The Survivors Club

by J. Carson Black

  “You can move in with me. You want me to call the moving van company?”

  “Sure. Can you put up the cast and crew?”

  Tess looked around. The living room to her rented house was small, and the kitchen was smaller. “It’ll be tight. We’d have to stack them like cordwood.”

  “They’re used to it. The orgies.”

  “I forgot.”

  “How can you forget? Hosting orgies—it’s one of my best assets.”

  “I thought your strong chin was your best asset.”

  “Nah, it’s gotta be the orgies. Unless it’s my entourage.”

  “You have an entourage?”

  “Okay. I don’t have an entourage. I’m down to one lonely, dorky guy—all I’ve got is my sidekick.”

  Tess smiled. By now she’d seen most of his movies. Max’s characters always had a sidekick. All of Max’s sidekicks were a little on the homely side, but lovable. She said, “Is he lovable? Does he have soulful eyes?”

  “How would I know? I’m a guy.”

  “But he’s your wingman.”

  “Guess you could call him that.”

  “Is he secretly in love with me?”

  “Oh, yeah. You know the type. Guy’s always moping around, just hoping to get a glimpse of you. I guess he still thinks he has a shot.”

  “He doesn’t. Even though you don’t really appreciate me the way you should, and your sidekick …” Tess fished around and came up with: “Marshal.”

  “Marshal?”

  “Marshal.”

  “You sure?”

  “That’s his name.”

  “I would have named him Ned, but okay. Marshal worships you from afar. He gets to know the real you, because I’m too busy squiring famous actresses to events to notice the love of my life right under my nose.”

  “It’s true—poor Marshal and I spend most of our downtime together.”

  “Meanwhile,” Max said, “I go on my merry way, doing my own thing, not knowing that every day in every way I’m—”

  “Breaking my heart?”

  Silence.

  Tess wished she hadn’t said that.

  Max said: “Am I breaking your heart?”

  “No, not really. Could be I’m already beginning to forget you.”

  “Forget me? How is such a thing possible? I’m the leading man.”

  “I have the tabloids so at least I can remember what you look like.”

  There was another pause. He said, “I can fly out. Next week, it would have to be quick. Overnight—or you could come here.”

  Tess thought about Bonny, new here as undersheriff. Bringing her to Santa Cruz County with him. She was his right hand. And there would be Danny’s merciless teasing. Razzed unmercifully about the “movie star.” She wouldn’t mind being razzed. She wanted so badly to see Max right now, this minute, but Tess also knew she had to concentrate on this case. She’d be gone long hours. She only had a limited window of opportunity on Hanley—the longer without a break there was, the more unlikely the case would ever be solved. Still, Max would be here.

  Tess said, “You can’t really get away, can you? You’re on a schedule.”

  “I could call it an emergency.”

  “You know you can’t do that.”

  He sighed. She knew he was thinking there was no getting away from responsibility. So many people depended on him. And she couldn’t go there.

  And yet the physical yearning was almost unbearable.

  He said, “When can you come out here?”

  “Not now.”

  Quiet for a moment. “We can plan for something later. We’re both too busy.”

  “Yes.”

  “But it doesn’t mean this won’t work out,” he added.

  “No.” She remembered how thin and pale he’d been in the hospital after the shooting. Max Conroy, star of stage and screen, kidnapped and held for ransom in her county. In Bonny’s county.

  And Tess had ended up in the middle of a deadly romantic triangle, trying to help a displaced movie star on the run from kidnappers and a scheming wife who would have been happy to play the part of a grieving widow.

  Max had been damaged. Badly. But he had survived, and somehow they had ended up together.

  Except he lived in California and she lived here, on the border between Arizona and Mexico and loneliness.

  Tess remembered waiting for the paramedics. She remembered the blood. She didn’t know for sure, but she’d thought that he had died. When she was alone with him for those few frantic seconds, as she tried to compress the wound.

  Maybe he hadn’t died. But he had been slipping away. Max heard her voice, and she still felt that this was what made the difference. She knew he believed it, too.

  Sometimes she wondered if he loved her at all—or if he just felt he owed her.

  He said, “I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too.” She wanted to add that it was an almost physical pain.

  They talked for a while and covered the waterfront—her case, his TV series, even beautiful Suri. Tess could tell from his voice that she was just what she always knew the woman was: his costar.

  No worries.

  But when she put the phone down, she was aware of the ache. It was the ache of a woman whose husband is gone, his side of the bed empty.

  When her cell rang a moment later, Tess answered, “What did you forget?”

  But it wasn’t Max. “Is this Detective McCrae?”

  She recognized the voice—it belonged to Steve Barkman, the guy who’d accosted her in Credo. “How did you get my number?”

  His mother was a powerful judge, but Tess suspected it was somebody with Pima County Sheriff’s—a noncommissioned employee with a high degree of suck-uppiness.

  “I figured you’re home for the day.”

  Tess tried not to be creeped out. “What do you want, Mr. Barkman?”

  “Just wanted to talk about the Hanley case.”

  “I don’t talk about my cases.”

  “Wait! Could we meet? I need to know about the shooting. I heard he was shot multiple times. Can you confirm that?”

