Tahoe Payback (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 15)

by Todd Borg

  Next to me, Diamond seemed to focus on those individuals who were physically the most boisterous. No doubt, that indicated to him where a physical altercation was most likely to break out.

  I was lost in my negative reverie about the human species. I found myself thinking that people, who were so clever and so capable of amazing things, had a collective moral value below that of dogs. Rare was the dog who was intrinsically mean and self-serving above all other concerns. But it was common in people. Which was why people were the most successful predators.

  As I scanned the people before me, imagining which ones were not in Tahoe to celebrate good charity work but were instead here to hang with fellow crooks, a person moved through my field of vision. He was on the other side of the campfire, not running, but moving with purpose. Something about him seemed familiar. I stared, squinting, trying to get a good glimpse of his face. I realized that he reminded me of the donor lady’s son, Betty Rodriguez’s son Gray. The man who had clearly stated his hatred of charity scammers.

  Then he was gone.

  A moment later, a murmur arose from a group on the other side of the campfire. Six or eight people had turned away from the fire, looking toward the dark forest. I heard a gasp. A cry. Then a collective exclamation of surprise and horror.

  The words, “Oh, my God!” and “What’s going on?!” and “I can’t believe this!” rose from the group.

  Other people heard and turned to look at some kind of movement in the dark. Something swung back and forth as if on a swing.

  The vague shape swinging in the forest began to levitate. As it rose up above the crowd, it was lit by the campfire and also by the flashlights of several people in the crowd.

  The gasp of horror grew as we realized what we were seeing.

  It was a man, hanging from a rope looped around his ankles. The rope was lifting him up into the trees, a body, alive or maybe dead, being hoisted to the sky.

  An amplified voice crackled through the night air. The voice was loud enough to be heard over the DJ’s music. It was also garbled, like that of the young man Matt who had called me and told me to come to the party.

  “You are all predators!” The voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. “Your crime is preying on the innocent and bleeding them dry. But you are not apex predators. I am the apex predator. And I am taking you down, one by one.”

  FORTY-NINE

  D iamond was on his radio in a moment, calling in troops.

  I considered whether or not there was a way to contain all the witnesses. But within seconds, they panicked, yelling and scattering into the forest as if running from a bomb. There would be no way to stop them. Our only hope was that if anyone had seen anything helpful, they might stay around and volunteer the information.

  I pointed my light up toward the victim, but he was too high, and my beam was weak. Diamond got off his radio and pulled a flashlight from his pocket. He walked over below the victim and shined his light up. More people shined their lights. Eventually, there were enough combined beams to clearly light the hanging person, but there was little to see beyond the fact that there was no obvious movement. The victim was 80 or 100 feet above the ground, too far to reveal anything.

  Diamond called out. “Hello to the person hanging in the trees! This is Sergeant Martinez, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. Can you hear me?”

  There was no response.

  “If you can hear me but can’t talk, move your body.”

  Nothing.

  We could see the rope from the victim’s ankles rising above him, but it was obscured by tree branches.

  Diamond called out again in a loud voice. “This is an announcement to everyone who can hear me. Your observations of what just happened are very important to us. We’d like to ask you questions about what you saw. Please stay here so that we can talk to you. We have more officers coming, and they’ll be able to help speed the process so you won’t have to wait too long.”

  From the standpoint of the perpetrator, it was a brilliant display of theater. Hoist a victim from the midst of a crowd in such a manner that we couldn’t even see how it was done. Then, despite the presence of law enforcement on the scene, the perpetrator had little concern that anyone would identify him.

  I looked around the dark forest, thinking about the process the perpetrator used.

  If I had wanted to commit such a crime, I’d come out during the daylight and climb to the top of the bluff, which was 100 or 150 feet tall. From there, I’d toss a stone out and up into the tall pines. I’d have a long thin line tied to the stone. Something like paracord. If the line was forest green, even better. If the stone’s trajectory didn’t work, I’d toss more stones until I got it just right.

  Once a stone and its line went where I wanted, I’d tie the end of the line off near the top of the bluff. Then I could climb down and secure the line near the tree trunk so that it would be ready when I wanted it.

  Later, I’d have my heavy, beefy companions waiting up on the bluff. When I snared my victim, I’d give word over my cell phone, and my comrades would wrap the line over shoulder pads, loop it around their torso for grip, then lean into it and trot off across the top of the dark bluff, raising the victim who was tied to the other end.

  As soon as I visualized the process, I realized a much better way to do it.

  There are lightweight, low-voltage winches available for use on sailboats and, no doubt, many other applications. Instead of getting help from companions, the perpetrator could set up a winch, tied to a tree at the top of the bluff. A lightweight battery could be connected to the winch. The switch could be triggered electronically. I didn’t know the details, but I’d learned about electronic actuators in a previous case. The winch might weigh 8 pounds and the battery another 8 pounds. Add a few pounds for miscellaneous gear, and the whole works would be less than 20 pounds. As soon as the perpetrator had snared the victim, he’d trigger the electronic remote. If he’d left no fingerprints on his equipment and there was no serial number on the equipment to identify where and when it had been purchased, the perpetrator would be very difficult to find.

  Another possibility would be that while everyone else was still trying to understand what was happening, the perpetrator would already be climbing the bluff. Soon after the victim was up into the trees and the winch had turned itself off, triggered by a distance measurement or some other gadget, the perpetrator would be nearly to the winch. He’d take the line that stretched out into the tree branches and down to the victim, and he’d tie it off on something strong. The winch and battery would easily fit into a backpack with his megaphone, and he’d be gone.

