The door burst open.
Of course he hadn’t locked it.
And there was Jaimie—her face a white fright mask, mascara running down her cheeks. Looking like she’d been unearthed out of a fresh grave. Like a zombie. His sister, the zombie.
All these thoughts ribboned through his mind, and he saw the black hole of a very-large-caliber gun. Pointed right at his face.
And he saw the man behind the gun. The man who held Jaimie as if she were a rag doll. The man was strong, brutish, and stupid.
Stupid.
Like a guy who fell off the proverbial turnip truck.
An ox.
A rancher type, the kind Jaimie fucked. Blue work shirt. White straw cowboy hat. Round face. Sunburn. Blue eyes. Local yokel grin. Graying blond hair.
Except his eyes were like blue marbles. Cold.
Suddenly, it occurred to him that he might have underestimated the man.
He understood that when the man shoved Jaimie facedown on the desk and pushed the gun muzzle into her hair.
Smiling as he did it.
“Here’s how it’s gonna go, friend.”
He was the cowboy he’d seen outside the general store. The Okie.
“I’m gonna kill her right in front of you. It’s gonna make a big mess. This is a large-caliber weapon. She’ll blow chunks and so will you. She’s gonna mess up the nice finish on your desk. All that blood’ll soak into the grain. Now I know you’re not afraid of blood or killing. But you’re gonna see her close up, and then, being human nature and all, you’ll picture what you’ll look like. Just remember, friend, dead’s forever. There’s now, and then there’s nothing.”
Michael steeled himself. “Go ahead and kill her.”
“Look, bud, all I want is you to wire that money to my account. You can do it in two minutes tops. Don’t you care about your sister at all?”
“No.”
He shook his head. “Okay, then.”
And he pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 54
Tess checked the kitchen door—unlocked. She said, “I’ll go low right. You go high left, okay?”
“Roger.”
They took their positions on either side of the door, weapons at the ready. Moran’s pointing to the left, Tess’s to the right. Moran turned the knob and pushed the door open with his foot.
Nothing greeted them.
The shot had come from the right. Moran went left, Tess went right, and they cleared the rooms immediately in front of them. Tess, the kitchen, Moran, the parlor. They zeroed in on the room where they’d heard the shot.
Noise—a commotion—someone banging into furniture, the screech of wood against tile, and then the loud shock of something repeatedly hitting the floor.
Michael’s study.
The sound of a gourd breaking. Again and again.
The door was open and Tess could see a woman’s body sprawled facedown over the desk, blood oozing out from under her head, a clot of it burrowed into her slightly upturned cheek.
Long dark hair with blonde highlights.
Jaimie.
But the horror was so much worse. Michael DeKoven was crawling on his hands and knees, his head a bloody mess. A man in Wrangler jeans and a blue denim shirt bent over him, slamming his head repeatedly into the floor.
Poole.
“Police! Hands behind your head! Do it now!”
Tess heard her own voice, but it sounded foreign in her ears.
“Do it now!” yelled Deputy Moran. His voice strong and loud in the room.
Poole kept pounding DeKoven’s head into the floor. “How do you like that, motherfucker? How do you like that?”
Blood spraying—a red mist. A solid chunk of DeKoven’s head smashing into the floor once more before Moran was able to get hold of one of Poole’s blood-slippery arms in his, wrenching it behind the man’s back.
Michael DeKoven’s body slumped, then caved.
Tess thought he was dead. He had to be dead.
Tess had to hopscotch over Michael’s body to give Moran a hand. Poole was staggering, bellowing like a maddened bull, trying to twist around and head butt Moran. “I’ll show you, you prissy little fucker!” he yelled at DeKoven’s corpse. “I’ll show you who’s boss!”
Tess latched on. He roared and shook her off, swung his head back and forth, blood flying like an oscillating lawn sprinkler.
Enraged. His eyes red rimmed. She latched onto him again. It took both of them to restrain him.
Abruptly, he stopped struggling.
