The Kill Clause tr-1 Read online

  “Tell me what happened. In the shack. Every detail.”

  He told her, fighting back his own tears at times, wiping hers throughout.

  “I wish you’d killed him,” she said.

  “Then we would have lost our chance at the truth.”

  “But he’d be dead. Gone from this planet. Eradicated.” More tears than Tim could keep up with. She took his hand, squeezing it in both of hers, letting her tears streak down her temples to the pillow. “I’m angry. So angry. At everything. Everyone.”

  His throat was closing, so he cleared it once, hard.

  “Are you gonna go to sleep?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  She drifted off for a moment, then opened her eyes. “Me neither.” She smiled sleepily.

  “I’m gonna go watch a little TV. I don’t want to thrash around and keep you up.” He smoothed the hair gently out of her eyes. “At least one of us should get some sleep.”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  He lay on the living room couch as if in a coffin, fully dressed, hands laced across his chest. He stared at the ceiling, trying to grasp the new realities of his life. He couldn’t get his mind around the monumentality of his loss. He was falling into darkness, with no idea of its depth. Canned laughter emanated from Nick at Nite at hypnotic intervals. He tuned out everything but its sound. Laughter still exists, he thought. If I need to remember that, I can turn on the little box and there it is.

  Sometime around 3:00 A.M. Dray awakened him, trudging to the couch, trailing the comforter. She crawled on top of him and burrowed into his neck.

  “Timothy Rackley,” she said, her voice soft and sleep-heavy.

  He stroked her hair gently, then pulled it up and rubbed the soft nape of her neck. They slept entwined in a restless embrace.

  4

  TIM opened his eyes and felt dread descend on him before he could even put a name to it. He swung his legs off the couch and set his feet on the floor. Dray was in the kitchen, rustling.

  He didn’t just remember his grief, he relearned it. For several minutes he sat on the couch, slumped forward, arms angled out in anticipation of his rise. Paralyzed with sorrow. Unable to bear a single movement. He focused on his breathing. If he could draw three breaths, then he’d be able to draw three more, and life could go on as such, in three-breath increments.

  Finally he mustered the strength to stand. Walking back to the shower, he tried not to think about his daughter’s theatrical heaviness when he carried her along this same path from TV to bedroom at night. Her head tilted back, eyes squeezed shut, tongue stuck out the side of her mouth like a drunk cartoon character’s. Trying to steal a few extra minutes of tube time by feigning sleep.

  In daylight her death had taken on a reality. It lived in the house with them, in the dust on the floors, the blankness of the ceilings, the soft, unanswered noises of his movement past her room.

  After a scorching shower, he dressed and walked back to the kitchen.

  Dray sat at the table, sipping coffee, her eyes swollen, her hair flat on one side. The cordless phone sat on the table beside her. “Well,” she said, “I just got off the phone with the DA. It looks like you guys didn’t screw up the case against Kindell.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  They studied each other for a moment. She held her arms out like a child wanting to be hugged, and Tim walked into her embrace. She buried her head in his stomach, and he scrunched her hair in the back. She groaned.

  He slid down into the chair next to her.

  Black half-moons stood out beneath her eyes. “Motherfucking asshole prick cocksucking goddamned fucked-up pile of miserable shit,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Tim said.

  “They have Kindell at county. He’s got three priors-a weenie wagger and two lewd acts with a minor. All girls under the age of ten. Three slaps on the wrist. Last time out he pled. Judge found him not guilty by reason of insanity. NGI bought him a year and a half at Patton, padded walls and warm food.” She spoke quickly, getting it out.

  “And the case?”

  “He completely clammed up at the station-wouldn’t talk no matter how hard they pressed-but there’s evidence all over his little shack. They got a blood match this A.M. from the…from the hacksaw…” She leaned over and gagged, her spine arching through twodry heaves.

  Tim held her hair back gently, but she brought nothing up. She shoved herself upright in her chair, wiped her mouth, gave a great, halting exhale, then it was back to business. “The DA’s hammering him, filing special circumstances. The arraignment’s tomorrow.” She spun her coffee mug, then spun it again.

