The Survivors Club

by J. Carson Black

  It went on that way for a while longer. Unsatisfying, but Tess thought they got something out of it. At one point her eyes met Cheryl’s—and she saw confirmation there. They both knew he was lying. There would be a trail, if they could just find the trailhead. Perhaps a chartered jet. Perhaps another name. Perhaps both.

  He escorted them out. Pleased with himself.

  Tess said, “What kind of car is that? It’s really impressive.”

  “It should be, for $103,000. It’s a Fisker Karma.”

  He’d quoted the price on his Charles Russell painting, too. As rich as he was, why did he have to prove himself?

  “Do you have any trouble on that road?” Tess asked. “Looks like there are places you could bottom out.”

  “I just take it slow,” he said. “The key is to know where the dangerous spots are, and try to avoid them.”

  Which pretty much described his side of the interview.

  Half an hour after the two female detectives left empty-handed, Michael’s wife, Nicole, who had just driven in from a shopping trip, paid an unexpected visit to his side of the courtyard. She knocked on his door so hard, if it weren’t two inches thick, she might have put her fist through it.

  When Michael opened the door she pushed past him, her whole body shaking with anger. “You must have really messed up, Michael.”

  “Always a first time,” he murmured. “To what do I owe this great pleasure?”

  “Oh, shut up! You could put us all in danger.”

  She was spoiling for a fight. He wished he’d never confided in her, but that was when they were happy, three years ago. Before he finally realized that women just didn’t turn him on. Twelve years into a marriage, that was awkward.

  “You said this, this thing you do wouldn’t make any waves. You said you had it all covered, and I would never have to worry about a policeman knocking on my door.”

  “Not so you’d notice, but the police didn’t knock on your door.”

  “Give them time, Michael. I don’t want the kids exposed to this. I don’t want to be exposed to it myself. I’m thinking of leaving.”

  Nicole always said that, but she never did. She liked it here. She liked her own house across the pool, the beautiful rich furnishings from his parents’ house filling it up nicely. She had a great touch. She appreciated his family, if he didn’t. She loved the nice cushy life, didn’t want to take the kids out of their elementary school, didn’t want to be too far from her horsey friends or the new day spa that had been built in the new subdivision down the mountain. She was happy with the way things were. She knew she wouldn’t get much—her lawyers weren’t as good as his.

  Plus, she had something to hold over his head.

  Nicole liked it just this way. She could forget about him most of the time, but funnel her resentment to him whenever she liked. Make fun of him, make fun of Martin, whom she called “Cabana Boy.” As in, “How’s Cabana Boy today? Did he get a sunburn on his witto tiny wienie?”

  This was the level of discourse he had with her. She embarrassed him, and at some point he’d find a way to get rid of her. She was an albatross around his neck.

  Don’t shit where you eat.

  “Just tell me you had nothing to do with that guy Barkman’s death.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that guy Barkman’s death.”

  She hauled back and slapped him hard across the face.

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t change anything. I know you’re upset. I know you hate it when Martin stays over—”

  “Shut up! I couldn’t care less about your boy toy, as long as you don’t have sex in front of the kids. I’m talking about Barkman. If it wasn’t you, who was it?”

  “Nobody I know.”

  “Nobody. Right, nobody. That’s an intelligent answer! The fact is, you don’t know, do you, Michael? You think you’re in charge, but you aren’t in charge. You think you’re so clever. You—”

  He grabbed her arms—both of them—and shoved her out the door. She tripped and had to grab the doorjamb to keep from falling. “Fuck you, Michael! You can just…burn in hell!”

  She stalked toward her own smaller, more tasteful house. Turned back to say, “You are so screwed, Michael, and you know it! They’re going to come for you, and if they ask, I’m going to tell them what I know.”

  “What you know? What you know? You don’t know jack!”

  He slammed the heavy door. Hyperventilating.

  The bitch.

  He called Jaimie. He’d called her earlier, to warn her that a detective might be coming her way, but she hadn’t returned his message. She’d ignored him—again. Jaimie was such a game player, and that was what he wanted to talk to her about.

  When his spoiled bitch of a sister answered, he heard a horse blowing loudly through its nostrils. He could barely hear her, but he could sure hear the horse snorting its guts out.

  “Jaimie, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “You told that detective from Nogales I was Hanley’s financial advisor.”

  “So?”

  “I told you he decided against going with me. You knew that. Don’t you know the police talk to each other? I just had a visit from them, by the way. The police.”

  “Oh, come on, Michael! Why would I do that? I can’t keep track of your clients. For all I knew George was your client. What’s the big deal? You’re the best liar I know, aside from myself. Quit!”

  A rattle of a chain and a bang of a bucket. She was disciplining one of those big fat horses she couldn’t afford.

  Michael swallowed his impatience. Jaimie wasn’t very intelligent. And she was impulsive. Which was the thing he wanted to talk to her about. He needed to broach it the right way, because Jaimie would just clam up if he pissed her off. The more furious she was, the more likely she’d stonewall him. Jaimie was the type who would go into a sulk for days. Normally he didn’t care, because she wasn’t really in his circle of friends, sister or not, but in many ways best not gotten into, they were joined at the hip.

