The Survivors Club

by J. Carson Black

  She walked back outside and scanned the property. The only vehicle here was the ranch truck, a sun-blistered 1970s GMC.

  This time, she walked around to the back of the farm truck and took note of the license number.

  When she called in, her detective sergeant, Joe Messina, confirmed they were mobilizing search and rescue. “If she’s up in those mountains and disoriented, she’s going to be in trouble. It’ll get cold up there tonight. We can’t wait.”

  Tess couldn’t imagine even a disoriented Jaimie Wolfe climbing uphill, but if she was frightened by something. Or someone…

  It had been sitting right in front of her all this time.

  What if she’d been run off the road?

  What if Wade Poole was after her? What if he had her?

  They could be anywhere by now.

  Joe seemed to read her mind. “You think it was Wade Poole?”

  Tess had filed her most recent report earlier in the day by e-mail. Joe and Bonny knew about Wade Poole.

  “You saw photos of the scene.”

  “Yeah, those boot prints. There was a scuffle.”

  It had been hard to see, because the surface of the road had been baked hard. But you could draw that conclusion.

  “Okay, I’ll get Danny on it, too. You stay out in the field, if you think that’s where you need to be.”

  Michael awoke from his nap to the ringing of the phone. He was entangled in Martin’s arms. Someone had been calling him at intervals all last night, but they never left a message, and he didn’t recognize the number.

  The last rays of the sun streamed in through the blinds, striping Martin’s magnificent body. Michael smiled down on him. Martin was his possession. He knew that not only did he possess Martin’s body, but his soul. Martin’s love for him was absolute, but sometimes he played games—withholding his affection, like that argument about his audition. He could be annoying sometimes. Michael didn’t want to be trapped—ever again. His marriage to Nicole taught him that. But it was flattering. And there was no more beautiful man on the planet than Martin.

  And he was good. Very good.

  I own you, Michael thought with satisfaction. You beautiful, beautiful boy. You’re mine.

  He picked up the phone and answered.

  First there was nothing. Then, Jaimie started babbling. Babbling and crying. It took a while for him to figure out what she was telling him. And when he realized what had happened, his blood froze.

  She was a hostage.

  Michael decided to pretend that nothing had happened. This was way too big for him to assimilate all at once. So they went out on to the terrace and they had dinner as usual. He said nothing, of course, to Martin. He stared out at the pool and let it sink in. He had to understand it first.

  Martin was prattling on about New York, his new timepiece, and some New York designer. Wondered aloud about the Les Mis production he would be attending tonight. Michael stared into the lighted pool as if the answer could be found there.

  Jaimie he could do without. He didn’t care, frankly, what happened to her. Yes, she was his sister, and there was blood to consider. But his siblings had always disappointed him. He’d loved Chad but never took him seriously. Who could? Jaimie was obnoxious, embarrassing, a man-hunter, a drunk—acting out constantly, even though she had a very good life, thanks to the DeKoven inheritance. Jaimie and her stupid horses. Jaimie and that dog—he still didn’t understand how she could pull something like that.

  The women in his family had been weak—except for Brayden. Michael allowed that she was tough and smart. She sure didn’t get that from their doormat of a mother. What a pathetic weakling. Their mother never once stood up for them. She knew what their father did to them but she was too meek to say a word. She acted the plain, long-suffering housewife, pretending she was too sick to help anyone, but it wasn’t really that. She wasn’t just weak. She was selfish.

  She didn’t care about anyone but herself.

  He hated her even more than the old man.

  Michael knew he was trying not to think about the subject at hand. The problem was not that this guy had Jaimie, that she was his hostage. The problem was that he knew.

  How did he know?

  Michael had no idea. But the guy had demanded two million dollars to keep quiet.

  Which was bullshit.

  Michael would have found a way to pay the two million (and that would not be easy), but he knew that blackmailers always came back to the well. They wouldn’t stop. The threat would hang over his head forever. He’d never know when he’d get another phone call to replenish the coffers.

