Текст книги "The Survivors Club"

Автор книги: J. Black

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Any luck, it would come back to Wade Poole.

Jaimie drove out on Harshaw Road, which led south toward the Mexican border. It was a graded road early on but then started to wind and get narrower. She was looking for a sign for the ghost town of Mowry. On her right, she passed the graveyard of another ghost town, Harshaw, for which the road was named. A lot of colorful fake flowers, whitewashed stones and crosses, and piled rocks to keep the coyotes away, although the people buried there were from the early part of the twentieth century and long past edibility.

She tried to occupy her mind with stuff like that, but her heart was beating hard and all she could think of was what that thing—Helium Man—said he’d do to Adele.

The road started going up higher, and the trees became thicker—mostly oak.

She was driving into a tight curve when suddenly a white truck pulled out right in front of her. She slammed on the brakes and wrestled with the wheel of her big Dodge Ram, skidding across the narrow road down into the ravine on the other side.

The truck came to rest upright. She took stock: banged up a little but her seat belt saved her. And whoever that asshole was who clipped her—

Someone yanked open the truck door. Somebody coming to rescue her? She was okay, she needed to tell them that, but suddenly her belt was unlatched, a big man leaning over her, crushing her against the airbag that had whopped her in the chest and, she realized, broken her wrist, and he pulled her out by the shoulder and shoved her up against the side of the truck. “Police!” he yelled, and grabbed her arm and wrenched it around behind her back—agony. The next thing she knew, her hands were cuffed behind her back.

She screamed.

The man kicked her legs apart and patted her down, then grabbed her by the arm and pulled her up the embankment and over to his own truck, shoved her inside. “You move, and you’re going to jail,” he yelled, his red face right in hers. “Got it?”

She nodded mutely. She couldn’t think of anything except for the excruciating pain in her wrist. And that she wet her pants.

He drove her truck back out on the road, parked and locked it. Then he came back and got his truck and took off with a slew of dirt, up a two-lane track into the woods.

Jaimie was confused. This guy was dressed like her friends in the ranching community. He drove with one hand on the wheel, slewing along the road, and one hand holding a gun trained on her. She had no doubt he would use it. But another part of her insisted that he was a cop. He treated her as a cop would. With authority.

Cops wouldn’t kill unarmed citizens—and that was what she would hold on to.

Her own revolver sat in a zippered bag inside her truck.

Her wrist was screaming. She realized she was screaming too when he took his gun butt and smacked her mouth. “Shut up. Do it now. You are in deep enough trouble already.”

They headed up a steep four-wheel-drive road, little more than a trail, up into the hills.

They came to a camping spot screened by trees. In the truck, he duct taped her mouth and tied a rope around her neck. He jerked at the rope and told her to follow him. She scrambled to keep up, terrified of being literally hanged—her air cut off. She saw the remains of an adobe building among the trees, roofless, just two walls meeting in a corner, the adobe bricks slumping like a melting candy barn. There was a stake there, driven deep into the ground, and a chain. He replaced the rope with a choke chain and hooked it to the chain. She could only sit in one way, because she was snubbed up pretty close to the stake—about two and a half to three feet.

I’m going to die.

She was sure of that. She also knew he would rape her first, and probably torture her.

He was no cop.

How had she been so stupid? He had her ten thousand dollars and he had her. She could feel the chain links cold and hard against her neck. Could feel her airway close, suffocating her. Realized that wasn’t really happening, but she felt it anyway. Panic exploded upward. Her gorge rose. Tears spilled down her cheeks.

The man sat down across from her, cross-legged. His broad face all smiles.

“Please don’t kill me!” she said through the duct tape. “I’ll do anything you want—anything. Just…don’t kill me.”

He reached over and tugged on the chain. The choke chain pinched her throat.

Suddenly, she had to throw up. She could choke to death.

He ripped the duct tape off just before she vomited.

He watched her like she was some bug crawling along the ground. Fascinated.

“Sorry,” he said. “I had to establish the ground rules. You need to speak only when spoken to. Okay?”

She nodded.

He pulled a blade of grass out of the ground and stuck it between his teeth. It was hard to believe this was happening. He had such merry blue eyes. Hard to believe, looking at him, that he wasn’t a nice man. Maybe he would just have sex with her, take the money, and let her live.

It was like a tender shoot of a plant inside her, reaching for the sun. Just a slim hope.

“Okay, here are the ground rules,” he said at last. “You are my hostage. If you cooperate, you will go back to your family. Got that?”

She nodded. She nodded as hard as she could.

“Okay, where’s your phone?”

She nodded to the back pocket of her jeans.

He got up and came to her, bent and slid out her phone. “We’re gonna need this for later. The cash is in your truck, I take it?”

