“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
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.”
“Had you met him before?”
“I don’t think so. But I meet a lot of people. I can’t say I’m absolutely sure about that. But Steve knows— knew him.”
Tess remembered at DeKoven’s office, the look on Michael DeKoven’s face when she mentioned Steve Barkman. She wondered if Barkman had made contact with him by then. “What did Barkman say about the guy he was investigating?”
“He said something about pulling the surveillance tape at the center.” He added, “Wish I’d thought of that.”
“But he didn’t tell you who it was.”
“He wanted to be sure.”
“But you were surprised whoever it was lived in Tucson?”
“A little. It’s been a few years since I got my degree. Maybe he knew me from a jump. At the time I chalked it up to making an enemy here somewhere along the line, and maybe that’s what happened—could have been when I was jumping at SkyDive Arizona in Eloy. Skydivers live in a small world. We’re always running into each other.”
“Can you think of anything that might have made the guy go off on you like that?”
He stared into space, thinking. Shook his head. “No, I can’t. But he looked at me like he knew me. When he pointed the finger gun at me, he acted like it was a big joke. No, that’s not right.”
“Not a joke?”
“It was a joke, but it was a mean joke. It was…I guess the closest thing I can describe it to is celebrating in the end zone.”
“Why do you think he did that?”
“If he found a way to sabotage my rig, then I think he did it because he knew he could.”
“You mean if you were killed.”
“Yeah. No one would ever know.”
Tess noticed that he seemed to take the idea of being killed in stride. “If it’s true, he really screwed up.”
He grinned. “I guess I’m just naturally a survivor.”
Tess said, “There’s no doubt your rig was sabotaged?”
“None. My reserve rig was up for repacking—I wouldn’t be allowed to jump without having it done. Every hundred and twenty days the rigger has to repack the reserve. It’s a safety issue.”
“You think DeKoven bribed the rigger?”
He sat back. “He didn’t have to. Since it’s a long wait, the owner of the rig doesn’t usually stick around, so all the guy who wants to sabotage the pack has to do is wait until no one’s watching, find the rig he’s looking for, and cut the cables.”
“It’s that simple?”
“Oh, yeah. He could pretend the pack is his and he’s checking it—all he’d have to do is lift the flap to the cable housing and cut the cables with wire cutters—the cables to the main canopy and the reserve canopy. No one would ever see it. The pack is sealed with a red cord and a lead seal. Extremely doubtful the pack’s owner would recheck it. There’d be no reason to.
The band, a local group called the Blasphemers—they were loud and pretty good—struck up, and it was hard to talk for a while. Finally they took a break.
Tess asked him, “Did you ever meet Jaimie DeKoven?” Michael DeKoven went to Stanford, following in the footsteps of his father, but his little sister Jaimie spent a couple of semesters at the U of A.
“Who’s that—a sister? No, I don’t remember her. I don’t remember anyone by that name.” He grinned. It was
