Tahoe Heat

by Todd Borg

  He clearly knew that I was following him. But I couldn’t tell if he was fleeing from me or enticing me to chase him.

  The truck suddenly accelerated again. But my old, rusted Jeep has the big engine they offered the year it was made, and I easily kept up with him. At one point on a curve, oncoming headlights shined through the truck’s glass. I saw the silhouette of the driver but no one else.

  We were back up to 50 mph when he made a sudden turn to the right and skidded off onto some kind of trail that I never knew existed. I hit the brakes and followed.

  The trail was rutted and rocky and wound through trees and sage. The pickup bounced along in front of me, his rear wheels spinning and kicking up stones and dirt. I tried to keep up, but the Jeep was bouncing so hard, it bottomed out on the suspension and then popped into the air. My head hit the ceiling. I knew that Spot was being thrown around so hard that he could suffer real injury. Maybe the suspension of the pickup was less vulnerable to this kind of trail. Whatever the reason, it kept up an incredible speed, gradually pulling away from me.

  I dropped back ten, then twenty yards. The pickup’s dust plume grew to obscure its taillights. I had a harder time seeing where the trail went. I kept the pedal down and pushed into the dirt cloud as fast as possible.

  After a moment, I burst into clear air and realized he’d turned off his lights, pulled off and stopped. I looked left and right, trying to see where he’d gone. I raced forward until I saw a place where I could pull in to the left. I turned around and came back down toward him.

  I slowed as the dust cloud thickened.

  The truck was off to the side between some trees. I turned at an angle as I stopped so that my headlights were on the truck. Either he was lying down on the seat, or it was empty.

  I turned more, so that my headlights shined into the forest.

  Nothing.

  I backed up, angled the other way.

  My headlights fell on him, a lone figure in dark clothes, dodging through the trees into the darkness. Only one thing about him stood out, the tool he carried, its shiny surface catching and reflecting my headlights.

  An axe.

  In the tortured space of a second or two that I could not afford to waste, I considered my options.

  I knew that I could send Spot after him. But the man might hear the footsteps of the attacking dog, and turn with his axe.

  I couldn’t do it.

  I grabbed the tiny flashlight out of the glove box and shoved it into my pocket. Before I turned off the Jeep, I turned on the brights and honked the horn, hoping he’d turn and look toward the lights, thereby reducing his night vision for a minute. Then I shut it off and left the Jeep with Spot in it.

  The forest was dark. The sliver of moon was now behind the thunderstorms across the lake, and of no benefit to me in the deep woods. I heard vehicles on the highway, but they were below us down the slope, and there were far too many trees between us and the highway for their lights to get through.

  I held my arms out and up in front of my face as I ran. I could just make out the tree trunks as vague stripes of black against the dark background. But I couldn’t see the branches. They hit my outstretched arms and gave me warning to duck and bend and shut my eyes to avoid losing them on sharp, dried branches.

  Every few seconds I stopped and held my breath, trying to locate the noise of the other person over the pounding of my heart. The third time I stopped, it seemed as if he was turning more upslope. The fourth time I stopped, he was angling back toward the two-rut trail. Then his noise stopped.

  I assumed he’d stopped like me, listening to the darkness, trying to hear if I was close to him or not.

  But as I stared toward the last sound, I realized that there was a large, vague dark hump that rose up. I moved that direction, struggling to make out the lay of the land. As I got closer, the rise became more evident, a sharp slope that rose toward the not-quite-black sky. I slowed, stepping carefully, aware that he could be near, listening for my footsteps. Twigs snapped under my feet. The occasional larger branch broke with a loud pop.

  The closer I got to the slope, the more it looked like a big bump of ground, a hill on the broader slope. As I reconsidered the shape of his earlier sounds, it began to make sense to me that he’d gone around the backside of the hump. That would explain why his footfalls went silent. He was circling around the hump of ground to double-back to his truck. I was thinking about whether I should follow or try to intercept him by going around the other direction, when I heard a noise.

