The Survivors Club (8 page)

CHAPTER 14

Michael DeKoven’s office was twenty-three floors up, the second level from the top of the Dystel Energy Building at One South Church in Tucson.

Tess was on her own—Danny had to testify in court on another case. As she stepped into the elevator, she was joined by a man in bicycle togs and a racing bike.

He noted that she’d hit the button for the twenty-third floor. He didn’t reach past her for another.

Tess recognized him as Michael Ross DeKoven himself—the head of DeKoven Financial.

Tess knew he was thirty-five—the oldest of the four DeKoven siblings. He was youthful and athletic, with brown hair and the square jaw of a comic-book hero. Tess knew he had a wife and two children, a boy and a girl. His wife was a little younger but not by much, and she had worked as a financial advisor at DeKoven Financial.

As she stepped in, Tess was aware he was watching her out of the corner of his eye. They both watched the floor numbers change.

Finally, he said, “Are you the lady detective?”

Tess smiled at him. “That’s right.”

“And remind me, why are we meeting today?”

“I wanted to ask you about George Hanley.”

“George Hanley?”

“He worked with your sister, Jaimie Wolfe, on SABEL. An older gentleman.”

“Oh, I think I remember him—vaguely. He was the one that was killed? The old man?”

“That’s right. Jaimie said he was your client.”

“No, actually, he wasn’t.” He cleared his throat and looked up at the numbers. Tess could feel the tension between them. It was almost as if he were hoping she’d disappear if he ignored her.

Fat chance of that.

The elevator dinged. The door opened onto an opulent office.

Michael DeKoven said, “I need to shower and change. Can you wait?”

“Sure I can.”

“Because if you’re busy…”

“No. This is Number One Hit on my Hit Parade.”

He smiled. “See you in two shakes, then.”

Tess waited.

And waited.

She knew all about waiting people out. She did it all the time in interviews. Sometimes it psyched people out and sometimes it didn’t. She appreciated the man’s willingness to try something like this. She guessed he did it a lot—a power play.

Tess didn’t plan to ask him anything major. She wanted to know a little about Hanley’s finances. But he’d scotched that in the elevator.

She also wanted to find out more about the DeKovens, to get a better handle on Jaimie DeKoven. Their star had faded in recent years, but the family was still important to this part of the country. Tess was new to southern Arizona, but she liked history. She’d been reading up on Tucson and its past, and the DeKovens were a big part of that.

Tess knew these were powerful people, and any place she was, she liked to check in with powerful people.

Because things happened around them.

She noticed a watercolor behind the desk, well lit and beautifully framed. Walked over to get a closer look.

“I see you noticed my new purchase,” a voice came from behind her: Michael DeKoven all spiffed up. He spiffed up good. A handsome man.

“Charles Russell?” she said.

“Good eye.”

Tess did have a good eye—she’d noted the signature.

“It’s an original Russell—I just bought it at the Scottsdale auction. A hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Tess had to get used to people who not only put a financial value on everything, but stated it outright. Was it insecurity? Or just pride?

“‘Counting Coup,’” DeKoven added. “It was quite a battle to get this piece, but I won in the end. Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

“I buy a lot of Russell and Remington. They speak to me. I was raised in the Southwest where a lot of these struggles happened—lots of struggle. The Apache wars, Geronimo…my family was a big part of the taming of this area, so historical paintings from that era have always held an attraction for me. My great-great-great-grandfather was the first to operate a cattle ranch in the Rincon Valley. He helped build this state.” DeKoven sat down behind his massive desk. “What did you want again?”

“George Hanley?”

He laughed. “Oh, I can’t tell you much. I only met him, I think, once or twice.”

“Just a few questions,” Tess murmured, “and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“I don’t know if I can be helpful at all.” His tone diffident. “You know, I meet a lot of people.”

“But he came to you for financial advice?”

“As I recall, we had a meeting. I told him what I thought he should do, that I’d be happy to look into his finances in depth if he wanted me to. We talked about how he could make that money work for him instead of letting a lot of it go to Uncle Sam. Although in the
general scheme of things, it wasn’t much money at all. I was worried that he might not have enough to see him all the way through retirement.” He paused. “But I guess that’s not an issue now.”

Tess didn’t like the way he said that. It was just a toss-off remark, but it sounded inappropriate coming from DeKoven’s mouth.

“So that’s the extent of my involvement with Mr. Hanley.” DeKoven stood up and reached out his hand. Manicured nails, expensive watch, and a handsome wedding ring.

His voice was hearty. “Other than talking to him at a few of Jaimie’s meet-and-greets, that’s about the extent of it. I hope this has been helpful.”

Tess read it as,
I hope I haven’t been the least bit helpful.

She was being dismissed. That pissed her off, so she stayed put. “Did Mr. Hanley ever mention problems with his son-in-law?”

He blinked. Tess could tell he was surprised that she was still here. “No…not that I can remember. We didn’t really talk.”

“What about his daughter?”

“No.”

DeKoven didn’t look so handsome anymore. He looked put out. He’d cued the music and was waiting for her to take the hint and hustle offstage, and so far she’d proved to be dense.

