The Kill Clause Page 2

  A sob swelled in his throat, and he swallowed it, swallowed it hard.

  “Tess goes to private school. We have an arrangement, us and her mom. The kids can stop by for play dates unannounced. There was no one expecting Ginny, no one to miss her. This is Moorpark, Bear.” His voice cracked. “It’s Moorpark. You’re not supposed to know your kid’s not okay when she’s four hundred yards away.” Tim faded off into a space between agonizing thoughts, a momentary respite from the distinct pain of having failed—as a father, as a deputy U.S. marshal, as a man—to protect his sole child’s existence.

  Bear drove on and didn’t talk, and Tim appreciated him greatly for it.

  Bear’s cell phone rang. He picked it up and spoke into it, a string of words and numbers that Tim barely registered. Bear flipped the unit shut and pulled to the curb. Tim didn’t notice for several minutes that they were stopped, that Bear was studying him. When he looked over, Bear’s eyes were startlingly severe.

  Tim spoke through the sluggishness of his exhaustion. “What?”

  “That was Fowler. They caught him.”

  Tim felt a rush of emotions, dark and hateful and intertwined. “Where?”

  “Off Grimes Canyon. About a half mile from here.”

  “We’re going.”

  “Ain’t gonna be nothing to see but yellow tape and aftermath. We don’t want to contaminate the arrest, fuck up the crime scene. I thought I’d take you to Dray—”

  “We’re going.”

  Bear picked up the empty bottle, jiggled it, then set it back on the dash. “I know.”

  •They pulled down the long, isolated drive, gravel popping beneath the tires, winding their way into the heart of the small canyon. A converted stand-alone garage to a house that had long since burned down sat dark and slanted along a crescent of eucalyptus. The smudged side windows diffused a single spot of yellow interior light. Rain and wear had lifted the plywood from the walls, and the swing-down door was rotting in fat patches. To the side a rusting white pickup rose from the weeds, fresh mud caked in the tire treads and thrown up around the wheel wells.

  A police vehicle sat diagonally across the overgrown concrete foundation of the extinct house, lights blinking. Like the other cars in the fleet, it was labeled MOORPARK POLICE, though all two-man crews were, like Dray, sheriff’s deputies contracted from Ventura County. Parked beside it was an unmarked, lights flashing from the sun visor. Without the accompanying scream of the sirens, the strobe action was disorienting.

  Fowler met them at the truck, his mouth pursed over a lipful of tobacco. He was breathing hard, his eyes sharp and gleaming, his face flushed with excitement. He unsnapped his holster, then snapped it again. The detectives were not in sight. No yellow tape, no perimeter, no crime-lab guys working up forensics.

  Before Tim could get out of the truck, Fowler was talking. “Gutierez and Harrison—they rolled from Homicide Bureau—they got a read off the tire tracks at the riverbank. I guess they’re factory-issue radials for Toyotas ’87 to ’89 or some shit. Crime lab found a fingernail at the scene—”

  Tim buckled, and Bear laid a supporting hand across the small of his back, out of Fowler’s view.

  “—chip of white paint under it. Automobile paint. Gutierez what-the-fucked it, ran it through for a ten-mile radius, only got twenty-seven hits, if you can believe it. We split up the addresses. This was our third stop. There’s hard-core evidence. The guy spilled in seconds. Cases just don’t work out like this.” He coughed out a single note of a laugh, then went pale. His hand dipped to his holster again, and he unsnapped and snapped the thumb break. “Jesus Christ, Rack, I’m sorry. I’ve just been…I should have come over myself, but I wanted to get my head down and help bust the piece of shit.”

  “Why isn’t there a perimeter up?” Tim said.

  “We, uh…we still have him. He’s inside.”

  Tim’s mouth went dry. His fury narrowed, gathering like a parachute pulled through a napkin ring; with focus it seemed less likely to bleed into sorrow. Bear slid up next to him like a revving car at a stoplight.

  “What about CSU? Did you even call them?”

  Fowler grew suddenly interested in the ground. “We called you.” He toed a desiccated weed, which gave off a good crackle. “I know if my little girl—” He shook off the thought. “The boys and I just weren’t gonna let this one fly.” He unsnapped the thumb break again, slid his Beretta from the holster, and held the pistol out to Tim, butt first. “For you and Dray.”