She nodded furiously, tried again to speak through the duct tape. Tried to please him. There was hope. She was a hostage. That was okay. Hostages were kept alive.

“Okay, I’ll be right back. Don’t you move. If you do, you might just end up hanging yourself and you’ll be no use to me and none to yourself, neither.”

He ran down the hill. She could hear him beating his way through the tree branches and bushes.

She waited. A fly zoomed around and lighted on her nose. She swatted at it with her manacled hands, but it kept coming back. She was in a twisted position, one shoulder high, her head stretched in the direction of the stake. She tried to get her legs under her so she could release the tension in her shoulders, neck, back, and hip. It was easiest just to lie down on her side.

He returned, sounding like an elk stomping through the brush. Smiling.

So weird—the way he smiled. The way he acted. And yet she realized he would kill her without a second thought.

“I counted it. You did good. It looks like I can trust you.”

She nodded, hard.

He sat down again, cross-legged in the dirt, and leaned toward her, like he was a friend about to tell her a story by the campfire. “Here’s the deal. I want a lot more money than ten thousand dollars, and I think you can get it for me.”

She could barely fathom what he was saying. He wanted moremoney?

“See, I know what you, Brayden, and Michael have been doing. I know all about your little game.” He tipped his hat up on his head. “That should be worth a lot more than ten thousand dollars. I figure—don’t want to be greedy—that the information I have at my disposal, which I could give to the police, with evidence to back it up, is worth a cool million or two, at the very least. Just how much is your family’s net worth?”

The realization came on her all at once, like a cascade, hitting her hard. He knew about their game? He wanted a couple million dollars? She couldn’t seem to process this.

He looked at her—she swore it was in a kindly way—like he felt sorry for her. “I know, it’s a lot to take in. How could anybody know? But it’s true. I know all about your little game. But hey. We all get our jollies in our own way, and who am I to judge? Thing is, though, I see an opening, I take it. What’s good for you folks would be good for me.”

He shifted again, his Roper boots stirring up the dust. He sat back, legs crossed at the feet, braced by his arms. Lazy and smiling and terrifying all at once.

It felt like a dream.

“By the way, the name’s Wade.” He smiled. “Now let’s figure out how we’re going to do this.”

CHAPTER 47

AFIS showed no match for the partial fingerprint on the strip of duct tape that had remained stuck to the tree. It was possible that the duct tape was left by someone else hiding a weapon in the tree, as it seemed to be the best hiding place around there. As Peter Deuteronomy had pointed out, caching weapons in various hiding spots along the border had become a frequent occurrence. Either way, Tess couldn’t get Wade Poole on prints. Worse, she had no idea where to begin looking for him. He seemed to have disappeared. So far they had been unable to find an address for Poole in Glendale, California, where he was supposed to have lived. He did not register a vehicle at the DMV. He was not on the tax rolls. He had no phone number.

He had ceased to exist.

But they were on his trail. Danny, working from his computer at home, came across a likely conference earlier in the year, the annual Western Association of Homicide Detectives Conference, held in January. Tess had gone once, herself—there were plenty of good seminars, especially on the latest advances in law enforcement.

“He was retired,” Danny said, “but that doesn’t mean anything. A lot of those old guys go to this conference—gotta keep their hand in.”

Once a homicide cop, always a homicide cop, Tess thought.

“He probably just got together with his old pals and played a lot of golf,” Danny added.

It took them all of twenty minutes to get the information from Hanley’s records. He had gone to Palm Springs in January.

“So what he said about having too much to drink was true,” Tess said. “Bert said if he drank more than one he was a falling-down drunk.”

“I can see it. They’re hanging out together in the bar, he’s having such a good time with his old buddy and former son-in-law he drinks a little too much and spills the beans. He might not have even remembered it. But Wadesure did.”

“So they decided to team up and prove that the family was killing people,” Tess said. “Only Hanley wants to build a case, and Wade wants something else.”

“Money.”

“Probably.”

“He’s a mean son of a bitch,” Danny said. “It wouldn’t surprise me that he’d kill Hanley and try to pin it on the Alacrán. Thirty rounds to make it look like overkill.”

“George trusted Peter Deuteronomy to keep his USB disk. He was afraid of what Wade Poole might do.”

“Or do to him. You thinking what I’m thinking, guera?”

Tess was. Wade Poole’s next target was the family. If you put yourself in his position, what would he do next?

Extortion.

They discussed the possibility that Wade Poole might go after the DeKovens. How would they react to extortion? What kind of pressure would it put on them? And how could Tess and Danny use it to further their own goals?

“This might be the crack in the dam,” Tess said.

“Yeah, it could be.”