  I stopped in mid-stride, the heel of my forward foot just touching the ground.

  It sounded like a snap of some kind, high in pitch. It came from somewhere behind me. But I’d been moving, so my sense of direction was vague.

  I had walked Spot in the forest at night countless times. I always noticed how many noises there are. Numerous animals sleep during the day and come out at night to avoid being seen by predators. As a result, numerous predators have adapted to hunting at night. Coyotes and Great Horned owls and raccoons and mountain lions and house cats. All of which occasionally make noise. But forest sounds take on a new feeling when you know that somewhere nearby, there is a man with an axe.

  Very slowly, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the flashlight. I put my thumb over the switch, pointed it toward the sound, ready to flip it on if I heard another sound.

  Even more slowly, I lifted my left foot, moved it at glacial speed toward a nearby tree, set it down as if I were growing my own roots rather than walking. I repeated the process with my right foot, moving toward the tree like a movie on quadruple slo-mo. Despite how dark it was, being behind a tree would give me more protection.

  Again I made another slow, silent step toward the tree, and finally got next to it. I shifted a bit so that I was on the opposite side from where I thought the noise originated. I leaned my head out, and stared into the darkness. My flashlight was still out, my thumb ready to push the button. If the man was actually there, given enough time, he’d eventually make a move.

  I waited a long minute. Then another. I heard tiny rustlings, like the movements of a mouse. Or the sounds of my imagination. The noises were so soft, I couldn’t discern a direction. They came from nowhere and everywhere at once.

  I began a slow silent count, deciding I would move if I got to five hundred without any sound from the axe man.

  The sudden crack of a breaking branch was loud in my ears. Directly behind me.

  I spun, turning on the flashlight. The beam caught a flash of movement, the silver glint of a sharpened axe blade, arcing toward my head.

  FIFTY-ONE

  I jerked to the side. Raised my forearm against the striking axe. The wooden handle smashed against my elbow. The axe deflected a fraction of a degree. The blade missed my head and slammed into the tree, scraping my right shoulder as it went by.

  The flashlight was knocked to the ground.

  The man ran away into the night.

  I tried to push away from the tree trunk to chase after him, but I was pinned. The axe head had sliced through my jacket and shirt, its cold metal grazing my skin, and nailed me to the bark.

  Pain seared my right shoulder. I twisted my body so that I could reach over with my left hand and grab the handle. But the axe was sunk deep into the tree, and my grip was ineffective.

  I raised my right leg and used my knee to apply sideways pressure to the axe handle. With my left hand and knee together, I forced the axe out of the tree. My right arm felt shaky, so I grabbed the axe in my left hand and the flashlight in my right and ran toward where I thought the man had gone. I shined the feeble light beam into the woods, trying to find my way, aware that it made me a target, but hoping that he had no more weapons.

  I’d soon come a good distance, but when I stopped to listen, I heard nothing. After ten seconds, I decided he was too far away to hear, so I headed in the general direction that I thought would bring me near my Jeep. If I could send Spot after him soon enough, I s
till had a chance. The man might have a gun that he could use on Spot, but I doubted it, as he would have probably used it instead of the axe to try to kill me. Or used it after the axe failed to kill me.

  I ran ahead, looking for my Jeep or his truck or the rutted trail. When it was clear that I didn’t know where my Jeep was, I paused, pulled my phone out of my pocket and opened it to look at the display. No reception.

  I wandered through the black woods. Five minutes later, I heard a truck down on the highway. The sound came 90 degrees from where I thought the highway was. Based on that new information, I adjusted my search for the Jeep. As I stumbled through the forest, I tried to imagine who would carry an axe around in his pickup, and what kind of a person could use it to kill another person.

  The only one I could think of with that kind of inner fire was the fitness buff, Holly Hughes, master of the bullwhip, mother of Ryan’s gamer friend William. Ryan had frightening memories of her chopping wood with an axe.

