The Survivors Club (30 page)

CHAPTER 51

When Michael’s phone rang (his ringtone was, appropriately, “When the Bullet Hits the Bone”) and he saw Jaimie’s name on the readout again, his first inclination was to ignore her, as he usually did. But he knew it was the rancher guy, and that the rancher guy meant business. He wanted to ignore the call, but he couldn’t.

He’d make it clear. There would be no two million dollars. The rancher guy could kill Jaimie. It didn’t matter to him.

“Guess where I am?” the rancher guy said.

“I don’t give a damn.”

“Oh, but you should. I’m at Jaimie’s.”

“So?”

“Are you familiar with her television and sound system?”

Michael felt his first stirring of unease. He said nothing.

“Really, you should have a talk with your sister. She was dumb enough to leave the DVD she burned of your party out in plain sight. Well, not plain
sight
exactly, but close enough for horseshoes.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Don’t you want to see the video?”

Michael felt his pulse race. Did Jaimie really just leave it out for anyone to see? Was she that stupid?

The answer was yes. She was that stupid.

“One thing I’ve learned,” the guy said, “in this long life of mine, is that people do what’s easy. When nobody’s looking, when they feel like they can let their guard down, that nobody will know how smart they are, they do dumb things. Like put a DVD right next to the DVD player. Maybe put something on top of it, oh, like a bunch of movies, to hide it, but I can’t tell you how many times people have fucked up on some little turning point like that.”

Michael didn’t reply.

“There’s even writing on the case. ‘TSC.’ That’s what it says on here. Sound familiar?”

“No.”

“This is just a guess, but maybe TSC is short for The Survivors Club. Oh, wait, she mentioned that somewhere along the way. Maybe it was on the drive over. Hard to hear her with that choke chain pulled tight.”

“You know what I think? I think you’re full of shit.”

He was about to thumb the phone off when the guy said, “Nice party you guys had. Let me send it to you. Hold on.”

It came through.

“I’ll wait while you watch a little, okay?”

Michael watched. He couldn’t help himself. It was from about five years ago. They were celebrating another killing. He couldn’t remember which one it was. And looking at himself, so completely out of it, his heart sank. Everything seemed to cave inside of him.

Leaving only terror.

Prison.

And then one day, they’d strap him to a gurney in a little room and give him a lethal injection.

Fear kited up into his throat, but disciplined himself by thinking,
I have lawyers
. He said, “So what?”

“So what? Hey you got monster ones, my friend.
So what
. This goes viral. I can transmit it anywhere. I can transmit it to the local gendarmes, I can transmit it to the FBI, it can go all over the world with a touch of a button. So what? You really want to push me?”

Michael’s vocal cords barely got purchase, but he said, “Fuck you.”

“Fuck me? What a terrible thing to say. You just hurt my feelings, friend.”

Michael could barely feel his fingers holding the phone. He could picture the little room at the prison in Florence. There was a window, and people behind the window, and they’d all be peering in at him like kids with their faces to the glass. Like his death was a TV show. But facts were facts. “If I paid you two million dollars, what would stop you from extorting me again and again?”

“Hmmm.” The man paused, then said, “Would you trust my word? I’m a man of my word. You would have to trust me on that.”

Michael said nothing.

“Just a little pressure from my thumb and this goes all over. The first place it goes is to the FBI.”

“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just some of us joking around about killing our parents. A fantasy.”

Another pause. Then, “There are facts to back it up, bro. Peter Farley. The woman in New Zealand. Santa Cruz County and TPD is already on your trail, bud, they’re already looking at you. You think they won’t act on this evidence? You think it won’t show them where and what to investigate? You’re toast, my friend. Unless you pay me to shut up. And I’ll even throw in Jaimie.”

Michael almost hung up. But he couldn’t. His fingers were slippery with sweat now. He clamped harder on the phone.

“Two million, bro. Worth the price of admission, let me tell you.”

But Michael knew this wouldn’t be the end.

Still, he had to do something. “You come here. Bring it. Bring Jaimie. We’ll talk then.”

“Gonna take you some time to work out the details, friend. Put in a call to your bank. I have a number for an account in Belize for you to wire it to. These days, it should take a couple of minutes tops, once you say the word.”

