The Kill Clause tr-1 Read online

  Rayner seemed not even to notice the walking-dead appearance of the crew advancing on him. He started to speak but had to clear his throat and start over. “Franklin’s at the VA hospital. He’s had a stroke.”

  •They sat spread out evenly across the chairs and sofas of the study, as if needing a buffer from proximity. Tim and Rayner had played unelected spokesmen, swapping information with flat, toneless, just-the-facts-please-ma’am sentences.

  Robert hurried to get down a few bolstering bourbons. He drank without hesitation, pausing only to suck ice. A different type of postop drink. The Stork drank milk through a straw-Tim guessed his palate abnormalities made drinking from a glass difficult for him. The Stork had settled down significantly now that the immediate threat had passed; his odd detachment seemed to make him impervious to trauma.

  Ananberg kept glancing at the still-moist stain on the front of Mitchell’s shirt.

  Robert looked exceedingly weary. He shook his head, his eyes glazed with grief. “I can’t believe the old man had a stroke.”

  Tim thought of his morning meeting with Dumone, the quiet apartment filled with the smell of stale carpet.

  Rayner sat leaning forward in his charcoal glen-plaid suit, gold cuff links peeking out from the sleeves. The thin white band of his mustache looked fake. “I got the news and called over about an hour ago. The nurse wouldn’t put him on to talk. I guess he wasn’t in full control of his faculties and speech. No visitors tonight. I’m getting him transferred to the VIP floor at Cedars first thing tomorrow. We can have more control there.”

  “Of his mouth?” the Stork asked.

  “Of his care.” Rayner’s annoyed gaze lingered on the Stork. “Franklin has an older sister, but he asked she not be contacted. He doesn’t want her flying out, fussing over him.”

  “Unmarried,” Ananberg said, by way of explanation.

  The ensuing silence was broken only by ice clinking against glass and the slurp of milk through the Stork’s straw.

  “I think we could all use some time. What do you say we take the rest of the weekend off, meet Sunday night?” Rayner said.

  Robert’s eyes were focused on absolutely nothing, as if they were peering down an endless well. An alcohol blush had bloomed on his face; now that he’d started drinking, Tim wondered if he’d be able to stop.

  Mitchell sat with his hands folded in his lap, the points of his thumbs touching. His arms he held tight to his sides, giving him a compact, focused bearing. His eyes had narrowed, almost to a squint, as though he were running net-explosive-weight calculations in his head. He was supremely calm, almost relaxed.

  Tim looked uneasily from one brother to the other, his anger and disgust growing. “Take some time off? This isn’t a church committee-we have matters to discuss.”

  Rayner cleared his throat, clasped his hands piously. “Let’s not start pointing fingers here. I know the execution went badly-”

  “No,” Tim said. “The execution did not go badly. It aspired to go badly.”

  “I have to agree with Tim’s assessment,” Ananberg said. “This was a mess.”

  “You weren’t there,” Robert said.

  “That’s exactly irrelevant. This blows up, we all go to jail.”

  “Look. Things were complicated. We didn’t mean for it to go down that way, it just happened.”

  “Well,” Ananberg said, “who happened it?”

  All eyes settled on Robert, except Mitchell’s, which tracked the pendulum of the grandfather clock. Robert tilted his glass at Tim. “Rack fucked up, too.”

  “Amen to that,” Tim said. “I should have set firm ROEs. We have strict procedures in place here. We need strict procedures in the field. There are gonna be some new rules.”

  “Like what?” Mitchell asked.

  “Not now,” Rayner said. “We’re in no shape to talk about anything.”

  “When we come back, we’re discussing this,” Tim said. “At length.”

  Rayner stood and flared his hands down the fabric over his thighs, smoothing wrinkles. “Monday at eight.”

  When Rayner passed him, Tim was surprised to see genuine grief in the downturn of his mouth.

  •The TV was murmuring in Joshua’s office, so Tim decided to forgo the elevator and sneak up the back stairs. His apartment waited. Mattress. Desk. Dresser. He pulled the child-size desk chair to the window and sat with his feet up, breathing exhaust through the screen, listening to someone yelling in the Japanese restaurant across the alley. It was remarkable how much angrier anger seemed when conveyed in an Eastern tongue.

