The Survivors Club

Rancher.

“Hey,” the man called out, slamming the door of his truck and walking toward her. “You a friend of Jaimie’s?”

Tess introduced herself and asked who he was. He hitched his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans, framing his rodeo belt buckle, and breathed in the spring air. Taking stock of the place with a country smile. “Names’s Barnes,” he said, “Dave Barnes.” He shook her hand with his big mitt. He wore a Super Bowl–type ring that would have dwarfed another man’s hand. “Jaimie asked me to look after her livestock while she was gone.”

“Gone? Do you know where?”

He screwed up his face. “Didn’t say. Just took off—I gather she was in a hurry and she wanted me to feed the livestock. So you’re with Santa Cruz County?” He added, spotting the shield on her belt. “Nobody broke in here, did they?”

“Not that I know of.”

He strolled over to Jaimie’s porch. “Jaimie’s a little slack on security. I told her that. She leaves her key right here.” He lifted a plant in a pot on the porch and picked up a set of keys in the saucer underneath. Opened the door to wagging tails and slavering tongues. “Hey there!” he said as the dogs funneled out of the house.

Adele was among them.

“You want to come in?”

“No, thanks,” Tess said. She would need a warrant if she did—and who knew what might happen down the road. She didn’t want to hurt a potential criminal case because of the “fruit of the poisoned tree.” But she did peer around him at the inside. It looked the same as it did the last time she was here.

“Jaimie has business with the law?” the man asked.

“I wanted to talk to her. Are you a member of SABEL by any chance?”

“SABEL? Nah. That’s a little too environmentalist for me.” He scratched his neck. “You think that they’re doin’ any good? Seems like a hopeless cause to me. There’s just too damn much of that g.d. grass.”

“Did you ever meet a friend of hers named George Hanley?”

He thought about it. “Nope, don’t believe I had the pleasure. Who’s George Hanley?”

“He also belonged to SABEL. Did you hear about the man killed down Credo?”

“Old guy got himself shot up?”

“That’s the one.”

He looked down and kicked at a clod of dirt. “A real shame. Heard it was illegals or cartels—damn, it’s getting so bad. Shooting people up and cutting heads off and burning folks…I sure do hope he rests in peace.”

“How would you describe Jaimie Wolfe?”

“Let’s see…one hot babe.” He grinned. “Not that she’d notice me. Good on a horse. Like a horse whisperer, you heard of them? She’s always been nice to me.”

“Would you mind giving me your contact information, just in case I can think of anything else to ask?”

He said, “This Hanley guy who died in Credo, you think Jaimie had anything to do with that?”

“Doubtful,” Tess lied. “I’m just talking to anyone who knew him.”

“Tell you what. Give me your card, and if I hear somethin’, I’ll give you a call.”

She did so, scrawling her home phone number as well.

Tess drove up by the road and parked. She’d turned on her laptop, and looked for tire treads that matched what she’d seen—just in case Jaimie had been to Barkman’s house. Then she started up the Tahoe and put it in gear, turning east on 82. A glance in her rearview mirror showed the white Ford belonging to Jaimie’s friend driving off the ranch and turning in the opposite direction.

Her mobile rang. It was Cheryl Tedesco.

“One of our techs found something interesting at Barkman’s place,” she said. “You remember that printer he had with all those slots for micro cards?”

Tess listened while Cheryl explained that Steve Barkman had hidden a micro SD card in plain sight.

“I remember a tech mentioning something about it at the scene. What exactly is a micro SD card?”

“A storage device. It’s tiny, but apparently, it packs a lot of gigabytes on it—actually terabytes. My tech tells me that one terabyte holds one thousand gigabytes.”

Tess would be impressed if she knew precisely what a gigabyte was. “Computer memory.”

“Uh-huh. He told me, no wonder they didn’t find anything on his laptop except a bunch of bookmarked web pages, Facebook, and other crap. He must have kept it all on the card.”

“Where did your tech find it?”

“First, you gotta understand how close it came to being thrown out. It was in that jar of pens and pencils on his bookcase. But fortunately, our guys are scrupulous in looking for and bagging evidence. You know how big a micro SD is?”

“Small?” Tess guessed.

“Try a little black rectangle you can put on the tip of your finger.”

“You think there will be a lot of info on Michael DeKoven?”

“That’s the hope.”

“How far along are you?”

“Well, it’s on the tip of my finger right now. I’ll keep you posted.”

CHAPTER 24

Michael, Jaimie, and Brayden said little on the flight over. Michael rented a Town Car at LAX and drove down to Laguna Beach.

No one talked.

Michael sat still, staring at the traffic but not seeing it. Stunned.

Chad.

His brother.

His little brother.

Chad was kind of a nonentity. He’d never progressed in any way—not in school, not in a career, not even in his social life. He was an overgrown, carefree child. Their mother used to call him an innocent.

Not that he was dumb. He wasn’t. Maybe all the pot he smoked and the beer and the fast food he consumed contributed to his…haziness, but he’d carved out his own little life in the Laguna beach house and he wasn’t a bother to anybody. They could just forget about him and go on with their lives.

Michael felt guilty. He should have paid more attention. They just left him out there on his own, thinking he was fine. Happy. But he must have run across some bad people. As head of the family, Michael felt responsible.

They checked into the Retreat at Laguna, then drove to the Laguna Police Department on Loma. It took Michael a while to find a parking space and they were late. They waited in the outside office until a detective came to meet with them. He was tall and Hispanic, with a pitted face and bad breath. His name was Pete Morales. He took them back to his office.

He didn’t talk long. They would have to go identify the body at the hospital morgue, and there was very little he could tell them.

“It looks like he was going surfing. His neighbor says he usually goes out between four and five-thirty in the morning. He was found just below the steps down to the beach by a couple of surfers—” he read their names. “They must have found him shortly after he was killed.”

Michael absorbed this. “Do you have any leads? Who do you think would do something like this?” Aware of Brayden sitting beside him, her hand on his arm, stroking over and over, as if she were in a trance.

Jaimie asked, “How was he killed?”

“He was choked.”

“Strangled?” asked Brayden.