“It’s after hours, bud. Tell you what. You come here and we’ll talk.”

“I’m not going there.”

“Then we’re done here.” And Michael disconnected.

CHAPTER 52

Tess had finished a late dinner when she got the call—searchers had discovered a camping area above Mowry, on a hiking trail in a remote area. There was a stake in the ground and a chain, and footprints that appeared to match the partials they’d seen down below, where the truck had crashed off the side of the road. It looked as if Jaimie had been kidnapped and held there.

Tess thought that was probably true.

Whatever had happened, Jaimie and her kidnapper were gone.

It sounded like a crime scene to Tess. She spoke to the head of the team, a neighbor and a former cop himself, James Tarbel. They agreed that since it was dark, they could easily trample whatever evidence there was. The next day they would send a detective and crime scene techs.

She sat there in the dark, thinking. She was sure it was Wade Poole, sure he had Jaimie. But where were they now? Why did he take her up here?

It had been a temporary hiding place, but it could have been more than that, from the description. She guessed—and she could be wrong about this—he had photographed her to scare her family.

Now she thought she knew why Poole had kidnapped Jaimie.

Poole knew about the family—he knew what they were doing. He’d killed George Hanley because of it. Because they’d disagreed on what to do with the evidence. Hanley wanted to turn it over to the authorities. But he’d made the mistake of letting his old partner, his son-in-law, in on the deal.

Poole didn’t care about bringing the DeKovens to justice.

Tess was pretty sure that all Wade Poole cared about was money.

She got ready for bed, but couldn’t sleep. Finally, she decided to go back to Jaimie’s one more time and see if there was anything to point to where Wade Poole might go next.

It was full dark now, and cold. When Tess drove onto the ranch, she saw immediately that something was different.

Should have secured this as a secondary crime scene, she thought.

Tired. Too much going on.

Tess stared at the spot where the ranch truck had been—the old, root beer—colored GMC.

It was gone.

She stood there, arms crossed, feeling the chill down to her bone. Cold at night in the desert, especially in the spring. The heat was absorbed by the earth and the atmosphere felt thin and chilly. And dark. She heard horses stirring in their stalls, here a grunt and neigh. She had her Maglite and her service weapon, and that was it.

The barn door was closed. It had been open before.

Tess held the Maglite in her left hand and drew her weapon. She felt the familiar adrenaline rush. Where she’d been tired and sleepy a moment ago, she was all nerve now. Every sense bristling.

Maybe he’d taken the truck.

Or maybe not.

She made her way around the barn. The couple of windows were too high, and no way to get up to them. She heard a snort. It wasn’t a frightened sound, more like a horse just…sighing. She listened through the wall and heard a rhythmic munching.

A horseman, though, wouldn’t scare these horses. A ranch guy—and Wade certainly looked as if he’d spent time on a ranch somewhere—would not raise any alarms.

Tess decided not to take any chances. She called for backup, and within ten minutes a couple of deputies arrived from the substation in town.

They took it slow. They were careful. Weapons drawn, one going low—Deputy Walsh—and one going high–Tess. And one standing on the other side of the double doors, Deputy Agel.

Tess pulled the right hand door to the side—it slid on a groove.

Agel, from the left, covered them. Yelled, “Police! Don’t move!”

One single lightbulb cast light from the rafters. No hayloft—Tess had seen the separate feed shed away from the barn.

The horses looked over their stalls. Four on one side and three on the other. The last stall empty. Or someone hiding in it.

Walsh duckwalked out from under Tess, aiming to the right. Tess to the left, along with Agel. Checking each stall.

“Clear!”

“Clear!”

“Clear!”

The last stall was empty.

But they had something—confirmation.

Backed in to the far wall at the end of the aisle was Wade Poole’s stolen Ford truck—the front bumper mashed against the wheel well.

“Looks like he’s been in a fender-bender,” Tess said.

She called it in. “No license plate,” Tess told her detective sergeant. “He must have put it on the farm truck.”

She gave him the VIN number and waited.

