Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

“You’re right.”

“You swore you’d never be like him,” Bear said. “Your father. If there was one fucking thing I knew in the world, it was that people could rise above the shit they were brewed in. I knew that because of you. I thought I knew that because of you.”

Tim’s face numbed, and he felt a sheen of moisture gloss his eyes. “I wanted to take something back. After Ginny. Do you understand that?”

“I don’t agree with it. I do not fucking agree.”

“That’s not what I asked. Do you understand?”

Bear swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple jerking up, then down like a piston. “Of course I understand. But that has nothing to do with what you’ve done. I also wanted to take something back after Ginny. I also loved her. She was my niece, practically. I wanted to shoot a trucker who was manhandling a woman in a bar where I stopped that night, the night she was killed. Guess what? I didn’t. Just that simple. I fucking didn’t. There is no right way to take something back like that. You just stare at it and you learn it’s empty, you’re empty, and that’s the hard fucking painful fact of the goddamn catharsis-which is a word I’m sure you thought I didn’t know-that you don’t get anything back. Life ain’t a Spiegel catalog. You just go on with that part of you missing, period, the end.”

Tim started to say something, but Bear raised one hand violently. “I’m just getting started. If every father killed three men to get at who killed his daughter, where would we be? These killings of yours. Lane. Debuffier. Were they unlawful? Yes. Was there malice? Yes. Willful? Yes. Deliberate and with premeditation? Yes, yes. You’re eye-to-eye with two murder ones. And don’t think I’m not gonna bring you in. Right here, right now.” His left cheek twitched up in a squint, physical discomfort’s overture. He belched quietly into a raised fist.

“You can bring me in, Bear. Just not now.”

“You don’t think?”

“I need to finish the job. The Mastersons are out of control, on a rampage. I’m uniquely positioned to deal with them-I know their MO, their habits and patterns. You need me in the field, feeding you information. I can cooperate-through you-with the service, with LAPD. Let’s deal. Once we reign in this…”-Tim took a moment to search for the phrase-“lethal force I’ve helped to unleash, I’ll come back and face the music.”

“Oh, sure. After all this, Tannino’ll happily turn you out on the streets to keep up with your vigilante activities. You’re a civilian now, Rack. What are you thinking?”

Though Tim already knew what Bear’s answer would be, he kept laying groundwork for later. “My cooperation, intel, ass on the line, and eventual surrender. That’s what you get. I don’t care if Tannino wants the deal-you don’t have to work it out now. It’s what I’m offering. It’s the basis on which I’ll be working.”

“No. Why should the marshal trust you now? Why should I trust you now?”

“I’m finding my way back-to society and to what’s right. You can trust that.”

“Forgive me for needing more.”

“We’ve cut deals with mutts before.”

“Can you imagine the shit Tannino would catch if things get worse and it comes out we had you and turned you loose? Or that we didn’t come after you full steam? No way. No deal.” Bear leaned forward, his right arm across his stomach, clutching. The cramping was just getting started. “Give me your weapon.”

“I can’t do that.”

“We’ll have a showdown. Do you want that here, at Kose’s place?”

“I’ll come in. You’ll get me. You have my word. But I’m finishing this thing.”

His arm tightening across his stomach, Bear lurched forward, his elbow thunking the table, knocking over his glass. He studied the spreading stain for a moment, then looked up at Tim, realization giving way to fury. He cross-drew with his left hand, a single, economical gesture that ended with the barrel pointed at Tim’s head. “You piece of shit,” Bear gasped. “You fucking mutt.”

A woman shrieked across the room, but surprisingly, nobody moved. Tim scooted back in his chair and dropped his napkin on the floor. “It’s just hydrogen peroxide. Don’t worry-it’ll break down into oxygen gas and water in your stomach.”

Bear’s face was awash with sweat, his voice a coarse groan squeezed through the tightening vise of his gut. His torso was spilled across the table, but his face and the muzzle were up and pointed. “So help me God, I’ll shoot you before I let you leave here.”

Tim kept his eyes on Bear’s. He rose slowly, Bear’s front sight inching up to track him, then turned and walked out of the restaurant.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON RUSH HOUR in L.A.-a preview of purgatory. Tim found himself mired in it en route to USC. He’d stopped by the house of Erika Heinrich, Bowrick’s girlfriend, and peeked through the windows but found no one home. The only girl’s room was on the west corner of the house, facing the street.

It was a well-baited trap-Bowrick would show eventually.

The more Tim lurched and braked along the 110, the more he missed his Beemer.

His Nokia vibrated, and, grateful for the reminder, he pulled it from his pocket and threw it out the window. It hit the concrete and turned to a drove of bouncing pieces.

Tim had given Bear the Nokia number, and he wasn’t about to take any chances on a cell-phone trace. From here on out he’d use the Nextel, since the number was known only by the Stork, who was likely hiding under his bed about now, and Robert and Mitchell, who, as SWAT guys out of Detroit, would have no clue about cutting-edge electronic-surveillance technology.

Tim had turned over Robert’s and Mitchell’s Nextel numbers to Bear in case the service wanted to put the ESU geeks on them, but even if they elected to pursue this route, it would take them days to set up.

Tim called Robert and Mitchell again, but they’d both-either wisely or luckily-turned off their phones; voice mail picked up right away. Tim strained to come up with a timely and low-rent version of phone trap-and-trace that he could take advantage of despite his limited access to resources. To his advantage was his latitude of movement outside the law-he could move quicker and dirtier than Bear and the deputy marshals-but he had trouble seeing how he could get it done without a direct line to network technology and a team to move block to block with handheld tracking units. He decided to keep trying Robert’s and Mitchell’s phones to ascertain whether they were still being used; if they weren’t turned on, they couldn’t be tracked.

From what Tim had seen, Mitchell kept his phone off out of habit; Robert was the best bet for telephone contact. It occurred to Tim that the Mastersons might be keeping their cell phones turned off because they were tinkering with electronic explosives, preparing them. It also struck him that wherever they lived, it was far enough away from Rayner’s Hancock Park house that they’d needed a phone book to find a liquor store in the area.

By the time Tim exited the freeway and made his way to Memorial Coliseum, it was close to 6:45, and he was concerned he might have missed Delroy Jones’s practice altogether. He entered the embrace of the stadium, momentarily disoriented by the thickness of dusk against the immense stretches of drab concrete. He spotted a single form in a red-and-yellow nylon sweatsuit, pounding its way up the great steep columns of stadium steps. Up one column, across the top, down the next. Then the same thing all over again.

Tim retrieved a Gatorade bottle from his war bag, then sat at the top of the steps watching Delroy sweat his way up to him. He took a huge swig, relaxing as Delroy reached the top, eyed him with a street-wise scowl, and jogged across the bleacher in front of him. Tim’s appearance screamed cop-it had even before he’d joined the service.