by Todd Borg
“Who are you,” the man said before we got to him. “And what are you doing in this house.” His voice was deep and resonant, and I recognized it. He didn’t turn around.
“I’m from the water police, Tyrone.”
TWENTY-FOUR
I walked around the far side of the hot tub where I could face Tyrone Handkins. I sat down on a planter. Spot looked at Tyrone, then me, sensed there was no immediate danger and relaxed. He walked over to the tub and lowered his head to lap at the roiling water. The hot foamy water bubbled over his nose, and Spot jerked back. He shook his head, stared at the water, then shook his head again as he licked chlorine off his nose.
“Does the Bossanova know you’re here enjoying the place?” I asked. “Or is this a benefit he is unaware of when he’s out of town?”
“Bossanova?” Tyrone didn’t move from his seated position. The foaming water came to just below his shoulders. He could be holding a weapon under the water, and I’d be unable to see it. He looked at me, then glanced away. Shifty eyes.
“Tony Nova. Your boss. The Remake Productions computer guy in Vegas called him that.”
“Banes said that? I hadn’t heard that.”
“Where do I find Nova?” I said.
“What for?” Tyrone’s eyes went to the lights of Reno, then down to the foaming water.
“I want to ask him some questions.”
“Questions like what?”
“Like why did the guy in the ski mask come to Glory’s hotel room while I was there talking to you? Was he the guy you paged?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I saw his shadow under the door and surprised him before he could surprise me. I chased him through the casino. The next day he succeeded in surprising me, this time at my office. He almost killed me with a handrail.”
“You look alive to me.”
“Does he work directly for you? Or for Tony Nova?”
“Neither,” Tyrone said. “I have no idea who you’re referring to.”
“You want me to think he was there to surprise you, instead?”
Tyrone glanced up. “I don’t know. Maybe he was.”
“Then who did you page?”
“I don’t recall paging anyone.”
“You reached inside a black briefcase. It looked like you were pushing buttons on a cell phone. A minute later, you got a call to which you responded, ‘the sooner, the better.’ Sounded like I was being set up.”
Tyrone’s eyes darted up and down. “Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I get a lot of calls.”
“Then what were you doing with your hand inside the briefcase?”
His head went back and forth in a slow shake. “I don’t remember. Are you sure? Maybe I... Wait, I remember.” Tyrone’s eyes met mine for a moment. “I have a travel alarm. I’d set it because I was going to take a nap. But I couldn’t fall asleep. I remembered it was still on when you were talking to me. So I reached in to turn it off. Here, I’ll show you.”
He stood up and climbed out of the hot tub. He reached for a terry cloth bathrobe that was hanging nearby and pulled it on. Still dripping, Tyrone walked barefoot through the sliding glass door into the great room.
Spot and I followed him into the indoor courtyard, then out to the master suite. Tyrone walked over to a dresser and lifted a briefcase off the top. He handed it to me. “It’s inside. Have a look.”
I pulled out a travel alarm and a cell phone. “The alarm makes for a good explanation. But there’s a cell phone as well.”
Spot was inspecting the carpet. He found a good place, circled once and lay down.
“I haven’t used the alarm since,” Tyrone said. “Check the alarm time. It’s probably set for two o’clock.”
I found the button and pressed it. The display read 2:30 p.m. “Where is Tony Nova?”
“Gone.”
“Where?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“When will he be back?”
Tyrone looked around the room, exasperated. “I don’t know.”
“The guy at Remake Productions said that you and he and maybe everybody else may end up out of work now that Glory is dead. He said she was the main revenue source for the company. Is that true?”
“You don’t...” Tyrone stopped himself.
I tried to provoke him. “Maybe you dealt with the worry of your boss firing you by getting rid of him. Or he already fired you, and you killed him in revenge.”
Tyrone stared at me, a severe frown on his face. “You’re like the rest, aren’t you,” he said. “I’m guilty from the beginning. There’s nothing I can do.” His voice had the same wounded sincerity that I’d heard a dozen times before from ruthless killers.
“I’d like to think not,” I said. “But you were present at her death. You had means and opportunity and possibly motive. I came to ask you questions at the hotel and got jumped and nearly killed as a result. You told your roadies not to talk to me, then you disappeared. Now I find you at your boss’s house and you evade my questions about him.” I was raising my voice. “If he didn’t come to the same fate as Glory, where is he?”
“I told you!” Tyrone shouted. “I don’t know.”
Spot jumped to his feet, concern on his face.
Tyrone stepped toward me. “Get out!” His hands were clenched into fists. He wanted to take a swing. I couldn’t tell if self-restraint or Spot’s presence held him back.
“Get out of your boss’s house?” I said. “Let’s call him and ask. Prove to me that he knows you’re here. Let him tell me to leave.”
Tyrone’s face was flushed and his eyes seemed afire. He walked out of the master suite, moving fast. Spot and I followed. Tyrone marched through the courtyard, into the great room and over to the gun case. He opened the glass door and pulled a rifle off the rack. It looked like a Remington 700. Tyrone worked the bolt action, lifted it up and aimed it at my chest. I was only 20 feet away across the room. He was shaking with anger, but there wasn’t much chance that he would miss.
