The Kill Clause by Gregg Hurwitz Read Free Book Online

after the trial.
    The phone rang constantly with calls from investigators, well-wishers, press, its jangle an unnerving marching-band tune for the parade of tin-foil-covered plates and eyes crinkled with sympathy. But despite the traumatizing details and petty tortures, the days were defined by a maddening eventlessness, all sound and fury and little advancement, like running on ice.
    The incessant hammering of grief and stress left Tim and Dray with tattered and few resources. Though they tried to comfort each other, to embrace, to mourn together, their pain seemed amplified by the other’s distress and their own uselessness in the face of it. They both found themselves increasingly wrapped in their own private pain, unable to muster the strength to pull themselves out of it.
    They began keeping a respectful distance from each other, like roommates. They napped frequently, though always separately, and they rarely ate, despite the array of filled Tupperware that packed their refrigerator, replenished almost hourly by neighbors and friends. When they did interact, it was in brief, overpolite exchanges, parodies of domesticity. The sight of Dray elicited in Tim a piercing shame that he was unable to be more for her right now. He knew that in his face Dray saw reflected back only the same devastation that weighed down hers.
    The DA’s office was respectful about keeping them in the loop about the case, though also cautious about releasing many specifics. In conversations with her colleagues, Dray managed to piece together fragments of information about Gutierez and Harrison’s investigation, enough to grasp that they’d jettisoned the accomplice theory to focus their full energies on shoring up the case against Kindell.
    Tim’s mind returned to Kindell’s shack with obsessive regularity, replaying each detail, from the slipperiness of the oil-stained floor to the sharp scent of paint thinner.
    I wasn’t supposed to kill her.
    He didn’t—
    Eight words had opened up a chasm of doubt. The pain of not knowing almost equaled the pain of loss, because it played carnival-mirror tricks with Tim’s grief, magnifying it one moment, reshaping it the next. He was mourning without knowing the exact parameters of what he was mourning—Ginny was dead, but what she had gonethrough and who was responsible for it were blank canvases awaiting the latest incarnation, the latest projection of rage or horror. Kindell had proved enough to sate the appetite of the detectives and the DA, but Tim knew there were additional gutters to be flushed. The progression of atrocious events that had filled his daughter’s last hours remained out there, frozen in history, waiting to be reconstructed.
    Wednesday night he and Dray went for a drive, their first outing together since Ginny’s death. They sat awkwardly in silence, trying to let the movement and crisp night air lull them back to compatibility. On their way home they passed McLane’s. Dray craned her neck, checking out the vehicles in the dark lot. “Gutierez’s rig,” she murmured.
    Tim flipped a U-turn and pulled in the lot. Dray turned in her seat to watch him, more curious than surprised.
    They found Gutierez in the back, shooting stick with Harrison. Gutierez nodded in greeting, then spoke in the same softened voice everyone used with them now. “You guys holding up okay?”
    “Fine, thanks. Can we have a minute?”
    “Sure thing, Rack.”
    The detectives followed Tim and Dray out to the back parking lot.
    “Word is you’re dropping the accomplice angle,” Tim said.
    Harrison stiffened. Gutierez cocked his head slightly. “It didn’t yield.”
    “Have you checked Kindell’s priors? Did he work with an accomplice on those?”
    “We’re working very closely with the DA, and we’ve turned up no evidence of other people’s involvement. We’ve looked into everything. Now, you’re well aware that we can’t involve parents of victims in our cases—”
    “A little late