  “I’m not telling you anything pertaining to this investigation. I am going to hang up now.”

  “Listen, just give me verification.”

  Tess had second thoughts about hanging up. “What’s your interest in this, Mr. Barkman?”

  “I’m a concerned citizen.”

  Tess said, “Mr. Barkman, do you know anything about this?”

  “You’re not accusing me of anything, are you? Because you don’t have a leg to stand on if you’re trying to pull that intimidation shit.”

  Defensive. Angry. But underneath, she sensed he was gloating. Tess thought he knew more than he was giving away, and she guessed he wanted to show her that he was important, that he knew details about the investigation.

  “Mr. Barkman, I didn’t mean to come off sounding like that. I’m just curious if you have some inside knowledge about this that might be able to help us out.”

  “I might be willing to trade.”

  “Trade?”

  “I’d want all the information you have on the case.”

  “I can’t do that, Mr. Barkman. You’re working for the sheriff’s office in Pima County. You ought to know that I can’t tell you anything. But if you have information that could help us you could—”

  “If you’re not going to wash my hand, I’m not washing yours. You’ll regret this, but that’s your choice.”

  And he hung up.

  Tess stared at the phone. She’d memorized his number from the readout, punched in his number. Got his voice mail.

  She pushed the door open and walked out onto the porch. The air was cool now that the sun was down. Cool enough for a long-sleeved shirt. She hugged herself, staring at the moon sailing above the cut-out hills.

  Closing her eyes, she willed the air to stir behind her, to hear his step, to smell Max’s cologne as he put his hands on her arms and put his f
ace against her neck.

  But Max was far away. In a galaxy far away, a place completely foreign to her.

  A dog barked. Tess shook off the feeling of Max standing beside her, the phantom closeness that made her melt inside.

  Steve Barkman figured into this somehow. Either he was taunting her about his knowledge of her case, or he was trying to pump her for information.

  She brought out her laptop, and under the yellow stain of the porch light she searched for the website of the Arizona Daily Star. She found the article and read it through.

  It was a very short piece, not even an article. More like a paragraph, and it read like a follow-up to an earlier story, probably from the previous day.

  No mention of multiple gunshots.

  Yet Barkman was sure Hanley had sustained massive firepower.

  Why?

  Maybe somebody with Pima County Sheriff’s Office told him. She could picture someone he worked with saying that the man found in Credo was shot up badly.

  She stared at the hill across the way.

  Shot multiple times.

  “Why is it so important to you?” she said to the invisible Steve Barkman. But the only ones who heard her were the stray cat and the crickets and the dark.

  CHAPTER 11

  The next morning, Danny pulled into the parking lot the same time as Tess did.

  “Autopsy results,” he called out. “Including photos!” He waggled a thumb drive.

  Inside, they went over the report and the photos.

  The photos were gruesome.

  Tess had taken many photos of George Hanley at the scene. He was only recognizable as a human being by his legs, arms, and the shape of his head.

  “Look at this.” Danny opened up one of the autopsy photos—George Hanley, naked on the autopsy table, his wounds cleaned up and looking as if he’d been attacked by dark red leeches. But this photo focused on Hanley’s lap.

  Tess had looked at and photographed the body. She’d marked evidence, but hadn’t touched him. There was always a risk that her own clothing lint, her own skin or hair follicles, her own DNA, could end up on the victim, especially one as torn up as this one was.

  Tess could see exactly what Hanley looked like on the floor of the cabin. She could see the crime scene techs as they took Hanley away, could run it on a reel in her mind. They almost had to scrape him off the floor of the cabin to get him into the body bag. He was a blood-soaked bag of grain. The cloth of his knit polo shirt and chinos had been enmeshed in his flesh.

  So Tess had not seen then what she saw now.

  His genitals were fully intact.

  “That’s right,” Danny said. “He’s still got his balls. And here’s Exhibit B.” Another photo of Hanley’s mouth. “They didn’t stuff them in his mouth.”

  Tess hadn’t stripped away the duct tape. There was no way she could do that at the scene. But she had wondered…

  She’d wondered, as she knew Danny had wondered, if anything had been jammed down Hanley’s throat, his lips sealed by the tape after the fact.

  That didn’t happen.

  Both Tess and Danny knew what this meant.

  When it came to looking like a drug-related or cartel killing, Hanley’s death had walked like a duck. It had walked like a duck, and talked like a duck.

  But it wasn’t a duck.

  “Somebody didn’t do his homework,” Danny said. “They sure didn’t know about the latest fashion accessory. You gotta wonder who would work so hard to make it look that way.”

  The focus on the case had changed. It was quite possible that whoever killed George Hanley had tried to make it look like a drug-related hit.

  Tess and Danny attended George Hanley’s funeral.

  They went to pay their respects to a fallen cop—no matter how long he’d been out of the job he would always be one of them—but also to see who might show up.

  The funeral was held at the Lois Maderas Memorial Park outside Nogales. The only people who attended were George Hanley’s daughter Pat; her husband, Bert; and a handful of people Tess put in two categories: a couple of Hanley’s neighbors at the apartment he’d been staying in, and a sprinkling of well-off people in middle age. Judging from the bumper stickers on their big SUVs, Tess pegged them as environmentally conscious members of SABEL. Jaimie Wolfe did not attend.