  Plus, there were…issues, laying hands on money like that. Their financial assets were complicated—blind trusts, offshore accounts, a real house of cards. These days it paid to keep a low profile. They had spending money—they were fine, all of them—but so much of their fortune was tied up.

  Michael had a pretty good idea who was doing this. Who’d have the brass to do it. And if he was right, he could just go ahead and take him out.

  He pictured Sheppard as he was the last time he’d seen him, at the Houston center.

  He remember sipping his Starbucks and watching Sheppard, and how Sheppard had caught his eye.

  Now, Michael did what he’d done on that day. He formed his right hand into a gun, and squeezed the trigger at the pool.

  Second time counts for all.

  Michael had done his due diligence on Alec Sheppard at the time he’d prepared to kill him. The problem was, Sheppard checked out of the Marriott two days ago. He could be anywhere. Michael was about to call the office in Houston to see if he could sweet-talk his way into finding out where Sheppard was here in Arizona, when Brayden called.

  “Did you get that crazy phone call?” she demanded.

  “Which one?” He laughed, but even he could hear the worry in his own voice.

  “The man who’s holding Jaimie hostage, that one!”

  “A crank. Don’t worry about it.”

  “He knows, Michael. He knows about Houston. He knows about California—this guy knows what we did.”

  Michael closed his eyes and saw the white truck on Kitt Peak, saw the note under the windshield wiper of his 4Runner: I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.

  And it was then that he realized he’d seen the white truck before.

  And the guy in it.

  Maybe a week or two ago, at the little general store down the road. The guy grinned at him when he was coming out the door. A rancher guy. He walked to his truck—a white truck—and got in. Michael remembered because of what the guy said to him before he stepped off the porch of the general store. “Do I know you, friend?”

  Michael had replied, “I don’t think so.”

  “I guess I must’ve got you confused with someone else, then.” His smile was affable.

  And he’d patted Michael on the shoulder.

  Which reminded Michael of something. How he’d said almost the same thing to Peter Farley in LA.

  When he was stalking him.

  CHAPTER 50

  Wade Poole was disappointed that Michael DeKoven hadn’t taken his first offer seriously, but it didn’t surprise him much. Negotiations often started on a negative note.

  Time to go back to Jaimie’s. He needed a place to go to ground with her, so why not to her house?

  Besides, it was past time for him to get the DVD.

  He’d checked on it once—right under the woman cop’s nose—but it was possible that Jaimie might have hidden it someplace else.

  Doubtful. Jaimie probably wouldn’t even think about moving it—her mind didn’t work that way. She was lazy and overconfident, and he was sure she believed her home was her castle and inviolable.

  Still, when it came to that family, you couldn’t trust anybody.

  He put her in the truck and bumped down the lane—a backside loop that bypassed Harshaw road. It was little more than a cow track, but it got him to a ranch road that came out pretty close to the highway to
Patagonia. His right front bumper was smashed up some, but he took the chance. No one was on the road for most of the way—it was only a mile or two—and on the one occasion when headlights did appear, he pulled off the road at a diagonal and turned off his engine and lights. He doubted anyone would see the crimp in the bumper by the way he parked.

  He watched as the vehicle went by—a search and rescue truck. What were the odds they were looking for Jaimie?

  It was going on midnight when he turned in under the WOLFE MANOR sign. He stopped about a quarter mile down the road and checked the place out. Aside from a snort or two from the horses, no one was there. The place was dark. There were no vehicles. Still, he reconnoitered. Looked in all the places where he’d have set up surveillance if he’d been the one watching. It was easy to think like a cop because he was one.

