Tahoe Killshot

by Todd Borg

  “Anything about him stand out?”

  “He was professional. Wore gloves. Didn’t utter a word.”

  Cardoza nodded. He squinted out at the lake. “I still think Handkins is our man. Hires muscle to work for him, is my guess.”

  “Could be,” I said. “I thought I’d have a look at the Flume Trail. See if the area squares with what Handkins told me. Do you know if the place Glory died is still marked?”

  “Maybe. Call the Incline Village office. They would know. Tell me, McKenna. Your client was the girl on the boat?”

  “Yes. Faith Runyon.”

  “But she’s dead. So who’re you working for?”

  “My conscience.”

  Cardoza frowned at me, then turned to the Audi.

  “Hard to get to a lot of good fishing lakes in a low clearance car,” I said.

  “That’s why I thought of Blue Lakes. They paved it not long ago. You should check it out if you haven’t been out there.”

  Cardoza left, and I called the Incline Village office of the Washoe Sheriff. A deputy named Doug Minney came on the line. I explained who I was.

  “I want to go check out the Flume Trail where Glory died,” I said. “I was wondering if the place is still marked.”

  “Why? You think you can learn something we missed?” His voice was higher than his natural register. Tense. Defensive.

  “I doubt it,” I said. “But it’d be easier to visualize if I saw the place where she went off. I thought I’d go up there with a mountain bike expert. Look at the tracks, stuff like that. Be good if I could do it before other bikers come through.”

  “It’s been over a week since she went off.”

  “I know. But the only storm since then went north of the Flume. The tracks might still be there.”

  “Well, the crime scene tape is still there. Same with the logs the Forest Service put down to divert bicyclists to the side. But we reopened the trail some time ago, so who knows if anybody has messed up the tracks. Steve was going to go up in the morning and take down our tape and move the logs.”

  “Any chance you could delay it a little?”

  “Delay official business for you?”

  “Just a few hours is all I’d need.”

  There was a long pause before Minney spoke. “We left three Dayglo orange streamers to mark where she went off. They’re tied to a branch on a Lodgepole pine on the mountain side of the trail. The singer went off directly opposite. You can’t miss it.” His breathing was audible over the phone. “We put tape on stakes along both sides of the trail about a foot off the ground. We had the deputies step over them so as to not disturb any tracks, foot tracks or bike tracks. But even so, there isn’t much to look at. We also brought a guy up there from a bike shop in Incline. He couldn’t tell us anything. He saw one type of tread that comes from the Velociraptor brand of tire. That’s the kind the singer’s bodyguard has. There was another bike track from a guy who came along after the accident. His tracks obscured much of what had been there before.”

  “What kind of tire did he have?”

  “I forget. But it’s kind of a generic tread that doesn’t leave a recognizable track.

  “What about the tracks from Glory’s bike?” I asked.

  “She had a tire called an El Gato. It leaves distinct tracks, but since she rode in front, her tracks were mostly covered up by the bodyguard’s tracks and the other guy who came along.”

  “And others after him, I suppose,” I said. “August has to be the busiest month on the Flume.”

  “Yeah, but the accident was early in the morning and the guy who came along called nine-one-one on his cell. One of our guys, Jackson, called the guy back right away. Got him to block off the trail some distance away in both directions. The guy dragged branches across the trail and told everyone who came along to turn back, that he was under order from the cops. The guy was real careful about staying off the trail. Meanwhile, the bodyguard was climbing down the cliff toward the girl.”

  “I’ve met him. Tyrone Handkins.”

  “Right. Jackson and another deputy, Monasset, got up there before Handkins climbed back up. So they were able to keep him and anyone else from walking on the trail.”

  “Which way were Glory and Tyrone going?”

  “North, from Marlette Lake toward Incline. They didn’t have a shuttle car. The bodyguard said they planned to loop back over the mountain and head back to Spooner.”

  I thought about that. Glory must have been in great shape that she could plan a 20-mile ride at high elevation, and then perform back-to-back concerts.