  I stumbled onto the rutted trail. I went down it for a bit, but realized that my Jeep must be up the trail instead of down. So I turned and came to the truck and my Jeep after a short run.

  The truck had been backed up and smashed into the front of the Jeep, then left to block the trail. The impact didn’t look like it had been severe. The airbags in the Jeep hadn’t deployed. Spot looked fine as he stood in the back seat. I ran the dimming flashlight over the truck, wondering why the man hadn’t driven it away. The answer was in the flat, left front tire.

  Two of the truck’s wheels sat in depressions. I tried the truck’s door. It was locked. But even if it hadn’t been, I could never budge it from the depressions that the wheels were in unless I could start it. Hot-wiring a strange truck would not be fast or easy.

  I shined my light on the ground, noted multiple boulders. A distant squealing of tires came from the highway. Then another screech of rubber. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I guessed it involved the man, or woman, who’d wielded the axe.

  I walked back behind the Jeep, up the path, checking for a place where I might get through the forest. There were fallen trees and boulders and ravines everywhere I looked.

  I went back to the truck, took a good-sized rock and smashed the passenger window. I reached in, opened the door, swept the broken glass onto the floor and slid in. Once behind the driver’s seat, I released the parking brake, and I pulled on the shifter, hoping the truck was old enough that the shift movement wasn’t integrated with the key lock in the steering column.

  It wasn’t, and I pulled the shift down to neutral.

  I transferred to the Jeep and started it. Spot jumped around, eager to have me back, tired of being left in a vehicle in the forest and being rammed by a truck. He stuck his nose over my burning shoulder. I gave him a quick pat on the nose.

  “Okay, boy, hang on.” I put the Jeep in 4-wheel-drive and eased it forward until it contacted the back bumper of the truck. I gave it gas. The Jeep’s engine roared, wheels spun, and gradually I pushed the truck forward. The driver had left the wheels turned, so it curved to the right.

  After a few feet, the truck’s flat tire and the rutted path created too much resistance. I floored the accelerator, and the truck rolled another few feet and hit an obstruction.

  I backed up. The truck rolled back with me. So I pushed it forward once again, wheels spinning, engine racing as if to blow up.

  When the truck again hit the obstruction, I stopped, put the Jeep in park, put the parking brake on as far as it would go and let my foot off the brake. The Jeep and truck moved a bit, but held. I got out and ran to the truck to put on its brake and shifted it back into park.

  When I again backed up the Jeep, the truck didn’t roll back with me, and I was able to squeeze by, scraping a tree on the left and the truck’s bumper on the right.

  I bounced down the rutted path, the Jeep lurching as if to come off its wheels. I drove as fast as possible, my head hitting the ceiling. Spot was flung back and forth despite hunkering down to get some stability.

  It felt like the distance was triple what it was on the drive in. When I got to the highway, I turned north, thinking that was the direction I’d heard the screeching tires. As I sped away, I had a thought. I looked at my phone again, and saw that it had reception. I jerked to the side of the road, stopped, and dialed Diamond’s number.

  “It’s me,” I interrupted before he finished answering. “I just tangled with the killer in the forest south of Hidden Woods. It was dark, so I don’t know who he is. He nailed me to a tree with an axe, then got away. He had a flat tire on his pickup and left it in the woods. I heard screeching tires on the highway. I’m guessing he hijacked a car on the highway. You had any reports?”

  “No. Nothing,” he said.

  “Call me if you hear anything?”

  “Yes.”

  I hung up and drove to Ryan’s. The house was dark. Smithy’s Toyota was in the driveway, engine running. I beeped the horn and waved my hand out my window.

  I had a sudden, nagging thought about something Lily had said.

  When she saw Matisse’s painting of The Horse, the Rider, and the Clown, she talked about how the curve that symbolized the rider was almost the same as the curve that symbolized the clown. She said that a little change makes a big difference.

