Poole.

“Police! Hands behind your head! Do it now!”

Tess heard her own voice, but it sounded foreign in her ears.

“Do it now!” yelled Deputy Moran. His voice strong and loud in the room.

Poole kept pounding DeKoven’s head into the floor. “How do you like that, motherfucker? How do you like that?”

Blood spraying—a red mist. A solid chunk of DeKoven’s head smashing into the floor once more before Moran was able to get hold of one of Poole’s blood-slippery arms in his, wrenching it behind the man’s back.

Michael DeKoven’s body slumped, then caved.

Tess thought he was dead. He had to be dead.

Tess had to hopscotch over Michael’s body to give Moran a hand. Poole was staggering, bellowing like a maddened bull, trying to twist around and head butt Moran. “I’ll show you, you prissy little fucker!” he yelled at DeKoven’s corpse. “I’ll show you who’s boss!”

Tess latched on. He roared and shook her off, swung his head back and forth, blood flying like an oscillating lawn sprinkler.

Enraged. His eyes red rimmed. She latched onto him again. It took both of them to restrain him.

Abruptly, he stopped struggling.

All three of them huffing like freight trains.

Blood snared his mouth and dripped to the bottom of his nose and splashed on the tile.

Suddenly he dropped to his knees, almost pulling Tess and Moran with him. Tess stumbled and went to one knee just to stay up.

Poole shook himself like a big dog and blood flew. He raised his face to the ceiling and howled. He howled like a wolf.

Moran looked at Tess. “What the—?”

The howling morphed into laughter. Jagged, manic, loud.

It went on and on and on.

CHAPTER 55

Jurisdictional hell.

Everyone wanted a piece of Wade Poole.

Pima County Sheriff’s got the nod—they had the best case. Fortunately, Tess and Danny would sit in on the interrogation, along with Cheryl Tedesco of TPD.

They’d need a bigger interview room.

While they cooled their heels at the Pima County Sheriff’s Adult Detention Center on Silverlake Road, Danny made a call to his wife.

Tess listened as they talked, overheard him crooning a lullaby to his new little girl. How his voice softened. How his face changed. Tess found herself wishing that she had a family like that, had that dimension to her life. A child.

She’d never thought about that possibility before.

As Danny disconnected, he looked at her, puzzled. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Danny pocketed his phone and leaned forward, elbows on knees. Clasped his hands and glanced over at her. “What you think is going to happen in there?”

“What do you think will happen in there?”

“I think he’ll reserve his right to remain silent. I think we came all this way for nothing.”

Tess agreed. As a homicide cop, Wade Poole had been on the other side too many times. He knew all the tricks. He knew what they would say before they said it.

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?”