The Kill Clause Part 41

As Tim started to cut through the crowd, Dobbins rose and began to head in his direction. He walked with a deliberate gait, his beak nose pointed down, watching his shoes.

A movement from his left side, a thick plug of a man parting the crowd, solid and purposeful, seeming to glide through the bustle. Black jacket, low baseball cap, head ducked, hands in pockets. Mitch.e.l.l.

Tim ran, cried out, his voice lost with the shouts of gleeful children.

Despite all else that had gone down, he was shocked that Mitch.e.l.l would attempt a shooting in an area crowded with kids. The thought barely had time to register when Mitch.e.l.l's hand flashed up from his pocket, gripping a plastic flex-cuff. One tough plastic strip was curved around to make a dinner-plate-size circle, the notched end already snared through the catch. Just waiting to be tightened.

Mitch.e.l.l swept behind Dobbins, who continued walking toward Tim, studying the ground at his feet, oblivious. Tim yelled, shoving a father out of the way. Dobbins's head was just rising to check out the commotion ahead when the loop of the flex-cuff dropped over his head like a snare.

Even over the low rumble of the crowd, Tim heard the shrill zippering sound of the plastic pulling through the catch, and then Dobbins sucked in a creaking gasp, hands at his throat, and fell to his knees. A little girl screamed, and there was a flurry within the already-moving crowd, people running away, kids dashing to parents.

Mitch.e.l.l was several strides from Dobbins now, but he turned as Tim approached, now fifteen yards away. Their eyes locked. Mitch.e.l.l's expression of utter tranquillity never gave way, not even as he drew, a quick, reflexive lift of his .45 that rivaled Tim's own. Tim's weapon was clear of his waistband but pointed directly down at the ground; he didn't dare raise it with children and parents streaming through his line of sight, crying and shouting.

Splitting the distance between them, Dobbins lay on the ground, now flat on his back, expelling great, abbreviated choking sounds. His body was remarkably still, save for one foot that ticked back and forth, pendulum-steady, the untied laces brushing asphalt. Over Mitch.e.l.l's shoulder Tim saw a tan Cadillac coast into view on the street behind the park, Robert at the wheel.

Tim stared down the bore of Mitch.e.l.l's gun, a hypnotic black dot that sucked in all his thoughts, leaving him with only a nonspecific buzz in his head. Mitch.e.l.l's right eye was closed, his left focused on Tim's face over the lined sights. Children flashed between them.

Mitch.e.l.l lowered his gun and took two jogging backward steps, then turned and sprinted to the car. Tim raced after him but got only a few steps past Dobbins before his conscience leash-jerked him back.

He slid to Dobbins, the asphalt sc.r.a.ping his knees even through his jeans. Dobbins's neck sported deep scratch marks above the tight band of the flex-cuff; Tim could see the corresponding flesh stuck beneath the nails of his scrabbling fingers.

A cl.u.s.ter of people had gathered, watching warily from a few feet. Children were crying and being pulled away. The mother Tim had observed earlier looked sh.e.l.l-shocked, her weighty purse slung over one shoulder, her notepad flat against her thigh. Three people were on cell phones, anxiously providing the park's address and a queasy description of the emergency.

The mother stepped forward, pulling an overburdened key chain from her purse and letting it dangle. "I have a knife."

Tim grabbed the key chain and snapped off the pocketknife-an elegant sterling-silver trinket from Tiffany. The blade was thin, which would help, but not serrated, so sawing against the thick plastic would be tough going.

Tim moved Dobbins's hands away, but they shot back to his b.l.o.o.d.y throat, obscuring Tim's view. He pinned one of Dobbins's arms beneath a knee and slapped the other away until a man stepped from the crowd and held it down.

Dobbins's face was tomato red. A vein bulged on his forehead, and the skin around his neck was sucked in tight, leaving hollows.

Tim slid the blade under the embedded band, cutting through a thin layer of Dobbins's skin in the process. He tried to turn the knife to get the cutting edge up against the flex-cuff, but there was not enough give; Mitch.e.l.l had yanked it incredibly tight, smashing down the top half of Dobbins's Adam's apple.

Beneath him Dobbins jerked and expelled a ticking gurgle.

Tim turned the knife, fingering through the blood to find Dobbins's larynx. He walked his fingers down until he felt the soft give of the cricothyroid membrane, then cut a lengthwise slit through Dobbins's flesh. A burst of air shot out through the hole, accompanied by a spray of blood.

"Your pen. Give me your gold pen." Tim snapped his fingers, his hand out to the mother. Antic.i.p.ating him, she unscrewed the pen barrel and shook it so the rollerpoint ink cartridge fell. She handed him the hollow tube of the top half of the pen, and he turned it and inserted the tapered end into the b.l.o.o.d.y gap. It slid in smoothly.

The sound of sirens, still distant.

