“There are innocent people at risk of being killed.”
“We don’t know that.” Rayner’s eyes were a jumbled mix of desperation and stifled panic. When he spoke again, the wound in his upper lip spread, a seam between two flaps of skin. “The kill clause…Mr. Rackley…or did you forget? The Commission is…dissolved.”
“The kill clause also states we have to tie up loose ends. You don’t consider this a loose end?”
The whirring of the paper shredder continued in the background with maddening regularity.
“I’m a professor of social psychology…a prominent advocate… Don’t undo my life’s work. Don’t ruin what I’ve tried to”-he lurched forward, racked with pain-“accomplish here because of those two…maniacs. They’re not our business… What they do nowisn’t part of what we were… The press will pollute everything…” His eyes tearing, Rayner pressed a hand to his side in a futile attempt to stanch his bleeding. He looked desperate and utterly crestfallen. “Please don’t drag…my name through the mud…”
“Robert and Mitchell are going to kill people we ruled not guilty. We’re part of this. We set it in motion. We own responsibility for whichever way it spins.”
Rayner’s face was going white. He made a sound of disagreement, a sharp exhale turned to a fricative against his teeth.
“I’m protecting those people,” Tim said. “That’s more important than your reputation.”
Rayner rolled his head back and laughed, a soft, crackling chuckle that chilled Tim. “You say this to a dying man. You’re an idiot…Mr. Rackley. You’ll never know what happened to your daughter… Youdon’t have the faintest idea…”
Tim stood abruptly, his heart hammering. “You know what happened to Ginny?”
“Of course. I know everything…” He was wheezing, expelling words in great exhales. “There was an accomplice… I know who… I found out…”
The puddle of blood grew beneath Rayner, spreading along the seam at the base of the bottom step. His taunting was concise and vicious-Tim felt the words like a stiletto prying in a wound.
“Go ahead…leak my name to the cops, the press…but…you’ll never know…” Rayner’s eyes steeled with a smug intractability, and Tim felt a quick rush of affinity for whichever Masterson had tried to smash through his expression with a gun barrel.
Tim’s voice came low and harsh, and it held a note of menace that surprised even him. “Tell me who else killed my daughter.”
Rayner grimaced, his teeth shining through the split upper lip. His spitefulness vanished, replaced with terror at death’s final approach. His hand inched out, trembling, and gripped the cuff of Tim’s pants.
Tim stood over him, glaring down, arms crossed, watching him die.
Rayner’s body seemed to retract slightly, as if curling into itself, though it hardly moved. He looked up at Tim, floating in a sudden calm. “I loved my boy, Mr. Rackley,” he said, and then he died.
Tim stepped away, his pants pulling free of Rayner’s fingers. He had little time before the ambulances arrived, and he’d be damned if he was going to leave without Kindell’s case binder. Especially in light of what Rayner had told him.
Following the trail of Rayner’s blood, he entered the conference room, the whine of the paper shredder growing louder, and walked past the blast-blown victim photos on the immense table. Aside from some black scorching near the baffle, the safe was perfectly intact. The door hung slightly open, its lugs still extended in the locked position. Tim leaned closer, noting the frag scars, like little scratches, also near the baffle. He sniffed the air, twice, deep, waiting for the smell to navigate through his memory; it unlocked a box that had been closed since Somalia in ’93. Fifty-grains-per-foot det cord.
Mitchell had probably slid about two feet of detonation cord inside the baffle and stuck a blasting cap in the protruding end. The explosion would have overpressurized the air pocket inside the safe, flexing the door outward to the point that the locking lugs unseated themselves and the door popped. The metal baffle would have acted as a buffer, protecting the case binders beneath.
That the door had snapped back to its original shape with no permanent damage was testament to Mitchell’s precision and skill. Robert and Mitchell had opted for an explosive breach, which was louder and riskier than picking the safe. Tim hoped that meant they didn’t have the Stork on board, the only one who could have accomplished the latter.
Tim nudged the door open with a knuckle. Only two binders remained-Lane’s and Debuffier’s.
Kindell’s was missing.
Behind him the paper shredder continued its laments. Tim’s eyes closed with the horror of the realization. He ran over to the shredder, banging into a high-backed chair and knocking it over. A single page had crumpled up in the machine, jamming the blades. Tim ripped it free, and the bottom half shot through, dissipating into tiny squares.
Roger Kindell’s booking photo, torn just below the eyes.
Robert and Mitchell had shredded Kindell’s file, and the secrets it held. The ultimate act of aggression, the final step in the power play, a declaration of war.
The Mastersons were now operational.
Tim stared at the half photograph, feeling his frustration grow to rage. The agony of all he had lost rattled through him, leaving him winded. He finally lowered the top half of Kindell’s head into the whirring blades.
He stopped on his way out only to retrieve Ginny’s framed picture from the table.
33
BEAR’S VOICE WAS ragged with sleep, gruffer even than usual. “What?” Tim threaded the needle between a Camaro and a semi on a two-lane slide to the freeway carpool lane, drawing a cacophony of bleating horns. Even in February the L.A. morning came on hard and relentless; the sun matched the explicitness of the town itself, all too eager to skip foreplay and be revealed.
“You heard me. Those are the names and addresses. Do you have them?”
“Yeah, yeah, I got ’em. What is the extent of your involvement in this?”
“Call local PD, get cars to Mick Dobbins now. Put out a BOLO on Terrill Bowrick now. As I said, I don’t have a current address for Black Bear-”
“Thomas Black Bear’s doing a nickel in Donovan for grand larceny.”
“Then don’t worry about him. I have no current for Rhythm Jones either, so put out another BOLO. He’s in grave and immediate danger. And get to William Rayner’s before the bodies chill.”
“How are you caught up in this?”
Tim was anxious for Bear to stop talking, call dispatch, and put out the Be on the Lookouts. “Yamashiro at five-thirty. I’ll bring all the answers.”
“Fuck Yamashiro. You want me to get on the horn, I need some answers now.”
“You don’t want those answers now. You want to get those subjects in protective custody without being compromised by the knowledge that we know you already have anyway. I’ll clear the air when I see you.”
“You’ll do more than that.” Bear hung up.
Tim tried Robert’s and Mitchell’s Nextels next, but their respective voice mails picked up without a ring. He left no messages.
In the widening range of dire potentialities, Tim saw his foolishness clarified, amplified, and he took a moment to bask in an unadulterated self-contempt before pulling himself back to utility.
That the Mastersons had shredded Kindell’s case binder instead of taking it indicated they weren’t interested in pursuing him. Kindell alone among the suspects they’d leave be, to torment Tim with his continued existence. For the hits they’d start with Bowrick and Dobbins, since both had known addresses, and then they’d get on Rhythm’s trail. Black Bear, they’d soon learn, was safe from them in prison.
Tim’s objective was clear: Before and above all else, he had to ensure the safety of the targets.
Bowrick was gone already; Tim had watched him climb into the tricked-out Escalade and disappear into the rush of traffic on Lincoln.
At a stoplight he called information to get Dobbins’s address. An apartment in a shitty part of Culver City, south of Sony Pictures. He got snagged in the morning commute, so it took nearly a half hour to get to Dobbins’s place, a cracked stucco job from the fifties.