“I wanted to see for myself if the person Steve was tracking was the guy I saw last month on a jump.”
“On a jump? What do you mean by ‘on a jump?’”
“I’m a skydiver.”
“And this guy Barkman is tracking, he’s also a skydiver?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you said you met him on a jump.”
“It’s a long story.”
It was going on five p.m. and the sun was lowering in the sky when Tess and Danny walked out to the parking lot.
Danny said, “So this guy Sheppard comes here because Steve Barkman has a hot tip on a guy who aimed his finger at him?”
“The guy aimed his finger at him right before he jumped out of a plane and his chute didn’t open. I can see why he’d come here.”
“You believe the guy.”
“What does he have to gain?”
“Hey, guera, if you don’t know…”
Tess knew what Danny was talking about: people who liked to attach themselves to investigations, who got a vicarious thrill from being in on what the police were doing. “He doesn’t strike me that way, Dan.”
Danny mumbled something.
“What did you say?”
“Guy bothers me, is all. What about this bullshit about a jogger putting a sticker on his chest?”
Tess had to admit that bothered her, as well. What an outlandish claim.
“If this is true,” Danny said, “it shoots the hell out of the freak accident theory. It could be the guy who threatened Sheppard—and I use the term ‘threatened’ loosely—might have objected to Barkman finding him, In a big way.”
“I think Cheryl’s going to look at Barkman in a whole new light.”
“Barkman’s death was a homicide staged to look like an accident?”
“Could have been a smart move,” Tess said. “The way it looked, we spent a lot of our time concentrating on how freaky it was.” She stood by her car, which she’d managed to park near the shade of a eucalyptus tree. “It could have happened like this. Someone was there, hanging out with him, having a beer, and noticed the light was out.”
Danny nodded. “Yeah. So. Whoever it was—and now maybe we’ll never know—pointed it out to him. Like: hey, your light’s out. And while he’s up on the ladder, the guy kicked it out from under him. But how’d this guy know falling into the coffee table would kill him?”
“Maybe Barkman hit hard and while he was out—”
“Or at least disoriented.”
“They helped him along.”
Tess knew they were thinking about the same thing: the shard of glass that went straight through Barkman’s eye and into his brain.
After Danny drove out, Tess waited a while. She watched some joggers follow the path at Reid Park, enjoying the smell of the sprinklers on the grass at the golf course.
When Alec Sheppard came out of the substation, Tess walked over to see if he’d like to go out for a drink.
They met at a bar called Badwater on Fourth Avenue. It wasn’t far from the Marriott where Alec was staying, and he told her it brought back memories of his college days. By now the sun was almost down. They sat outside at a picnic table under the lights, surrounded by a kite-string of moths. There was a lot of babble of beer-drinking patrons, but not so loud they couldn’t talk.
Cheryl Tedesco had been thorough, but Tess wanted to go over it again, in case there was a revelation she might be missing.
After some small talk, how he’d liked the U of A, what he did for a living—he’d run a company that had specialized in oil cleanup in the Gulf—Tess said, “You said Steve Barkman worked for you. But he didn’t give you a report?”
“No. He’d only been looking into it for a few days.”
“How many days?”
“Four? Five. Five days.”
“Did you talk to him during that time?”
“I thought we went all over this before.”
“Bear with me. What did he say?”
“He said he thought there was a connection.”
“What kind of connection?”
“He didn’t say. But he recognized him. He wanted to be careful because the guy had money, and he didn’t want to get in the middle of a lawsuit. Maybe he was worried about defamation of character.”
Tess said, “Could you wait a minute? I’ll be back.”
“Sure.”
Tess left him and headed for her car. She’d put a copy of Tucson Lifestyle magazine in the murder book, which now resided in her briefcase under the front seat of the Tahoe. In a perfect world, she’d have other, similar photos of men the same age to go with it. But who was she kidding? It wasn’t a perfect world.
Back at the bar, Tess handed Alec the magazine. “Would you mind looking through it?”
There was a question in his eyes, but she just nodded at the magazine. “Just flip through it.”
He stopped where she expected him to stop.
Looked up at her, his face grim.
“That’s him.”
“The man you saw at the jump center?”
“That’s him.”
“Had you met him before?”
“I don’t think so. But I meet a lot of people. I can’t say I’m absolutely sure about that. But Steve knows—knew him.”
Tess remembered at DeKoven’s office, the look on Michael DeKoven’s face when she mentioned Steve Barkman. She wondered if Barkman had made contact with him by then. “What did Barkman say about the guy he was investigating?”
“He said something about pulling the surveillance tape at the center.” He added, “Wish I’d thought of that.”
“But he didn’t tell you who it was.”
“He wanted to be sure.”
“But you were surprised whoever it was lived in Tucson?”
“A little. It’s been a few years since I got my degree. Maybe he knew me from a jump. At the time I chalked it up to making an enemy here somewhere along the line, and maybe that’s what happened—could have been when I was jumping at SkyDive Arizona in Eloy. Skydivers live in a small world. We’re always running into each other.”
“Can you think of anything that might have made the guy go off on you like that?”