All three of them huffing like freight trains.
Blood snared his mouth and dripped to the bottom of his nose and splashed on the tile.
Suddenly he dropped to his knees, almost pulling Tess and Moran with him. Tess stumbled and went to one knee just to stay up.
Poole shook himself like a big dog and blood flew. He raised his face to the ceiling and howled. He howled like a wolf.
Moran looked at Tess. “What the—?”
The howling morphed into laughter. Jagged, manic, loud.
It went on and on and on.
CHAPTER 55
Jurisdictional hell.
Everyone wanted a piece of Wade Poole.
Pima County Sheriff’s got the nod—they had the best case. Fortunately, Tess and Danny would sit in on the interrogation, along with Cheryl Tedesco of TPD.
They’d need a bigger interview room.
While they cooled their heels at the Pima County Sheriff’s Adult Detention Center on Silverlake Road, Danny made a call to his wife.
Tess listened as they talked, overheard him crooning a lullaby to his new little girl. How his voice softened. How his face changed. Tess found herself wishing that she had a family like that, had that dimension to her life. A child.
She’d never thought about that possibility before.
As Danny disconnected, he looked at her, puzzled. “What?”
“Nothing.”
Danny pocketed his phone and leaned forward, elbows on knees. Clasped his hands and glanced over at her. “What you think is going to happen in there?”
“What do you think will happen in there?”
“I think he’ll reserve his right to remain silent. I think we came all this way for nothing.”
Tess agreed. As a homicide cop, Wade Poole had been on the other side too many times. He knew all the tricks. He knew what they would say before they said it.
Plus, he was an asshole.
He’d stonewall them.
He knew he was going down, but he’d still get the last laugh.
It was a victory of sorts.
The room was cramped, stale, and warm. There were enough people there for a poorly attended city council meeting. Tess, Danny, and Cheryl were merely observers.
There were two Pima County sheriff’s detectives. They came to the party armed with an arsenal of evidence. In Michael DeKoven’s house alone, two people were dead by Wade Poole’s hand, and a Pima County Sheriff’s deputy and a Santa Cruz County homicide detective had witnessed Michael DeKoven’s murder.
Poole sat easy in his chair, despite the fact that he couldn’t stretch out. His hands were cuffed and chained to the interview table. He smiled: the jovial hayseed.
Detective Phil Arenas leaned forward. “You know we’ve got you dead to rights, Wade. You’re smart enough to know that. So why don’t you tell me your side?”
Wade shifted in his seat.
He grinned. “Yeah, you got me.” He leaned forward. “So what say I tell you everything?”
The surprise was plain on Arenas’s face.
Wade leaned back. The chain rattled. “’Course I want something in exchange. I want a cushy place, one of those country club prisons.”
Tess was aware she was staring at him. And she wasn’t alone. The secondary investigator on the case, Eric Spindler, opened his mouth wide enough to let flies in.
“Wade,” Spindler said. “You know that that’s not the way it w—”
Poole kept his eye on the lead, Phil Arenas. “That’s the deal. I’ll clear this case for you and a bunch of others, because I know exactly what those kids did.” He grinned, all corn pone. “You give me a good place, and I’ll tell all.”
“We’ll do our best, Wade,” Arenas said. “But you know as well as I do. There aren’t any country club prisons in Arizona.”
“You know what I mean. I want the best of the best. Whatever that is.” He leveled his gaze at Arenas. “But you gotta give me hospice care.”
Arenas left the room. They waited, but they didn’t have to wait long.
“Okay, Wade,” Arenas said, settling into the chair close to Poole. “If everything you say checks out, we can do that. So you’re sick? What is it you have?”
“Brain cancer. My doctor’s name is Clarence Pogue.” He rattled off the number. “Got it on the speed dial inside of my head.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Not too bad. Headaches, mostly. My balance sucks. The vomiting is the worst. You gonna make that call?”
Spindler pulled his phone from his pocket and left the room.
