The Kill Clause (6 page)

Maybeck was fondling the new battering ram, getting a feel for it like a pitcher with a new glove. “What do we got on the door?”

“It’s a circa-1920s building, so probably a metal door with a wood core. There’s no security screen to pop or anything.”

Tim took a look around. Empty 40s in brown paper bags. Weedy front yards. Broken windows. “They might’ve sold the doors when the neighborhood went to shit and the hotel switched ownership.”

“Double-check in case they’re hollow-core,” Bear said. “The last thing we need is you putting the ram through the goddamn door again.”

“Relax, Jowalski. That happened once, six fucking months ago.”

“Once was enough.”

Freed cleared his throat. “It’s a two-story building, room is center first floor, number nine. It’s got sliding-door access to a shitty pool in the back, and a back-facing bedroom window. Me and Thomas’ll cover the rear.”

Tim turned down the volume on his portable radio so he wouldn’t have to remember to do it on the approach. “Is the unit connected to the rooms on either side?”

“No.”

The adrenaline started to hammer pretty hard. The men had instinctively paired into their two-man cells, and they were bristling like fillies in the gate. Precious strained a bit on her leash.

Miller finished with the police officer and turned to his men. “All right, boys. Let’s Pearl Harbor his ass.”

•They shuffled along the outdoor walkway, stacked tight, guns low-ready across their chests, approaching from the hinge side of the door. Miller led with Precious, Maybeck hauling his ram close behind. Tim
was in his customary position as the number one; Bear, his cell partner, would be through the doorway right after him. The other cells were pressed behind them. All black gear and weapons, their eyes bugged out with goggles, helmets low and sleek. More than a few fugitives had wet themselves after being surprised by a kick-in.

Bear was sweating heavy, holding the action back on the Remington, the ejection port empty and ready for when he wanted to jack the pump and make some noise.

Miller crept forward and tapped the far edge of the door frame. Precious went up on her hind legs, holding her paws back from the door, then followed Miller’s hand down across the bottom of the door and back up to the knob. If she smelled any explosive materials booby-trapping the door, she would have sat, but she just stood there panting. Miller took her off in a fast trot, clearing the way.

The door was particleboard, probably hollow, with cheap, white-metal hinges. Maybeck rested his hand on it, feeling its vibe. Deputy marshals and doors have a long-standing respect for one another.

Maybeck drew back the battering ram. A perfect moment of quiet. Then he swung it down, striking the locking mechanism. The dead bolt tore through the frame, the door banging in with a jagged Pac-Man bite missing at the knob. Maybeck flattened himself against the outside wall, and Tim swept past him, kicking through into the unknown, the heat of seven more bodies following him, all yelling.

“U.S. Marshals!”

“Down! Everybody down on the ground!”

“Policía! Policía!”

“Hands up! Get your fucking hands up!”

The mule’s head snapped up. He’d been counting hundreds into a wrinkled brown paper bag. Three cell phones lay on the dinged-up wood table beside the cash, one of them silently emitting the telltale burst.

Tim was aware of the shirtless male to his right—a
Joaquín y Leticia
tattoo inked across his left pectoral—but he went for the first immediate threat, shoving the mule over and getting him proned out. “Spread your arms! Spread your arms!”

The room shook with thundering boots and commands as the other ART members poured in, moving threat to threat. Tim frisked the mule quickly around the waist and sides to make sure he couldn’t get to a weapon immediately, then stepped over him and let Bear move up to take custody. Tim’s head pivoted with the MP-5, cheek mashed to the shoulder stock, sighting down the dark hall.

Two deputies were on Joaquin, four more spreading along the walls,
MP-5s raised. One of them took over the mule for Bear, then Bear was at Tim’s back, one hand touching his shoulder, stutter-stepping after him into the dark hall. Behind them Joaquin struggled and cursed as the others finished clearing the front room.

“U.S. Marshals!” Tim yelled down the hall. “You’re surrounded! Step out into the hall! Step out into the hall!”

Two more men waited behind Tim and Bear, eager to penetrate the rear rooms. The hall stood dim and silent, a fifteen-yard stretch back to the open opposing doors of the bedroom and bathroom. No closets or corners behind which to seek cover—reasons veterans sometimes balked at hallways and called them fatal funnels.

Tim moved swiftly down the hall, men stacking up behind, still shouting commands. The place smelled of rotting carpet and dust. As Tim neared the two open doors, Heidel and Lydia Ramirez leaned barely out from either side, pistols lowered at Tim’s head. It was an impeccably timed move; Tim couldn’t get a shot off on one without the other’s opening up on him. The narrowness of the hall cut off Bear’s angle behind him.