  “Let’s just say you did notice something,” Minney said. “First thing you’d do is call us, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll talk to Steve,” he said. “See if he can wait until noon to take down the crime scene tape.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  After lunch, I drove across town to a bike shop.

  There were two young men working in the repair area. One was explaining brake design to a customer. The other had a bike frame up in a bike stand so that he could work on the derailleur. The man’s hands were covered in black lubricant.

  “Afternoon,” he said when he saw me. He clicked the shifter, held the pedal and turned the crank. The chain climbed up to the largest sprocket, click by click, and then started back down.

  “I’m an investigator, and I’m looking to hire a mountain bike expert,” I said.

  He stopped and looked at me. “Investigator.”

  “Yes. Owen McKenna.”

  “You mean a detective?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Joey Dickson.” He held up his blackened hand to show that he couldn’t shake. “I guess I’m what you’d call an expert. But I’m slammed here at the shop in August.”

  “I was hoping to find someone who could go out with me tomorrow morning. Can you give me a referral?”

  He resumed turning the crank. “You need a guide?”

  “Yes. Someone who can read trail marks and tread patterns. That kind of thing.”

  He grinned at me. “Like a mountain man who can follow deer tracks, only for mountain bikes?”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Cool. A tracker. Well, I wish I was your guy. But to be honest, the guy you want is Wheels.”

  “Wheels?”

  “Wheels Washburn.” He wiped his hands on a rag and picked up a well-worn mountain biking magazine. The pages automatically opened to a center photo spread. “Check it out,” he said. “Here’s Wheels up on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.”

  The picture showed a popular trail that runs from Luther Pass down toward South Lake Tahoe. The look on the long-haired guy’s face was maniacal glee as he launched off a rock. His bicycle was six feet off the ground. He floated above it.

  “He’s an awesome rider,” Joey said. “Knows the technical stuff, too. Here, I’ll write down his number.” He scratched out a number on a card. “Only I should kinda warn you about him.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s got this thing where he jerks and grunts. Almost like barking. It’s called Tourette’s syndrome. Anyway, don’t let it bug you. Wheels is a real nice guy. We call him the Tourette tornado.”

  I got Wheels Washburn on the phone late that afternoon. There was a loud racket in the background.

  “Hold on a sec,” he shouted. In a moment, the noise slowed and stopped. “Sorry about that. I was running a log splitter.” Other than a single grunt his speech sounded normal.

  “So you want, like, crime deconstruction based on tread marks,” he said after I explained my request to go up to the Flume Trail and look at the place where Glory went off.

  I said, “I’m just thinking that if I went up there alone, I’d see a bunch of bike tracks and they wouldn’t mean anything. But they might suggest something to you.”

  “Sherlock o’er the Flume,” Wheels said. “Conan Doyle wouldn’ta thunk it, mountain bikes, would he?” His phrasing was intersperse
d with grunts.

  “Maybe not,” I said.

  “Essay project in college. Conan Doyle and Sherlock. Title was ‘Alter Ego, Ergo, Ego Altered?’ Don’t think the prof bought my thesis. Got an A, though. Then she pressures me about the grad program at UC Irvine. Creative writing. What’s it gonna be? Words or wheels? My name is Wheels. What was she thinking?”

  “Will you do it?”

  “Sure. I was going to ride the Chan, anyway. May the Flume it be instead.”

  “The Chan?” I said.

  “Short for Jackie Chan. A bitchin’ ride from the top of Kingsbury down. Gonna get closed because the Forest Service thinks it causes erosion. Bunch of weenies, those guys.”

  “How much do you charge?”

  “To play Sherlock? Enough for dinner at the Cantina?”

  “Sounds fair,” I said. “Are you free at nine a.m.?”

  “Oh,” he said. “Late riser? Remember Shakespeare, Ben Franklin, Jimmy Carter, Paul McCartney. Note the premiums that fall to early birdies.”

