Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

“Where’s Mickey?” Tim asked.

“There you go again.” Her eyes flashed heavenward, her hands shaking twice, an exasperated plea for divine intervention. “What do you want with him? Everyone pulling and shoving at him-it’s enough already. Leave him in peace.”

“I’m a friend of Mickey’s, remember? I got the police to release him. Did someone else take him?”

“No one else has been nosing around”-she squinted at him-“except you. Mickey probably went down to the park. It’s after-school time. He likes to watch the children play. He misses them, because those schmucks took it away from him, his work at the school, those kids he adored so.”

Tim fought to maintain a facade of patience. “Which way is the park?”

She pointed an unsteady finger. “Just up the street.”

When Tim flashed past her, she let out a little shriek. He hit a dead sprint, sighting the park ahead, a half block rimmed with sycamores. Fluorescent Frisbees drifted over the abbreviated field, mothers chatted beside strollers, infants kicked up sand in a play box. Tim pulled up in the picnic area, trying to condense the whirlwind of motion, scanning the area for Dobbins. A mother sat with a notepad across her knees, her gold pen flashing in the sunlight. Children kicked and screamed from swings. Colorful clothing. The smell of baby powder. Cell phones chirping.

Across the park Dobbins sat on the edge of a wide brick planter, watching a group of kids play tag, his face heavy with sadness.

As Tim started to cut through the crowd, Dobbins rose and began to head in his direction. He walked with a deliberate gait, his beak nose pointed down, watching his shoes.

A movement from his left side, a thick plug of a man parting the crowd, solid and purposeful, seeming to glide through the bustle. Black jacket, low baseball cap, head ducked, hands in pockets. Mitchell.

Tim ran, cried out, his voice lost with the shouts of gleeful children.

Despite all else that had gone down, he was shocked that Mitchell would attempt a shooting in an area crowded with kids. The thought barely had time to register when Mitchell’s hand flashed up from his pocket, gripping a plastic flex-cuff. One tough plastic strip was curved around to make a dinner-plate-size circle, the notched end already snared through the catch. Just waiting to be tightened.

Mitchell swept behind Dobbins, who continued walking toward Tim, studying the ground at his feet, oblivious. Tim yelled, shoving a father out of the way. Dobbins’s head was just rising to check out the commotion ahead when the loop of the flex-cuff dropped over his head like a snare.

Even over the low rumble of the crowd, Tim heard the shrill zippering sound of the plastic pulling through the catch, and then Dobbins sucked in a creaking gasp, hands at his throat, and fell to his knees. A little girl screamed, and there was a flurry within the already-moving crowd, people running away, kids dashing to parents.

Mitchell was several strides from Dobbins now, but he turned as Tim approached, now fifteen yards away. Their eyes locked. Mitchell’s expression of utter tranquillity never gave way, not even as he drew, a quick, reflexive lift of his. 45 that rivaled Tim’s own. Tim’s weapon was clear of his waistband but pointed directly down at the ground; he didn’t dare raise it with children and parents streaming through his line of sight, crying and shouting.

Splitting the distance between them, Dobbins lay on the ground, now flat on his back, expelling great, abbreviated choking sounds. His body was remarkably still, save for one foot that ticked back and forth, pendulum-steady, the untied laces brushing asphalt. Over Mitchell’s shoulder Tim saw a tan Cadillac coast into view on the street behind the park, Robert at the wheel.

Tim stared down the bore of Mitchell’s gun, a hypnotic black dot that sucked in all his thoughts, leaving him with only a nonspecific buzz in his head. Mitchell’s right eye was closed, his left focused on Tim’s face over the lined sights. Children flashed between them.

Mitchell lowered his gun and took two jogging backward steps, then turned and sprinted to the car. Tim raced after him but got only a few steps past Dobbins before his conscience leash-jerked him back.

He slid to Dobbins, the asphalt scraping his knees even through his jeans. Dobbins’s neck sported deep scratch marks above the tight band of the flex-cuff; Tim could see the corresponding flesh stuck beneath the nails of his scrabbling fingers.

A cluster of people had gathered, watching warily from a few feet. Children were crying and being pulled away. The mother Tim had observed earlier looked shell-shocked, her weighty purse slung over one shoulder, her notepad flat against her thigh. Three people were on cell phones, anxiously providing the park’s address and a queasy description of the emergency.

The mother stepped forward, pulling an overburdened key chain from her purse and letting it dangle. “I have a knife.”

Tim grabbed the key chain and snapped off the pocketknife-an elegant sterling-silver trinket from Tiffany. The blade was thin, which would help, but not serrated, so sawing against the thick plastic would be tough going.

Tim moved Dobbins’s hands away, but they shot back to his bloody throat, obscuring Tim’s view. He pinned one of Dobbins’s arms beneath a knee and slapped the other away until a man stepped from the crowd and held it down.

Dobbins’s face was tomato red. A vein bulged on his forehead, and the skin around his neck was sucked in tight, leaving hollows.

Tim slid the blade under the embedded band, cutting through a thin layer of Dobbins’s skin in the process. He tried to turn the knife to get the cutting edge up against the flex-cuff, but there was not enough give; Mitchell had yanked it incredibly tight, smashing down the top half of Dobbins’s Adam’s apple.

Beneath him Dobbins jerked and expelled a ticking gurgle.

Tim turned the knife, fingering through the blood to find Dobbins’s larynx. He walked his fingers down until he felt the soft give of the cricothyroid membrane, then cut a lengthwise slit through Dobbins’s flesh. A burst of air shot out through the hole, accompanied by a spray of blood.

“Your pen. Give me your gold pen.” Tim snapped his fingers, his hand out to the mother. Anticipating him, she unscrewed the pen barrel and shook it so the rollerpoint ink cartridge fell. She handed him the hollow tube of the top half of the pen, and he turned it and inserted the tapered end into the bloody gap. It slid in smoothly.

The sound of sirens, still distant.

Tim sucked once to clear the tube and spit a mouthful of blood on the pavement, fighting off images of hepatitis and HIV, and then Dobbins’s body lurched forward as he drew air through the pen barrel directly into his throat. His sloped eyes gave off no anger, just a panicked disorientation.

“Come here,” Tim said. The woman came forward and crouched. “Hold this. Hold this.” She took the pen barrel from Tim’s blood-moist fingers, tentatively at first. He firmed her hands with his own, then rose.

The crowd parted, leaving him a few feet on either side. A crimson spray decorated the front of his shirt; his hands were stained to the knuckles. He jogged out of the park, back down the sidewalk to his car, spitting a bit of blood every few steps.

Driving away, he passed an ambulance and two cop cars just turning onto the block.

TIM CHANGED OUT of his shirt and took a prolonged shower, scrubbing his hands and under his nails, letting the bathroom fill with steam. Turning the dial almost all the way to “hot,” he stood beneath the stream, shoulders slumped, head hung, letting the water strike him at the crown and run down over his face. It felt blissful and clean and painful.