  “We still have an accomplice out there who they need to track down.”

  “Someone in on the kill who knew how to cover his tracks in ways Kindell didn’t.”

  “Or a partnership gone bad, or a double-cross.”

  “Or, as the DA seems to think, it was just Kindell in his truck, Ginny walking to Tess’s, and bad goddamned timing.”

  “He’s not looking into this?”

  “She assured me personally her office would continue to explore the possibility, but she doesn’t seem hot on it.”

  “Why not?”

  “A high-visibility case, a neat little package as it stands. And I’m sure Gutierez and Harrison are none too eager to spend sweat probing your leads.”

  Tim considered the dried weeds outside Kindell’s, the soft dirt that could have borne footprints or the marks of a second set of tire tracks. He thought of all the traffic through there-him and Bear included-before CSU was called, obscuring evidence, polluting the scene. Guilt felt weightier heaped on top of intense sorrow.

  “I keep thinking I’ll have to make arrangements. Like they always say.” Her face contorted as if she were going to sob, though she didn’t.

  Tim poured himself a cup of coffee, focusing on the task, trying for a numb moment.

  “Remember at the department picnic, when she was four?”

  “Don’t,” Tim said.

  “She was wearing that yellow-checked dress your aunt sent. A plane went overhead. She asked what it was. And you told her it was an airplane, and that people were up there flying in it.”

  “Don’t.”

  “And she looked up at it, gauged its size with a chubby little thumb, and do you remember what she said? ‘No way,’ she said. ‘They’d never fit.’” A tear tracked down Dray’s cheek. “Her hair was curly back then. I remember it like I could touch it.”

  The doorbell rang, and Tim rose to answer it, grateful for the disruption. On the doorstep stood Mac, Fowler, Gutierez, Harrison, and a few other deputies from the bar last night. They all had their hats off, like salesmen feigning deference.

  “Uh, Rack, we…” Fowler cleared his throat hard. He smelled of coffee and stale booze. He seemed to catch himself. “Is Dray here, too?”

  Tim felt a tug at the back belt loop of his jeans. Dray went up on tiptoe and rested her chin on his shoulder.

  Fowler nodded at her, then continued. “We all wanted to apologize. For in the bar. And earlier, too. It was a, uh, a real tough night for us all-not near as hard as for you, I know, but we’re also not used to…Anyways, we were way out of line at a time when you least needed it, and uh, well…”

  Gutierez picked up for him. “We’re ashamed.”

  “We’re on it now,” Harrison said. “The case. Full force.”

  “If there’s anything we can do…” Mac said.

  “Thank you,” Tim said. “I appreciate you coming by.”

  They shuffled around a bit, then moved forward one at a time to shake Tim’s hand. It was a foolish, formal little ceremony, but Tim found it a moving one nonetheless. Dray held him from behind, trembling slightly.

  The deputies headed back down the walk, and then the patrol cars pulled out one after the other. Tim and Dray watched the procession until the last car faded from sight.

  The next forty-eight hours passed tediously and pa
infully, like a jagged kidney stone. Every action was weighty and frightful, full of hidden turns and dark corners. Calling family members and friends. Trying to get Ginny’s body released from the coroner. Receiving updates on the case the DA was preparing against Kindell. Even the smallest tasks left Tim and Dray drenched in exhaustion.

  Kindell, understandably reticent about staying in custody, refused to waive time, demanding a prompt prelim. Dray learned that the public defender had filed a 1538 motion to suppress evidence. She hit the roof and called the DA’s office but was assured that the motion was not meritorious, that PDs filed them prophylactically all the time to keep appellate lawyers off their asses down the line. It wasn’t the worst thing that the PD was touching all the bases; he had a reputation for being a loose cannon, and the last thing they wanted was Kindell filing an Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Writ after the trial.

  The phone rang constantly with calls from investigators, well-wishers, press, its jangle an unnerving marching-band tune for the parade of tin-foil-covered plates and eyes crinkled with sympathy. But despite the traumatizing details and petty tortures, the days were defined by a maddening eventlessness, all sound and fury and little advancement, like running on ice.