Heidel’s face was pressed hard against the inside jamb of the bedroom door, so his voice came out slurred. “That’s right, motherfucker! Keep moving!” The gun flicked to Bear, still behind Tim. “You! Big guy! Back the fuck off.”

Heidel was sporting what appeared to be a Sig Sauer. He carried a wheel gun, a Ruger from the looks of it, in a shoulder holster under his left armpit.

“Come here, come here!” Heidel’s greedy hand bunched Tim’s shirt.

Bear chambered a round, his massive fists encompassing the shotgun like a pool cue. “Release that federal officer! I said
release that federal officer!
”

Without raising the MP-5, Tim thumbed the release, dropping the clip on the floor just before Heidel whipped him around the corner into the bedroom. Heidel slammed Tim against the wall and pressed the Sig into his cheek so hard it crushed his flesh against the bone. Heidel wore a Philly Blunt skullcap pulled low over his eyebrows. A wispy goatee, light blond, barely stood out from his pasty white skin. Another man, a big Hispanic male with a snake tattoo encircling his biceps, snatched the MP-5 from Tim with one hand and lifted Tim’s Smith & Wesson from the holster with the other. He looked at the MP-5’s empty receiver and threw the gun to the side in disgust, though it still housed a round in the chamber.

More shouting farther down the hall. Heidel stuck his arm out and
fired blindly into the hall until the Sig’s slide locked to the rear. He threw the empty gun aside, drew his Ruger, then gestured for Tim’s Smith & Wesson, which he jammed into his empty shoulder holster as a backup. He shoved the Ruger up against Tim’s face.

“Anybody fucking moves, I’m wasting your guy!” Heidel yelled. “Come on, baby. Come on.” His girlfriend stepped across the hall into the bedroom, and Heidel slammed and locked the door. Tim rotated slightly into the grinding pain of the pistol to get the lay of the room and noticed the fire door connecting to the hotel room next door. Faulty intel.

Heidel yelled at the closed door, “Anyone comes through here, I shoot the fed! I’m not fucking around.” He turned, panicky, and shoved the big man toward the fire door. “Move it, Carlos.”

Carlos flung open the fire door and stepped through. Another bedroom, another long hall. Heidel pushed Tim forward, following Carlos’s trail. The big man had a revolver tucked in the back of his jeans, the pearl handle glimmering. Tim slowed a bit, falling back. Heidel and his girlfriend fired idiotically at the walls behind them.

“Move it,
cabrón,
” Lydia screamed. She shoved him, and Tim faked a fall.

Carlos kept running, disappearing around the corner.

“Get up! Get the fuck up!” Lydia stood over Tim, unbound breasts swaying fat and free beneath a stretched-out man’s undershirt. Heidel was behind her, providing rear cover.

Tim pushed up onto his hands and knees, then rose. His holster hung empty from his belt. “Get him the hell up and moving!” Heidel shouted.

Tim crossed his arms, his left hand high on his biceps. When Heidel raised the Ruger to his forehead, as Tim knew he would, he snapped his hand over, grabbing the wheel tightly so it couldn’t rotate, and kicked the girlfriend in the stomach as hard as he could. She grunted loudly and dropped, maintaining her clutch on the pistol.

Heidel was yanking the trigger, not yet realizing that the cylinder couldn’t turn, the barrel digging into the middle of Tim’s forehead. With his right hand Tim reached across and pulled his own Smith & Wesson from its limp dangle in Heidel’s shoulder holster, then calmly fired a shot into Heidel’s chest. The back-spray of blood misted Tim’s face, and Heidel fell away, arms spreading out and up like a kid’s first pass at a snow angel. Tim kept his grip on the Ruger, still held up and backward, aimed at his own head. He pivoted quickly, saw that Lydia had found her feet, and he fired a shot through her chest and one
through her face before her upswinging pistol arm reached horizontal.

She collapsed with a gurgle, a shudder of flesh and ripped cotton jersey.

Tim spun the Ruger and holstered it, keeping his Smith & Wesson at the ready. He ran down the hall, shoulder scraping a wall, and entered the front room just as Carlos banged through the sliding door onto the hotel’s pool deck. With the exception of Freed and Thomas, all the cover rifles were out front, and the LAPD’s secondary perimeter was a block away. Tim sprinted through the sliding door in pursuit, but Carlos was gone. Thomas was running toward Tim, shotgun at his side, while Freed kept rear cover by the pool. Having unexpectedly moved the length of four rooms and two hallways, Carlos had caught them off guard.