  “I was taking it easy on you. McCartney is an early riser?”

  “Got me. Good guess, though, doncha think?”

  “Seven o’clock, then?”

  “Better,” he grunted. “Meet at Spooner Lake Campground? You’re not a shuttle boy, are you? I always do the loop.”

  I understood that he meant disdain for anyone who parked a second car near the bottom of Tunnel Creek Road for an easy ride back to Spooner Lake. Instead, he’d ride to the end of the Flume Trail and loop back up and over the mountains above Marlette Lake, riding a much longer and strenuous route.

  “Shuttle boy?” I said. “Next thing, you’ll be asking if I like classical music and go to museums.”

  “Please,” Wheels said. “I had to read Capote in college. Been watching John Wayne movies ever since.”

  “Seven it is,” I said.

  Street and I got take-out Chinese and drove out to Emerald Bay. We parked at the Bayview Trailhead and hiked to the rocky cliff above the west end of Cascade Lake. Even in August, there were enough snow patches in the mountains to keep a steady flow of icy water rushing to Cascade Falls. We sat next to where the water tumbled over the edge. Below us was the indigo oval of Cascade Lake and behind it the huge blue swath of Tahoe. Spot lapped some water, then lay down next to the stream. He stretched out his head so that his nose was only inches from the flowing water.

  “You said you talked to the FBI man today?” Street said as she reached chopsticks into one of the white paper boxes and picked up a Sugar Snap pea. With delicate precision she placed it in her mouth. Spot strained his eyes upward to watch.

  “Agent Ramos,” I nodded, digging in with my plastic fork. “Same jerk as before.” I ate peas and chicken, then forked rice out of the other box. I cranked off the screw cap on a Big House Red, pulled glasses out of my pack and poured. I handed one to Street. “He thinks the killer is a professional who has a thing for flair and variety.”

  “Meaning?” Street dipped her chopsticks into the rice box and came out with five, maybe six grains. She chewed them carefully. I watched the thin edge of her jaw and the smooth skin of her neck as she swallowed. I didn’t understand why the way she ate gave me lascivious thoughts.

  “Meaning,” I said, “that it would explain why he used the handrail in my office or the bomb on Faith’s boat or figured out how to get Glory to ride off the Flume Trail when it would be much more efficient just to shoot us with a rifle.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t like rifles.” Street pulled a piece of chicken off the chopsticks with her lips.

  Spot gave up watching us. His eyes tracked a floating bug as it went past his nose.

  “Maybe. My guess is that he avoids firearms because they are easy to track. Then again, Ramos thought that there was no reason why the killer wouldn’t use a rifle if it suited him.”

  “You’re scaring me,” Street said.

  “I don’t mean to do that.” I rubbed her thigh. “I’m only saying that the killer’s taste for the unusual probably wouldn’t be exclusionary. If a rifle was appropriate for a job, he might use it.” I put my arm around her shoulders. “I’ll be careful.”

  We ate for a while.

  “Do you still think Tyrone hired this guy?”

  “Maybe.”

  Street maneuvered another speck of food onto her chopsticks. “Are you getting enough? I feel like I’m hogging it all.”

  “Yes, quite the glutton you are.” I took the box and ate the rest.

  She said, “It sounds like killing is a game for this guy. Like he’s not just doing a job for money.”

  “Could be.”

  We drank wine and looked out at the scenery.

  Street said, “Remember that psychologist you met when the arsonist was lighting the forest fires? The one who did work for the FBI in San Francisco?”

  “Yes. George something.”

  “Morrell,” Street said.

  “I’m the guy who met him. You recall his name.”

  “One tends to remember the details leading up to one’s kidnapping.”

  I gave her shoulders another squeeze.

  Street shivered. “What was it he said about serial killers?”

  “The homicidal trinity,” I said. “Many serial killers have a background of firestarting, animal torture and bed-wetting.”

  “I meant, what is the reason they kill?”