  He checked his Nokia voice mail-two messages. The first was Dray. Her voice, recognizable to him in so many indescribable subtleties, moved right through him. She was doing her best to soften her tone, make it more feminine, which meant she was regretful and wishing to convey affection.

  “Tim, it’s me.” A long, crackling pause. “There are, uh, some forms here that need joint parental signatures. To cancel Ginny’s medical insurance. Dissolve what’s left of her college fund. Crap like that. If you could…If you could stop by sometime, that’d be great. I’ll be around tomorrow. Or I could leave them on the kitchen table, if you want, and you could do it when I’m at work. But I’d rather that…that…” A sigh. “I’d really like to see you, Timothy.”

  Bear’s startlingly gruff voice broke Tim’s momentary lapse into happiness.

  “Rack. Bear. How about a fucking phone call?”

  He got Dray’s machine, so he left a message, then called Bear. Bear said he’d like to see Dray, too, so Tim agreed to meet him at the house tomorrow at noon.

  He got into bed, since he had little else to do. Because of the brightness of the downtown street and the inadequate city-issue blinds, darkness didn’t really happen in his apartment. Night was a slightly altered attitude toward the hours, no more. It lacked lethargy.

  As a preemptive strike against the images he’d found beneath the coroner’s sheet, Tim tried to imagine Ginny in a peaceful pose, but everything came back trite and inauthentic. In life she’d never reclined peacefully in dandelion fields; there was little reason for her to do so now. His mind returned again and again to Debuffier’s bullet-split face, to the death they’d dealt him and the lives he’d be unable to take in the future. There was a cheapness to the killing; it lacked righteousness. It was like gaining a fortune through inheritance.

  Lane was dead and Debuffier was dead and Ginny couldn’t have cared less.

  After a while Tim found the emptiness of the room bad company. When he turned on the news, Melissa Yueh’s face peered out, gleeful and tainted with a red, almost sexual excitement. “The city is heating up again after another execution of a suspected criminal, Buzani Debuffier. Debuffier was shot and killed immediately after apparently committing a violent torture/murder.”

  “Violent torture/murder” seemed redundant to Tim, but then he wasn’t selling ratings. Footage rolled of guys in Scientific Investigation Division windbreakers poking through the debris at Debuffier’s. “…LAPD won’t disclose if they believe the case is related to the Lane assassination, but inside sources indicate that bits of rare explosive wire were found inside devices at both scenes-”

  Feeling his stress ratchet up another notch, Tim flipped the channel. Leave It to Beaver flickered out at him in black and white. June scrunched Beaver in a hug, and the Beav closed his eyes. The scene was cloying to the point of repugnance, but Tim left it on.

  He fell asleep to it.

  26

  TIM SLEPT LATE and showered long. The khakis and button-up shirt he’d hung in the bathroom to steam out the wrinkles actually smoothed out decently.

  He dressed in the living room, near the comforting murmur of the television. After a commercial featuring a bronzed and exuberant woman astride an elaborate exercise machine, Rayner appeared on a plush talk-show couch looking particularly unaggrieved-perhaps his sorrow over Dumone’s stroke had been feigned after all. Or perhaps he couldn’t help but perk up
when he saw himself reflected back in the lens of a camera. He was, of course, commenting on Debuffier’s death, waxing poetic about vengeance and duty and this travesty we call justice.

  The pervasive theme of the show was that Debuffier had gotten what he’d had coming to him. With a few exceptions, the audience was energetic and sanctimonious, and the host, a Geraldo rip-off in an illadvised maroon suit, claimed that the “counteroffensive against murderers” was inciting Americans to take back the streets. When a caller proudly related that his cousin in Texas, inspired by the Lane hit, had “shot a burglar dead” the day before yesterday, the news received whoops and cheers.

  Rayner cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Well, it seems to me-and I’ve discussed this with several sources close to the investigation-that the person or persons behind these executions aren’t seeking to promote wholesale vigilantism. They’ve chosen these cases quite specifically-cases in which the justice system appears to have failed. I’d guess their motivation is to open up discussion about these shortcomings in the law.”