  Finally, he drove in and parked behind the dark house. A couple of dogs barked and then they all got up from the porch and the yard and came toward them. He dragged Jaimie into the house. He’d given her a couple of Xanax to take the edge off, so she stumbled a little as they walked in. He was a little shaky on his feet as well. His feet numb, probably from sitting cross-legged all that time. At least that was what he chose to think. The dogs funneled in after them. He herded them back outside by pouring dry dog food on the porch. The good thing was, they’d alert him to anyone coming.

  After securing her in the bathtub, hooking her collar to a chain wrapped around a water pipe, he went back outside and drove his new truck into the center aisle of the horse barn and closed the doors. Back in the house, he donned latex gloves and went straight to the TV set.

  It didn’t take long to hit the Mother Lode. Jaimie kept it right by the TV set—in a stack of DVDs. There were six DVDs—various movies and a workout video—and at the bottom, a Maxell Gold DVD, unmarked. The DVDs had been stuck in the back of a small cabinet, made to look like an afterthought.

  He was pretty sure this was what he was looking for.

  He pulled out the DVD on the bottom—the only one that wasn’t marked—put it in the player, and cued it up.

  He wasn’t disappointed.

  These kids were amazing. They thought they were invincible. They thought they could get away with anything. They honestly thought they were entitled to anything. Just crook a finger or give an order, and some poor peasant leaped up to please them.

  Assholes.

  The video (it was poor quality—she must have burned it from a video she took off her cell phone) had gone all the way to just short of the end. He cued to the beginning and played it. There was some footage that looked as if it had been tacked on. A sullen gray sky. Tall cliffs, green bushes and trees, and dark jagged rocks, slick with water from eddies around them. The video panned down to the dark water, where a yellow inflatable boat sat, two people looking up. The camera panned around to the inside of a roofed platform with bench seats and pulleys—tight quarters. Athletic-looking kid, couldn’t be more than twenty, clipping some kind of harness to another kid’s leg. The camera panned down to the water and the people in the boat. There was a break in the video and then a close-up of a woman smiling. She looked both nervous and excited. There were the pulleys and ropes and the athletic-looking kid.

  Another break.

  He got the idea that the video had been patched together from different sources.

  Now the camera panned to the sky, the cliff.

  Screaming.

  Jerky video. Something hurtling down, a figure, landing hard on the bank.

  “Pow!” someone yelled.

  A woman’s voice.

  A smile, a tanned face, upturned nose, dark hair, ribboned with yellow streaks, sunglasses. Just one jerky moment—the expensive lipstick, the broad smile.

  Jaimie.

  But that wasn’t the best thing on the homemade DVD. The best was something even older. Maybe four or five years ago. Michael younger, Jaimie younger. Taking turns with the camera.

  They were all either shit-faced, or drugged. And they were laughing. Hysterical. Michael was on something, that was obvious, and he was sprawled on a bed in what Wade assumed was his ancestral mansion. Lying there like a pasha, in a striped button-down shirt, open and loose on his chest. Pushing on the head of some woman giving him head, looked like a bleached blonde. Jerky movements. Another scene, out by the pool, tottering around drunk, talking into the camera. Waving his finger at whoever was videotaping him.

  “We did it, Dad, you fucking son of a bitch!”

  Jaimie holding on to his shoulder, laughing. “We survived you, and now you’re moldering away! You couldn’t survive us!” Paroxysms of laughter.

  Jaimie pretending to hold a microphone. “How many have you killed, Michael? Just give me an estimate!”

  He looked sleepy, a sweet smile on his face. Sprawled on a chaise by the pool. Started counting on his fingers. “One, two, three…?”

  Jaimie homing in on him with her fake microphone. “What was your favorite? Who did you like killing most?”

  He grinned. “That’s easy. Dear old Dad.”

  Thought about it for a second. “Putting Mom out of her misery, that was pretty good, too.”

  They both dissolved into laughter. Shared hits off a bottle of champagne. Got celebratory and opened another bottle, which Michael sprayed all over Jaimie. Brayden was there, too, and they took turns teasing her, encouraging her to talk into the camera, but she just folded her arms and hopped back.

