The Kill Clause (26 page)

“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.

“God
damn
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.

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.

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.