Tess said, “Do you know a man named Steve Barkman?”

She saw something in his eyes. Which was new, because there’d been nothing there during the whole interview.

“Barkman…Judge Rees’s son? I’ve heard of him but I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure. Why?”

“He was in Credo,” Tess said. “I got the feeling he was interested in George Hanley’s death. He mentioned you.” Lying was an important tool in the homicide detective’s toolbox.

For an instant, Tess saw something new cross DeKoven’s face. She couldn’t read it. Then his expression smoothed back to bland. “He mentioned me? I’m flattered.”

Tess waited.

“What did he say?”

She shrugged. “Just that he knew you.”

Michael DeKoven didn’t take the bait. He smiled broadly and held out his hand for her to shake. “This has all been very interesting. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment I’m late for.”

The official term for this in the detective’s handbook was “the bum’s rush.”

Tess sat in the car in the parking lot with the air running. She felt shopworn and vaguely greasy having just talked to Mr. DeKoven.

She looked the family up on her laptop.

There were four children—two boys and two girls. Their father had died a few years ago in a plane crash, leaving them a massive fortune. (At least that was what she read.) Tess managed to find a photo of the pioneering family in happier times, when the kids were young and the mother, Eloise, was still alive. The photo was of a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a water treatment plant in the desert south of Tucson, to be built by DeKoven Construction. It was a sunny day, everyone shading their eyes and staring into the camera, the whole brood. A big day for DeKoven Construction. The patriarch of the family, Quentin DeKoven, looked both proud and grim, as if he had just finished climbing Mt. Everest and had some time to gloat. He stood apart from his wife and children.

The mother, Eloise, had a bland expression. Tess sensed discontent there. The girls wore shorts and tops. Jaimie looked thin and bored. The younger sister, Brayden, was a little shorter and a little plumper. She had
a sweet expression. Her hair was blonde, lightened by the sun. Michael looked like the teenage version of what he was now.

Tess tried to think of a word for it. Disconnected, maybe? As if he were watching a play, but not participating. Removed.

Except when she mentioned Steve Barkman. That had wiped the self-satisfied smirk off his face.

She squinted at the photograph. The fourth child was the younger son: Chad. He looked slightly down and away from the camera. Tess got the impression that the boy didn’t want to be there, which would fit with his age—he was just starting his teen years. But the biggest impression she got from him was passivity.

No so with Michael. Michael gave her the impression of smoothness. Smoothness and distance.

Except when she’d mentioned Steve Barkman.

CHAPTER 15

Tucson, Arizona

Irene Contreras had the key to Steve Barkman’s house.

His place was on a little patch of desert, which could be reached off Ft. Lowell Road, not far from El Fuerte across Craycroft—the old army post ruins at Fort Lowell Park.

Her granddaughter played soccer there.

The dirt lane off Ft. Lowell Road meandered through creosote desert and ended up at a brick house built in the sixties. Irene knew the house was from the sixties because her father had worked for Beauty Built Homes, building houses just like this one.

Irene once was the secretary for a construction company for over twenty years, but times were tough and she’d lost her job, so now she worked for a cleaning service, Happy Maids. She wasn’t all that happy, because she’d loved her old job and this was a lot more work and hard on her back, but the nice thing was, she lived only five minutes away from Mr. Barkman’s, and he was on her regular schedule.

She pulled up behind his SUV, got the cleaning caddy from the hatchback of the Happy Maids car, and crunched up the lane to the house.

When she pushed the door open, she caught a whiff of something spoiled. Meat, maybe? Or fruit or vegetables that had turned?

But the stronger smell was alcohol. She was used to that. Mr. Barkman liked his bourbon and his beer. She’d had to put enough of the bottles in the recycle bin.

The room was dark, the blinds drawn.

But even before her eyes adjusted, she knew something was wrong.

It took a moment for Irene to make sense of the scene. Her first thought was that someone had shoved a massive tree stump through the living room coffee table.

Only, tree stumps didn’t bleed.

CHAPTER 16

Alec Sheppard pitched headfirst out of the Twin Otter, the wash of the propeller blasting him in the direction of the plane’s tail—free-falling in a perfect no-lift dive, spinning away and down like a drill bit. Pure joy in what he could do.

He threw out the pilot chute to deploy the main canopy and started counting down. One thousand one, two thousand one, three thousand one—three seconds to deployment. Kept his eyes forward as he counted. Alec had been trained to look straight ahead, and in all his jumps—he was coming up on a 125—he’d never broken faith with this most important tenet.

There was a reason for this.

Looking at the ground could stop the thinking process cold. It could lock up your brain function and bring home the very real prospect of mortality at the exact moment when you needed all your wits. You never wanted to be mesmerized by ground rush.

When he reached “three thousand one,” he looked up.

He already knew what he would see—his main canopy hadn’t deployed.

But he had options.

Plan A: Because his legs and arms were spread out, he might have created a “burble,” a vacuum pocket flat on his back, which would keep the main canopy from deploying.

So he dipped his right shoulder.

