The Survivors Club

by J. Carson Black

  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?”

  CHAPTER 17

  Tess was halfway back to Nogales when she got the news.

  By coincidence, she’d been asking a friend of hers, Terry Braithwate, with the Pima County Sheriff’s Office, about Steve Barkman.

  “Just a minute,” Braithwate said. “You won’t believe this.”

  Tess could hear the scanner in the background—Braithwate was monitoring the TPD frequencies.

  “Small world—there’s a possible 01-01 at 5425A East Ft. Lowell Road.”

  Possible homicide.

  Tess heard it, and knew immediately. “That’s Steve Barkman’s residence.”

  “Jesus.” A click of computer keys. “I’m looking…oh, I didn’t know that. The place is officially owned by his mother—Geneva Rees.”

  “So what’s the nature of the 01-01? Do they know?”

  “Still trying to figure it out.”

  “But the deceased is…”

  “Let me check—hold on.” He came back on a moment later. “Shit. It is Steve.”

  “They don’t know if it’s a homicide?” Tess said.

  “Not yet. Ds are at the scene though.”

  Tess got off the horn with Braithwate and called Danny.

  “Barkman? The guy you had to apologize to?”

  “Yeah.” Tess told him how Barkman had seemed to be obsessed with George Hanley’s death.

  “There might be something there,” Danny said.

  Tess said, “I’m going back.”

  “Hey, guera—I’ll meet you there.”

  There he goes with the white girl comment again.

  Sometimes it was such a pain in the ass to be Anglo.

  Tess parked on Ft. Lowell Road. The dirt road into Barkman’s mother’s property was jammed with vehicles. She saw four TPD units—one of them a D car and another belonging to a detective sergeant—and a crime scene unit, TV satellite truck, and a regular TPD unit. All of which were parked either in the long driveway or along the side of the semirural stretch of road.

  She waited for Danny. When he appeared, they walked toward the property.

  The officer guarding the crime scene tape looked like he’d give them trouble, and he did.

  Danny badged him. “We have an ongoing investigation involving Mr. Barkman—”

  “Nobody can come in here.”

  Tess glanced at the crowd beyond the tape and spotted a woman with a blonde ponytail in conversation with a crime scene tech and another detective. She wore a long-sleeved blouse, tan slacks, her weapon in plain sight, and most important, a silver shield clipped to her belt.

  “Cheryl Tedesco!” Tess called out.

  Cheryl Tedesco looked up, shading her eyes against the bright Arizona sun. She detached herself from the group. “Tess! Holy cow, girl! What’re you doing here?”

  Tess introduced her partner. “We think your case links with ours.”

  “I’m all ears.” Cheryl lifted the tape, and Tess and Danny ducked under. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

  Three months ago, Tess and Cheryl had roomed together at an interrogation methods course in Lake Havasu City. Not only did they hit it off right away, but they shared an experience that bonded them. On their way to dinner the first night, they witnessed a car accident that nearly wiped them out and did knock down a pedestrian. Fortunately, the pedestrian survived with cuts and bruises, but the driver had to be cut out of her car. The woman was in a panic, because her dog was in a crate on the backseat. Tess and Cheryl took turns directing traffic and placating the woman as they waited for the paramedics. Between them, they were able to get the small dog carrier out and show the woman her pet was all right. This enabled her to calm down and cooperate, and eventually she was freed of the wreckage. She only went off to the hospital after they promised her the dog would be taken care of. And a day later, the woman and her dog were reunited.

  Tess admired the efficient way Cheryl handled triage, the calmness with which she directed traffic and talked the panicked driver down. Maybe because Tess hoped that what she saw in Cheryl, she saw in herself.

  “So what’s your interest in Barkman?” Cheryl asked.

  “He was very curious about a case I’m working.” Tess told her about George Hanley, and about Barkman’s seeming obsession with the idea Hanley had been shot multiple times.

  Cheryl looked mildly skeptical, and Tess didn’t blame her. It was a tenuous link. “Tell you what. I have to get back in there, but I’ll see who can brief you.” She scanned the gro
up behind her. “Manuel—can you come here?”

  A detective left the group and approached them. Cheryl introduced them and said, “Catch them up on what we’ve got, will ya? I’ll be back in a bit.”