  The incessant hammering of grief and stress left Tim and Dray with tattered and few resources. Though they tried to comfort each other, to embrace, to mourn together, their pain seemed amplified by the other’s distress and their own uselessness in the face of it. They both found themselves increasingly wrapped in their own private pain, unable to muster the strength to pull themselves out of it.

  They began keeping a respectful distance from each other, like roommates. They napped frequently, though always separately, and they rarely ate, despite the array of filled Tupperware that packed their refrigerator, replenished almost hourly by neighbors and friends. When they did interact, it was in brief, overpolite exchanges, parodies of domesticity. The sight of Dray elicited in Tim a piercing shame that he was unable to be more for her right now. He knew that in his face Dray saw reflected back only the same devastation that weighed down hers.

  The DA’s office was respectful about keeping them in the loop about the case, though also cautious about releasing many specifics. In conversations with her colleagues, Dray managed to piece together fragments of information about Gutierez and Harrison’s investigation, enough to grasp that they’d jettisoned the accomplice theory to focus their full energies on shoring up the case against Kindell.

  Tim’s mind returned to Kindell’s shack with obsessive regularity, replaying each detail, from the slipperiness of the oil-stained floor to the sharp scent of paint thinner.

  I wasn’t supposed to kill her.

  He didn’t-

  Eight words had opened up a chasm of doubt. The pain of not knowing almost equaled the pain of loss, because it played carnival-mirror tricks with Tim’s grief, magnifying it one moment, reshaping it the next. He was mourning without knowing the exact parameters of what he was mourning-Ginny was dead, but what she had gone through and who was responsible for it were blank canvases awaiting the latest incarnation, the latest projection of rage or horror. Kindell had proved enough to sate the appetite of the detectives and the DA, but Tim knew there were additional gutters to be flushed. The progression of atrocious events that had filled his daughter’s last hours remained out there, frozen in history, waiting to be reconstructed.

  Wednesday night he and Dray went for a drive, their first outing together since Ginny’s death. They sat awkwardly in silence, trying to let the movement and crisp night air lull them back to compatibility. On their way home they passed McLane’s. Dray craned her neck, checking out the vehicles in the dark lot. “Gutierez’s rig,” she murmured.

  Tim flipped a U-turn and pulled in the lot. Dray turned in her seat to watch him, more curious than surprised.

  They found Gutierez in the back, shooting stick with Harrison. Gutierez nodded in greeting, then spoke in the same softened voice everyone used with them now. “You guys holding up okay?”

  “Fine, thanks. Can we have a minute?”

  “Sure thing, Rack.”

  The detectives followed Tim and Dray out to the back parking lot.

  “Word is you’re dropping the accomplice angle,” Tim said.

  Harrison stiffened. Gutierez cocked his head slightly. “It didn’t yield.”

  “Have you checked Kindell’s priors? Did he work with an accomplice on those?”

  “We’re working very closely with the DA, and we’ve turned up no evidence of other people’s involvement. We’ve looked into everything. Now, you’re well aware that we can’t involve parents of victims in our cases-”

  “A little late for that,” Dray threw in.

  “You’ve got no distance from the case. No perspective. And to say you’re biased is something of an understatement. Now, I know what you thought you heard in there-”

  “How did you find Ginny’s body?” Tim said. “So quickly. I mean, that creek bed is pretty remote.”

  Harrison blew out a breath that clouded in the cool air. “Anonymous call.”

  “Man or woman?”

  “Look, we don’t have to-”

  “Was it a man’s or a woman’s voice?”

  Gutierez folded his arms, irritation starting to shift to anger. “A man’s.”

  “Did you trace it? Was it recorded?”

  “No, it went to the private line of the deputy working the desk.”

  “Not 911? Not dispatch?” Dray said. “Who would know the private number?”

  “Someone making sure their ass was covered,” Tim said. “Someone afraid to be implicated or ID’d. Like an accomplice.”