  The three men stared at the pistol. Bear made a noise deep in his throat that didn’t quite shape itself into a judgment one way or the other. Fowler’s face was still flushed and intense, a lightning bolt of a vein forking his forehead. Somewhere in his jumble of thoughts, Tim grasped why Fowler had contacted Bear on his cell phone, not the radio.

  Bear shifted so he was close to Tim, beside him but facing opposite, his back to Fowler, his eyes staring out at the dark of the canyon. “What do you want here, Rack?” His fingers spread, then clenched into fists. “As a father? As a representative of the law?”

  Tim took the pistol. He walked toward the garage, and neither Bear nor Fowler followed. He heard sounds issuing through the warped door. Murmuring voices.

  He knocked twice, the ragged wood biting his knuckles.

  “Hang on.” The voice belonged to Mac, Fowler’s partner and another of Dray’s deputy colleagues. Some shuffling. “Stand back!”

  The garage door swung up on screeching springs. With inadvertent theatricality, Mac moved his large frame out of Tim’s way, revealing Gutierez and Harrison standing on either side of a scrawny man on a torn couch. Tim recognized the detectives now—local boys. Dray had worked with them when they were still patrolmen out of Moorpark Station; Homicide had assigned them the area, no doubt, because of their familiarity with it.

  Tim’s eyes swept the interior, taking in a heap of blood-moist rags, a pair of little girl’s fingerprint-muddied cotton panties plugging a draft in the far wall, a bent hacksaw with the teeth worn down to nubs. He fought to get his mind around these objects, these inconceivabilities.

  He stepped forward, his shoes slippery on the oil-stained concrete. The man was clean-shaven, his face razor-nicked at the jaw. He hunched over his legs, elbows tucked into his crotch, hands cuffed before him. His boots, like Bear’s, were caked with mud. The two detectives stepped away as Tim approached, straightening their poly wool suits.

  Mac’s deep voice issued over Tim’s shoulder. “Meet Roger Kindell.”

  “You see him, you puke?” Gutierez said. “This is that little girl’s father.”

  The man’s eyes, focused on Tim, showed neither comprehension nor remorse.

  “That this could happen in our fucking town,” Harrison said, as if continuing some previous conversation. “The animals are drifting north. Invading.”

  Tim stepped forward again, until his shadow fell across Kindell’s face, blocking the dim light from the bare lamp bulb. Kindell sucked his teeth, then bent his face into the bowl of his hands, his fingers massaging the line of his scalp. His voice was loose, vowel-heavy at the ends of his words, and a touch guttural.

  “I already tole you I did it. Lee me alone.”

  Tim felt his heartbeat hammering in his temples, his throat. Controlled rage.

  Kindell kept his face turned down into his hands. Black crescents stood out beneath his fingernails—dried blood.

  Harrison uncrossed his arms, sweat shining on his ebony face. “Look at him. You look at him, son.” Still no response. In a flash the detective was on top of Kindell, hands digging into his throat and cheeks, knee riding his gut, bending his head back and up so he faced Tim. Kindell’s breathing flared his nostrils; his eyes were sharply defiant.

  Gutierez turned to Tim. “I got a throw-down.” Tim glanced at the proffered bulge at the detective’s ankle beneath his pant leg, a crappy gun to be left on the scene clutched in Kindell’s dead hand. Gutierez nodded. “See no evil, hear no evil
, speak no evil, my friend.”

  Harrison pulled himself off Kindell, shoved his head to the side, and nodded at Tim. “You do what you need to do.”

  Mac was playing lookout at the wide opening of the garage door, his head swiveling back and forth, checking the darkness despite the fact that Bear and Fowler were less than twenty yards away with a clear line of sight to the main road.

  Tim turned back to Kindell. “Leave me.”

  “You got it, brother,” Gutierez said. He paused beside Tim and slipped him the handcuff key. “We already frisked the piece of shit. Just don’t leave any of the wrong kind of marks on him.”

  Mac squeezed Tim’s shoulder, then followed the two detectives out. Tim reached up, grabbed the dangling rope handle on the garage door, and tugged. The door creaked again, gained momentum fast, and slammed shut. Kindell didn’t so much as blink. Cool as a blade.