Tim sucked once to clear the tube and spit a mouthful of blood on the pavement, fighting off images of hepat.i.tis and HIV, and then Dobbins's body lurched forward as he drew air through the pen barrel directly into his throat. His sloped eyes gave off no anger, just a panicked disorientation.

"Come here," Tim said. The woman came forward and crouched. "Hold this. Hold this." She took the pen barrel from Tim's blood-moist fingers, tentatively at first. He firmed her hands with his own, then rose.

The crowd parted, leaving him a few feet on either side. A crimson spray decorated the front of his shirt; his hands were stained to the knuckles. He jogged out of the park, back down the sidewalk to his car, spitting a bit of blood every few steps.

Driving away, he pa.s.sed an ambulance and two cop cars just turning onto the block.

38.

TIM CHANGED OUT of his shirt and took a prolonged shower, scrubbing his hands and under his nails, letting the bathroom fill with steam. Turning the dial almost all the way to "hot," he stood beneath the stream, shoulders slumped, head hung, letting the water strike him at the crown and run down over his face. It felt blissful and clean and painful.

Once dressed, he went to the corner booth and called Hansen at the Nextel office to check what cell site had been routing Robert's and Mitch.e.l.l's outgoing calls.

"Your boys are smarter than you think. Not a single call. I'd say either they dumped the phones or they're using another phone for outgoing."

Before he could express his doubt that Robert and Mitch.e.l.l were sufficiently technologically sophisticated to take those countermeasures, a thought struck him: The Stork was. was. Having a second phone exclusively for outgoing calls was a brilliant idea-one that none of Tim's fugitives had ever come up with. Having a second phone exclusively for outgoing calls was a brilliant idea-one that none of Tim's fugitives had ever come up with.

"Well, I just had a little run-in that may provoke a phone call," Tim said. "Will you mind keeping on it, just in case they slip up?"

Tim thanked him and walked up the street to the store from which he'd rented his Nokia. The diminutive store owner didn't so much as comment on the last phone he'd rented Tim, now scattered in pieces at the side of the 110. Tim selected the same model, and the owner word-lessly started the paperwork for the identical financial arrangement they'd agreed upon previously. Money doesn't just talk; it silences.

Tim would keep the Nextel, too, because that was the number Robert and Mitch.e.l.l knew and the only means they had of getting in touch with him. His elaborate game of musical phones would have made a mutt like Gary Heidel proud.

Tim charged his phones side by side near the outlet and sat Indian style on the floor staring at exactly nothing.

He recalled Mitch.e.l.l's expression of confusion on the playground-he'd truly been surprised Tim had come after him. Depending on whether their surveillance on Dobbins had overlapped with the police's picking him up last night, they might not even be aware that the authorities had been alerted.

If Tannino went ahead with the press conference, they'd know soon enough.

Within a few hours Robert Masterson, Mitch.e.l.l Masterson, Eddie Davis, and Tim Rackley would be names known coast to coast. Tannino would likely keep Dumone's, Ananberg's, and Rayner's deaths separate, at least for the time being. Tim turned on the television to see if any word had leaked, but aside from a nothing-new update about Rayner's murder and Melissa Yueh's announcement that KCOM would be airing a special report at seven o'clock, there was zilch.

Yueh collected her papers, tapping them once neatly on her anchor desk to line the edges. "In other news, Mick Dobbins, the formerly accused child molester, was attacked today in a Culver City park by an unidentified man who cinched a hard plastic garbage-bag tie over his head. He nearly asphyxiated, but another man performed an emergency tracheotomy, then fled the scene. Eyewitnesses helped the police compile this sketch of the a.s.sailant."

A composite flashed up on the screen that looked more like Yosemite Sam than Mitch.e.l.l Masterson.

"Police would not reveal whether this attempted murder is linked to the Lane and Debuffier executions, but they did indicate they were considering the possibility."

A shot of the park showed Culver City PD pushing bystanders back from a circle of asphalt marked with crime-scene tape. To the side the back of Bear's wide frame was readily apparent. He'd sweated through his sport coat at the armpits. The impromptu huddle around him included Maybeck, Denley, Thomas, and Freed.

Colleagues turned adversaries.

"Local authorities are looking for both men. Dobbins was taken to Brotman Medical Center, where he is reported in stable condition."

Tim turned off the TV and sat at his desk. He'd have to give Dray at least twenty-four hours on the car. The safety-deposit key could take hours, could take weeks.

His thoughts, once turned to his wife, didn't readily depart. Dray, who kept her nails short and unpainted. Dray, who always held other people's babies awkwardly away from her body, like leaking trash bags. Dray, two-ring shooter on a Transtar target with a Beretta at fifty yards.

He folded his hands in his lap and sat in the relative silence because that was what'd he'd heard that people seeking peace did. He closed his eyes, but spotlit in the dark was Kindell's bent hacksaw, worn to the nubs, still sticky with Ginny's blood. He wondered what other items waited in the surrounding blackness.