  The sun was high in the sky by now and hot, even for April.

  Manuel hitched his trousers. “The victim fell through a glass-topped coffee table headfirst. What it looks like, he was in the process of changing a light bulb in the ceiling fan—there was one of those short stepladders like you’d use? He could’ve slipped and fell and hit the coffee table with his head, which is what it looks like he did. And his head went right through the glass. We think he bled to death.”

  Tess stared at him, tried to assimilate this.

  Danny said, “You saying it was an accident?”

  “We don’t know. But it looks that way.”

  “Man, that’s a weird one,” Danny said. “Talk about a freak accident.” He added, “If that’s what it is.”

  Tess asked, “The ceiling fan was close to the coffee table? Close enough—”

  “That he could take a header into the coffee table?” Danny finished helpfully.

  “We’re trying to figure that out now.”

  “Can we get in to see the scene?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Hey!” It was Cheryl, walking toward them. “Thanks, Manny. All right, here’s the deal. I can slip you in to take a look, but it’ll have to be quick, okay?”

  She went to the trunk of her car and handed out blue booties and gloves.

  They went up to the house. A thick-trunked eucalyptus tree towered above the flat roof of the brick ranch. The desert around here was basically untouched, populated by creosote bushes and a few mesquite. A bank of vertical windows framed by posts from roof to foundation looked out on the carport. The carport was just a pad of concrete with a ramada covering above. Tess recognized the Range Rover parked on the pad.

  Cheryl passed around the Vicks VapoRub.

  Tess dabbed some in her nostrils. It would help, but if the smell was bad, it wouldn’t help a lot.

  The door was open and the crime scene techs were already working the scene.

  Tess wasn’t prepared for the carnage.

  Steve Barkman had been driven by his own weight nose-first into the coffee table, shattering the glass. One shard had pierced his eye. His face had stopped five inches from the floor, and blood collected on the slope of his nose and then dripped and spattered on the Saltillo tile below.

  His neck and spine had accordioned into the table—part of the force that drove his head through the glass—and the forward momentum of his torso had been stopped instantly in an awkward sprawl. He’d tried to avoid his fate by throwing out his hands, but it was too late.

  He wore shorts and a T-shirt, similar to those he’d worn when Tess had met him in Credo.

  It seemed like a hundred years ago.

  She looked around. There was the aluminum stepladder, three to four feet tall. It had fallen to the floor. Iridescent orange paint circled the broken light bulb lying on the tile. Above, Tess saw the empty socket for the light. Barkman must have set the light globe on the coffee table; now it lay on the floor, one side broken open.

  Tess kept her hands under her arms and stared at the body and the environs.

  The television was on. She looked at Cheryl.

  Cheryl said, “The maid said he always had the television on.”

  Tess saw the logo on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. Fox News.

  “You seen enough?” Cheryl asked. “We haven’t even got a body temp yet. We’re gonna have to clear out and let the techs get to work.”

  Outside, the sun shone down on them, a mockingbird sang in a tree nearby, and the air smelled like fresh laundered clothing on the line—a memory from her childhood. It smelled like spring.

  But the death smell lurked underneath. It sat in the membranes of her nose and lay at the back of her soft palate.

  It happened at every death scene. Tess carried the residue on her, like a thin film of dust mixed with sweat, just gritty enough to stay on her clothes and her hands. She knew this was her imagination, but it didn’t stop the odor from taking up inside her, from clinging to her pores.

  Tess thought it was the price she paid to do the work she did. It was something she took from the crime scene, a part of people who had lost their lives. And it resonated for a while.

  A physical manifestation of a respect for the dead.

  Like a mortuary that knew part of its job was to comfort the survivors, speaking in low, respectful tones, the flowers beautiful but not glamorous, the music lovely but muted.

  Just part of her job.

  “So what do you think?” she asked.

  “Everyone’s thinking—not just me—that it looks like an accident. Anything out of place other than what we saw?”

  “Let’s wait for the techs to finish with the body and then we can go back in.”

  It took about an hour, and finally Steve Barkman was on his way to the morgue.

  Inside, they looked around. The place was pretty neat. There was a plate in the sink that had been rinsed, and a bottle of beer out.

