Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

The incessant hammering of grief and stress left Tim and Dray with tattered and few resources. Though they tried to comfort each other, to embrace, to mourn together, their pain seemed amplified by the other’s distress and their own uselessness in the face of it. They both found themselves increasingly wrapped in their own private pain, unable to muster the strength to pull themselves out of it.

They began keeping a respectful distance from each other, like roommates. They napped frequently, though always separately, and they rarely ate, despite the array of filled Tupperware that packed their refrigerator, replenished almost hourly by neighbors and friends. When they did interact, it was in brief, overpolite exchanges, parodies of domesticity. The sight of Dray elicited in Tim a piercing shame that he was unable to be more for her right now. He knew that in his face Dray saw reflected back only the same devastation that weighed down hers.

The DA’s office was respectful about keeping them in the loop about the case, though also cautious about releasing many specifics. In conversations with her colleagues, Dray managed to piece together fragments of information about Gutierez and Harrison’s investigation, enough to grasp that they’d jettisoned the accomplice theory to focus their full energies on shoring up the case against Kindell.

Tim’s mind returned to Kindell’s shack with obsessive regularity, replaying each detail, from the slipperiness of the oil-stained floor to the sharp scent of paint thinner.

I wasn’t supposed to kill her.

He didn’t-

Eight words had opened up a chasm of doubt. The pain of not knowing almost equaled the pain of loss, because it played carnival-mirror tricks with Tim’s grief, magnifying it one moment, reshaping it the next. He was mourning without knowing the exact parameters of what he was mourning-Ginny was dead, but what she had gone through and who was responsible for it were blank canvases awaiting the latest incarnation, the latest projection of rage or horror. Kindell had proved enough to sate the appetite of the detectives and the DA, but Tim knew there were additional gutters to be flushed. The progression of atrocious events that had filled his daughter’s last hours remained out there, frozen in history, waiting to be reconstructed.

Wednesday night he and Dray went for a drive, their first outing together since Ginny’s death. They sat awkwardly in silence, trying to let the movement and crisp night air lull them back to compatibility. On their way home they passed McLane’s. Dray craned her neck, checking out the vehicles in the dark lot. “Gutierez’s rig,” she murmured.

Tim flipped a U-turn and pulled in the lot. Dray turned in her seat to watch him, more curious than surprised.

They found Gutierez in the back, shooting stick with Harrison. Gutierez nodded in greeting, then spoke in the same softened voice everyone used with them now. “You guys holding up okay?”

“Fine, thanks. Can we have a minute?”

“Sure thing, Rack.”

The detectives followed Tim and Dray out to the back parking lot.

“Word is you’re dropping the accomplice angle,” Tim said.

Harrison stiffened. Gutierez cocked his head slightly. “It didn’t yield.”

“Have you checked Kindell’s priors? Did he work with an accomplice on those?”

“We’re working very closely with the DA, and we’ve turned up no evidence of other people’s involvement. We’ve looked into everything. Now, you’re well aware that we can’t involve parents of victims in our cases-”

“A little late for that,” Dray threw in.

“You’ve got no distance from the case. No perspective. And to say you’re biased is something of an understatement. Now, I know what you thought you heard in there-”

“How did you find Ginny’s body?” Tim said. “So quickly. I mean, that creek bed is pretty remote.”

Harrison blew out a breath that clouded in the cool air. “Anonymous call.”

“Man or woman?”

“Look, we don’t have to-”

“Was it a man’s or a woman’s voice?”

Gutierez folded his arms, irritation starting to shift to anger. “A man’s.”

“Did you trace it? Was it recorded?”

“No, it went to the private line of the deputy working the desk.”

“Not 911? Not dispatch?” Dray said. “Who would know the private number?”

“Someone making sure their ass was covered,” Tim said. “Someone afraid to be implicated or ID’d. Like an accomplice.”

Harrison stepped forward, getting in Tim’s space. “Listen, Fox Mulder, I don’t think you have any idea how many anonymous tips we get. It doesn’t mean the guy was in on a murder. I mean, odds are a guy drifting through an out-of-the-way creek bed is up to something other than selling Girl Scout cookies. It could have been a guy with a rap sheet, a scared kid who didn’t want to get tangled up in a murder case. It could’ve been a bum sniffing glue.”

“Because bums whacked out on glue fumes are in possession of private phone numbers into the Moorpark Police Station,” Dray said.

“It’s listed.”

“A bum with a phone book,” Tim said.

“Hey, man, you missed your chance to take care of business. We gave it to you. And guess what? You wanted everything aboveboard. Well, fine. We can respect that. But that means it’s out of your hands now. You’re a biased party, the parents of the vic, and you’re to go nowhere near this case or we’ll slap you with obstruction. There’s no shooter on the grassy knoll. Your daughter died, and we got the sick fuck who did it. Case closed. Go home to each other. Grieve.”

“Thanks,” Dray said. “We’ll take that under advisement.”

They walked back to Tim’s car silently, climbed in, and sat.

“He’s right.” Tim’s voice was soft, cracked, defeated. “We can’t get involved. There’s no way we could go about this investigation fairly, objectively. Let’s hope Kindell sweats it and tries to talk for a plea. Or chokes on the stand and spills. Or that his PD trots out the accomplice theory as part of the defense. Something. Anything.”

“I feel useless,” Dray said.

A cop car pulled in swiftly and parked across the lot. Mac and Fowler got out, joking and chuckling, and headed into the bar.

Tim and Dray sat in the afterwash of the laughter, eyes on the dash.

•When Tim entered the kitchen Thursday morning, Dray looked up from the latest batch of thank-yous and condolence-card replies she was writing. Her eyes went to the pager in his hand, then to his Smith amp; Wesson, clipped to his belt. “You’re going to the office? Already?”

“Bear needs me.”

Light glowed yellow through the drawn blinds, falling across her face. “I need you. Bear’ll be just fine.”

The phone rang, but she shook her head. “Press,” she said. “All morning. They want a sobbing mother, a stoic father. Which do you want to play?”

He waited for the phone to quiet before speaking. “A tip came in from one of our CIs this morning. We’re planning a hot takedown. I have to go in.”

One of Bear and Tim’s confidential informants had caught wind of a deal going down that had Gary Heidel’s smell all over it. The Escape Team had been tracking Heidel, a Top 15, for the better part of five months. After being convicted for one count of first-degree murder and two counts of drug trafficking, Heidel had escaped during his transport from courthouse to prison. Two Hispanic accomplices in a pickup had pinned the sedan against a tree, shot both deputy marshals, and extracted Heidel.

Tim had known that Heidel would need money quickly, and so he’d turn to the one place guys like him got money quickly. Since Heidel’s MO was a distinctive one-he acquired diluted cocaine from Chihuahua and had mules drive it across the border hidden in wine bottles-it had been easier for Tim and Bear to press the street for related information. Finally their vigilance had paid off. If their CI had given Bear reliable intel, a forty-key deal was going down sometime that afternoon or night.