  There was a lot more of it, but that was enough.

  Wade had enough to get his payday.

  CHAPTER 51

  When Michael’s phone rang (his ringtone was, appropriately, “When the Bullet Hits the Bone”) and he saw Jaimie’s name on the readout again, his first inclination was to ignore her, as he usually did. But he knew it was the rancher guy, and that the rancher guy meant business. He wanted to ignore the call, but he couldn’t.

  He’d make it clear. There would be no two million dollars. The rancher guy could kill Jaimie. It didn’t matter to him.

  “Guess where I am?” the rancher guy said.

  “I don’t give a damn.”

  “Oh, but you should. I’m at Jaimie’s.”

  “So?”

  “Are you familiar with her television and sound system?”

  Michael felt his first stirring of unease. He said nothing.

  “Really, you should have a talk with your sister. She was dumb enough to leave the DVD she burned of your party out in plain sight. Well, not plain sight exactly, but close enough for horseshoes.”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  “Don’t you want to see the video?”

  Michael felt his pulse race. Did Jaimie really just leave it out for anyone to see? Was she that stupid?

  The answer was yes. She was that stupid.

  “One thing I’ve learned,” the guy said, “in this long life of mine, is that people do what’s easy. When nobody’s looking, when they feel like they can let their guard down, that nobody will know how smart they are, they do dumb things. Like put a DVD right next to the DVD player. Maybe put something on top of it, oh, like a bunch of movies, to hide it, but I can’t tell you how many times people have fucked up on some little turning point like that.”

  Michael didn’t reply.

  “There’s even writing on the case. ‘TSC.’ That’s what it says on here. Sound familiar?”

  “No.”

  “This is just a guess, but maybe TSC is short for The Survivors Club. Oh, wait, she mentioned that somewhere along the way. Maybe it was on the drive over. Hard to hear her with that choke chain pulled tight.”

  “You know what I think? I think you’re full of shit.”

  He was about to thumb the phone off when the guy said, “Nice party you guys had. Let me send it to you. Hold on.”

  It came through.

  “I’ll wait while you watch a little, okay?”

  Michael watched. He couldn’t help himself. It was from about five years ago. They w
ere celebrating another killing. He couldn’t remember which one it was. And looking at himself, so completely out of it, his heart sank. Everything seemed to cave inside of him.

  Leaving only terror.

  Prison.

  And then one day, they’d strap him to a gurney in a little room and give him a lethal injection.

  Fear kited up into his throat, but disciplined himself by thinking, I have lawyers. He said, “So what?”

  “So what? Hey you got monster ones, my friend. So what. This goes viral. I can transmit it anywhere. I can transmit it to the local gendarmes, I can transmit it to the FBI, it can go all over the world with a touch of a button. So what? You really want to push me?”

  Michael’s vocal cords barely got purchase, but he said, “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck me? What a terrible thing to say. You just hurt my feelings, friend.”

  Michael could barely feel his fingers holding the phone. He could picture the little room at the prison in Florence. There was a window, and people behind the window, and they’d all be peering in at him like kids with their faces to the glass. Like his death was a TV show. But facts were facts. “If I paid you two million dollars, what would stop you from extorting me again and again?”

  “Hmmm.” The man paused, then said, “Would you trust my word? I’m a man of my word. You would have to trust me on that.”

  Michael said nothing.

  “Just a little pressure from my thumb and this goes all over. The first place it goes is to the FBI.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just some of us joking around about killing our parents. A fantasy.”

  Another pause. Then, “There are facts to back it up, bro. Peter Farley. The woman in New Zealand. Santa Cruz County and TPD is already on your trail, bud, they’re already looking at you. You think they won’t act on this evidence? You think it won’t show them where and what to investigate? You’re toast, my friend. Unless you pay me to shut up. And I’ll even throw in Jaimie.”