sturdy oak desk, metal filing cabinets, shelves of books-most of them Rayner’s own. A spin through the file drawers revealed them to hold mainly classroom materials. The computer’s screen saver, a photograph of Rayner’s boy, bounced repetitively around the screen like a physics-defying missile in an Atari game.

Tim nearly broke a sterling letter opener prying the lock from the desk’s enormous bottom drawer. A tall stack of canary yellow files filled it to the rim. Tim raised the first and thickest file, and his own name stared back at him from the tab.

His pulse quickening, he opened it.

A stack of surveillance photographs. Tim heading into the Federal Building. Tim and Dray at a window table at Chuy’s, each gripping an oversize burrito. Tim’s father at the Santa Anita track, leaning over the home-stretch rail, a spray of betting slips protruding from a tense fist. Tim walking Ginny into Warren Elementary on her first day, the WELCOME, YOUNG SCHOLARS sign flapping overhead. In September. Six months ago.

As he flipped through them, a sense of outrage burst through the numbness, heating his face, pinching him at the temples. Robert and Mitchell had stalked him for months, with notepads and cameras, capturing him and his intimates at work, at school, brushing their teeth.

The next ten files also bore his name. He scattered them across the desktop, turning pages. Medical records. Elementary-school grades. Drug testing going back to age nineteen. Bullet-riddled Transtar targets. Endless assessment tests from each stage of his career-army enlistment, Rangers qualifying, the Marshals Service application.

Snippets jumped out at him from the paperwork montage:

20/20 vision.

No Axis 1 or Axis II disorders.

1.5-mile run qual time-9:23.

Bench press-310 lbs. for two reps.

Disturbed sleep post Croatia tour, some reported anxiety.

Toilet trained at 2 years, 1 month.

Seclusive, but high level of sociability.

Assertive, dominant, takes the initiative, confident.

Childhood family atmosphere-unstable and unpredictable.

Deserted by mother, age 3.

Facial expressions indicate control and reserve, but not absence of feelings.

No history of drug or alcohol abuse.

Unimpaired impulse control, unimpaired decision making.

Antisocial practices-extremely low.

No adolescent conduct problems. Despite father.

His eyes caught on a thick sheaf of questions titled “The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.” He vaguely recalled filling out the five-hundred-question assessment during one application process or another.

Item 9. If I were an artist, I would like to draw flowers. The “false” bubble darkened by a #2 pencil.

Item 49. It would be better if almost all laws were thrown away. False.

Item 56. I sometimes wish I could be as happy as others seem to be. True.

Item 146. I cry easily. False.

And then the sheets of interpretation, written in Rayner’s hand:

0 for 15 on the Lie Scale-extremely reliable reporter.

F Scale moderate-consistent and reliable, but reflects aptitude for nonconventional thinking.

High score on Responsibility Scale indicates subject possesses high standards, a strong sense of fairness and justice, self-confidence, dependability, trustworthiness.

Strong (even rigid) adherence to values.

Good little soldier-a phrase Robert had used with Tim during the intel dump outside the KCOM building.

Low depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviates.

Low hypomania.

Conscientious to the point of being moralistic, but flexible, creative, independent thinker.

Healthy balance of acquiescing and disagreeing response styles.

Paranoia-moderate.

Father wound leaves subject susceptible to intense bonding with father figure. Important Dumone remains unpolluted, must have pure interaction with subject.

Tim looked at the spread before him on the desk, a montage of the most intimate pieces of his life, a construction of the most private parts of his brain. His father’s rap sheet. I sometimes tease animals. His reason for military discharge underlined in red-to spend more time with family.

Rayner-Mussolini of the Information Age-had managed to compile a remarkable range of confidential information, enough to lay Tim as bare as a split frog on a dissecting slab. A hot burst of intense, little-boy shame faded back into anger and a sense of deep and profound violation.

Tim thought about Robert’s immense skill in bringing back information about the floor-to-roof inner workings of the KCOM building. Robert and Mitchell had applied that skill to Tim, bringing Rayner back every inch of him.

With a trembling hand, Tim lifted the last file from the drawer. It contained a sheaf of paper listing literally hundreds of other potential recruitment candidates. A few names Tim recognized from the Company, the feds, the SEALs. On the twentieth page, he ran across a spate of his former colleagues.

George “Bear” Jowalski-too old, slowing down operationally.