Without slowing, Thomas gestured to a still-swinging gate to Tim’s left. “Come on!”

Tim followed after him into a narrow alley. Puffs of smoke rose from the window of a restaurant kitchen, clinging to the walls. Carlos was halfway down the alley in a dead sprint for the traffic-heavy street ahead. Tim passed Thomas quickly. Carlos burst out onto the street and saw the LAPD vehicle at the far curb, the small crowd of bums and passersby drawn to the police perimeter, now pointing and shouting. Twenty yards behind, Tim cleared the alley just as Carlos froze up in surprise. The two young cops at the perimeter looked more shocked than Carlos.

Carlos reached for the revolver tucked in the small of his back, and Tim stopped running, raised his Smith & Wesson, and sighted on center mass. He double-tapped Carlos between the shoulder blades, then put his last bullet through the back of his head in case he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

When Carlos slapped the pavement, what was left of his head sent out a spray like a dropped melon.

WHEN TIM ARRIVED
back at Room 9, two deputies were hauling Joaquin out. They’d hoisted him by his ankle and wrist cuffs and were carrying him horizontally, facedown. A length of nylon cord cuff ran around his ankles and back up to his arms. He continued to resist violently, jerking and trying to bite the deputies’ legs. The mule evidently had gone more peacefully.

Five LAPD patrol cars cordoned off the area, lights flashing. A sizable crowd had gathered; in the distance Tim spotted the panning dishes atop the first news vans to pick up the story. The chop of a copter was audible, though the visible sky was empty.

Bear sat propped against the outside wall, clutching his ribs, Miller and a paramedic bent over him. Tim felt his pulse quicken once again. “Everything all right?”

Miller opened a fist dramatically, revealing the flattened slug he’d just picked out of Bear’s vest. Tim exhaled hard and slid down the wall to plunk beside Bear.

“You’ve got nine lives, Bear.”

“Only seven left. The first I owe to you, this one to Kevlar.”

Freed, Thomas, and a cop milled around the hoopty, peering hun-grily through the tinted windows. Sweat stains on Freed’s T-shirt outlined the pattern of a bulletproof vest.

“What are they doing?” Tim asked.

“Waiting for the U.S. Attorney’s office to call back,” Miller said. “She’s tracking down a judge at home so they can get a telephonic search warrant for the car.”

“We stumble in on a Top 15 exchanging cash with convicted drug traffickers who then try to kill us, and that doesn’t constitute probable cause to search the fucking car?” Bear deteriorated into a coughing fit.

“I guess not anymore,” Miller said.

“You mean my night classes at the South West LA Legal Training Academy weren’t wellsprings of infallibility? How ’bout that?”

Tim shrugged. “We have the guys, we have the vehicle. Nothing’s going anywhere. They might as well wait another twenty minutes and cover their asses.”

They sat watching the commotion in the parking lot and the street beyond, a windstorm trying to quiet. The younger deputies were circled up by the door to Room 9, trying to joke off the bitter aftertaste of mortality.

“You could toss a cat through Motherfucker’s chest cavity.”

“Nice hit, nice hit.”

“Rack shot that fuck, he was DRT: Dead Right There.”

A few of them swapped high fives. Tim noticed that Guerrera was gripping his wrist hard to keep his arms from shaking.

“That’s the way to do it, Rack,” someone called out. “Fuckin’-A yeah.”

Tim raised a hand in a half wave, but his eyes were on the marshal’s Bronco, just pulling through the police perimeter. Marshal Tannino hopped out and approached in a jog. A stocky, muscular man who’d
come up through the ranks, Marco Tannino had joined the service at twenty-one. His recommendation last spring by Senator Feinstein paved the way to his marshalship, one of the few appointments made on genuine merit. The majority of the ninety-four marshals were big contributors to Senate campaigns, trust-fund babies whose dads rubbed elbows with Beltway brass, or sycophantic bureaucrats from other government agencies. Much to the chagrin of the street deputies, one of the marshals out of Florida was a former professional clown. Tannino, on the other hand, had logged plenty of trigger time in his distinguished career, so he was respected from bottom to top in the district office and elsewhere.

He wore a focused expression, running a hand through his coiffed salt-and-pepper hair as Freed filled him in.

Miller squeezed Tim’s shoulder. “We need to get you a paramedic?”

Tim shook his head. The aftermath of the adrenaline kick had left his mouth dry and sour. The area smelled of sweat and cordite.

One of the police officers crouched over Tim and flipped open his black notebook. He started to talk, but Tim cut him off. “I have no statement.”