  “Jaimie,” he said. “I know about the dog.”

  “What dog?”

  “How did you think that could possibly work?”

  “Michael, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Your new dog. The Aussie mix.”

  “So? I like dogs. I’ve got plenty of them.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Silence.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I don’t have to justify myself to you. Maybe I just want to do something good for a change. She’s a nice dog. She needed a home—a good home. That was the least I could do.”

  “What do you mean, the least you could do?”

  Silence.

  “Jaimie?”

  “This is so fucked.”

  “What’s fucked?”

  “You know. You know exactly what I mean.”

  “Are you having regrets, Jaimie? Because as I recall, you didn’t seem to mind what happened at Huka Falls. In fact, you had the time of your life.”

  Silence.

  “You do not want to even think about screwing with me, Jaimie. I don’t want you messing things up with the games you play.”

  “The games I play? What about you? What about Houston? What about Alec Sheppard? You’re the one inviting trouble.”

  “Why’d you take that man’s dog?”

  “I wanted to. Okay? I wanted…something out of it.”

  “We come to the meat of the conversation at last.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “What did you do, Jaimie?”

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  He had to be careful. That’s why he used the landline, not his cell. Heaven only knew what they could do with cell phones. He lowered his voice. “You didn’t jump the gun?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He was ninety-nine percent sure nobody was
monitoring this call—he’d done a sweep this morning, but still, you never knew. He said carefully, “Was it you?”

  “Was it me what?”

  “Try to keep up, okay? You took the dog. We all know how impulsive you are—”

  She exploded. “I’m impulsive? Look what you did in Houston! You know, Michael? Before you lecture me, you’d better take a look at yourself first. You’d better take your own damn advice!”

  “What about Steve Barkman?”

  “What about Steve Barkman?”

  He kept his voice steady, even though he was angry. “I want to know how far you’ve gone off the reservation.”

  “Me? What about you?”

  “I’m asking you to tell me what else you’ve done. Did he approach you?” He almost said, “Did he blackmail you?” but stopped himself just in time.

  There was a pause. Then Jaimie said, “Fuck you, Michael! Just…fuck you!”

  And she hung up.

  Michael sat there, hearing only the dial tone.

  His heart thudded in his ears. His mouth went dry. What did Jaimie do?

  Whatever it was, however deep she was into this, she wasn’t about to tell him. He hit End, planning to call her back, but the phone rang before he could punch in her number.

  “Look, Jaimie—”

  It wasn’t Jaimie. It was Brayden, his little sister. And she was crying.

  He asked her what was wrong, but she was sobbing too hard for him to understand what she was saying.

  At first.

  CHAPTER 22

  Tess turned onto Spanish Trail headed for the freeway. Her mind wasn’t on Michael DeKoven. It was on Alec Sheppard.

  There was a spark there. She didn’t like to think about that.

  She loved Max.

  But the simple fact was, Max lived in California. She could relocate to California, but she couldn’t relocate to the world Max lived in. She couldn’t fit inside the bubble of his celebrity.

  Her life was here. She worked homicide and it was part of the fabric that made her. Her identity as a homicide cop went far back. It went way back to her childhood, when her closest friend was kidnapped and a big, strong, gentle man had helped her through. His name was Detective Joe Clayborn, and he’d promised her he would find her best friend, and after he did—after he found Emily’s body—Joe Clayborn promised her he would find her killer and put him away.

  He found him.

  He found the neighbor kid before he could kill again.

  Tess couldn’t live inside Max’s bubble. He would argue that she could do what she wanted, could pursue her own career. But she knew she’d be caught up in it—all of it, the tabloids and the fanzines and the paparazzi—and she didn’t want that kind of life. She wouldn’t be able to ply her trade there. Cops were insular and they kept to their own circles, and she wouldn’t fit in. She wouldn’t be effective. She would be an outsider.

  It was hard enough here, with Danny teasing her all the time.

  So she didn’t know what to do.

  She was attracted to Alec Sheppard, but it was only because she wasn’t spending every day with Max, day after day, week after week, month after month. Absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder. It made you forget.

  If she and Max had any shot at all, they needed to be together.

  And that was a bridge too far—for both of them.

  Sometimes she woke in the middle of the night and a voice screamed inside her head: What are you doing?

  But she couldn’t cut the tie. Couldn’t. Not yet—

  That was when Tess felt it—a piece falling into place.

  Up ahead was the little general store in Rincon Valley. She pulled off the road and parked.

  There were two reasons to stop at the store. One, she needed chocolate—dark chocolate, preferably—which she knew helped her think. And two, she might have to make more phone calls, and she didn’t want to do that while she was driving.

  Inside the store, Tess bought a Dove Bar, her hands fumbling as she pulled the debit card from her purse.

  When something happened in a case, she always felt she was on the edge of something big. Tremendous. Sometimes, too big for her to assimilate.

  She felt like that now.