  “They don’t kill because they want a particular person dead. They kill because it gives them a thrill.”

  “You think this guy could be like that?”

  “No. It would suggest that the victims have no connection to one another. Faith called me about Glory, so that suggests some kind of connection. When I got involved, the killer came after me.”

  “But this concept of variety and flair would suggest that something about it is fun for him,” Street said. “A thrill. That’s not how I would imagine the motivations of a paid killer.”

  I drank the last of the wine.

  “Maybe you should call Morrell and ask him,” Street said.

  On the drive home, we stopped off at Street’s insect lab so she could pick up some homework. I poked around while she dug in a file cabinet.

  Street often did forensic consulting, taking maggot samples from bodies and using them to make time-of-death estimates. So I usually expected to see some gross-looking bugs at her office. Even so, I was surprised when I looked into a see-through container over on a darkened counter. Inside were very large cockroach specimens. I thought they were dead, and I flipped on a light for a closer look. There was an explosion of movement. I jerked back as they climbed over each other in an attempt to get out of the light.

  “I thought the only live bugs you had here were maggots and bark beetles.” My breath was short.

  “Oh, you found my little darlings. You know the Intro to Entomology class I teach at the community college. Well, one of my students, Theresa something, once told me they had two-inch cockroaches in the apartment where she grew up in San Francisco. I must have seemed doubtful of the size.”

  “So she dropped by with proof?” I said.

  “Yeah. Two days ago. The infamous American Cockroach. Periplaneta americana. Common from Florida to Mexico. And apparently in some less-than-savory buildings in the Bay Area. I can’t decide what to do with them.”

  “Just don’t let them out.”

  Spot and I said goodbye to Street at the door of her condo and headed up the mountain to my cabin. It was 9:30 p.m. when I got Morrell on the phone.

  “Sorry to bother you this late,” I said after I reminded him that he’d been a consultant to me on the forest fire case.

  “No problem. Being retired means that my evening is no longer more precious than my day. Call any time.”

  “Do you know of the singer named Glory?”

  “Yes, I have her third CD, Born Of Jazz. Listened to it twice since I heard about her death.”

  “I’m looking for her killer.”
<
br />   “I thought her death was an accident.”

  “It’s looking like murder.” I went over the events since Faith first called me. When I was done I said, “My assumption is that the man who attacked me with the handrail is the same man who murdered Faith Runyon and Glory. If the FBI is correct, he may be a hired killer. My question is in regard to his motivations.”

  “I don’t mean to sound flip,” Morrell said, “but most hired killers are motivated by the money.”

  “That makes sense. So why would he go to such lengths as using a bomb to blow up Faith’s boat, or try to kill me with a handrail? As for Glory’s death, we don’t yet know why she rode off the cliff. But in any event, a gun is much easier and usually more effective. Why not use it if the goal is the money?”

  “I can only speculate,” Morrell said. “First, there are the practical reasons, which you’ve no doubt considered. Bombs destroy evidence. Bicycles going off cliffs look like accidents. A wooden stick is an easy weapon to burn. Then come the impractical reasons, which is to say, the reasons of the psyche. Think of the bus driver who drives too fast, the pilot who likes to push the performance limits of a jet, the cardiac surgeon who tries a daring but unnecessary new technique. All have nothing to do with the supposed reasons they go to work, which is to provide a useful service and get paid for it. Yet, people routinely engage in behavior that by some measures is stupid. This killer may be doing the same thing.”

  “You don’t think this guy is just a thrill-killer?”

  “No. The typical serial, thrill-killer is likely to be disconnected enough from reality that we would call him psychotic. He’s murdering just for kicks. And his victims are not connected to each other. That doesn’t fit this killer. This guy may have been paid to kill both Glory and Faith. And you, for that matter. Or perhaps he was only paid to kill Glory, and his pursuit of you and Faith is merely to cover his tracks.”

  “So he’s seeking variety in his methods just because it makes life more exciting.”

  “Yes, crass as it sounds.”