Tannino stepped in hard, his knee brushing against the cop so he had to stand to regain his balance. “Get out of here,” he said. “You know better than that.”

“Just doing my job, Marshal.”

“Do it elsewhere.”

The cop retreated inside the hotel room.

“How are you doing?” Tannino asked. He was looking Hill Street hip in his Harvey Woods sport coat, polyester slacks, and Nunn Bush wingtips.

“Okay.” Tim unholstered his Smith & Wesson, double-checked that the wheel was empty save the six casings, and handed it over to Tannino, not wanting to make him ask for it. The weapon was no longer his; it was federal evidence.

“We’ll get you a fresh one soon.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“Let’s get you out of this mess. The media monkeys are banging the bars, and the scene’s gonna heat up.”

“Thanks, Marshal. I fired si—”

The marshal held up his hand. “Not now, not here. Nothing oral, ever. You know the game. You’ll make one statement one time, and it’ll be in writing. You did your job and did it well—now let’s jump the
hoops and make sure you’re protected.” He offered his hand and pulled Tim up off the wall. “Let’s go.”

•The room was small and painfully bright. Tim shifted on the examination table, and the stiff paper beneath him crinkled. Bear and the other ART members had also been cleared to County USC Hospital and set up in separate rooms to simmer down.

A polite knock on the door, then Marshal Tannino stepped in. “Rackley. You left quite a trail back there.” He cocked his head, regarding Tim with his dark brown eyes. “The doctor told me you refused sedatives. Why’s that?”

“I don’t need to be sedated.”

“You’re not upset?”

“Not about this.”

“You’ve been through this before. With the Rangers, too.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I have. I’d like to say just a few times.”

“There’s an Employee Assistance Intervention Team coming out. They’re available to talk to you, the other guys, your wife, whatever you want.”

“The Hug Squad, huh? I might take a pass.”

“You can do that. But you might want to consider it.”

“To be honest, Marshal, this doesn’t bother me very much. I had little choice. I abided by regulations. They tried to kill me. I shot them justly.” Tim moistened his lips. “There are other things I need to tend to. Things closer to home.”

“I wanted to talk to you about that, too. Your daughter. There’s that guy who specializes in this kind of stuff—that high-profile shrink over at UCLA….”

“William Rayner.”

“He’s expensive, but I’m sure I could get admin to spring for—”

“We’re gonna feel our way through this one on our own, thanks.”

“Okay.” Tannino clicked his teeth a few times, watching Tim with concern. “How are you two doing with that stuff?”

Tim pursed his lips, then unpursed them. “I don’t know.”

Tannino cleared his throat, studied the floor. “Yeah. I’d imagine that’s just about right.”

“Is there any way…?”

“What, son?”

“Is there any way we could have one of our guys look into my daughter’s case? The sheriff’s detectives on it aren’t…” He stopped again, unable to meet Tannino’s eyes.

“We can’t put this office’s resources on the line for a personal case, Rackley. That’s not how we play. You know better than to ask that.”

Tim’s face reddened. “Yes. I do. I’m sorry.” He slid off the table. “I’m okay to go?”

“I’d like to buy you a little more time from the media. Three dead, a public shooting—it’s gonna be a circus. We’ll have to do things very methodically.” He looked at Tim as if unsure he was registering this. “Plus, your FLEOA lawyer is on his way over. He’ll help you with your statement, make sure you’re all lined out.”

“Okay,” Tim said. “Thanks.”

“I’m sorry about this crap. This is just the way things go down these days. But we’ll cover all our bases. You can’t turn a bad shooting into a good shooting, but you can turn a good shooting into a bad one.”

“It was a good shooting.”

“Then let’s make sure it stays that way.”

•Dray was curled up on the couch in the gloom of the living room when Tim returned. The blinds were drawn, as they’d been when Tim had left that morning, and he wondered if she’d bothered to open them all day. She was wearing ripped jeans and a sweatshirt from the academy and looked as though she hadn’t gotten around to a shower. At arm’s length from her repose sat a half-eaten bowl of cereal, beside two empty Coke cans that had been knocked over.

It was too dark for Tim to see whether she was asleep, though he sensed she wasn’t. He checked the clock on the VCR: almost eleven. “Sorry I’m so late. I got—”

“I know. I watched the news. I thought you might’ve been able to find a phone.”

“Not the way things went.”

With effort Dray propped herself up on her elbows, her face rising into visibility. “How’d it go down?”

He told her. A thoughtful frown appeared on her face halfway through.

