The Kill Clause tr-1 Page 26

  Tim snapped back from the window. “Let’s go, let’s go.” He yanked Donna out from under the door, tucking the entire unit under his arm like a football. The det bag already looped over his shoulder, Mitchell followed Robert down the hall. Their best evac path was through the kitchen and out the back door.

  Leading the twins, Tim entered the kitchen just as Debuffier’s shadow fell across the laundry room through the window of the back door. With a violent flare of his hand, Tim gestured a retreat, but the key had already hit the lock. Robert and Mitchell ducked into a closet, and Tim rolled beneath the kitchen table just as Debuffier yanked the door open and stepped inside.

  An empty rum bottle, knocked by Tim’s shoulder, tilted, but he snatched it, stretched over himself in an awkward, twisting supine position. A grumbling filled the kitchen as Debuffier fussed over the alarm, presumably to see why it didn’t go off. Then he crossed the kitchen, his enormous legs drawing into upside-down view, size-seventeen black loafers halting mere feet from Tim’s head. A stack of mail hit the table with a slap. Debuffier wore no socks; the dark strips of his ankles were just visible between his shoes and the frayed bottoms of his jeans. Tim’s breath pushed a flurry of crumbs into a two-inch roll beneath the table.

  Debuffier’s hand swung down into view, holding-of all things-a carton of pencils. Then he trudged out of sight, down the dimly lit back hall. Tim heard the enormous basement door swing open, then closed. The dead bolt slid home, then Debuffier’s footsteps down the stairs came rumbling silently through the kitchen floor into Tim’s cheek.

  Tim rolled out just as Robert and Mitchell were emerging from the closet.

  “Let’s di-di-mau,” Robert hissed.

  Before Tim had time to turn, the sound came up through the floor-boards as if suddenly enhanced, liberated, an echoing, distinctly human groan. The three men froze in the kitchen.

  Tim wanted to say, “We go”-the words were almost out of his mouth when they evanesced, and Robert and Mitchell fell into silent line behind him, heading into the house interior.

  Tim had Donna unwound and ready by the time they reached the door, and he slid her through the gap. Debuffier had draped black sheer cloth over the mirror and tied a white handkerchief over his head. Wearing overalls with no undershirt, he stood with his back to the door, stooped slightly, his enormous shoulders rippling with some unseen motion. Whirring. Pause. Whirring. Pause.

  Tim barely had time to realize that he was sharpening pencils when a tinny human voice echoed in response, it seemed, to the whirring. “God no. God, God no.”

  All three men stiffened, but there was no one else in sight in the small screen. Tim swung the lens, taking in the entire basement, but it was empty, save the tureens and bricks and feathers now kicked up and swirling. They remained on all fours above the small TV screen, blind men searching for a dropped penny.

  Debuffier turned, his face powdered in white streaks. Testing the point of a pencil with the pad of one huge finger, he crossed to the refrigerator and swung open the top door of the freezer. A woman’s head, framed perfectly by the box of the freezer, gaped out at the room, her mouth stretched wide and screaming. Alive. Sweat-darkened wisps of hair lay pasted down across her forehead. What appeared to be open sores dotted her face. Her head had been fit through a hole cut into the partition between fridge and freezer.

  Debuffier slammed the top door shut, muffling the piercing screams, and opened the refrigerator door. The woman’s body was curled into the lower unit, shivering and naked, also covered in small circular wounds. From her clawing feet to the abbreviated stretch of her neck, she seemed to hang suspended in the deadening white glow of the refrigerator light, the formaldehyde float of a primordial creature on a scientist’s shelf.

  Debuffier bent over, reaching for the soft flesh above her collarbone with the pointed end of the pencil. He shifted his massive weight, blocking their view of the woman, then the screaming ratcheted up a level, the sound numbed, like the woman’s head, in the tomblike box of darkness, disassociated from the body, the inflicted torment, the world.

  Robert stood up, trembling, in full-body drench. He drew his gun and aimed at the lock. Before Tim could respond, Mitchell grabbed Robert’s wrist and said in a harsh whisper, “No. We don’t get through that lock with a bullet.”

  As Robert came increasingly unwound, Mitchell seemed to grow more collected; nearly two decades’ experience defusing live bombs served him well in the face of an active horror.