Tess got the feeling Danny was fading. She knew he was beginning to realize that everything had changed now, and would be changed for a long time, and sleep would be one of those catch-as-catch-can deals.

“You sound like the walking dead,” Tess said.

“But I’m the happy walking dead.”

“Maybe you should get some sleep.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead. What were you saying?”

“What do you think Poole’s next move is gonna be?”

“Depends. If he’s a hard-ass, he’d start killing people. In the family.”

Tess said, “To encourage the others to negotiate, or just because he could?”

“Both, I guess. Maybe he’d kill one of them to scare them.”

“Chad,” Tess said.

“He’d be the obvious choice. He could show that he had a long arm. That he could get them anytime.”

“What about Hanley? I think he killed him because he had everything he needed and he knew Hanley wasn’t going to go along with what he was planning.”

“Sounds about right.” Danny sounded like he was drifting off to sleep. “Tell you what, that family better be scared, if they know what he did to Hanley.”

“You think they know how he was killed?” Tess said. “Because if they don’t, maybe someone should tell them.”

CHAPTER 48

Doris Glazer and her dog Buster rounded the last curve of the trail before the pull-off where she’d left her car. It had been a good hike on a picture-perfect day, but now it was time to head home and take a nap before her shift at Fry’s in Nogales. She stooped to leash Buster, and when she looked up she saw a dog standing in the dirt road.

The dog was a sorry sight, but Doris knew it was an Australian shepherd. It had a collar and tags—somebody’s pet.

The dog stood in the road, head down, panting. And between pants, it was whining. Doris saw why. The dog was dripping blood from its hind end. Its legs were trembling and splayed out for balance.

“Oh, my God.”

The Australian shepherd had been shot in the flank.

While the dog was in surgery to remove the bullet, Doris called Animal Control and gave them the registration number on the tag. The dog’s name was Bandit, and it belonged to a Jaimie Wolfe, who lived in Patagonia.

Doris had seen Jaimie Wolfe around town, knew her to say “hi” to on the street. Jaimie had that ranch where she taught horseback riding. Her number was unlisted, and since it would be a while before Bandit would be released—and frankly, Doris was worried about paying for the surgery—she decided to drive over to the farm herself.

But no one was there. It was getting late and she had to get ready to go to work, So Doris had to leave it for now. She’d done the right thing, and even if she had to pay out of her own pocket in the long run, Doris would figure out a way to make her dollars stretch a little more.

She doubted it would come to that. Anyone who owned a horse farm had to have some money to pay for their own injured dog.

CHAPTER 49

Michael and Martin had spent the morning shopping and the afternoon sunning by the pool, a light lunch, and a massage for Michael’s aching muscles.

As Michael had expected, Martin had forgiven him. Maybe it was thanks to the TAG Heuer Grand Carrera chronometer Martin now sported on his beautiful, lean-muscled arm. His feet were still tender, but Michael knew a foot masseuse at the Los Palmas Resort down the road and summoned him here on his lunch hour. Since the bastinado left no marks, the masseuse suspected nothing.

Michael had told Martin they would “heal together,” and Martin was more than willing to forgive him. Now he was agitating to go to a play tonight in town. Michael didn’t let on to Martin, but he didn’t want to go out. He wanted to stay here and think. And maybe turn the place into a guarded fort. The phone rang. He glanced at the readout—Jaimie.

He didn’t want to hear whatever hard luck story she was peddling this time, so he ignored the call.

Jaimie had tried several times to raise Michael, but he wasn’t answering his cell. She couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe the trouble she was in. And it was getting cold now. Spring nights in the desert mountains could get down into the teens and twenties, and she was wearing a tank top and jeans.

The man—Wade—looked disappointed. “I thought you two were closer than that. He ignores your calls?”

“Maybe he’s busy.”

He’d stripped off the duct tape, partly because he wanted her to call her brother, but also because it was doubtful anyone would hear her out here.

Wade watched her and massaged his forehead. He’d been covering his right eye and pushing his palm against his temple for a while now. Migraine. She knew, because she got them herself. “He’d better get unbusy. This is a limited-time offer.”

She shrugged. It was hard to shrug being chained the way she was, but she did it anyway to show him that she didn’t care. Every muscle ached. She was cold—shivering. She hated her goddamn brother more than anything on earth except for Mr. Congeniality over there. “What did you do to my dog?”

“I shot her.”

“You bastard!”

“Not very ladylike, are you?”

“Fuck you.”

Jaimie wanted to kill him. Adele was hers. Adele belonged to her. She loved Adele. She didn’t love hardly anyone, but she loved that dog. And now Adele was gone.

Tears slid down her face. She wiped her nose with her good hand, and was surprised when her captor shot up off the ground and kicked her in the ear.

