The Survivors Club

by J. Carson Black

  Cheryl led her through the incident. Melinda described the first meeting with Barkman in great detail. “He was only interested in Brae.”

  “What was his manner?”

  “Other than that he zeroed in on her? He was confident. Overconfident, really. I’ve known a few colleagues like that—they think they’re the Young Guns. Cocky. But not over-the-top.”

  She told them that Steve Barkman looked good but that he leaned in way too close to Brayden. “He violated her personal space. I noticed that right away. I hate that! It made me think of a cat playing with a mouse. And Brayden’s no mouse, believe me. A little mousey.” She added, “I know that sounds bitchy.”

  “He was after her, big-time. I thought he was thinking he’d get laid. But we kind of joined ranks and after a while he got the message and left. It was like we all breathed a sigh of relief. It was that intense.” Then she described the second occasion, the next day. This time Barkman showed up early. “I saw him coming our way, and I thought, oh, no. We told him Brayden wasn’t coming, which was a lie.”

  She described how Brayden spotted Barkman and took off.

  “What did he do?”

  “He went after her.”

  “Brayden didn’t come back?”

  “No. But she called twenty minutes later. She was freaked. She said he came up to her in the parking lot—said he basically accosted her. She said he tried to keep her from leaving.”

  Outside on the street, Cheryl said to Tess, “She didn’t like Steve Barkman putting the moves on her, but I don’t see any there, there.” Cheryl shaded her eyes against the sun and squinted in the direction of the Dystel building, where Michael DeKoven worked. “I dunno, It seems too elaborate to me—even if someone kicked the stool out from under him and he crashed headfirst into the table—and believe me, he could have bounced off or landed in another way—then how did that piece of glass go right through one eye?”

  Tess had no answer for that. But she did wonder: Why would Brayden lie about knowing Steve Barkman?

  CHAPTER 36

  Michael didn’t want to see anyone—except Martin. He called Martin first thing.

  “So you want me to fly back?” Martin said. “Now?”

  “Yes. I’ll pay for it.”

  “I have a gig.”

  “A gig? Or an audition?”

  Michael knew that Martin was taking fewer and fewer modeling jobs, that he was trying to break into TV and the movies. In fact, he’d made noises about moving to LA.

  “An audition,” Martin said.

  “You can go to the audition, Martin, or you can come here and stay with me. I need comfort right now.”

  “But I just got back.”

  “Martin, I need to be able to depend on you.”

  “But this part might be—”

  “My goddamn brother died. I need you. I need a friend, Martin, I need my lover. If it isn’t you, it’ll be someone else. If you can’t do this for me now, when I’m in need, you won’t ever be coming back. Think about what that means.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Michael knew that Martin was thinking about all the clothes, the shoes, the renovations to his apartment—hell, the apartment itself. He was thinking of all the trips they’d made together—Milan, Florence, Paris, Berlin, Sydney.

  Martin said, “Okay. Book me a flight, though, will you? It has to be first class.”

  “You’re already booked.” Michael gave him the information.

  After that Michael sat in the solarium and listened to music, mostly jazz. Jazz felt just disorderly enough. The music was all over the place, and so were his feelings. His mind ranged over his memories of Chad. But try as he might to summon up a picture of his little brother, he couldn’t quite see his face. Over the years, Chad had kind of …disappeared. Chad had always seemed to be swallowed up by this house. By the presence of their father, who dominated over everything and everyone.

  Michael had changed out every piece of furniture, relaid the floors, even expanded the room, but his father still dominated this place.

  He could move. But the truth was, if he moved, his father would win.

  He wasn’t going to be driven off his land, he wasn’t going to give up the DeKoven homestead.

  Maybe it was the music. His father liked jazz. He put on something frenetic—AC/DC.

  Sang along with “Highway to Hell.”

  Finally, his mind began to skip to other things.

  Flying back from LA, he’d looked down at the Santa Anas, remembering his kill. Farley’s death was a triumph of logistics and planning. Elaborate, yes, but also rewarding. Michael had pitted his brainpower and his physical strength against a knotty problem. It had taken athletic prowess and toughness to carry out the mission. Dragging Farley up to the pool was no easy feat.

  His sadness was beginning to creep away, replaced by satisfaction of the game he’d played with Peter Farley.

  Chad had a good life. They’d let him live his lifestyle out there, never bothered him. Supported him.

  The more he thought about it, the more likely it was that Chad’s death had been a random killing. Probably by an acquaintance. Someone on crystal meth or bath salts—something like that. They were all pretty doped up around there. Michael thought that a hippie or surfer dude could just as easily be former military, or could learn the chokehold he used from a book. There were all sorts of bad people in the world, and they had their obsessions. They had their own way of doing things. Michael had met a lot of them.

  In fact, he was one of them.

  CHAPTER 37

  Danny was now the proud father of a baby girl. Elena was the most beautiful little girl in the world. He knew he was biased, but that didn’t alter the facts. Everything had changed, and really it had changed overnight. Now there was another human being here, with a personality he thought he could already see.