  Sweat streaked in great droplets down Robert’s temples. “We do not walk away.”

  “No,” Tim said. “We don’t.” He turned and snapped his fingers, his voice a loud-whispered rush of urgency. “Ten-second hold, boys. Focus. New game plan, new priorities. I call 911. We blast through the door. We neutralize Debuffier, nonlethally if we can. We secure the victim. Then, if we have the luxury, we consider our own position.”

  Mitchell dug through the det bag, his razor knife out, a blasting cap having magically appeared, held between his teeth so his hands were free. He pulled the explosive sheet out and unrolled it a few turns. Working with rapid efficiency, he sliced out a disk of PETN, leaving behind a cookie-cutter hole.

  Tim jogged into the kitchen before turning on his cell phone, so as not to trip Mitchell’s blasting caps. Stretching his T-shirt across the receiver, he spoke in a scratchy voice. “I have a medical emergency at 14132 Lanyard Street. In the basement. Repeat: in the basement. Please send an ambulance immediately.” He snapped the phone shut, turned it off, and headed back down the hall.

  The screaming reached an unbelievably high pitch, drawn thin and fine like a silver wire. Unshaken, Mitchell dug a can of spray-on glue from the bag, misted the back of the disk, and slapped it on the door over the lock.

  “God oh God stop please stop.”

  Robert was moving from foot to foot in an odd kind of hot-coal dance, as if alleviating the burn from the screams, his face colored with rage and excitement. “Move it move it move it move it move it.”

  Mitchell ripped off a strip of explosive sheet and dropped the blasting cap from his mouth onto it. As Tim stretched the protruding wires down the hall, Mitchell finished priming the sheet, sandwiching it around the blasting cap and sticking it to the door. Driven by the screams, Robert and Mitchell followed Tim around the corner, Mitchell clutching a nine-volt in the vise of his fist. Tim handed off the wire ends to him.

  Robert was breathing too hard, his nostrils flaring. “Do it. Do it. Do it.”

  Tim had to dispense with his whisper now, to be heard over the woman’s screams. “Now, listen. We need to do this right. I’ll be the first through the-”

  “Please. Please. Oh God please.”

  Robert seized the wires from Mitchell and touched them to the battery. Tim had time only for an instinctual reaction, opening his mouth so his lungs could vent and flex air, preventing the possibility of rupture in the face of the overpressure. The house seemed to jump with the explosion, drywall dust clouding the air, and already Robert was up and running for the stairs, weapon drawn.

  “Shit!” Ears ringing from the sharp-edged ping of metal rent, Tim stood and followed Robert in a sprint. Robert had already thrown the door open and disappeared through the haze of dust down the stairs, no backup, no strategic entry. Tim heard the blast of three erratic shots, and he shouldered hard against the now-jagged door frame at the top of the stairs, his elbows locked, his. 357 downpointed, Mitchell closing fast from behind.

  Robert swept down the stairs as if floating, his gun raised. Debuffier had swung the refrigerator door all the way open so it was bent back against its hinges, revealing the stretch of curled and terrified flesh within; he crouched behind it, using it as a shield. A chunk of drywall from the blast had landed on the second-to-last step, enough to send Robert into a stumble. Debuffier sprang up, nimble and catlike, and rushed Robert, a blur of size and lean, dark muscle. Robert’s mass blocked Tim’s angle on a shot, so Tim continued his charge down the
steps. Debuffier reached Robert before he’d regained his balance and swatted the pistol from his grip. Debuffier seized him, his massive hands nearly encompassing Robert’s rib cage, and hurled him up the stairs at Tim.

  Robert’s shoulder connected hard with Tim’s thighs, sending him into a cartwheeling fall down the final three steps. Tim’s. 357 clattered off the side of the stairs, striking the concrete with a clang, and a numbness rang through his shoulder and hip that would later mean pain. He kept in his roll, trying to come up on his feet but landing jarringly on his knees, still hunched in a somersault crouch. The thick stock of Debuffier’s leg broke his vertical field like a pillar, and Tim swung hard and sharp for the knee, angling for a break but instead connecting with the dense muscle of the thigh. His lead-weighted fist landed with the solid pop of a dinner plate dropped flat on a bed of water, and Debuffier howled. A fist rose like a too-large sun, connecting with Tim’s crown. Tim felt the skin of his head pinch against the bone, saw a brilliant burst of light, heard Mitchell’s boots thundering down the stairs behind him, then he was up in the air, Debuffier’s hands crushing him at the shoulders, his feet dangling, a marionette under the appraising and pitiless eye of an Italian puppeteer. Debuffier’s breath wafted coconut and sour milk across Tim’s face.