Nothing changed.

He dipped his left shoulder. The canopy still didn’t deploy.

Okay: Plan B. Pull the reserve.

He pulled the ripcord on his reserve canopy.

There was no response. He reached back again and felt along the brake cable—he’d have to manually find the pin that would release his reserve chute. He started stripping the cable with both hands, pulling, pulling, pulling—

Something sharp sliced into his index finger.

A thrill went through him. The pain—but also, the first ripple of fear.

He was now at twelve hundred feet.

He had time…maybe five seconds.

Alec went back to pulling on the cable, rooting around inside the reserve rig, going deep—and sliced his finger again. Adrenaline shot through him a second time, leaving his extremities momentarily weak.

The cable had been sheared in half.

That was when the image floated before him: the man in the SkyView Café Starbucks.

Pointing the finger gun at him.

Pointing the finger gun.

Don’t panic.

No time for troubleshooting. He’d tried Plan A and Plan B. All he could do now was keep on with Plan B.

Once again he reached around with both hands and tried to get to the reserve pin inside the rig. He clawed and dug around in the pouch, stretching his arms to the breaking point, squeezed and pinched and pounded and scrabbled, slicing his fingers on the shorn cable strands, trying like hell to find the damn pin and pull it out. Any minute he’d get to it. Any minute, but all the while he was counting down the seconds, like a news crawl running through his head. One thousand feet, nine hundred feet, eight hundred—

His back was arched. His arms were straining. His neck was tired. His fingers and hands were slippery with blood—cut to ribbons.

He looked down.

The ground rushed up, faster and faster. Ants became people, and then people became people-with-horrified-faces. He was going in undeployed—again.

Six hundred feet.

He forced his eyes back up to level. He wasn’t done yet. Pulling, shoving, hitting, grabbing, shaking the reserve rig—he’d go down fighting. But at the same time as he fought to save himself, Alec could feel his mind shift into pure acceptance mode.

I’m going to die.

No way he’d survive something like this twice.

The twenty-third psalm flitted through his mind—“Yea though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no evil—”

Because I’m the Craziest SOB on God’s Green Earth. That was the saying.

But this time it was different.

Evil was the exact thing he feared.

Alec awoke to the ringing of the phone. It took him a moment to swim out of his dream and realize where he was: Tucson, Arizona.

The last thing he’d seen before waking was something dark hurtling from above slamming into him—hard.

But the image that stuck with him when his parachute didn’t open wasn’t the shattering memory of the disastrous free fall into the slough in Florida, which left him with a fractured pelvis, splintered ribs, a broken collarbone, and a stopped heart.

No. This time when his canopy didn’t deploy, Alec Sheppard saw the face of a stranger.

The stranger was a good-looking man, about Alec’s age, mid-to-late thirties. He wore a jumpsuit. He was about to jump, or he’d already jumped. He sat at one of the café tables at the SkyView Jump Center, a cup of Starbucks coffee on the round table in front of him. The man appeared to recognize him; his eyes lit up and a smile played on his lips. Alec had never seen him before—at least he didn’t think so, but he’d jumped a lot of places and interacted with a host of people he’d never meet again.

What puzzled him was the thing the man did next. He pointed his finger at Alec, like he was shooting a gun.

Sun streamed through the sheer outer drapes of the hotel’s window.

Alec had beaten the Reaper twice. The second time he’d literally landed on his feet—no injuries at all.

As he reached across the hotel bed for the phone, he thought about the man at the SkyView Café in Houston. The man who shot the finger gun at him right before he jumped three weeks ago in Houston might have been the same guy as the jogger on the roof in Atlanta last September.

Both of them were strangers. Both of them had targeted him. The jogger with the red tag had smacked him on the chest. The other guy had sabotaged his rig or found someone to do it for him. The cables to both the main canopy and the reserve canopy had been cut.

The phone stopped ringing. It was probably Steve, calling to remind him about their breakfast downstairs in the hotel restaurant.

Alec turned on the TV, still thinking about the guy who had plastered the red tape with the number five to his chest. He hadn’t been hurt, but it did qualify as an assault.

And the other guy. The Starbucks Guy, as Alec had come to think of him. Sitting there with that strange smile on his face, shooting the finger gun at Alec approximately thirty minutes before he almost fell to his death. If the jump master hadn’t been able to pull the ripcord on Alec’s reserve canopy at the last possible moment, he would have cratered again. As it was, he’d landed unscathed.

Alec took a shower, dressed, and called Steve, but got his voice mail. Looked at his watch.

A half hour later, he left the room and took the elevator down to the restaurant.

Steve was a no-show.

Alec called Steve again, and once again, got his voice mail. He left another message and ordered breakfast.

He ate alone.

After breakfast, Alec called again. He left another message. He tried not to sound annoyed. A half hour later, just as he was headed for the hotel gym, he got a call from a number he didn’t recognize.

Alec answered—he had a bad feeling. “Hello?”

“My name is Detective Sergeant Dave White of the Tucson Police Department. Would you mind telling me why you’ve been trying to reach Steve Barkman?”