  He took note of the Beretta in Tim’s hand, pointed down at the floor, and turned his head to the wall, as if expressing vague uninterest. His hair was cropped short, a grown-out buzz cut that resembled fur.

  The question came out before Tim considered it. “Did you kill my daughter?”

  The lightbulb in the lamp emitted an odd humming noise. The air wrapped around Tim, dank and tinted with the odor of paint thinner.

  Kindell turned back to face him. His even features were set off by an unusually flat and elongated forehead. His hands rested together in his lap. He didn’t look as though he planned to answer the question.

  “Did you kill my daughter?” Tim asked again.

  After a thoughtful pause, Kindell nodded slowly, once.

  Tim waited for his breathing to even out. He felt his lips trembling, fought them still. “Why?”

  Same sluggish cadence to the words, as though they’d been slowed down. “Cuz she was so beautiful.”

  Tim racked the Beretta’s slide, chambering a round. Kindell emitted a muffled sob, his eyes starting to stream. The first sign of any emotion. He glared at Tim defiantly, even as snot ran from his nose and forded his upper lip.

  Tim raised the pistol. His hands were shaking with rage, so it took a moment for him to line the sights on the tall target of Kindell’s forehead.

  •Bear leaned against his truck, massive arms crossed, eyeing the other four men.

  “You don’t motherfuck around with a deputy’s family,” Gutierez was saying. A deferential nod to Bear. “Or a marshal’s.”

  Bear didn’t nod back.

  Fowler weighed in. “They don’t give a shit anymore. No sense of anything.”

  “Amen to that,” Gutierez said.

  “It’s like that guy who walked the sarin nerve-gas bomb into the day-care center. Ezekiel or Jedediah or whatever.” Harrison shook his head. “Nothing makes sense anymore. Nothing.”

  “How’s Dray doing?” Mac asked. “She all right?”

  “She’s tough,” Bear said.

  “Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth,” Fowler said.

  Gutierez again—“She’s gonna be better once Rack brings her back a little news.”

  “You know Tim well?” Bear asked.

  The detective shifted his weight from one shoe to the other. “Know of him.”

  “Why don’t you leave his nickname to those of us who do?”

  “Hey, come on Jowalski,” Mac said. “Tito don’t mean no harm. We’re on the same side, us out here.”

  “Are we?” Bear said.

  They waited, glancing at the closed garage door, bracing themselves for a gunshot in the silence. The crickets were at it, filling the air with nervous chirping.

  Mac wiped his brow with a forearm, though the night was cool. “Wonder what he’s doing in there.”

  “He’s not gonna kill him,” Bear said.

  The others’ heads swiveled toward Bear, surprised. Fowler wore a shit-eating grin. “You don’t think?”

  Bear shifted uncomfortably, then crossed his arms as if to lock down his posture.

  “Why wouldn’t he?” Gutierez said.

  Bear regarded him with unadulterated disdain. “For one, he’s not gonna want to be yoked to you jackasses for the rest of his life.”

  Gutierez started to say something but took note of Bear’s flexed forearms and closed his mouth. The crickets continued to shrill. They all did their best to avoid eye contact.

  “Fuck this. I’m gonna get him.” Bear drew himself up off his truck. Beside him even Mac looked small. Bear took a step toward the garage, then stopped abruptly. He lowered his head, eyes on the dirt, frozen between advance and retreat.

  •Tim kept the Beretta trained on Kindell’s head, his body still and rigid, a shooter’s outline cut from steel. After a moment his gun arm began to quake. His eyes moistened; two jerking breaths racked his shoulders. With a sudden, stunning certainty, he knew that he would not kill Kindell. His thoughts, absent the focus of the task, pulled back to his daughter. He was overtaken with a sadness so stark and selfish and crushing that it seemed to defy the limits of his heart. It came on fierce and full-powered, like nothing he’d ever confronted. He lowered the gun and bent, fists on thighs, as it throttled through him.

  When he regained awareness that he was still drawing breath, he straightened as best he could. “Were you alone?”

  The same roll of the head, up, down, up.