“Come here,” she said when he was done. He crossed to her, and she made room on the couch between her legs. He sat, leaning against her, her body sleep-warm and firm. She’d been working her triceps last month, and they stood out like prongs on the backs of her arms. She played with his hair. She pressed his head to her chest, and he let her. As he relinquished control, it became clear how much he’d retreated into protective rigidity to drag himself through the past few days. He lay back, breathing Dray in, relishing her touch.

After a few minutes he turned and kissed her. They broke apart, hesitated, then kissed again.

Dray brushed his bangs back from his forehead, running a finger over the thin scar at his scalp line where he’d been struck by a rifle butt outside of Kandahar. He kept his hair combed down on the right side to hide it; Dray alone could study it without making him uncomfortable. “Maybe we could, I don’t know, go back to the bedroom,” she said.

“Are you hitting on me?”

“I think so.”

Tim stood and leaned over her, sliding his hands under her knees and shoulders. She let out an anomalous giggle and looped her arms around his neck. He exaggerated his trouble picking her up, groaned, and dropped her back on the couch. “You’re gonna have to lay off the weights.”

He’d intended it as a joke, but it came out sharply. Her smile dimmed, and he felt his insult bank and come back a vicious self-loathing. He crouched and cupped her face with both his hands, letting her read the remorse in his eyes.

“Come with me,” he said.

She stood, and they regarded each other. They hadn’t made love since Ginny was killed. Though it had been only six days, the fact hung disproportionately heavy between them. Maybe they were punishing themselves, denying themselves intimacy, or maybe they feared the closeness itself.

Tim felt first-date nervous, and he thought how odd to be so fragile at his age, in his house, with his wife. She was breathing hard, her neck sparkling with remembered sweat, and she reached out and took his hand, a touch awkwardly.

They walked back to the bedroom, pulled off their shirts, and began to kiss, tentatively, tenderly. She lay back on the bed, and he moved gently above her, but then her noises shifted direction and gained edge. He stopped, realizing she was weeping. Her fingers splayed, her palms finding the balls of his shoulders, and she pushed him back and off. He sat on the bed, naked and confused as she grappled with the sheets to pull them over herself. Ginny’s empty room across the hall silently made itself known, like a deep vibration.

Dray tucked one arm across her stomach and pressed her other hand to her trembling lips until they stopped. “I’m sorry. I thought I might be ready.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He reached out and stroked her hair, but shedidn’t respond. He put on his clothes quietly, unsure whether she perceived
his dressing as an insult or as his move to gather his pride; he’d intended neither.

“I guess I just need some space.”

“Maybe I should go back to…?” He pointed down the hall, then retreated slowly across the room. He paused for a moment at the door, but she didn’t stop him.

•Tim slept lurchingly through a tangle of nightmares and awoke in a sweaty haze a mere hour later, his intake of dream images somehow affirming his suspicion that Ginny had died at the hands of two killers—one still an enigma.

He couldn’t trust the detectives’ competence. He didn’t agree with the DA’s take on the case. He couldn’t use the service. He couldn’t investigate the case himself.

He was desperate.

Desperate enough to look for help in the one place he swore he never would.

He glanced at the clock—11:37
P
.
M
.

He jotted Dray a note in case she woke up, left the house quietly, and drove swiftly to Pasadena. He headed through the clean suburban neighborhood, his heartbeat and anxiety increasing with his proximity. He parked at the end of an aggregate concrete walk, the stones perfectly smoothed as they were on Tim’s porch. The windows sparkled—not a single smudge. The lawn was dead level and precisely trimmed, the sides lined to perfection by an edger or maybe even shears.

Tim headed up the walk and stood for a moment, taking note of the coat of paint on the front door, untainted by even one brush mark. He rang the bell and waited.

The footsteps approached evenly, as if timed.

His father opened the door.

“Timmy.”

“Dad.”

His father stood, as always, wedged between the door and the jamb, as if protecting the house from a Bible salesman’s assault. His gray suit was cheap but well pressed, the knot of his tie seated high and hard against his throat despite the hour. “How are you holding up? Haven’t talked to you since the news.”

The news. An engagement. A business deal. A daughter’s death.

“May I come in?”

His father inhaled deeply and held his breath for a moment, indicating
the inconvenience. Finally, he stepped back and let the door swing open. “Would you mind taking off your shoes?”

Tim sat on the couch in the living room, facing the La-Z-Boy upon which he knew his father would eventually settle. His father stood over him for a moment, arms crossed. “Drink?”

“Water would be good.”

His father leaned over, plucked a coaster off the coffee table, and handed it to him before disappearing into the kitchen.