  He felt as if his heart encompassed the whole world, and yet his gaze was brought down to a tiny little girl with tiny little fists and eyes squeezed shut. He knew he would fight to the death for her. This new little person he already loved beyond himself.

  He tried to concentrate on his work—paperwork, which was endless in a sheriff’s detective’s job. He tried, but it was hard. Theresa was asleep, and although he wanted to wake her and share with her this great feeling, he knew she needed rest.

  So when his phone buzzed, he got up quietly from her bedside and walked out into the hallway, where the sun threw down squares of brightness in the hospital corridor.

  The readout said Pat Scofield, George Hanley’s daughter.

  He wondered why she was calling now. Neither she nor her husband had made a peep since the day Danny and Tess had delivered the news. Not one phone call. Pat Scofield had answered his questions dutifully over the phone, as if she didn’t care.

  He answered.

  He heard the edge to her voice right away.

  She talked quickly—scared. “I’m sure I just saw my brother-in-law drive by the house,” she whispered.

  “Your brother-in-law?”

  “He was married to my sister. He…I thought I’d never see him again. I thought he went to California.”

  She was blurting out things that made little sense.

  “Slow down,” Danny said. “Take a deep breath.”

  He didn’t like her. From the moment he’d met her he didn’t like her, and now she was taking precious time away from his time with his new daughter. But this was his job, and he had to listen. It was important that he do the job right. For the victim, if not for the people left behind. He had met countless people like Pat Scofield. They sucked up all the energy in the room into themselves, and returned nothing.

  “He was married to my sister. He moved to California after my sister died. I thought I’d never see him again but I think he was here.”

  Danny leaned closer into the phone, spoke softly. “You’re afraid of him?”

  “I shouldn’t be, I know, but…I don’t like
him. He’s never had anything to do with us but I think it was him. I was cleaning the front window and I saw him drive by. He slowed down.”

  “Why would you be afraid of him?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “I just saw him drive by and slow down, and I remembered some of the things he did.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was my imagination. I shouldn’t have called.” But she didn’t hang up.

  Danny said, “Can you describe him?”

  “I haven’t seen or heard from him in eleven years. Maybe longer than that. Right after we buried Karen, he moved to California. Just upped and left, like he was footloose and fancy-free.”

  Danny was sensing there were old wounds here, possibly imaginary, but you could never count on that. “You want me to come by?”

  “No, no. I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “Look, I’m not far away. My wife is sleeping. She just had a baby.”

  “Maybe you should come by.”

  No congratulations. Not even a “That’s nice.”

  He said, “I’ll be there shortly. There are a couple more questions I want to ask you, anyway.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Neither she nor her husband had ever asked about the status of the case. He’d thought that was strange at the time, but he was busy with his own work and, of course, the coming birth of Elena. But after the initial shock, the crying and the desperation to see her father Pat exhibited, he’d been surprised that there hadn’t been a flurry of calls afterward.

  People reacted to tragedy in wildly different ways. Nothing surprised him anymore. Theresa needed her sleep. And he needed to work.

  He left word with the nurse, went by to take another look at his beautiful, precious daughter, and drove down to Rio Rico.

  When he arrived, Pat was back to her vague, flustered, disjointed self. She was sorry she’d bothered him. She was fine now. Bert would be coming home soon, and anyway, it was just her imagination. Her brother-in-law wouldn’t be here. He’d been living in California, and although she’d heard he might have moved back to Arizona, she’d assumed it would be up north, to Phoenix, where he was from.

  “You think he moved back to Arizona?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe it was just a visit. Dad mentioned seeing him, but I can’t really remember what he said. Dad knew I didn’t want to hear about him. He made Karen so unhappy. You should have seen the way he treated her. Like she didn’t matter. That’s a terrible thing to do to a woman. Especially one who was five months pregnant when she died.”

  “Your father? They were friends?”

  “They were partners. For years.”

  “You mean your brother-in-law was a cop?”

  “Yes, he was a homicide detective, just like my father was.”

  He said, “Karen died during a robbery? Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  He asked her to describe it.

  She told him Karen had been at a convenience store—a Pit Stop—the night someone came in and robbed the store, killing both the clerk and Karen. “They were the only people in the store,” Pat said.

  “Where was this?”

  “Phoenix.”

  “Do you know the name of the detective who investigated the shooting?”

  “It was…Detective…” She closed her eyes. “Detective Clarence Sinkwich. I remember that because I’ve always used word associations to remember peoples’ names, and so I pictured a tiny little witch sitting in a sink. He was a very kind man. I don’t know how we would have gotten through it without him. He was like a rock. My dad was like that, too. Although I never saw him in action, that’s what I heard.”

  “Do you remember when this was?”

  “It was October fourteenth, 2001.” She added, “I’ll never forget that night.”

  “What about your brother-in-law?”