  Tess and Danny kept an eye out for anything unusual, and chatted up the SABEL people and neighbors when they could. But they could only do so much. They had to keep it respectful—this was not the time to grill anyone. Mostly, they were here to watch and learn.

  And to document with photos of the mourners—both Danny and Tess were adept at taking photos with their cell phones without their subjects being the wiser.

  Before the service began, Tess walked to the main building under the pretext of using the restroom, and from there she watched the mourners.

  Sometimes killers attended funerals. It was always wise for a detective to attend the funeral of the victim if he could. Some killers were loved ones—domestics were common as dirt. The bad guy came because he (or she) had to show up as part of the family. Sometimes, they came out of guilt. There were also instances where killers came to see their handiwork—what they had wrought.

  They came to gloat.

  But Tess saw no unusual behavior.

  It looked mostly like people attended because they either wanted to pay their respects, or they felt they had to.

  She walked back to the graveside.

  Pat Scofield looked as if someone had taken a baseball bat to her—stunned. Her face and eyes were red from crying. She wore thick hose with a chunky-looking dress that was years out of date. Her husband was turned out surprisingly well in a bespoke suit.

  “The odd couple,” Danny whispered, nodding at Pat and Bert. “Think I’ll go for a walk up on that hill.”

  His turn to watch the mourners.

  After the funeral, Tess asked Danny if he’d like to go with her to check out Jaimie Wolfe. Tess still hadn’t gotten the list of SABEL members. She’d called Jaimie twice and left messages.

  “Sure,” Danny said. “I got some things I have to do—some cleanup on Roscoe, but later this afternoon, I’m available.”

  Roscoe was a sad story—a woman had neglected and starved her little son to death. Tess knew the case haunted Danny, what with his own firstborn coming soon.

  They split up after agreeing to drive out to visit Jaimie at the end of their shift.

  CHAPTER 12

  The best thing about the Lois Maderas Memorial Park: the hills and windbreak of trees at the top of one of them. The shade here was dark, and he was far enough away that even a sharp-eyed cop wouldn’t see him. He lay on his stomach on the grass, watching.

  He didn’t come to watch the mourners.

  He came because he knew the cops would be there, and he wanted to see who they were.

  They were easy to spot. Dressed professionally, but casual. Even if they didn’t dress like cops, he would know them anywhere.

  Because of what they were looking at.

  They weren’t watching the coffin as it was lowered into the earth.

  They were looking out. Out at the people surrounding the grave. Their faces impassive behind dark glasses. Quiet and contained, they kept their eyes on the mourners, and now and then they scanned the surrounding hills.

  He didn’t use his binocs because he didn’t want to catch a reflection.

  The woman in particular interested him. She wore a navy jacket over a pale blouse and chino-type slacks. He could see the rectangle under her jacket on her left hip. The woman was a cop all the way. Her dark blonde hair pulled into a neat ponytail. The dark glasses. The calm around her.

  And the other guy—the spic.

  He was a little more restless. Full of energy. Looking for trouble. When he looked toward the hills, it was almost with X-ray vision.

  The watcher knew he couldn’t be seen, but still…

  He knew that killers often s
howed up at funerals to gloat. Or out of nervousness, because they couldn’t stay away. Maybe they were worried about some loose end, maybe they had a compulsion.

  But he came to watch the cops watching for him.

  CHAPTER 13

  This time there were no girls or horses in the riding ring.

  Tess stood back while Danny knocked.

  It took a while, but Jaimie finally came to the door. She wore a similar outfit to the one she’d worn last time—except for the cowboy boots, which were beat up, but expensive.

  “I’m busy today,” Jaimie said, her voice abrupt.

  “Just a couple more questions,” Danny said.

  “Who are you?”

  Tess stepped up close to Jaimie. “This is Danny Rojas, my partner.”

  “Your ‘partner?’ With the sheriff’s office? Or are you lovers?”

  Danny gave her his best sexy grin. “We’re negotiating on that.”

  Tess thought about stomping on his foot, but the moment passed.

  Jaimie came out on the porch and closed the door behind her. “All right, you can ask your damn questions! I just hope it won’t take long.”

  She seemed completely different from the way she’d been before. Last time she’d at least given the appearance of being forthcoming, and volunteered information. This time she folded her arms and stood on the porch. “What do you want to know?”

  “First, I need the names of the SABEL members,” Tess said.

  “Fine.” She walked inside and closed the door.

  “You have a way with people,” Danny observed.

  They waited. The smell of alfalfa, horse urine, and manure drifted up to them.

  A couple of minutes later, Jaimie Wolfe returned with a sheet of paper. “Names and phone numbers,” she said, her voice brisk.

  Only eight people on the list. Apparently eradicating buffelgrass wasn’t a popular pastime around here.

  “Do you have any theories as to why George Hanley moved down here?”

  Jaimie shrugged. “He said, to be with his daughter.”

  “He never mentioned an additional reason to you?”