He moved back down the hall, again stepping over the booby-trap wire, and into the dining room.
Gizmos and gadgets of all sorts lay about the floor in various stages of development and disuse. Tim recognized Betty, the conical digital-tone renderer, and Donna, the modified peeper. Betty had been altered, the keypad removed and a single Walkman earpiece inserted. Tim picked it up, inserted the earpiece, and swung the sound-gathering parabola around the dining room. He picked up nothing. He angled it through the open laundry-room and back doors, and the Doberman’s panting, hot and slobbering, burst into his ear. He let out a startled yell and tugged the earpiece free, his heart racing. The Doberman was still lying out near the fence, nearly fifty yards away. Tim was regarding the long-range mike with renewed admiration when he became aware of Robert’s sandpaper chuckle, feet away.
He dropped Betty, his. 357 drawn before she hit the floor.
Robert’s malicious laughter continued. Muscles tensed, weapon readied, Tim followed the sound toward the kitchen. He swung into the room, back pressed to the jamb, but there was nothing there, just an empty kitchen table, the Stork’s cup of juice on the counter, the red light of the telephone.
Tim slowly realized that the laughter was issuing from the still-active speaker on the wall-mounted phone. His assault on the back door had interrupted the Stork’s call.
Robert’s abrasive voice boomed out into the kitchen, over what sounded like low-level radio static issuing from the line. “Something scare you, princess?”
Tim spoke loudly in the direction of the speakerphone. “I’m quaking in my stilettos.” Talking compounded the throbbing in his stomach.
“You put on quite a show. It’s like old-time radio. ‘The Shadow knows.’ I bet the Stork would have appreciated it. Did you kill him?”
“He’s dead.”
“I figured.”
In the background Tim heard a distinctive, familiar chime rise out of the static. “You have Kindell.”
“You’re a quick study.”
“Have you killed him?”
“Not yet.”
The barely audible static from the speakerphone found resonance in the kitchen, the sudden depth of stereo sound. The matching murmur issued from the direction of the kitchen table. As Tim walked over, a radio-frequency scanner came into view on the seat of one of the chairs. The distinctive chime he’d overheard on the line-LAPD’s dispatch prompt. He felt his stomach tighten but pulled his focus back to the conversation. “What are you going to do with him?”
“I’m gonna violate his constitutional guarantees. And hard.”
A digital counter on the phone ticked off the length of the ongoing calclass="underline" 17:23. The clock on the stove showed 10:44 P.M. Bowrick was safe only for a little more than an hour; then he’d likely be turned out of the clinic and put back on the street.
“You set Kindell up to kidnap my daughter.”
The air left Robert; Tim heard it across the mouthpiece like a burst of static. The rustle of the phone being covered. The murmur of the brothers conversing.
“We didn’t mean for it to go down that way.”
“Yeah? Well, then, why don’t you tell me how you meant for it to go down? Because, hey, maybe once I hear this, I’ll just forgive you and we can all go home.”
“We needed an executioner. We’d been waiting for months, almost a year, while Rayner tinkered with psychological profiles. Ananberg was being an uptight cunt. Dumone was…well, Dumone moves slow. Us and Rayner, we needed to get the plan in motion. The problem was, Rayner said, a guy with your profile wasn’t likely to say yes to something like the Commission. Needed a more personal motivation. So we thought we’d give you a little shove.”
“A shove.”
“It was supposed to go down easy. Kindell picks up Virginia, we bust in, cap his ass before he so much as touches a hair on her head. We save her, deliver her back to you in secret. We tell you the system let a child molester off the hook three times and placed him right there in your sunny little neighborhood. We tell you he had designs on your little girl-designs that would have been fulfilled if things were just left up to the system. We tell you we’re guys with a plan, and since that plan just saved your daughter’s life, why don’t you come to a meeting?”
“I’m overcome with gratitude and, after subsequent bonding, I join the Commission.”
“Something like that.”
“You put my daughter in the hands of a convicted child molester.” The venom in Tim’s voice must have set Robert back on his heels, because he took a few moments to respond.
“Look, I’m sorry it went down that way, but desperate times and all that. Rayner was looking at Kindell closely since he’d gotten off for his priors-the insanity-plea bullshit, a loophole that made him a potential Commission target even before Ginny. Rayner did the profile on him. He wasn’t a killer. None of his priors took that turn. We thought we’d just approach him, say, ‘Hey, here’s a girl you might like. Grab her and keep an eye on her, don’t do nothing till we show.’”
“Didn’t work out that way, did it?”
“No it didn’t. And after, we figured Kindell would wind up in jail. We were gonna try to use Ginny’s death to pull you aboard, but when he got off because of the deafness…well, shit, that made you a sure thing. Hey, man, life gives you lemons…”
“Then you slowly win my trust, Rayner doctors up Kindell’s case binder so I’m convinced Kindell acted alone, and we vote to execute him. I do the job. I clean up your mess, the one remaining witness.”
“Right. Once we off Kindell, there’s nothing linking us to Ginny. Or to anything around the Commission. It’s just your word against ours.”
They had no idea that Rayner had taped their call from Kindell’s. A sound escaped Tim, a creaking, eerie laugh that caught him off guard.
“What’s so fucking funny?”
“You’ve become just like them. This plan of yours, it led you to kill a girl. A seven-year-old girl.”
“Don’t put that shit on our heads.” Robert’s voice rose, to the verge of yelling. “We don’t own what Kindell did. That wasn’t what we wanted.”
From the beginning Tim had tried to understand the Mastersons’ odd mix of resentment toward Tim and horror over Ginny’s death. The resentment was guilt gone bad; the horror was their own revulsion at having her blood on their hands. He recalled Mitchell’s words on the telephone: We were gonna cut you a break, leave you be. Part of us figures we owe you.
“Well, Kindell’s gonna pay now,” Robert said. “We’ll do him for you. It’ll be a statement, even, to this hellhole of a city. A little…”
“-tribute-” Mitchell’s muffled interjection.
“-for all the other pukes out there to see. The first step of the next phase, our phase. It’ll say, ‘We got him. And you’re next, motherfucker.’”
“I can’t let you do that.”
Robert’s voice was shot through with intensity and menace. “Are you really gonna fight to save the life of the man who killed your daughter? This piece of shit deserves to die.”
Kindell’s image came to Tim quickly and vividly, as it always did. The crop of fuzzy hair, so much like animal fur, capping the flat forehead. The wet, insensate eyes, devoid of emotional comprehension. He thought of the relief Kindell’s absence from the world would afford him. At the moment he could imagine nothing more disagreeable than extending himself to save his life. “I happen to agree. But that call isn’t ours to make.”
“Oh? He’s bleeding here in Mitch’s hands. So tell me, whose call is it if it ain’t ours?” He chuckled. “And lemme warn you while we’re at it-we know you’re double-dealing with the marshals. Any sign of any car, we cap Kindell and shoot our way out. And believe us, we’ll know. We got our ears to the ground.”
Tim looked at the radio scanner on the chair.
“You forget, Rackley, we surveilled you for the better part of a year. We know when you were toilet trained. We knew how you’d react when Ginny died, how to fold you right into the Commission. We predicted you and played you like a fucking board game. We go head-to-head, you’re gonna lose. We know you, Rackley.”