  Tim drove his head forward into Debuffier’s chin, heard a pleasing crack, and the hands relaxed, for just an instant. Tim felt himself lowered a few inches, his feet finding the ground again, and, as Debuffier’s hand reared back to deliver a paralyzing blow to the head, Tim rotated in, Green Beret style, a downstriking punch to the groin, quick and hard like a bear river-plunging for fish. The lead band across the back of his glove seemed to draw his fist down faster, harder, lending it a crushing momentum, and the line of his knuckles connected with the hard ridge of Debuffier’s pubic bone.

  There was a single instant of perfect balance and stillness, then the world flooded back into motion-Robert yelling, a shrill banshee wail echoing within the metal box of the mostly closed freezer, the shattering yield of Debuffier’s bone as a skin-muffled crunch announced the instant and comprehensive fragmentation of his pelvis.

  Debuffier’s animal bellow of pain found resonance in the concrete walls and came back from the four corners of the room compounded. The freezer door was mid-swing, the woman’s petrified expression flashing into view. His face an in-twisted vortex of pain, Debuffier half stood, one knee brushing the floor but not bearing his weight, his eyelids stretched so wide that the top curvature of his eyeballs was visible. His hands hung loose and open around his hips, frozen, as if contemplating how best to grasp a balloon filled with broken glass.

  Mitchell thundered down the last few steps, but Robert had already found his pistol and was standing in full Weaver, head cocked, one eye closed.

  Debuffier raised his hand. “No,” he said.

  The bullet took off his index finger at the knuckle before sucking his head in around the hole opened up at the bridge of his nose. His body smacked concrete, a widening pool spreading beneath his head with oil-slick deliberateness.

  A tureen lay on its side, draining soapy water.

  Robert stood over him, feet spread, and discharged two more bullets into the pulpy mess of his head.

  “Goddamn it, Robert.” Tim limped over to the refrigerator and swung open the freezer door. The woman’s face stared back, weak with terror, broken bits of lead visible in several of her sores. He saw where Debuffier had drilled holes in the sides of the freezer to provide ventilation. A weight belt had been fastened around her neck, tight beneath the chin, making her unable to duck out of the hole. One of her eyes had been punctured-it oozed a cloudy liquid that caked her lower lid.

  She was weeping. “Oh, no. There are more of you. Oh, my God, I can’t.”

  “We’re here to help you.” Tim reached for the weight belt, but she shrieked and turned for his hand, gnashing wearily. Mitchell and Robert were at Tim’s back, radiating horror and breathless silence.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m a U.S. de-” Tim stopped, struck by the illegitimacy of his presence. “I’m going to get you out and help you.”

  Her face seemed to melt, wrinkling at the forehead. She cried in soft barks with her voice alone, not producing any tears. Tim reached slowly for the weight belt and, when she made no movement toward his hand, uncinched it.

  Robert and Mitchell had the lower door open. When they touched her, she shrieked again, but they guided her quickly down and out and laid her on the floor. The smell of pus, panic sweat, and day-old meat rose from her body. Lying limp on the concrete, arms jerking, legs quivering, she began to keen-deep, split-open moans.

  Robert took three staggering steps toward the corner and leaned against the wall. He was crying, not loudly or with force, but matter-of-factly. Tears forged tracks through the drywall dust that had collected on his cheeks.

  Someone had probably reported the explosion or gunshots; police units were likely en route already, in addition to ambulances.

  Mitchell was holding the woman’s head tenderly in both hands, trying to smooth her stiff hair. He spoke to her with an eerie calm. “We killed him. We killed the motherfucker who did this to you.”

  She began to convulse violently, limbs thrashing on the concrete, and Mitchell cradled her head so it wouldn’t bang against the floor. Just as quickly as it had gone into motion, her body went limp, save her right leg, which continued to twitch, one broken toenail scraping concrete. Mitchell was up in a crouch over her, ear at her mouth, fingers checking for a neck pulse. He applied a sternal rub, digging his knuckles into her breastbone, and when he got no response, he began chest compressions.