He stared into space, thinking. Shook his head. “No, I can’t. But he looked at me like he knew me. When he pointed the finger gun at me, he acted like it was a big joke. No, that’s not right.”
“Not a joke?”
“It was a joke, but it was a mean joke. It was…I guess the closest thing I can describe it to is celebrating in the end zone.”
“Why do you think he did that?”
“If he found a way to sabotage my rig, then I think he did it because he knew he could.”
“You mean if you were killed.”
“Yeah. No one would ever know.”
Tess noticed that he seemed to take the idea of being killed in stride. “If it’s true, he really screwed up.”
He grinned. “I guess I’m just naturally a survivor.”
Tess said, “There’s no doubt your rig was sabotaged?”
“None. My reserve rig was up for repacking—I wouldn’t be allowed to jump without having it done. Every hundred and twenty days the rigger has to repack the reserve. It’s a safety issue.”
“You think DeKoven bribed the rigger?”
He sat back. “He didn’t have to. Since it’s a long wait, the owner of the rig doesn’t usually stick around, so all the guy who wants to sabotage the pack has to do is wait until no one’s watching, find the rig he’s looking for, and cut the cables.”
“It’s that simple?”
“Oh, yeah. He could pretend the pack is his and he’s checking it—all he’d have to do is lift the flap to the cable housing and cut the cables with wire cutters—the cables to the main canopy and the reserve canopy. No one would ever see it. The pack is sealed with a red cord and a lead seal. Extremely doubtful the pack’s owner would recheck it. There’d be no reason to. I
sure didn’t.”
The band, a local group called the Blasphemers—they were loud and pretty good—struck up, and it was hard to talk for a while. Finally they took a break.
Tess asked him, “Did you ever meet Jaimie DeKoven?” Michael DeKoven went to Stanford, following in the footsteps of his father, but his little sister Jaimie spent a couple of semesters at the U of A.
“Who’s that—a sister? No, I don’t remember her. I don’t remember anyone by that name.” He grinned. It was an attractive grin. “I met a lot of girls in college.”
“I’m sure.”
“Did you go to college? Can you remember every guy you ever met, or even dated?”
“Nope. Not a one of ’em,” Tess lied.
Unfortunately, she remembered every single one of them. She’d pushed them to the back of the file cabinet and let the cobwebs grow. She said, “Tell me again about the tagger.”
He ran down the facts. His jog on the roof of the Hilton Atlanta. The sinking sun in his eyes, the jogger coming toward him and slapping the tag on him.
“You didn’t get a good look at him?”
“He wore a hoodie. And I was looking right into the sunset. It was just a shape, just a jogger—I didn’t pay any attention until he smacked me in the chest.”
“And you went after him.”
“Eventually, but he got a head start.”
“Height?”
“Shorter than me.”
“Sex?”
“We’ve been through this. It was dark, hard to tell, what he was wearing—a jogging suit with a hoodie.”
“I was hoping the beer goggles would help.” She glanced at the half-full beer glass at his elbow. “Quick—height.”
“Shorter than me.”
“You’re six foot one, two?”
“Two. I’d say, maybe, five eleven.”
“Build?”
“Slight. A jogger, or maybe more like a long-distance runner.”
“Do you think the tagging and incident in Houston are related?”
Sheppard hesitated. Then he said, “It had the same kind of feeling.”
“What feeling?”
“Like the joke was on me.”
Tess asked about the tag.
“I threw it away. I thought it was just some stupid punk playing a prank.”
“It had the number five on it?”
“Yeah, but they could have gotten that anywhere. I saw it kind of like tagging, like graffiti. Only I was the surface instead of a wall.”
“You were assaulted.”
“Yes.”
“You said it was like tagging. But you know what it makes me think of? Wilding.”
He thought about it. “But those are bands of kids, right? And they don’t just stop at assaulting somebody. They’ve killed people. So you think it was random. Some kid showing off for his friends? That I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“Could be. Anything else you can remember?”
Sheppard looked inward. She could see him trying to come up with something. When you tried, it usually didn’t work. But then he shifted his gaze to her, and if he’d been a slot machine he would have rolled three sevens.
“The shoes,” he said. “They were expensive. Athletic shoes.”
Tess thought: So the kid had money.
If it was a kid.
CHAPTER 19
Michael DeKoven had fallen asleep with the light on. He awoke at midnight beside his lover. Martin had crawled in under the sheets and was kissing his neck.
They made love. First urgently. Then slowly.
Martin was a model for those underwear ads they had in GQ and Esquire. He had the sleek but muscled tanned body that shimmered under the lights, perfect against the tight white underwear he wore while posing by swimming pools or against the sand, often with an equally disinterested female model.
Michael called Martin his “Tighty-Whitey,” in reference to the underwear—and other things.
Martin cradled Michael in his arms and said, “How’d your day go?”
“A man was murdered today.”
“Anyone we know?”
“An acquaintance. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re going to question me.”
“You? Why?”
Michael shrugged. “It’s a high-profile case, and I’ve had dealings with the guy.”
“Well. I’m sure you’ll pass with flying colors.” Michael said nothing.