  Tim watched Rayner’s betrayal with the horrified anticipation of a first-day-on-the-floor med student at a thoracotomy. Rayner’s need to issue a communique had been thwarted, so he’d chosen to tackle the issues as a commentator rather than leaving the Great Unwashed to think independently about the Commission’s efforts. His tedious media analyses had been nothing more than preparation for future orchestration. Before long he’d be feeding information to handpicked journalists to spin coverage. Maybe he’d done so already.

  The TV host’s arms spread wide, bent at the elbows, microphone dangling like a baton. “Or they’re just kicking ass and taking names.”

  Rayner’s eyes were unaffected by the tight smile that flashed on his face. “Perhaps. But I think these executions-however misguided-are part of a dialogue. They’re indicative of a growing sentiment in Americans today. We’re simply fed up with the law. We don’t believe that the law owns justice anymore, that the law will work for us.”

  A hefty man in a Cleveland Browns sweatshirt called out, “Yeah! Screw the courts!”

  Off Rayner’s expression of pained forbearance, Tim clicked the remote. One channel over, John Walsh from America’s Most Wanted was holding forth on Crossfire. Tom Green solicited passersby to target-shoot at crime fliers of the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted. Howard Stern implored viewers to wager guesses about the respective lengths of Lane’s and Debuffier’s penises.

  Tim felt sick by the time he turned off the TV.

  He used his socks to dust off a pair of oxfords, which he laced loosely in anticipation of blisters. He deliberated over belts. Only when he pulled cologne from his dopp kit did he realize he’d been dressing up to see Dray.

  He stopped by Cedars-Sinai on his way to Dray. The Beverly Hills-adjacent medical center rose glittering and imperious between Beverly and Third, a reassuring architectural display of order and competence. Tim got tangled up on Gracie Allen Drive before finding Lot #1 off George Burns Road. Trusty Tom Altman, aided by a smiling Arizona license, had little trouble talking his way past reception. After passing a woman wearing a mink over a hospital gown and an octogenarian with a Yiddish accent singing “Anything Goes” and raising his bathrobe for each glimpse of stocking, Tim found Dumone’s room on the VIP floor.

  He tapped the slightly ajar door with his knuckles before entering. A disgruntled expression on his pale, crumpled face, Dumone sat shored up by a clutch of pillows. Blanketing the nightstand to his left were flowers and gift baskets.

  Tim couldn’t resist a smile, and Dumone joined him, his grin pulling up only the right side of his face. “This place is all marble and plants and pillow fluffers. I feel like a pit bull at a poodle show.”

  Tim crossed, and they regarded each other warmly for a moment. “You look like hell.”

  “Don’t I know it. Look at this crap Rayner sent over.” Dumone’s hand rooted around one of the gift baskets and emerged with a foil-wrapped bag of coffee. “Guatemalan Fantasy. Sounds like a blue movie.”

  The droop of his face slurred his words, just slightly. To his side a monitor blinked at intervals. His left arm lay limply in his lap, hand coiled. An IV ran into his good arm, and an oxygen tube fed his nose.

  The wardrobe stood open just enough to reveal Dumone’s hung shirt and slacks, his Remington dangling in a shoulder holster.

  “They let you keep your revolver?” Tim asked.

  “Once I explained who I was, showed ’em my conceal-and-carry. I told them my weapon goes nowhere without me. They agreed sweetly, then took all the bullets, the bastards. They’re used to negotiating with old-school producers. A simple cop like me doesn’t stand a chance.”

  He jerked forward, seized by a violent coughing fit, hand held up to stave off any impulse Tim might have to help. Finally he quieted, his breath rasping. He took a moment before speaking again. “Rob and Mitch wanted to come by, but I put the hold on them. Wanted to talk to you first, get the lay.”

  “Are you feeling-?”

  Dumone cleared his throat loudly, cutting him off. “Threw a clot. Had it on the radar, was just a matter of time. Let’s talk shop. I’m not much good at the other.”

  He listened quietly and attentively, nodding from time to time, his mouth set slightly to the side. When Tim finished filling him in, Dumone pulled in a deep, halting breath and exhaled shakily. “What a shit storm. You gotta get things back on track.”

