J. Black - The Survivors Club

“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. Do 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?”

“I wanted to see for myself if the person Steve was tracking was the guy I saw last month on a jump.”

“On a jump? What do you mean by ‘on a jump?’”

“I’m a skydiver.”

“And this guy Barkman is tracking, he’s also a skydiver?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you said you met him on a jump.”

“It’s a long story.”

It was going on five p.m. and the sun was lowering in the sky when Tess and Danny walked out to the parking lot.

Danny said, “So this guy Sheppard comes here because Steve Barkman has a hot tip on a guy who aimed his finger at him?”

“The guy aimed his finger at him right before he jumped out of a plane and his chute didn’t open. I can see why he’d come here.”

“You believe the guy.”

“What does he have to gain?”

“Hey, guera , if you don’t know…”

Tess knew what Danny was talking about: people who liked to attach themselves to investigations, who got a vicarious thrill from being in on what the police were doing. “He doesn’t strike me that way, Dan.”

Danny mumbled something.

“What did you say?”

“Guy bothers me, is all. What about this bullshit about a jogger putting a sticker on his chest?”

Tess had to admit that bothered her, as well. What an outlandish claim.

“If this is true,” Danny said, “it shoots the hell out of the freak accident theory. It could be the guy who threatened Sheppard—and I use the term ‘threatened’ loosely—might have objected to Barkman finding him, In a big way.”

“I think Cheryl’s going to look at Barkman in a whole new light.”

“Barkman’s death was a homicide staged to look like an accident?”

“Could have been a smart move,” Tess said. “The way it looked, we spent a lot of our time concentrating on how freaky it was.” She stood by her car, which she’d managed to park near the shade of a eucalyptus tree. “It could have happened like this. Someone was there, hanging out with him, having a beer, and noticed the light was out.”

Danny nodded. “Yeah. So. Whoever it was—and now maybe we’ll never know—pointed it out to him. Like: hey, your light’s out. And while he’s up on the ladder, the guy kicked it out from under him. But how’d this guy know falling into the coffee table would kill him?”

“Maybe Barkman hit hard and while he was out—”

“Or at least disoriented.”

“They helped him along.”

Tess knew they were thinking about the same thing: the shard of glass that went straight through Barkman’s eye and into his brain.

After Danny drove out, Tess waited a while. She watched some joggers follow the path at Reid Park, enjoying the smell of the sprinklers on the grass at the golf course.

When Alec Sheppard came out of the substation, Tess walked over to see if he’d like to go out for a drink.

They met at a bar called Badwater on Fourth Avenue. It wasn’t far from the Marriott where Alec was staying, and he told her it brought back memories of his college days. By now the sun was almost down. They sat outside at a picnic table under the lights, surrounded by a kite-string of moths. There was a lot of babble of beer-drinking patrons, but not so loud they couldn’t talk.

Cheryl Tedesco had been thorough, but Tess wanted to go over it again, in case there was a revelation she might be missing.

After some small talk, how he’d liked the U of A, what he did for a living—he’d run a company that had specialized in oil cleanup in the Gulf—Tess said, “You said Steve Barkman worked for you. But he didn’t give you a report?”

“No. He’d only been looking into it for a few days.”

“How many days?”

“Four? Five. Five days.”

“Did you talk to him during that time?”

“I thought we went all over this before.”

“Bear with me. What did he say?”

“He said he thought there was a connection.”

“What kind of connection?”

“He didn’t say. But he recognized him. He wanted to be careful because the guy had money, and he didn’t want to get in the middle of a lawsuit. Maybe he was worried about defamation of character.”

Tess said, “Could you wait a minute? I’ll be back.”

“Sure.”

Tess left him and headed for her car. She’d put a copy of Tucson Lifestyle magazine in the murder book, which now resided in her briefcase under the front seat of the Tahoe. In a perfect world, she’d have other, similar photos of men the same age to go with it. But who was she kidding? It wasn’t a perfect world.

Back at the bar, Tess handed Alec the magazine. “Would you mind looking through it?”

There was a question in his eyes, but she just nodded at the magazine. “Just flip through it.”

He stopped where she expected him to stop.

Looked up at her, his face grim.

“That’s him.”

“The man you saw at the jump center?”

“That’s him.”