“Are you worried about this? If the detective is rude, I’ll—I’ll slit his throat. How about that?”
“That’s a little extreme.” Martin was always threatening violence against anyone who might hurt Michael. Which was ridiculous. Michael doubted Martin had a violent bone in his body. It was all swagger. But it was cute.
Michael was the one who pushed the limits. Now he said, “Look, I’ve got everything under control. You can be a little too protective—and we only have until this afternoon.”
Martin would be winging his way back to New York for another shoot. They saw each other less and less, and to be honest, Michael preferred it that way. The few times a year they were together, it consumed them both. It left Michael sated but also drained. His thinking was less sharp. And he couldn’t afford to make a mistake, not even on a micro level.
Sometimes, too, Michael’s dark side took over, and things got…out of hand.
He always felt bad afterward. But while Martin would act hurt and betrayed for a while, he always came back for more.
It was as if he hated himself for some reason, and felt he deserved punishment. He’d once said to Michael that he had always wanted to be someone’s slave.
They made love and then shared a breakfast out by the pool. Michael’s wife was, as usual, nowhere in evidence. She didn’t mind his dalliance with Martin, because they weren’t really a couple anymore anyway.
She said he kept too many secrets.
Martin bit into a strawberry and stretched his long, tanned legs out on the flags. Instead of the tighty-whities that made him famous as a model, he wore a long black pair of trunks with white laces at the fly. Delicious white laces, if you wanted to know the truth.
“What are you thinking?” Martin asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
“I know you have a dark side,” Martin said. “I know you have secrets. I wish you wouldn’t keep secrets from me.”
Did he actually pout?
Suddenly, Michael couldn’t take it anymore. He had too much on his mind. “I’m calling a car for you,” he said. He happened to look up at the shiny windows of Zinderneuf and saw his wife staring down at them. He smiled and waved, and she flipped him the bird.
CHAPTER 20
DAWN PATROL
Laguna Beach, California
Chad DeKoven’s mornings started the same way every day. His board clamped under his left arm, he opened the low gate to his pocket yard and took the narrow sidewalk to the steps leading down to the beach.
This morning he’d awakened early—four a.m. Couldn’t wait to get out there. Even the slight wine hangover couldn’t take away the excitement he felt. His hands tingled and so did his legs, and his stomach pricked with excitement. Every morning, he was always impatient, the only time during the day that he wasn’t easygoing. For anything else, he wasn’t goal-oriented. He didn’t care about jobs or politics or even getting the girl. But pulling on his wetsuit, even after all these years, he couldn’t wait to get out there.
He’d passed on his favorite Stewart board for his new fave, Sacrilege—Rolf Baer’s latest work of art, shaped for him to perfection and ideal for the day. This would be his first time out with the Sacrilege board, and he could not wait.
The fog was dark blue gray and clung to everything. The smell of seaweed tumbled up by the waves permeated his nostrils. He loved the smell of seaweed in the morning! He loved it all. His life was very simple. Surf. Hang with his friends. Find a lady who wanted to sleep with him—no strings.
; He might have been born for another decade—the sixties, maybe the seventies. In fact, he even had an original Volkswagen Microbus, which he had painted the color of the sunrise, with the rocks black in the distance and a wave like glass.
At twenty-nine years old, Chad had an associate’s degree in business (didn’t do jack shit for him, either), a marriage that had lasted seven months, no kids (incredibly fortunate, because he didn’t think he’d be much of a father), and the beach house in Laguna. He had enough money for his needs.
And he had his boards—he’d built himself quite a collection, enough so he had to add on a little room off the shed and got into a ton of hot water with the zoning people.
The moisture clung like pearls to the iron railing edging the steps. The neighbor’s place was dark—his neighbor was a hippie lady who came from money like he did and just wanted to be left alone to enjoy life and occasional weed. He peered into the darkness and saw the white of the churning surf and the dark shine of the sodium arc lights, way up on poles, shimmering off the hardpacked sand over by the park. The forecast was good but not spectacular—waist high to chest high.
A light rain started up, dimpling the sand.
Chad was debating which beach to hit when he heard something he didn’t expect. The scrape of a shoe on the concrete behind him.
Maybe it was Bobbert, a surf bum who lived across the street. He turned halfway, said, “Hey bro, what you—”
Something heavy thudded into his back and pressed into him hard, and a meaty arm shot out of nowhere, pulling him backward and off his feet. An elbow crunched his neck like a vise, closing his air passage. He tried to tuck his chin down, tried to reach up and pull at the elbow, but he couldn’t get a grip. His board hit the walk with an ugly crack! and maybe it was broken but it didn’t matter because all that mattered was trying to breathe, and his vision was swimming—
And that was when full-blown panic set in.
CHAPTER 21
The next morning Tess was up early—first the coyotes and then the birds woke her. While she ran a wash she took her coffee and breakfast out on the porch and took notes on what had happened the day before.
The case was shifting. At first it had looked like a cartel hit—or some unaffiliated bad guy trying to act like one. Someone sending a message. You cross us and you’re dead. Not just dead, but we’ll torture you first.
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