  “He drank about half,” Cheryl said. “We’ll submit it for DNA.”

  “No other glass, no other beer?”

  “No.” Cheryl pulled out a plastic tub from below the sink. “There were several bottles of Rolling Rock and an empty of Jack Daniel’s. Have no idea what the timeline for that will be. We’ll draw blood.”

  Tess glanced around the place. There was a laptop, which TPD would put into evidence, and a printer.

  Danny looked at the printer. “Hey, he’s got all the bells and whistles.”

  Tess came over. The printer was older—a Hewlett-Packard Office Pro L7780.

  “Wow, lots of features on this baby.”

  “What do you mean?” Tess asked.

  “Look at this—space for a whole bunch of micro card slots—anything you want. Wonder if he’s a photographer.”

  “We’ve been all over this place,” Cheryl said. “He doesn’t have a camera.”

  “Not even a digital one?”

  “Nope.”

  “Huh.” Danny shook his head. “Sure is a lot of space.” He shrugged. “Have you checked his phone?”

  “They did. I don’t remember them saying anything about a micro SD in there, but I’ll ask.”

  “Maybe the laptop will tell the tale.”

  Cheryl said, “If there’s a tale to tell.”

  As Tess and Danny came back outside, someone called out to them. “Excuse me, could I talk to you a minute?”

  Tess looked in the direction of the voice and saw a man approaching them from the road.

  Danny said, “Hey, man, we’re not—”

  “A minute’s all I ask.”

  The guy was in his midthirties. By the way he walked, and the expression on his face, Tess discarded the notion that he was just a spectator. She tried to file him somewhere. He could be with another law enforcement agency, or he could be a reporter. He had no credentials that she could see. She glanced at Danny.

  The man reached them. He was dressed casually—Docker-type slacks and a short-sleeved shirt. Casual or not, the clothes were several cuts above Macy’s. He had brown hair, was tanned and fit. Tess couldn’t see his eyes because he wore aviator shades.

  “I’m Alec Sheppard,” he said, holding out his hand to Tess and then to Danny.

  The guy had a way of taking over. It was subtle, but Tess knew it when she saw it. Not overbearing. He was used to starting the conversation and setting the tone—she guessed he was successful in whatever endeavor he pursued.

  “Are you with homicide?” he asked.

  “We’re homicide,” Danny said, “But with Santa Cruz County.”

  Tess thought her partner sounded eager to please.

  This guy Sheppard had a way of making you want to talk to him.

  “Maybe you could help me anyway. D
o you know what happened to Steve Barkman? This is a homicide scene?”

  Tess said, “What’s your interest in this, Mr. Sheppard? Are you related to Mr. Barkman?”

  “No. We’re friends. He was doing a job for me, and now I’m wondering if it got him killed.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Tess and Danny sat in on the interview at the Tucson Police Department midtown substation. The substation was located near the Reid Park Zoo—Tess thought this was appropriate, considering the many strange people who found themselves under the bank of fluorescent lights and in trouble. Cheryl Tedesco found a room big enough for the four of them. She rounded up sodas, water, and coffee and sat Alec Sheppard down at the postage-stamp table. Tess and Danny were strictly observers.

  After her introduction on the tape recorder, Cheryl got down to it. “You told us that Steve Barkman was working for you?”

  “Not officially. He was looking into something for me.”

  “But you paid him?”

  “I did, yes. I paid him expenses, and sent him some money for his time.”

  “What was he looking into?”

  “It’s a little hard to explain.” Sheppard was one of the few people who didn’t look washed out like aged cheese under the fluorescent lights. “This is going to sound outlandish. Steve was looking into an incident that happened to me a couple of weeks ago.”

  “This was a job he was doing for you?”

  “He wanted to do it as a favor to me, but I thought he should be paid.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “We were roommates at the University of Arizona. A long time ago.”

  “What work did he do?”

  “He was looking for someone for me.”

  “And who was he looking for?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Tess tried not to react. She kept her face bland. Now Barkman was dead and the lead he was following might be dead with him. “Why didn’t he say?”

  “He told me he wanted to be sure first.”

  “And that’s why you’re here?”