Wade sat back and grinned. For a man with a death sentence, he looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Spindler came back. “We’ll get you into hospice.”
And so Wade Poole began to talk.
He confessed to killing George Hanley. “What’d he think? He’d serve up proof about those kids killing people and tie it up in a nice little bow? You think they’d take him seriously? Stupid old fool, throwing away a chance to make a fortune with both hands. So I shot him, made it look like a cartel did it.”
“Just curious, Wade,” Arenas said. “While you’re getting things off your chest, what about your wife, Karen Poole?”
He grinned. “That was mine.”
“How about Chad DeKoven? You know anything about that?”
He held up a manacled hand. “Guilty. While I’m in a talkative mood, I can tell you I killed Steve Barkman, too—my most creative work yet. Kind of an experiment, but surprise-surprise, it worked.” He grinned. “Guess this good ol’ boy is a one-man crime wave.”
“Why did you kill Steve Barkman?”
He leaned forward. “That greedy little son of a bitch wasn’t interested in helping out Sheppard. He wanted a piece of the DeKoven pie. Can you believe that? Poor dumb fuck thought he could mess with me and mine.”
He sat back again, grinning from ear to ear.
“Had a dog like him once, sneaky little shit, used to skulk around and steal hoof parings when I was shoeing horses. Ate ’em right up. Always looked ashamed of himself, but he ate ’em. That’s what Steve Barkman reminded me of. A hoof-eating dog.” He leaned back even farther in his seat and stretched his legs out. “But there was another reason. You want to know what it was?”
“I’d appreciate anything you can say that will help us understand what happened here,” Arenas said.
Poole grinned. “I bet you would. I killed him for the same reason I killed Hanley and the surfer dude. Because my best girl asked me to.”
Phil Arenas looked at his partner. Cheryl looked at Tess and Danny and they looked at her.
“You should see your faces,” Poole said. “You didn’t know that, did you? You want to know who she is?”
He leaned into the microphone.
“Brayden.
“DeKoven.
“McConnell.”
The interrogation went for hours. Wade Poole had a lot to say and nothing to lose. Although he was forthcoming, even jovial, there was an undercurrent of rage Tess could feel. It was always there, behind the friendly mask he wore.
“I lured Hanley out to the ghost town. It was an ambush, pure and simple. He backed up onto the porch and I just kept walking and shooting, walking and shooting. Like that old fifties show, The Rifleman. Bam bam bam bam! Perfect place for a drug hit. When in doubt, always muddy the waters.”
By that time, he told them, he liked the idea of playing vigilante. He’d planned to pick off the DeKovens one by one. “I decided to mess with their heads first. Scare ’em. For sport, you know? The hunter becomes the hunted.” He grinned.
“How’d you meet Brayden DeKoven?” Phil Arenas asked.
“I was on to them all, but I figured Brayden would be the weakest link, being the youngest and a female. Jesus, was I ever wrong. That simpering little bitch has ice water in her veins!” He laughed. “She made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. She wanted her two brothers and her sister dead. Gave me this song and dance about how she’d waited for a guy like me all her life, batted her eyes real pretty, did things to me you can’t imagine.” He winked. “Told me if I killed them she’d split the inheritance with me.”
“You believed that?” Arenas asked.
His eyes turned to stone, and once again Tess could see the real man behind the friendly mask. “Hell, no. What she didn’t realize, though, was, she was next.”
“No interest in marrying her?”
“It wouldn’t last long, would it? I’m a dead man! Plus, who could live with a crazy bitch like that? And her kid? Jesus. Nope, I wanted money up front and she paid me good. I’ve still got a lot of life left in me and I’ve got one hell of a bucket list. If you’re gonna die, you might as well go out in style. So I figured I could blackmail Michael DeKoven as easily as she could.”
They were just finishing up when he turned pale. “I’m gonna pass out. You got a bed in here somewhere? I need to lie down now.”
But he didn’t make it as far as the door.