  The woman at the cash register had long blonde hair and looked like she was a couple of years out of Rodeo Queen range. She said, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m good.”

  She walked out of the store and into the parking lot and out toward the back. There were corrals behind the store, and horses. This was a nice little spot, the Rincon Mountains rising up to the east, their golden flanks shadowed navy blue by clouds that seemed to wander over the mountain like a herd of buffalo.

  The air smelled rural, like her place on Harshaw Road. The horses were at their feed tub at the far end of a pasture, their tails swishing. She could hear them stomping and banging their noses against the feed tub—sound traveled out here. It reminded her of Jaimie Wolfe and her equestrian center, and she wondered if Jaimie was part of the narrative she was building, too.

  She punched in Alec Sheppard’s number and he answered on the first ring.

  “You said something I didn’t quite get,” Tess said without preamble. “What did you mean when you said you were ‘getting in shape after the accident?’”

  “Oh, that. I got busted up pretty bad in Florida.”

  He sounded embarrassed.

  “What happened?”

  “I had what they call a partial malfunction. My reserve canopy tangled with the main canopy, and neither of them inflated. Do you know what terminal velocity means?”

  “No.” Tess’s eye followed an old ranch truck—seventies vintage—pulling into the lot. Sunlight arrowed off the bumper and she shaded her eyes. When the engine shut off she smelled gas.

  Sheppard said, “It’s an equation. People fall at different rates. If you weigh more, you fall faster. There are a lot of conditions that can change your velocity. In my case, the canopy was a mess but it did slow me down. Because the two of them were wadded up together, they created even more drag—that got me down to sixty or seventy miles per hour. I got lucky. Really lucky. I thought I was dead.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing much I could do. I tried to make like a flying squirrel and hope for the best. That was probably what saved me—pure luck I landed the way I wanted to. When I hit, my entire body absorbed the impact. If I’d gone in headfirst or hit with my feet, I would have accordioned, and that could have killed me. At the very least I’d have serious internal injuries.

  “That’s a dangerous sport.”

  He actually laughed. “I made one hell of an impression—literally—went in six, seven inches down in the bog. Just smushed into it—the mud got into my eyes, my nose, my mouth, I was this close to drowning. Thank God someone got to me in time to pull me out. Even so, the wind was knocked out of me and my heart stopped. I broke my ribs, collarbone, fractured my pelvis—”

  “You survived all that?”

  “I was lucky someone was there to give me CPR.”

  “You could have been killed.”

  “I was dead, for a very short period of time.”

  Tess felt the tingle low in her abdomen. She had always—literally—felt with her gut. When she was getting close, when everything came together or was about to…

  “You should go with me sometime,” Alec Sheppard said. Tess barely heard him. There was a buzzing in her ears. She saw the burned and crushed frame of the Spokane Indians’ bus—a photograph that had accompanied the article.

  “Lucky Lohrke,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Just a guy. Look, I’ve got to go. Can we talk later?”

  “Sure.”

  Tess knew he sounded a little put off, but that didn’t matter. She loved Max.

  Scratch that. She was in love with Max.

  She walked back to her car.

  Tess turned onto the freeway going west. Thinking about DeK
oven.

  Not Michael DeKoven.

  Quentin DeKoven.

  She could see it on the page, as she had a few days ago.

  “In 1999, Quentin DeKoven was the lone survivor of a single-engine plane crash in northern Arizona. After dragging the dying pilot nearly three miles through rugged country and spending the night in frigid temperatures, DeKoven was found by the search team, nearly dead from exposure.

  “He lost two fingers on one hand and a foot to frostbite.”

  She saw the words. She remembered the sun beaming down on the page. She knew what she was wearing, knew the side street she’d pulled into, knew the time of day.

  “In a cruel twist of fate, Quentin DeKoven died in 2005 when his private plane abruptly lost altitude and crashed into a wilderness area in the Pinaleño Mountains, six years after he survived a similar incident in 1999.”

  Quentin DeKoven had survived a private plane crash that should have killed him.

  Six years later, he’d died in another.

  He wasn’t the only one who’d dodged the Reaper.

  Tess flashed on Steve Barkman’s self-satisfied grin. The cat-that-ate-the-canary grin when he asked her about George Hanley’s death.

  How many times was he shot?

  The question hadn’t made any sense when he’d asked it. Why was he obsessed with the number of shots?

  Now she knew: George Hanley was shot six times the first time he died. Yes—died. His daughter Pat had told her he “died on the operating table.” He’d died and been revived.

  There were similarities.

  That first morning, waking up, Tess had thought of that baseball player in the magazine, Lucky Lohrke. Lucky Lohrke, who was bumped off a flight back to the States at the end of World War II. Lucky Lohrke, who was traded to another team and got off the bus before it crashed and burned on a snowy mountain.

  Lucky.

  George Hanley had been lucky. He’d survived death on the operating table.

  Later, he won the lottery.

  But after that, all these years later, his luck had run out.

  She called Danny. “Remember the DVD George Hanley had in his apartment? You found it, the second pass through?”