Twenty minutes later it was confirmed. The white Ford F-350 belonged to a construction site in Nogales, Arizona—Redline Construction. The truck had been stolen eleven days earlier.

“They didn’t lock it up?” Usually construction sites, even out in the boonies, set up chain-link fence enclosures for temporary parking lots.

“Apparently not. Where do you think he’s headed?”

Tess didn’t know. But she could guess. “Wade Poole is after the DeKoven family. I think he’s planning to shake them down. So I would send a TPD unit to Brayden DeKoven’s address, and Pima County should check out Michael DeKoven’s place out on the Spanish Trail.” She rattled off both addresses.

“You remember them?” Messina said. Added, “I guess you would, huh? That’s handy.”

He still wasn’t used to her, still saw her as a freak. But she was a useful freak.

“I would set up surveillance if he’s not there yet,” Tess added. She made a mental note to call Cheryl Tedesco. Cheryl would want to know what was going on, and might even be able to move things along at TPD.

“We have an Attempt to Locate in both counties now for a brown 1978 GMC pickup.” He read off the license plate belonging to the white Ford.

“Sounds good. I’m on my way.”

“What address?”

“Michael DeKoven’s.”

Tess thought, if she were Wade Poole, that was where she’d go.

Tess was almost to the Vail exit outside Tucson when her detective sergeant contacted her again.

“We have a description of the truck, but the license plate isn’t the same.”

He’d switched plates again? The license plate didn’t come back to the ranch truck or the stolen Ford. Somewhere along the line, he’d stolen another plate.

One jump ahead.

“Where is he?”

“He’s on Spanish Trail. Pima County Sheriff’s unit is following.”

“Ask them not to alert him.”

“Will do. I’ll tell him to turn off.”

Tess’s heart was beating so hard she wondered if it would burst through her chest cavity. Wade Poole was armed and dangerous. If he was cornered, he would not hesitate to kill.

He was a killing machine.

Wade saw the Pima County Sheriff’s car coming in his direction. He saw the body of the car feint slightly—a reflex action—and continue on smoothly. He guessed that someone had put out a BOLO on the ranch truck. He watched in his rearview as the radio car slowed and pulled off onto the verge. Knew it would turn around and pursue. There was no place to go to ground. But he was close to Michael DeKoven’s castle on a hill—probably not three miles overland. He could see the lights up on the hill. He thought about ditching the truck, but he wanted Jaimie as a hostage. He kept his gaze glued to the rearview mirror. The curve in the road hid the sheriff’s car. Any minute he expected headlights to appear. But they didn’t.

Maybe he was hypersensitive. He kept driving. The turnoff was up ahead, and he wanted to keep Jaimie with him. He glanced at her. She leaned as far as she could away from him, up against the passenger side. From her posture you’d think she was cowed, but he saw the hatred in her eyes. Even in the dark of the night, he could see it. He would not take her for granted. Hatred like that could overcome a lot.

Momma didn’t raise no fools. He’d have to watch her every minute.

Wade knew that Michael would call back. He was sure that Michael would be frozen, that he wouldn’t know which way to jump. The rich little turd couldn’t get help from law enforcement. He couldn’t get help from anyone. Michael thought that he could draw Wade to go to him, that on his home turf he’d have the upper hand. But Wade had all the cards.

Tess’s Tahoe was a plain wrap. But she knew, if anyone had antennae for a plain wrap, it would be Wade Poole. She pulled off the road at the little general store, now closed, and waited. She knew where Wade was headed. Meantime, the Pima County sheriff’s deputy who had spotted him rolled in. He introduced himself as Wiley Moran.

They discussed what they were going to do. There was time for backup.

But that wasn’t the only consideration. Wade Poole was loaded for bear, and Jaimie Wolfe was almost certainly his hostage.

“What do you think Poole would do if he was turned down?” asked Deputy Moran.

He knew the right question to ask. Tess had been a deputy not too long ago, and she knew how important it was to think a situation through. Especially if you were ambitious, and Deputy Moran clearly was.

Tess said, “He’d kill them both.”

Deputy Moran’s eyebrows rose in an arch. He didn’t have to ask a question.

Tess said, “He’d kill them and take off. Cut his losses.”