CHAPTER 56
On a warm spring day, Elena Christina Rojas was christened at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Nogales.
Danny invited everyone to the house afterward. Tess wandered through the rooms of their brick ranch, balancing her plate of blue corn tamales, apple empanada, and barbecued flank steak with her cup of punch. She now knew the exact definition of the word “beaming,” because Danny embodied it. His smile seemed permanently affixed to his face—pride, joy, and gratitude all wrapped into one. He stuck like a burr to his wife and his baby, his jokes a little less off-color.
His focus had changed. He was the same Danny Rojas who teased Tess and called her guera, the same Danny who looked for humor in every situation, but he now wore a mantle of fatherhood on his shoulders and Tess was acutely aware of it. Father. Dad. There was more to him now. Being a father was number one, just ahead of being a husband.
Tess threaded through knots of cops and friends and family, the low babble of voices, thinking that for all Danny’s wisecracks, he had this one very important part of his life nailed down.
He had someone.
He had two someones.
Tess had a new someone herself. Last week she’d visited Adele at the vet hospital and ended up paying the bill and bringing her home. Adele wouldn’t fit in Tess’s glass case of mementos, but she’d been precious to two homicide victims: George Hanley and Jaimie DeKoven, and was quickly becoming just as precious to Tess.
Peter Deuteronomy had somehow got wind of it and called her extension at work to offer her his extra coupons for PetSmart.
Tess walked out onto the patio, which had a view of the hills in Nogales, Mexico, and the golden grassland.
The sky an aching blue above.
It was beautiful out here—quiet. But Tess realized how tired she was.
She was haunted by nightmares. The violence she’d seen in Michael DeKoven’s house clung to her and would not let go. She’d always been good at compartmentalizing, always been good at filing things away. But Wade Poole beating Michael DeKoven’s head against the floor replayed constantly in her mind.
The sheer savagery of it left an indelible mark.
Meanwhile, Wade Poole was being treated better than ninety-five percent of the prison population. His brain cancer wasn’t advanced, and he still had days—even weeks—when he wasn’t affected by his illness.
Tess and Danny were still working to nail down al
l the murders the Survivors Club had committed. The killings spanned several jurisdictions—including New Zealand—but only one possible killing here in Arizona. The ex-soldier shot by a sniper. The DeKovens had been careful not to kill in their own backyard.
Brayden DeKoven was questioned but so far there had been no arrest. She’d lawyered up big-time. Tess thought they’d better hurry; the youngest DeKoven was certainly a flight risk.
Even on the incriminating tape of the family boasting about their crimes by the pool, she had managed to appear innocent. Tess had run the tape through her head many times: Jaimie and Michael drinking champagne, completely out of hand—and Brayden, trying to avoid the spotlight. Brayden, embarrassed by her drunken and drugged siblings, even shy—seemingly astonished at what they were saying. To anyone watching, it appeared that Brayden had just walked onto a strange movie set and had no idea what was going on.
That plain, innocent, sweet dumpling face.
There was a lot of ground to cover. Tess and Danny had no idea how many people had been killed by the DeKovens, but she guessed at least four, since one of the DeKovens had slapped the number five on Alec Sheppard’s chest.
She owed Alec a call. They’d been playing phone tag the last couple of days. She tapped in his number, and this time, he answered on the first ring.
“I want to catch you up,” Tess said.
It was a long story and it took some time.
Finally, they disconnected. Tess stared at the oak-covered hills of Mexico, cluttered with brightly painted houses that seemed to pile one on top of the other. Traffic whispered on the freeway below, but she listened for cars on the road outside Danny’s subdivision. She inhaled the sweet scent of star jasmine spilling over the parapet.
She heard tires on gravel and the sound of a car door opening and closing. Greetings inside the house, heard Danny’s voice floating out of the open sliding glass door. “I think she’s outside.”
Tess was aware that her heart was beating hard, pulsing in her ears. She hadn’t felt this way since grade school.
The Survivors Club Page 26