J. Black - The Survivors Club

Plus, he was an asshole.

He’d stonewall them.

He knew he was going down, but he’d still get the last laugh.

It was a victory of sorts.

The room was cramped, stale, and warm. There were enough people there for a poorly attended city council meeting. Tess, Danny, and Cheryl were merely observers.

There were two Pima County sheriff’s detectives. They came to the party armed with an arsenal of evidence. In Michael DeKoven’s house alone, two people were dead by Wade Poole’s hand, and a Pima County Sheriff’s deputy and a Santa Cruz County homicide detective had witnessed Michael DeKoven’s murder.

Poole sat easy in his chair, despite the fact that he couldn’t stretch out. His hands were cuffed and chained to the interview table. He smiled: the jovial hayseed.

Detective Phil Arenas leaned forward. “You know we’ve got you dead to rights, Wade. You’re smart enough to know that. So why don’t you tell me your side?”

Wade shifted in his seat.

He grinned. “Yeah, you got me.” He leaned forward. “So what say I tell you everything?”

The surprise was plain on Arenas’s face.

Wade leaned back. The chain rattled. “’Course I want something in exchange. I want a cushy place, one of those country club prisons.”

Tess was aware she was staring at him. And she wasn’t alone. The secondary investigator on the case, Eric Spindler, opened his mouth wide enough to let flies in.

“Wade,” Spindler said. “You know that that’s not the way it w—”

Poole kept his eye on the lead, Phil Arenas. “That’s the deal. I’ll clear this case for you and a bunch of others, because I know exactly what those kids did.” He grinned, all corn pone. “You give me a good place, and I’ll tell all.”

“We’ll do our best, Wade,” Arenas said. “But you know as well as I do. There aren’t any country club prisons in Arizona.”

“You know what I mean. I want the best of the best. Whatever that is.” He leveled his gaze at Arenas. “But you gotta give me hospice care.”

Arenas left the room. They waited, but they didn’t have to wait long.

“Okay, Wade,” Arenas said, settling into the chair close to Poole. “If everything you say checks out, we can do that. So you’re sick? What is it you have?”

“Brain cancer. My doctor’s name is Clarence Pogue.” He rattled off the number. “Got it on the speed dial inside of my head.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Not too bad. Headaches, mostly. My balance sucks. The vomiting is the worst. You gonna make that call?”

Spindler pulled his phone from his pocket and left the room.

Wade sat back and grinned. For a man with a death sentence, he looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Spindler came back. “We’ll get you into hospice.”

And so Wade Poole began to talk.

He confessed to killing George Hanley. “What’d he think? He’d serve up proof about those kids killing people and tie it up in a nice little bow? You think they’d take him seriously? Stupid old fool, throwing away a chance to make a fortune with both hands. So I shot him, made it look like a cartel did it.”

“Just curious, Wade,” Arenas said. “While you’re getting things off your chest, what about your wife, Karen Poole?”

He grinned. “That was mine.”

“How about Chad DeKoven? You know anything about that?”

He held up a manacled hand. “Guilty. While I’m in a talkative mood, I can tell you I killed Steve Barkman, too—my most creative work yet. Kind of an experiment, but surprise-surprise, it worked.” He grinned. “Guess this good ol’ boy is a one-man crime wave.”

“Why did you kill Steve Barkman?”

He leaned forward. “That greedy little son of a bitch wasn’t interested in helping out Sheppard. He wanted a piece of the DeKoven pie. Can you believe that? Poor dumb fuck thought he could mess with me and mine.”

He sat back again, grinning from ear to ear.

“Had a dog like him once, sneaky little shit, used to skulk around and steal hoof parings when I was shoeing horses. Ate ’em right up. Always looked ashamed of himself, but he ate ’em. That’s what Steve Barkman reminded me of. A hoof-eating dog.” He leaned back even farther in his seat and stretched his legs out. “But there was another reason. You want to know what it was?”

“I’d appreciate anything you can say that will help us understand what happened here,” Arenas said.

Poole grinned. “I bet you would. I killed him for the same reason I killed Hanley and the surfer dude. Because my best girl asked me to.”

Phil Arenas looked at his partner. Cheryl looked at Tess and Danny and they looked at her.

“You should see your faces,” Poole said. “You didn’t know that, did you? You want to know who she is?”

He leaned into the microphone.

“Brayden.

“DeKoven.

“McConnell.”

The interrogation went for hours. Wade Poole had a lot to say and nothing to lose. Although he was forthcoming, even jovial, there was an undercurrent of rage Tess could feel. It was always there, behind the friendly mask he wore.

“I lured Hanley out to the ghost town. It was an ambush, pure and simple. He backed up onto the porch and I just kept walking and shooting, walking and shooting. Like that old fifties show, The Rifleman . Bam bam bam bam! Perfect place for a drug hit. When in doubt, always muddy the waters.”

By that time, he told them, he liked the idea of playing vigilante. He’d planned to pick off the DeKovens one by one. “I decided to mess with their heads first. Scare ’em. For sport, you know? The hunter becomes the hunted.” He grinned.

“How’d you meet Brayden DeKoven?” Phil Arenas asked.

“I was on to them all, but I figured Brayden would be the weakest link, being the youngest and a female. Jesus, was I ever wrong. That simpering little bitch has ice water in her veins!” He laughed. “She made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. She wanted her two brothers and her sister dead. Gave me this song and dance about how she’d waited for a guy like me all her life, batted her eyes real pretty, did things to me you can’t imagine.” He winked. “Told me if I killed them she’d split the inheritance with me.”

“You believed that?” Arenas asked.

His eyes turned to stone, and once again Tess could see the real man behind the friendly mask. “Hell, no. What she didn’t realize, though, was, she was next.”

“No interest in marrying her?”

“It wouldn’t last long, would it? I’m a dead man! Plus, who could live with a crazy bitch like that? And her kid? Jesus. Nope, I wanted money up front and she paid me good. I’ve still got a lot of life left in me and I’ve got one hell of a bucket list. If you’re gonna die, you might as well go out in style. So I figured I could blackmail Michael DeKoven as easily as she could.”

They were just finishing up when he turned pale. “I’m gonna pass out. You got a bed in here somewhere? I need to lie down now .”

But he didn’t make it as far as the door.

CHAPTER 56

On a warm spring day, Elena Christina Rojas was christened at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Nogales.

Danny invited everyone to the house afterward. Tess wandered through the rooms of their brick ranch, balancing her plate of blue corn tamales, apple empanada, and barbecued flank steak with her cup of punch. She now knew the exact definition of the word “beaming,” because Danny embodied it. His smile seemed permanently affixed to his face—pride, joy, and gratitude all wrapped into one. He stuck like a burr to his wife and his baby, his jokes a little less off-color.