  The woman’s head rocked slightly with Mitchell’s movement, her good eye slick and white, a porcelain egg. Tim stayed nearby, on his knees, ready to take over, though he knew, from some until-now-unrealized sense he must have acquired on blasted fields and in evac helicopters, that she was beyond reviving.

  A few paces away, Robert was muttering to himself, fists clenching in quick, furious pulses. Streaks of sweat stood out on his shirt.

  Mitchell stopped, arms bulging to stretch his sleeves. He stood and laced his fingers, bringing his hands to his belt. The more furious the activity, the calmer and more focused he grew. “She’s done. I’ll have the van waiting by the back fence.” He turned and headed up the stairs.

  Robert ran over to the woman. “No. Take over, Rackley. Take over.”

  Tim dutifully worked on her, but her mouth was cold and vacant against his, her body board-stiff, yielding upward around the union of his hands like cardboard pressed into carpet. Her lips had gone blue. He checked her carotid pulse again and got back only the dense coldness of marble.

  Robert’s face was moist, a blend of sweat and smeared tears, and a high shade of red that looked as if it stung.

  Tim got up, retrieved his pistol, and tapped Robert gently on the forearm. “Let’s clear out.”

  Robert wiped his mouth. “I’m not leaving her.”

  Tim placed a hand on Robert’s shoulder, but Robert knocked it off. The wail of a distant siren reached them.

  “There’s nothing more we can do here,” Tim said. “We go now. Robert. Robert. Robert.” Robert’s head finally snapped around. He blinked hard and wiped the sweat off his forehead. Tim squatted and fixed him with a calm, steady gaze. “I’m not asking anymore. Move.”

  Robert rose dumbly, a child following instructions, and made his way up the stairs.

  The woman’s head was tilted back on the hard concrete, her jaw stretched open. Tim gently pressed her mouth closed before stepping over Debuffier’s humped body and moving upstairs. Mitchell had wisely cleared the equipment from around the twisted metal door. As Tim stepped out into the backyard, he heard vehicles screeching up to the front curb. Just past the gap in the fence, the van was waiting, door slid open, and he stepped up and in.

  The twins sat in the rear, backs against the walls, Robert’s face flushed and combat-shocked,
Mitchell’s shirt stained where he’d held the woman’s head. Tim yanked the door shut behind him, and they pulled out from the curb.

  “You ever jump into the fray like that again,” Tim said, “I’ll shoot you myself.”

  Robert didn’t show a flicker of response.

  The Stork, sheet-white and sitting on a phone book to see over the high dash, glanced back over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…couldn’t go in. I was too scared.” Grimacing, he clutched his heart, bunching his shirt. “I got the car and waited for a sign, for someone to come out.” He fumbled in his pockets, pulled out a blue pill, and popped it.

  “You did fine,” Tim said. “You followed orders.”

  Robert clenched his sweaty bangs, his hair protruding in tufts between his fingers. “We could have gotten there earlier.”

  “No,” Mitchell said.

  “We could have…could have cut surveillance shorter. Just gone right in last night. She was there. She was in there the whole time.”

  Tim looked over at Robert, but Robert wouldn’t meet his eyes-he was looking everywhere, nowhere.

  “Don’t play ifs,” Mitchell said. “That’s a no-win game. It’s throwing yourself against a rock.”

  A series of cracks in the road made the van thrum with metallic urgency.

  Robert bowed his head forward, then smacked it back against the wall of the van, so hard it dented the metal out in a crater. His voice was still strained, his throat wobbly and constricted. “Christ oh Christ. She looked so much like Beth Ann.”

  He leaned over and threw up into his fist.

  25

  AS TIM PULLED through Rayner’s front gate behind the van, he was not surprised to see Ananberg’s Lexus with its Georgetown license-plate frame. The gate whirred, rotating closed behind them, folding them protectively into the large rise of the Tudor stage set. Robert stumbled out first, trudging for the house, and the Stork followed, his face drawn and bloodless. Mitchell seemed almost to glide behind them, steady and light on his feet. Tim parked and brought up the rear, a sheepdog herding toward the stone front step, but before they could arrive, Rayner opened the door, his eyes swollen and bloodshot, Ananberg up on tiptoe behind him.