He set the VCR to record the seven o'clock press conference, in case he wasn't back in an hour. He left down the fire escape, for practice, and so he could keep the doorstop wedged in place while he was gone.

*Erika Heinrich's bedroom light was on. Tim parked four blocks away and duplicated his previous cautious approach to the house. Her sash window was open, the blurry whites and blues of a television screen poorly reflected in the upper pane. Tim squatted beneath the window just as the KCOM news jingle wound up.

Marshal Tannino's televised voice carried outside in bits and pieces. "...these three men...renegade law-enforcement officers...wanted for questioning in connection with the Jedediah Lane and Buzani Debuffier killings...repeat: No charges have been brought...."

Tim rose to a crouch, bringing his eyes level with the sill. Terrill Bowrick sat beside Erika on her bed, both of them staring at the small TV on her dresser. Bowrick's adolescent slump rounded his back, his hands dangling between his thighs. He looked even younger than Tim remembered, his face pale except where dotted with acne, his neck and arms thin like a girl's. He looked incredibly weary, as if he hadn't slept in days.

In contrast the televised Tannino looked stiff in his best suit-a navy blue number-and his Regis Philbin tie. His hair, lit with dozens of camera flashes, seemed exceedingly blow-dried. He gestured to an easel, on which sat enlarged photographs of Robert, Mitch.e.l.l, and the Stork. "Any sighting of these three men should be reported to..."

No picture of Tim. No mention of Tim.

They probably wanted to nab the Medal of Valor winner quietly, spare the L.A. law-enforcement community another public debacle.

Bowrick's mouth, fringed with a meager mustache, was thin and bent down in a slightly open frown that suggested tears would not be long in coming. His face had whitened to an extraordinary degree. Erika was rubbing him between the shoulders in a repet.i.tive, soothing motion. Their faces both held an exhausted calm, as if fright and worry had worn away all vitality.

The door to the adjoining bathroom was ajar. Pink tile. Lights off. Empty. A chair was backed to the bedroom door, wedged under the k.n.o.b. Mommy didn't know about the special houseguest.

"...suspected of targeting alleged murderers and child molesters, suspects who were released by the criminal-court system."

A flurry of waving hands and pens. An explosion of questions, one winning out.

"Was the Mick Dobbins a.s.sault today related?"

"We believe so, yes."

"How are the Vigilante Three choosing their victims?"

Tannino grimaced at the nickname. "We have no information about that at this time."

"We have it from a reliable source that UCLA Professor William Rayner's death and that of his teaching a.s.sistant could be connected to these events. What is the nature of their involvement?"

"I'm not going to comment on that."

"Can you substantiate rumors that Franklin Dumone, the prominent Boston police sergeant who shot himself today at Cedars, was involved?"

"No. Next question."

"Why is the U.S. Marshals Service involved?"

"This case dovetails with and is an extension of the Lane a.s.sa.s.sination, the investigation of which fell under federal jurisdiction."

"So why isn't the FBI in charge of the investigation?"

"We're working closely with the FBI." Tannino lied well. In private he referred to the FBI as the f.u.c.king Bunch of Idiots.

"Any guess as to who the next intended victim will be?"

Bowrick's mouth didn't move at all, but he creaked, "Oh, G.o.d."

Tannino glanced away, just for a second, but it was a poker tell. "That's all the information we can disclose at this point."

Erika's hand stopped making its circles on Bowrick's back.

Tim leaped up, grabbed the protruding frame above the window, and slid down into the bedroom, landing on his feet. Bowrick and Erika reacted violently, lunging off the bed, dragging the comforter and sheets to the far side in the process. They stood side by side, cowering, their backs to the closet door.

The house smelled of bratwurst, and Tim thought, How's that for stereotypes?

Erika fell to her knees, trembling, embracing Bowrick around his waist. He had one hand up, forearm angled as if shielding light from his eyes.

"Don't shoot him, oh, G.o.d, don't..." She broke down.

"Some men are coming to kill you," Tim said. "Hide better."

A moment of stark disbelief. Bowrick lowered his hand.

Tim leaned back through the window and swung the st.u.r.dy, German jalousies shut, blocking the view from the street. When he turned again to face the kids, tears were sparkling on both their cheeks.

"Let 'em get me," Bowrick said. "I don't care anymore."

"Is that true?"

He sniffled, wiped his nose with his sleeve. "No."

Erika found her voice. "Who are are you?" you?"

Tim gestured to the window, now shuttered. "This is stupid. Your coming to this location is stupid. There are trails to lead them here."

"What am I supposed to do?" Saliva formed a bubble sheet in the corner of Bowrick's mouth.

"Not this."

"I got nowhere to go."

"Go to the cops."

"The cops f.u.c.king hate me."

"Keep your voice down."

"They won't do s.h.i.t for me, and if they do, it'll be worse being in custody than being out here. Trust me-I know."

Frustration tightened Tim's chest. "You figured it out before."

"They found me before."

"No, I I found you before." found you before."