  I parked and got out Herman’s piano tuning code. I’d always approached the code by trying to figure out what the numbers of beats indicated. This time, I ignored the beats and just looked at the letters. GEWN REAR DECAO. Could I make a little change in the letters to create a big change in meaning?

  I saw it in a minute. Staring at me all of this time.

  Just to verify what it meant, I called Maria one more time.

  “Sí,” she said into the phone.

  “Owen McKenna calling. Sorry to be brusque, but I have one more quick question.”

  “Of course.”

  “Some time back I heard someone say something like, ‘A thrush can hurt a frog.’ A thrush is a bird. But is it also something to do with a horse?”

  “Sí. Thrush is an infection in the soft tissue of a horse’s hoof. That part of the hoof is called the frog. Thrush can really hurt the frog. That is one of the reasons Mustangs do so well in the desert. The dry footing keeps their hooves from getting thrush.”

  “Gracias, Maria.” I hung up.

  The statement about thrush and frog came from someone who professed to know nothing of horses, someone who let me believe my mistaken notion that the statement was about a bird.

  If the axe-man had hijacked a vehicle, Diamond would have heard by now. Which meant the killer was probably traveling on foot to the nearest alternative transportation. Lana’s horses.

  I shifted the Jeep and headed back out to the highway, driving very fast, emergency flashers on. When I got to the drive to Lana’s house and stable, I made a hard, skidding turn, and drove up the narrow road.

  Lana’s house appeared in my headlights. I careened around it, and followed the road back to the Mondrian barn.

  Light spilled from the open barn door. I jumped out, let Spot out of the back. Streaks of blood went from the parking area to the barn door. I ran inside.

  Prancer and Peppy neighed at me, their heads over their stall walls, their eyes wide, hooves pawing the floor as they stomped back and forth.

  Paint was gone.

  Lana’s nephew Tory was nowhere to be seen.

  Lana was lying on the floor, her head bent up against the front wall of Paint’s horse stall. Her elbow was on one of the stall’s boards, her hand wedged against a deep circular cut across her throat. Blood bubbled out from under her fingers. The red river ran down her chest and dripped off onto the concrete floor. She was alive, but she looked groggy.

  I ran into the tack room, found a dirty rag, brought it out to Lana. I put it under her hand against the pulsing blood flow.

  I held her hand and the rag against her neck while I dialed Diamond with my other hand. Blood ran over my hand, dri
pped off onto the floor. As I waited while it rang, I thought, compress the wound hard enough to close the leak, you shut off the blood to the brain.

  “It’s McKenna,” I said when he answered. “I’m at Lana’s barn. She is severely wounded, bleeding profusely from her neck. Send help fast.”

  “Go,” Lana interrupted. “He’s after Ryan Lear.” Her words were so thick they were hard to understand. “He’s crazy... bullwhip. Cave Rock.”

  “I can’t leave you like this.”

  Her words were weaker. “I... die... you’re here or not. Save Ryan.” She passed out.

  FIFTY-TWO

  I put Spot in the Jeep, gunned the engine, and raced down Lana’s drive. I hit the buttons for Ryan’s cell. It rang several times, forwarded me to page and voice menu.

  “If you get this message, do not go home!” I said at the prompt. “I’ll call you later.”

  I raced down the highway, slid into the turnoff, sped up the driveway. Ryan’s motion lights were on.

  I hit the brakes, skidded to a stop next to Ryan’s Lexus. The car was caved in on one side as if from multiple blows of a kicking horse. It looked undrivable.

  Smithy was sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree. He held his hands at his face, blood coming through his fingers.

  Ryan was on his knees in front of his house, hands clasped in front of his chest, his head tipped back. The roaring scream coming from his upturned mouth was agonizing.

  Carol was nearby, doing a frantic kind of dance as if she were on hot coals. She jerked and bent and spun. A whimpering terror rose from her throat. I realized that I was looking at people coming apart.

  I ran up and saw blood running down Ryan’s face, blood coming out of a large tear in his pants. There was an ugly 4-inch laceration above his ear. Blood soaked his hair.