“You are a trespasser,” he said, rage in his voice. “The gate was locked. Somewhere there will be evidence that you forced your way in. I am authorized to be here. Even a black man would be acquitted in that situation.”
“Easy, Tyrone.” I put my hands up. “No more killings. I’m leaving.” I backed up several paces, turned and left.
TWENTY-FIVE
The next morning I drove over to Emerald Bay Road and stopped at the local FBI field office. Special Agent Ramos was in.
I’d met Ramos when the arsonist was lighting forest fires in Tahoe. My memory of him was that he was an irritating, self-important jerk. He was a short man of Mexican heritage who spoke like Dan Rather. His shoes were polished, his pants had sharp creases ironed into them, and his short hair was thick and black and combed with a part on the left side. Except for a large mole on his forehead, he looked like a model for a film about the immigrants who made this country great.
“Good to meet you, Mr. McKenna,” he said as if he’d never seen me before. “What can I help you with?” He sat down in his desk chair.
“I’m looking for a guy who beats people up with a wooden handrail. Wears a ski mask.”
“The guy who came to your office. I saw the report.” Ramos leaned back in his desk chair, his hands gripping the chair arms. After a moment he said, “You said you are a licensed investigator?”
I nodded, trying to repress the immediate resentment you feel when someone asks what they already know.
“Mr. McKenna, there are many components in our system of jurisprudence,” Ramos said, his words heavy with arrogance. “The FBI was conceived to be the top layer of...”
“Cut with the bullshit, Ramos. I don’t need your song and dance about need-to-know. I saved your ass last fall when I found out where the arsonist was going to light the next forest fire. If I hadn’t, how many lives would have burned on your watch? You owe me, and you know it. Either y
ou can pay your bill now and sleep at night, or you can lie awake counting how many ways you are an insult to your job.”
Ramos colored a deep red. “Are you threatening me?”
“With your sense of right and wrong, yes.”
Ramos reached over and pulled a cigar out of a box on the corner of his desk. He peeled the wrapper, cut the end off with a silver pocket knife and lit it with a silver lighter. His color was returning to normal. When he had the cigar burning he spoke.
“It is disturbing that the man in the mask came to your office. As far as we know, he’s only operated in Vegas and L.A. prior to this.”
“Who is he?”
“We don’t know. We call him the shape-shifter because he presents himself in different ways.”
“You mean disguises,” I said.
“Disguises, yes. And methods. We believe he operates through the Internet in a manner that is nearly impossible to trace. If a person wants his services, the person posts a cryptic message on a particular bulletin board with an email address and a code word. The code is apparently obtained through referrals from previous clients. The shape-shifter watches the bulletin boards and responds only if he wants to. Both parties use email addresses with one of the big web-based services like Yahoo so that they can be accessed from anywhere. They continuously change the addresses and use public computers at libraries or cybercafes to log onto the email accounts. We’ve intercepted several communications, but the email accounts had already been abandoned by the time we moved in.”
“These services you mention. They are...?”
“We’re not sure, however we believe the shape-shifter is an assassin. One of the emails we intercepted was traced to a report of a man in a mask leaving the scene of a murder in Vegas.”
“How was the victim killed?”
“He was beaten to death with a wooden stick. We analyzed some fibers and determined they were Douglas fir. Presumably, the shape-shifter used wood so he could burn the murder weapon. Having him show up at your office, however, is a break from the one-use doctrine.”
“You mean using a weapon only once.”
“Yes. As you know,” Ramos said, puffing on his cigar, his voice thick with condescension, “many murders are solved when the murder weapon is found and traced to the killer. The one-use doctrine is a simple and effective way a murderer can avoid detection. Specifically, a murderer destroys whatever weapon is used in the crime. It could be burning a wooden stick, or dropping a gun over a boat into the depths of Lake Tahoe. Of course, most killers are fools and don’t think of this. Or, even more stupid, they remember that the rifle cost a thousand dollars and they resist the impulse to dispose of it.”
“So the guy in the mask is breaking his rule by using the mask and the wooden stick multiple times.”
“Possibly. As soon as a weapon is used again, a pattern emerges. However, the original killing with the stick might have been done by someone else, and the shape-shifter was adopting that as a disguise when he came after you. For him, it is a one-use situation. But law enforcement will think it is the former killer they are after. Or turn it around. A new killer could be copying the shape-shifter. Either way, the confusion of evidence and clues is an effective screen.”
“Most professional killers just use a gun. Much more effective.”
“I agree,” Ramos said. “And this guy may well use a gun, too. But there is another side to the shape-shifter. In addition to his one-use approach, which demands variety, he likes flair.”
“Death by stick has more flair than death by gun?”
“Yes. More exciting and, better yet, riskier. Risk equals excitement, which is nectar to some killers.” Ramos sucked on his cigar and blew a cloud of blue smoke. “One of the emails had a code we deciphered as an address of a tire store in Thousand Oaks. A car was serviced there and left in the lot overnight. The next morning the owner picked it up. A doctor who lived up in the Santa Monica mountains. He drove it off a curve on the Mulholland Highway and plunged five hundred feet to his death.”