  “First and foremost I have to get the ROEs more clearly defined.”

  Dumone nodded, the oxygen tube rustling against his chest. “It’s all about the rules. They’re the only thing that separate us from vigilantes and Third World thugs. How we go about our actions is the entirety of who we are. Without perfection we’re a lynch mob.”

  “Robert and Mitchell are hungry for more operational control, but after this I’ve got no choice but to pull them back. Robert entirely.”

  “How about Mitch?”

  “He’s more poised under pressure than Robert, but he’s also straining at the bit. He brought explosives to a surveillance job, for Christ’s sake. And Rayner’s being oddly indulgent of them.”

  Dumone’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t know why that would be-there’s no love lost there from either side, last I checked.”

  “Well, Rayner’s content to-”

  “You’re in charge. You. Not Rayner. Rayner bribes us with a room in a nice house, but that does not put him in the driver’s seat. My vote goes with you. If you have to roll heads, roll heads. Tell Rayner to get his mug off the news. Have Rob ride the bench after that bullshit. Use Mitch if you need him. Run the show according to your judgment, and work things slowly back to a good balance.” He coughed jerkily, squinting through the pain. “Rob and Mitch give you jaw, send ’em to me.”

  “Thanks.” Tim nodded and rose. “Enjoy your coffee.”

  “You kidding me? If I can’t stir it into hot water, I don’t trust it.”

  Tim rested a hand on Dumone’s shoulder, and Dumone gripped him at the wrist. It was a brief gesture but an intimate one.

  “You’re at a crossroads, Deputy.” Dumone winked. “Lay down the law.”

  •Bear’s rig was already hogging the curb when Tim pulled up. He parked across the street. The murmur of voices from the backyard reached him halfway up the front walk, so he circled, lifted the latch on the side gate, and stepped through.

  Fowler, Gutierez, Dray, and about four other deputies milled around the Costco picnic table, surrounding Tim’s paint-splattered boom box, which was throwing out Faith Hill from back when she still twanged. They were all fisting beers, and their heads turned in unison toward Tim. Mac, sleeves double-cuffed to show off muscular forearms, was leaning over the grill, dousing a clumsily arrayed mound of charcoal with too much lighter fluid. Bear sat sideways on the deck chair with the snapped straps, waiting for Tim by himself, exuding loyal outrage. He was wearing a jacket, despite the fact that it was the first sunny afternoon in two weeks, and a bas
eball cap with an embossed gold star.

  Tim’s hands moved before his mouth could, gesturing out through the gate. “I should go. I didn’t realize you were having a party.” He prayed that the hurt indignation in his voice wasn’t as apparent to them as to his own ears. He felt foolish in his nice clothes.

  “Oh, come on, Rack. There’s no reason to be like that. Come in. Have a burger.” Mac wore a we’re-all-friends-here frat-boy smile. He’d propped a large, flat cardboard box against the side of the grill, as if tempting the gods of conflagration. Next to it lay a basketball.

  Dray approached fast, talking low so only Tim would hear her. “I’m so sorry. Mac took the liberty of inviting everyone back from the station. I didn’t know you were coming.”

  He felt the impulse to peck her on the lips in greeting. Her aborted lean told him she’d resisted the pull of the same habit.

  “He seems awfully at home here,” Tim said.

  A shadow flicker of remorse crossed her eyes. “He knows this is our home.”

  “Does he?” Tim looked away. “I’ll just sign the forms, then get out of here and leave you to your thing.”

  “It’s not my thing.”

  Mac threw a lit match on top of the charcoal briquettes, then studied them with disappointment. He added more lighter fluid.

  “Where’s the paperwork?” Tim asked.

  He followed her inside, nodding to the others. Bear stood and followed them inside, walking through the circle of deputies just to make them move out of his way.

  “Could you grab another jar of pickles?” Mac called after them.

  Dray grimaced and slid the door shut behind them. They turned and watched Mac leaning over the charcoal briquettes, examining them. A burst of orange flame leapt up, and he reared back, face flushed, then shot a handsome smile over at them to cover his embarrassment.