  Unremitting cramps in Tim’s chest kept him curled into an old man’s arthritic hunch. His voice rasped, weak and uncomprehending, “You just decided…decided to kill her?”

  Kindell blinked hard and drew his bound hands over his face like a squirrel grooming. “I wasn’t supposed to kill her.”

  Tim’s body snapped upright, his posture firming. “What does ‘supposed to’ mean?” No answer. “Was someone in on this with you?”

  “He didn’t—” Kindell stopped, closed his eyes.

  “He who? He didn’t what? Someone else helped you kill my girl?” His voice was shaking with fury and desperation. “Answer me, goddamnit. Answer me!”

  Kindell remained still, impervious to Tim’s questions, the smooth ovals of his closed eyelids like veined eggs.

  •The garage door flew up with a bang, spilling light across the weed-dense grounds. Kindell stumbled out, propelled by Tim’s shove, his hands now cuffed behind him. Tim caught up to him quickly, fisting the chain between the cuffs and pulling it up so Kindell’s arms locked straight behind him. Kindell grimaced but didn’t cry out.

  Bear and the others silently watched them approach. As Tim neared, Kindell tripped and went down, his knees and chest taking the shock of the ground. His grunt sounded like a bark.

  Kindell struggled to stand up. He bore no bruises or signs of punishment. “You asshoe. You uckin’ asshoe.”

  “Better watch your mouth,” Tim said. “I’m your best friend right about now.”

  Bear exhaled in a low, cheek-puffing rumble.

  Fowler glowered at Tim like a woman scorned. Gutierez and Harrison looked equally displeased.

  “Can we have a second here?” Fowler said, the skin tight around his jaw.

  Tim nodded, then followed the three men a few paces away from Mac and Bear.

  “He’s a piece-of-shit motherfucker,” Fowler hissed.

  Tim said, “No argument here.”

  Fowler spit a brown stream into the brush. “You’re gonna let pieces of shit like this run loose in our town?”

  Tim looked at him with a steady gaze until he turned away.

  “What the fuck, Rackley? We were doing you a favor here.”

  Gutierez smoothed his mustache with a thumb and forefinger. “This guy just killed your daughter. How can you not want to cap his ass?”

  “I’m not a jury.”

  “I bet Dray would have another opinion on the matter.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Juries suck,” Fowler said. “I don’t trust the courts.”

  “Then move to Sierra Leone.”

  “Listen, Rackley—”

 
“No, you listen.” Ten yards away Bear’s and Mac’s heads snapped to attention. “There’s an ongoing investigation here that you may have just fucked up in your eagerness to tie things up neatly.”

  Harrison weighed in from above crossed arms. “It’s an open-and-shut.”

  “He didn’t kill her alone.”

  Gutierez blew air out through clenched teeth. “What the fuck is this?”

  “Someone else was in on it.” Tim’s hand was jiggling back and forth, thumb tapping his thigh.

  “He didn’t tell us that.”

  “Well, then, it looks like you’ve exhausted your bag of detective tricks.”

  Bear walked over, his boots creaking, leaving Mac with Kindell. He scowled at the others, standing protectively at Tim’s side. “Everything all right?”

  “Your boy here is looking to complicate matters that aren’t complicated.” Gutierez glared at Tim. “You’re being emotional.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “How do you know there was someone else involved?” Gutierez jerked his head at Kindell, still lying prone on the ground. “What did he say?”

  “He didn’t say anything outright—”

  “Nothing outright,” Harrison said. “A hunch, huh?”

  Bear’s voice issued so low Tim felt it in his bones. “You’d better mind your fucking mouth after what he’s been through tonight.”

  Harrison’s smirk vanished instantly.

  “This is precisely why we don’t kill people without a trial.” Tim regarded the three men. “Call CSU. Start your investigation. Gather evidence.”

  Fowler was shaking his head. “This is a fucking mess. Kindell heard us talking. Planning this out.”

  Gutierez made a leveling gesture with his hands. “It’s fine. We’ll move forward with standard procedure. If the scumsuck wants to whine to the public defender, it’ll be his word against ours.” He glared at Tim and Bear. “All of ours.”

  Tim debated informing Gutierez that the last thing he intended to expend energy on this night was Gutierez’s anxiety, but he didn’t want to give anything up to him.