J. Black - The Survivors Club

Michael’s cleats clacked over the hardpan ground as he walked his bike to the 4Runner. He put it back on the rack. He got into the SUV and sat there. Now he could absorb it.

Someone tried to kill me.

He was shaking. Couldn’t stop.

He stared bleakly out the windshield—

And saw a sheet of paper stuck under the wipers. Facing him. Written in pencil in block letters.

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.

CHAPTER 43

Tess didn’t have long to wait before Hanley’s USB flash drive came back from evidence.

It was pretty straightforward. There was only one document on the thumb drive, entitled “Diary.” The opening page looked like a form that had been scanned in. An older form she recognized, even though there were differences: the front page of a homicide detective’s murder book.

The victim in the report was a man named Felix Sosa. He’d died five years ago, the victim of a sniper. Sosa lived in the Phoenix metropolitan area where George Hanley once worked homicide.

Only Hanley had long been retired by the time Sosa was killed.

Tess looked at the graphic photos. Read the stats, and what had been done. A detective named Manuel Alvarado was the primary on the case. Tess wondered if Alvarado was a friend of Hanley’s, and just exactly how Hanley had managed to get a copy of the murder book.

Tess scrolled down the file until she found Hanley’s notes.

Danny picked up on the second ring. Today he and Theresa and their baby girl were going home, but Tess wasn’t sure if they were still at the hospital. He sounded like he was on cloud nine.

“How are things?”

“ ¡Que bonita! Beautiful, to you Anglos.”

“Are you home?”

“Just got in.” She heard him muffle the phone and call out to someone. “My brother just got here. What’s up?”

Tess told him about the Felix Sosa case—a man shot by a sniper at a campground in Payson, Arizona. “What do you think of that?”

“So he made up his own murder book, is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Of a homicide in Payson. The guy was shot by a sniper?”

“Yes.”

A pause. “Then he probably was shot by a sniper before.”

“You know a guy up there, don’t you? Jimmy somebody?”

“Jimmy Tune.”

“Jimmy Tune? Really?”

“Yeah. We met at an interrogation course in Phoenix. I still talk to him—I’ll give him a call and give him a heads-up to talk to you. I’ve got his e-mail somewhere. Wish I could do more, but um, I’m a little busy right now.”

“You only have your first child once,” Tess said.

“You got that right. I’m sending you his e-mail now.”

Tess finished reading Hanley’s makeshift murder book on Felix Sosa. There was no mention of the man having been shot before. But there were more murder books. Tess counted three. One for Quentin DeKoven, the father of Michael DeKoven. One for Peter Farley.

And one for himself.

He knew they were coming for him.

Tess looked at the murder books. There were holes you could drive a truck through in them—his access had been severely limited. He made up for this lack by scanning photos and articles from newspapers or collected from websites.

Tess had seen the murder book for Peter Farley—briefly, but due to her memory, thoroughly. This one was similar, but different. It had been written by a different detective, one who did not have the same kind of access. More gaps, and more supposition. Tess was beginning to recognize Hanley’s way of writing—courtly and old-fashioned. Just the facts, but with an occasional reference to literature or an old-fashioned word. He did not have access to the official murder book photos, but had inserted reams of expert articles on mountain lions and the Santa Anas. He had a picture of a smiling Farley with his wife and college-age daughter, taken several years before—Tess thought he’d gotten it from the newspaper.

There were photos of Quentin DeKoven’s plane, scattered across a meadow, and a burned swath through pines and fir trees on the top of a mountain in the Pinaleños. He’d typed in his own theory—something to do with the wrong fuel mixture. He’d included photos of the senior DeKoven, his wife, and his children. He’d found and used the photo Tess herself had seen of the kids and their parents at the water treatment plant opening. And there was an old black-and-white newspaper photo of a similar aviation accident, the one DeKoven had survived. He’d scanned in an article in Outdoor Digest of DeKoven’s survival. A story of a wealthy man who carried his pilot three miles.

His own murder book was equally sketchy. He had scanned in a photo of himself. He’d scanned in a photo of the DVD of The Ultimate Survivor show. He’d scanned in a photo of himself in the hospital, after being shot six times, and the newspaper articles on the shootout he’d survived.

He’d made his case, once piece at a time. Carefully laid it out.

After the murder book came a diary of sorts. It was hard to read. He’d scanned in pages from a notebook—painstaking work. The handwriting was hard to read, and faint, but Tess got the gist.

George Hanley had been wooed by the DeKoven family—by Jaimie in particular. She wanted him to join SABEL. She’d somehow run into him at the Safeway in Continental, and his well-honed homicide cop instincts had told him she had targeted him. She’d struck up a conversation. Flirted. Jaimie was a beautiful woman and he was flattered, but he also could tell that she desperately wanted to know him . Him, of all people. A sixty-eight-year-old man. He said in the diary that she’d tried too hard. With instincts about people honed over many years as a homicide cop, he could see through the pretense.

He had wondered why.

And so he’d researched her . He’d researched the family.

Tess didn’t know how Hanley had made the link. He didn’t elaborate. Maybe it was the Phoenix connection. He’d lived in Phoenix. He might have known the homicide cop who had investigated Sosa’s death, or he might have looked him up and asked.

She kept reading. The day stretched. And the more she read, the more it dawned on her that there was much more to this story. She could feel it. There was a hint of desperation as he went along, as if he was racing time. How would he know that? Sure, he knew he was targeted, but…

It was palpable. His race against time, his race to get it all down. And on the next to last page—his last entry—Tess found the answer.

His words:

“What the hell was I thinking? I never should have told him about it because now he wants in. I wish I’d never gone out there, I don’t know what got into me. He was always good at getting things out of people, I saw him do it often enough. We called him the snake charmer. He of all people knows I’m not a drinker; one drink and I let out all the state secrets. Now he wants to take over.

“Great homicide det. I was—I shouldn’t have let my emotions color my thinking. He played me and deep down, I knew he was playing me. He played everybody all the time.

“I should have done something if I’d known what to do. I’ll regret that, should have stood up to him, but I had blinders on because he was my best friend, we worked together all those years, we were almost like an old married couple even though he was so much younger, and when he and Karen fell in love it felt natural, he was already like family. Anyone would think it was a homo thing, but it’s not a homo thing, it’s a cop thing. I was closer to him than I was to Amy and closer than I was to God, but I should have seen what that son of a bitch was doing, I should have been the one person she could rely on. I wonder if I could have stopped it if I just used my gray cells, but it went right past me. Amy was right, it was a boys’ club.”