J. Black - The Survivors Club

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 face 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.