  “Wade?” She practically spat his name. “He was around. You know, at the funeral. He came by once. He didn’t care. He didn’t care about her and he didn’t give a damn about the baby she was carrying.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Brayden came over with Aurora. Michael and his little sister sat out by the pool, watching Brayden’s kid swim with Michael’s two children. His wife, thank God, had gone off to “lunch” with her friends. It would be a long lunch, with plenty of alcohol. He knew she drank mostly because she couldn’t stand him. She suspected what he was doing but she didn’t know for sure. She thought they were playing a game, but she didn’t know the extent. She’d suspected he’d had something to do with Steve Barkman’s death—one of the few he’d had nothing to do with.

  Now it was time for Michael to find out if Brayden was involved in Barkman’s death.

  Brayden hung tough. She was a hard-nosed bitch. He was getting impatient.

  “Brae,” he said, using the name he’d had for her when she was a kid, “what do you think is happening here?”

  She kept her eyes on her kid. Looking at her, you’d think she was just a sweet little housewife, plain but attractive in a homey way. The kind you’d set up playdates with, the kind who’d go to PTA meetings. “Brae?”

  She looked at him. “I think that cop from Nogales thinks she’s on to something.”

  “And why is that, do you suppose?”

  She squeezed out some sunscreen and lathered her face with it. “I think she’s put it together. The guy who was killed down in that ghost town.” She looked at him, her eyes startling. Big round eyes, like the women from the turn of the last century. She had their mother’s eyes, but not her sweetness.

  “George Hanley?”

  “Uh-huh. I think she’s on to that.”

  “On to it?”

  Brayden said, “I thought we were gonna wait on him.”

  “We were.”

  Of course they were going to wait on him. The show he was on, The Ultimate Survivor, had only aired last year. He was too close. Too close in his notoriety, too close in geography. They’d decided early on that George Hanley was a project down the road. Maybe a year from now. But Jaimie…“You think Jaimie did this?”

  Brayden shrugged.

  “Seriously. Would she be capable of it? That was pretty rough stuff.”

  But he thought she was capable of it. For one thing, she had an AR-15. She loved her assault weapon. It was her passion. She voted NRA exclusively. When she wasn’t giving riding lessons or picking up men at the Buckboard Saloon, she spent most of her time at the firing range.

  Of course there had been few details that had come out about the Hanley killing, except that it was overkill. One account hinted at a cartel. Imagine, a cartel coming up into the US and killing some old man. It didn’t make sense. But it could be made to look like a cartel killing.

  But who would do that?

  Michael said, “You think Jaimie’d be capable of something like that? Just shooting the shit out of someone?”

  Brayden shrugged. Brayden was the champion shrugger of the world. She never committed to anything. As a lawyer, she could tie you in knots. She was, in many ways, the closest you could get to their father. Their patriarch. She didn’t have his mean streak, but she had the confounding part right down.

  Michael said, “She took the dog.”

  “What dog?”

  “Hanley’s dog. She took it as a prize.”

  “You mean, like the spoils of war?”

  “Exactly. She’s trying to pass it off as a dog she just found.”

  He let that lie out there. Jaimie had always been the weakest link. She was really not to be trusted. But Michael wondered if Brayden was to be trusted, either.

  Suddenly, he wondered if she was seeing someone. He didn’t care about her love life, but he didn’t want any complications. “You know not to tell anyone.”

  Brayden stared at her daughter playing in the pool, then turned her round face to him, the sweet little housewife
face. “Michael, you can be a real asshole, do you know that?”

  She put on her sunglasses again. Brayden looked better with them on. Her face was such a dumpling, but sunglasses made her look richer. Richer and more attractive.

  “They’re still investigating his death,” he said. “I get the impression they don’t think it was an accident.”

  She shrugged.

  “Brayden, you didn’t have anything to do with that, did you? His death?”

  “Me? No. Why would you say that, Michael?”

  He had no reason, except that she was the most secretive, the most unreadable of all of them. “You never met him?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  He’d have to take her word for it. She was such a good liar you could never really tell, never get a baseline with her.

  Brayden kept her eyes on the pool. “You think Jaimie killed that old man?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her. The question is, what do we do about it?”

  Brayden left soon afterward.

  Michael stared at the pool. Was everything going to hell, or was it just his imagination? He’d heard nothing more about Alec Sheppard. Maybe Sheppard had already flown back to Houston. It had been close, very close, but he was pretty sure there was little to link him to Houston except that one moment where he’d pointed the finger gun at Sheppard.

  But he went back through it anyway.

  He’d laid the trap for Sheppard beautifully. A word to the girl at the computer in the rigger’s loft at SkyDive Arizona, where he himself used to jump. “My friend Alec Sheppard’s supposed to meet me here, but I’m worried that the expiration date on his reserve pack is coming up and I really hope he can make the jump with me. I’d hate to miss him.”

  Every 120 days the reserve had to be repacked—it was a safety issue.

  The gum-chewing girl at the computer looked at the manifest and confirmed that Sheppard had to have his reserve chute repacked before the end of March.

  “Damn it! I wanted to surprise him. You know where he’s going?”