  Harrison stepped forward, getting in Tim’s space. “Listen, Fox Mulder, I don’t think you have any idea how many anonymous tips we get. It doesn’t mean the guy was in on a murder. I mean, odds are a guy drifting through an out-of-the-way creek bed is up to something other than selling Girl Scout cookies. It could have been a guy with a rap sheet, a scared kid who didn’t want to get tangled up in a murder case. It could’ve been a bum sniffing glue.”

  “Because bums whacked out on glue fumes are in possession of private phone numbers into the Moorpark Police Station,” Dray said.

  “It’s listed.”

  “A bum with a phone book,” Tim said.

  “Hey, man, you missed your chance to take care of business. We gave it to you. And guess what? You wanted everything aboveboard. Well, fine. We can respect that. But that means it’s out of your hands now. You’re a biased party, the parents of the vic, and you’re to go nowhere near this case or we’ll slap you with obstruction. There’s no shooter on the grassy knoll. Your daughter died, and we got the sick fuck who did it. Case closed. Go home to each other. Grieve.”

  “Thanks,” Dray said. “We’ll take that under advisement.”

  They walked back to Tim’s car silently, climbed in, and sat.

  “He’s right.” Tim’s voice was soft, cracked, defeated. “We can’t get involved. There’s no way we could go about this investigation fairly, objectively. Let’s hope Kindell sweats it and tries to talk for a plea. Or chokes on the stand and spills. Or that his PD trots out the accomplice theory as part of the defense. Something. Anything.”

  “I feel useless,” Dray said.

  A cop car pulled in swiftly and parked across the lot. Mac and Fowler got out, joking and chuckling, and headed into the bar.

  Tim and Dray sat in the afterwash of the laughter, eyes on the dash.

  •When Tim entered the kitchen Thursday morning, Dray looked up from the latest batch of thank-yous and condolence-card replies she was writing. Her eyes went to the pager in his hand, then to his Smith amp; Wesson, clipped to his belt. “You’re going to the office? Already?”

  “Bear needs me.”

  Light glowed yellow through the drawn blinds, falling across her face. “I need you. Bear’ll be just fine.”

  The phone rang, but she shook her head. �
��Press,” she said. “All morning. They want a sobbing mother, a stoic father. Which do you want to play?”

  He waited for the phone to quiet before speaking. “A tip came in from one of our CIs this morning. We’re planning a hot takedown. I have to go in.”

  One of Bear and Tim’s confidential informants had caught wind of a deal going down that had Gary Heidel’s smell all over it. The Escape Team had been tracking Heidel, a Top 15, for the better part of five months. After being convicted for one count of first-degree murder and two counts of drug trafficking, Heidel had escaped during his transport from courthouse to prison. Two Hispanic accomplices in a pickup had pinned the sedan against a tree, shot both deputy marshals, and extracted Heidel.

  Tim had known that Heidel would need money quickly, and so he’d turn to the one place guys like him got money quickly. Since Heidel’s MO was a distinctive one-he acquired diluted cocaine from Chihuahua and had mules drive it across the border hidden in wine bottles-it had been easier for Tim and Bear to press the street for related information. Finally their vigilance had paid off. If their CI had given Bear reliable intel, a forty-key deal was going down sometime that afternoon or night.

  “You sure you’re ready to work?”

  Tim’s eye flicked to the scattering of cards on the wood tabletop. Garlands in muted inks on taupe paper. “I don’t know what else to do. I’m going out of my mind. If I don’t work, I might do something stupid.”

  Dray dropped her eyes. He knew she sensed his eagerness to get out of the house. “You should go, then. I think I’m just upset that I’m not ready yet.”

  “You sure you’re okay? I could call Bear-”

  She waved him off. “It’s like what you said to me that first awful night.” She mustered a faint grin. “At least one of us should get some sleep.”

  He paused for a moment in the doorway before leaving. Dray leaned over the card she was writing, her jaw set just slightly as it got when she concentrated. Early sunlight shone through the window, turning the edges of her hair pale gold.

  “Of course I remember that day at the picnic, with her and the airplane,” Tim said. “I remember everything about her. Especially when she was bad-for some reason those memories bring her the closest. Like when she drew on the new wallpaper in the living room with crayons-”