The pain was shattering. She rolled on the ground in agony, the pain flashing through her like a pulsing red-and-black orb, filling her vision, filling her whole world.

He stood over her. “Don’t you ever talk to me like that again.” He kicked her hard in the side.

Jaimie heard the banging rattle, and suddenly felt him grabbing up links, jerking hard on the choke chain, the metal biting into her flesh. Her air stopping.

Buzzing in her hears. Her vision dimming, little dots like a fuzzy TV screen turning dark, darker, can’t breathe…swimming in agony, needing air—

And suddenly he released her. She fell forward, air gushing into her lungs. Air and dirt—she was facedown and gasping.

“Mind your manners! I’ve killed women like you for a lot less.”

She was aware she was gasping, trying to pull in air. Gasping and sobbing at the same time. Trying to get a deep breath and failing.

“And don’t you think I don’t know what I’m doing,” he added. “Just ask Chad.”

Tess called Cheryl Tedesco, who was about to leave for the day. Asked if there was anything new on the Barkman case. Her friend at TPD sounded harried. The case remained open, but Cheryl had been discouraged from pursuing it further. There was no evidence that Barkman’s death was anything but a freak accident. “There’s just not enough there, there. Anyway, we’re keeping it open but we’re directing our resources elsewhere.”

Tess knew the directive came from above, and there was no point arguing about it. Move on. “We think we know who killed George Hanley.”

“Remind me again who that is?”

“The older guy in Credo. The one that looked like a drug hit.”

“Oh, yeah, my bad. Sorry.” She sounded like she’d had very little sleep. The new case must be a bear.

Tess described Wade Poole. “He’s former homicide. We think he killed his wife and made it look like a robbery—this is a really bad guy. I just wanted to give you a heads-up—he may be after the DeKoven clan.”

Cheryl knew about Tess’s theory that the family was targeting people like Alec Sheppard, people who survived accidents.

Tess realized it required a leap of faith to believe that. Half the time she didn’t believe it herself.

So crazy, on its face.

Cheryl said, “So you still think it’s true? They’re still playing that game?”

“I think right now the shoe’s on the other foot. I think they’re running scared. We have an Attempt to Locate out on Wade Poole.”

“Guy sounds like a phantom.”

“The main thing. I wanted to go up to Michael DeKoven’s and warn him about Poole. I didn’t want to step on any toes.”

“No toes stepped on,” Cheryl said. “Be my guest—I wish I could help but I’m inundatedhere. We have another shooting in midtown—and this time it’s one of ours who got shot.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too. Didn’t know him, but he had a wife and two kids.”

They talked a little about it until Cheryl drifted off. Nothing more to say. She’d just disconnected when a call came in from Will Fallon, a deputy out of Patagonia. “Something’s happened I think you’ll be interested in.”

“Oh?”

“There was an accident out on Harshaw Road, up near Mowry. Somebody driving by spotted a truck that crashed into the woods. It belongs to Jaimie Wolfe.”

Tess drove out to see Jaimie’s truck. It was scratched up but possibly still operable. The driver’s-side door was open. She peered in, careful not to touch anything. The airbags had been deployed, but Tess could see a dog leash and a pile of bridles and halters on the passenger-side floor.

Other vehicles had been on the road, so it was hard to see the tracks because the graded dirt road was hard ground, like a washboard. But she could see where the truck left the road and plunged down the embankment. She also saw a spot where a vehicle had stopped, slewed, and scattered gravel and rocks. And a place where the tires had dug in the dirt, two divots, as a vehicle laid scratch.

Jaimie Wolfe was gone.

Tess was worried that Jaimie might be disoriented from the crash. She could have tried to walk home or hitched a ride. Or she could be wandering in the forest. Tess drove in the direction of Jaimie’s place. On the way she called the sheriff’s office and asked for them to pull together a search team. There was a sheriff’s substation in Patagonia, and they were already looking. But they might need to send a search and rescue team. “I’m on my way to Jaimie’s,” Tess added.

“Walt’s there. No sign of Mrs. Wolfe.”

Tess was almost there, so she pulled in anyway.

Walt Aronow was driving out. He rolled down his window. “She’s not home,” he said. “We’ve got a search and rescue team on the way out to the crash site.”

Tess decided to look at the farm anyway.

Everything was quiet. She went to the house—just as Walt had told her, everything was buttoned up. Next, she walked to the barn. The barn was typical of a horse farm: two rows of stalls fronting an aisle wide enough to drive a pickup through. The barn could be closed on both ends—two sets of double doors. She walked into the cool shade, and horses put their heads over their stalls and one nickered at her. They had hay and water, so they were all right.

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 Misproduction 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.