Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

Once dressed, he went to the corner booth and called Hansen at the Nextel office to check what cell site had been routing Robert’s and Mitchell’s outgoing calls.

“Your boys are smarter than you think. Not a single call. I’d say either they dumped the phones or they’re using another phone for outgoing.”

Before he could express his doubt that Robert and Mitchell were sufficiently technologically sophisticated to take those countermeasures, a thought struck him: The Stork was. Having a second phone exclusively for outgoing calls was a brilliant idea-one that none of Tim’s fugitives had ever come up with.

“Well, I just had a little run-in that may provoke a phone call,” Tim said. “Will you mind keeping on it, just in case they slip up?”

Tim thanked him and walked up the street to the store from which he’d rented his Nokia. The diminutive store owner didn’t so much as comment on the last phone he’d rented Tim, now scattered in pieces at the side of the 110. Tim selected the same model, and the owner word-lessly started the paperwork for the identical financial arrangement they’d agreed upon previously. Money doesn’t just talk; it silences.

Tim would keep the Nextel, too, because that was the number Robert and Mitchell knew and the only means they had of getting in touch with him. His elaborate game of musical phones would have made a mutt like Gary Heidel proud.

Tim charged his phones side by side near the outlet and sat Indian style on the floor staring at exactly nothing.

He recalled Mitchell’s expression of confusion on the playground-he’d truly been surprised Tim had come after him. Depending on whether their surveillance on Dobbins had overlapped with the police’s picking him up last night, they might not even be aware that the authorities had been alerted.

If Tannino went ahead with the press conference, they’d know soon enough.

Within a few hours Robert Masterson, Mitchell Masterson, Eddie Davis, and Tim Rackley would be names known coast to coast. Tannino would likely keep Dumone’s, Ananberg’s, and Rayner’s deaths separate, at least for the time being. Tim turned on the television to see if any word had leaked, but aside from a nothing-new update about Rayner’s murder and Melissa Yueh’s announcement that KCOM would be airing a special report at seven o’clock, there was zilch.

Yueh collected her papers, tapping them once neatly on her anchor desk to line the edges. “In other news, Mick Dobbins, the formerly accused child molester, was attacked today in a Culver City park by an unidentified man who cinched a hard plastic garbage-bag tie over his head. He nearly asphyxiated, but another man performed an emergency tracheotomy, then fled the scene. Eyewitnesses helped the police compile this sketch of the assailant.”

A composite flashed up on the screen that looked more like Yosemite Sam than Mitchell Masterson.

“Police would not reveal whether this attempted murder is linked to the Lane and Debuffier executions, but they did indicate they were considering the possibility.”

A shot of the park showed Culver City PD pushing bystanders back from a circle of asphalt marked with crime-scene tape. To the side the back of Bear’s wide frame was readily apparent. He’d sweated through his sport coat at the armpits. The impromptu huddle around him included Maybeck, Denley, Thomas, and Freed.

Colleagues turned adversaries.

“Local authorities are looking for both men. Dobbins was taken to Brotman Medical Center, where he is reported in stable condition.”

Tim turned off the TV and sat at his desk. He’d have to give Dray at least twenty-four hours on the car. The safety-deposit key could take hours, could take weeks.

His thoughts, once turned to his wife, didn’t readily depart. Dray, who kept her nails short and unpainted. Dray, who always held other people’s babies awkwardly away from her body, like leaking trash bags. Dray, two-ring shooter on a Transtar target with a Beretta at fifty yards.

He folded his hands in his lap and sat in the relative silence because that was what’d he’d heard that people seeking peace did. He closed his eyes, but spotlit in the dark was Kindell’s bent hacksaw, worn to the nubs, still sticky with Ginny’s blood. He wondered what other items waited in the surrounding blackness.

He set the VCR to record the seven o’clock press conference, in case he wasn’t back in an hour. He left down the fire escape, for practice, and so he could keep the doorstop wedged in place while he was gone.

Erika Heinrich’s bedroom light was on. Tim parked four blocks away and duplicated his previous cautious approach to the house. Her sash window was open, the blurry whites and blues of a television screen poorly reflected in the upper pane. Tim squatted beneath the window just as the KCOM news jingle wound up.

Marshal Tannino’s televised voice carried outside in bits and pieces. “…these three men…renegade law-enforcement officers…wanted for questioning in connection with the Jedediah Lane and Buzani Debuffier killings…repeat: No charges have been brought…”

Tim rose to a crouch, bringing his eyes level with the sill. Terrill Bowrick sat beside Erika on her bed, both of them staring at the small TV on her dresser. Bowrick’s adolescent slump rounded his back, his hands dangling between his thighs. He looked even younger than Tim remembered, his face pale except where dotted with acne, his neck and arms thin like a girl’s. He looked incredibly weary, as if he hadn’t slept in days.

In contrast the televised Tannino looked stiff in his best suit-a navy blue number-and his Regis Philbin tie. His hair, lit with dozens of camera flashes, seemed exceedingly blow-dried. He gestured to an easel, on which sat enlarged photographs of Robert, Mitchell, and the Stork. “Any sighting of these three men should be reported to…”

No picture of Tim. No mention of Tim.

They probably wanted to nab the Medal of Valor winner quietly, spare the L.A. law-enforcement community another public debacle.

Bowrick’s mouth, fringed with a meager mustache, was thin and bent down in a slightly open frown that suggested tears would not be long in coming. His face had whitened to an extraordinary degree. Erika was rubbing him between the shoulders in a repetitive, soothing motion. Their faces both held an exhausted calm, as if fright and worry had worn away all vitality.

The door to the adjoining bathroom was ajar. Pink tile. Lights off. Empty. A chair was backed to the bedroom door, wedged under the knob. Mommy didn’t know about the special houseguest.

“…suspected of targeting alleged murderers and child molesters, suspects who were released by the criminal-court system.”

A flurry of waving hands and pens. An explosion of questions, one winning out.

“Was the Mick Dobbins assault today related?”

“We believe so, yes.”

“How are the Vigilante Three choosing their victims?”

Tannino grimaced at the nickname. “We have no information about that at this time.”

“We have it from a reliable source that UCLA Professor William Rayner’s death and that of his teaching assistant could be connected to these events. What is the nature of their involvement?”

“I’m not going to comment on that.”

“Can you substantiate rumors that Franklin Dumone, the prominent Boston police sergeant who shot himself today at Cedars, was involved?”

“No. Next question.”

“Why is the U.S. Marshals Service involved?”

“This case dovetails with and is an extension of the Lane assassination, the investigation of which fell under federal jurisdiction.”

“So why isn’t the FBI in charge of the investigation?”

“We’re working closely with the FBI.” Tannino lied well. In private he referred to the FBI as the Fucking Bunch of Idiots.