“Why do you think it was murder?”
“Two reasons. First, the guy owed the Vegas mob close to a half-million and wasn’t paying. Second, a couple of our forensic guys spent some time with the burnt wreckage. They think the back seat was rigged so that a man could come out of the trunk.”
“And do what, grab the wheel and cause the accident?”
“Yes,” Ramos said. “Steer the guy off the cliff and roll out the door at the last moment. Like a Hollywood stuntman.”
I thought about it. “You’re thinking of the boat explosion?”
Ramos nodded. “We went over all the debris the Coast Guard found. We didn’t find anything specific to connect to this guy. But the boat explosion had flair. This guy loves that he can kill in outrageous ways and in a wide variety of ways. No doubt, he also loves that he can take enormous risks and still not get caught.
“If the people hiring him don’t know his identity, how does he get paid?”
Ramos puffed on the cigar. “We can only guess.”
I waited.
“Eighteen months ago a woman came to us with a story. She’d been on a tour bus outside of Las Vegas. It was a bus with windows that open. They were in the middle of the desert when she dropped a postcard. She got out of her seat and was looking for it on the floor when she saw a man in the back seat reach into his jacket pocket and pull out a pager. It hadn’t beeped, so it must have been on vibration mode. He opened the window and threw a canvas bag out of the window just as the bus was on a bridge. The bag went over the bridge to the canyon below. We’ve looked in the area and there are a couple of spots where someone below could have driven out on back roads.”
“She get a description?”
“No. He had a baseball cap pulled down low over his face. She didn’t think much of it until later when she was watching a movie on TV and realized she’d witnessed a perfect cash-drop.”
“You figure a guy sits some distance away with binoculars and makes the call,” I said.
“Right. Even if we’d been following the guy making the payoff, we couldn’t have caught the recipient unless we’d had a helicopter. And if we did have a chopper, the guy might have spotted it and not made the phone call. That kind of drop can be made from a bus or train or boat or even a private plane. If it is unmarked cash, it is a hard system to bust.”
“You have an idea why someone would pay a professional to come to Tahoe to kill me?”
Ramos shook his head.
“Anything else unusual happening around here, lately? Something the FBI would pay attention to?”
“No. Only the incidents in your office and the casino, and the boat explosion. We’ve seen nothing else unusual. The death of the singer Glory is still being treated as an accident.”
“What do you know about her bodyguard?” I asked.
“Tyrone Handkins? The coroner ruled that the cause of death was her fall from the Flume Trail.”
“Are you looking at anyone else besides this shape-shifter?”
“No. But that doesn’t mean much. As I said, for all the evidence we have, the shape-shifter might be long gone and this is a new dog using old tricks.”
“The boat explosion and the beating involved me, but you never thought to ask me about it or tell me about this guy in Vegas.”
“Like I said, we’ve been looking at it, but we’ve found nothing that would merit a conference with you. If that changes, perhaps you and I will have further communication. Now, have I paid my bill?”
TWENTY-SIX
As I drove away I called the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office and asked for Sergeant Ralph Cardoza.
“I’m sorry, he’s on vacation,” the receptionist said.
“Still? He was on vacation almost two weeks ago.”
“I know. We’re all jealous. He had a lot of extra days saved up.”
“Okay. I’ll try his cell.” I had the number on a Post-it note in my wallet.
; “Any luck fishing?” I said when he answered.
“No, I gave up on that reservoir. I’m going down to Hope Valley, maybe try Blue Lakes. You talk to Tyrone Handkins?”
“Yeah. I found him at his boss’s house outside of Reno.”
“No kidding. Who’s that?”
“Tony Nova. Lives just off the Mt. Rose Highway. You were right about Handkins having shifty eyes. But I didn’t get anything out of him except a temper.”
“I’m going to keep him in my sights, just the same. Hey, where are you at?” Cardoza asked.
“I’m driving up the east shore.”
“Then we probably went past each other. I’m north of Cave Rock, heading south.”
“Why don’t you pull off at the boat launch just south of Cave Rock. I’ll meet you there.”
There were many parked cars at the launch, but only one man standing there when I pulled in.
“Sergeant?” I said when I got out of my Jeep.
“Good to meet you, McKenna.” We shook. Cardoza radiated swagger and confidence. He stood straight and chewed his gum the way a kid does, lips parted, his jaw moving up and down with the insistence of assembly-line machinery. I guessed him at a fit 40, although his faded jeans and worn running shoes made him look younger. He had expensive sunglasses parked on top of his head. Behind him was an old Audi that looked to be in great condition.
“I heard you had a guy come after you,” he said. “Must have took some balls. What are you, six and a half?”
“Yeah. He surprised me at my office.”
“The report said he wore a ski mask?”
“Right.”
“Think it could have been Handkins?”
I shook my head. “The guy was white.”
“Maybe Handkins hired him.”
“That’s what I wondered. The guy was outside Glory’s hotel room after I’d questioned Handkins. It seemed like Handkins had set me up. I chased the guy, but he got away. He showed up at my office the next day.”