  The perpetrator knew from the lay of the land that no one would be able to reliably trace the activity and locations for hours and maybe even not until daylight. By then, even if the victim had still been alive when he was hoisted, he’d likely have died from the combined effects of cold temperature exposure, the stress of hanging upside down, and, if Doc Lee was right in his suspicions, the pulmonary impairment caused by some kind of spray in the victim’s lungs.

  The hitch in my concept was that the perpetrator wouldn’t know about the pop-up party location and the bluff until it was announced by way of email that afternoon. Unless he had inside information from the pop-up rave organizers. However, the whole process could possibly be put in place in the time between the announcement of the location and the moment the victim was snared around his ankles.

  The perpetrator might have no connection to the organizers.

  As I pondered the possibilities, I realized that Diamond had been busy setting up a perimeter around the area below the hanging body. He’d recruited three young men to help.

  I caught Diamond’s attention. “You’ve got this area under control. Reinforcements will arrive shortly. I’m going to hike up the slope on the north side of the bluff and see if I can find the line that holds the victim. If there’s any chance he’s still alive, it would be critical to lower him down as fast as pos
sible.”

  “Good idea,” Diamond said. “When any of my men arrive, I’ll send someone up to help you.”

  FIFTY

  I wanted to go back to the parking lot and get Spot. There were few things better than him when dealing with a bad guy in the dark. But it would take me fifteen minutes to run down the trail, get him out of the Jeep, and return to the campfire site.

  Meanwhile, there was a man hanging by his ankles up in the black treetops. If he was still alive, and if I had any chance of finding the rope that held him, I could possibly lower him to the ground.

  I tried to run up through the trees toward the bluff. The woods weren’t especially dense, but my light was small. The slope to the side of the bluff was very steep. As it got steeper still, my feet slipped in the loose duff that made up the top several inches of the soil. I remembered the headlamp in my pocket and put it on.

  I used my hands as I went up. It was an imposing slope. I slipped continuously, dirt shooting out from under my shoes and hands. But with four traction points, I made progress.

  I came to a wall of rock. Leaning back, shining the light left and right, I realized it was a house-sized boulder. It looked like I could get around it to the left.

  With my hands digging into dirt and grasping at every little root fiber, I moved to the side of the rock face, then continued up. As I crested the top of the giant rock, the campfire from down below appeared in my peripheral vision. I was up high enough now that if I scanned into the trees, it was possible I’d see the man hanging from his feet. But I didn’t dare look toward the fire. I didn’t want to lose what night vision I had. It was more important to focus on what I believed I’d find at the top of the bluff. The perpetrator was probably long gone. But if I could get to the rope that held the victim, I could possibly lower the victim to the ground. Maybe he could be saved.

  I continued to claw my way up the slope. Sirens sounded in the distance. The strong scents of moist soil filled the air as my fingers scraped dirt from the mountain side.

  After several more minutes of climbing on all fours, I came to the top of the slope. Scanning with my light, left and right, I tried to sense where the perpetrator would likely run his rope from the trees to a winch and, probably, another tree that he would use to tie the rope off. Nothing was obvious. I turned toward the pine trees, but I couldn’t see the victim among the thick branches.

  I jogged along the top edge of the bluff, sweeping my little headlamp beam left and right, hoping to see a rope stretched taut from a tree or boulder, out into the dark space of the tree canopy above the rave’s campfire.

  The clifftop edge of the bluff was not obvious. I had to slow down to avoid tumbling off. I’d gone about 50 feet when I heard a noise to the side. Whether human or animal, I didn’t know.

  I turned, shined my light. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I saw movement in the dark.

  “Police!” I shouted. “Don’t move, and you won’t be hurt.”

  There was a rustle in the forest. Someone or something was running away from me.

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  I sprinted toward the movement, toward the dark. I tried to shine my light, tried to see the dark trees. My ankle caught on a branch, tripping me. I went down just as my ankle broke the branch with a loud snap. I tumbled face first into the darkness, hitting the ground hard with my shoulder and my left cheek. My hip ground across an abrasive rock. Something between my hip and the rock seemed to catch and jerk across the rough surface and then give way.

  My first thought was that I was very fortunate that I hadn’t knocked my teeth out.

  My second thought was about the loud zipper sound as a broken line came out from under my hip and zinged through the trees, over branches, and down. The victim hanging upside down by his ankles dropped like a rock, head first, toward the ground 100 feet below.

  FIFTY-ONE

  I was stunned. There was no time to get up and run to the edge to shout out to the people below. There was no possibility of arranging a soft landing.

  The sound of the racing line went dead. I heard a thudding sound followed by a collective gasp from unseen people below.

  With a sickening sense of dread overwhelming me, I pushed myself up off the ground and stood up, listening to the woods back from the edge of the bluff.

  Whoever or whatever animal had been in the trees was gone. Without a dog, I’d never find him.

  I walked to the edge of the bluff, moving slowly as I got near the edge. I looked down.

  While most of the crowd had disappeared, the campfire was still bright, now a lonely fire in the forest. To one side, I could see multiple people bent over a body.

  I tried to gather my thoughts. My headlamp beam seemed more feeble than before. Or maybe it just looked dim in the forest compared to the klieg lights that were searing my mind space. I shined the flashlight here and there, but it was as if I was unable to register what I was seeing. I tried to find the place where the rope might have been tied. There were boulders and trees and shrubs throughout the black forest. But nowhere was there an obvious collection of synthetic fibers left by the paracord or whatever kind of rope the victim had been tied with.

  After a minute, I realized the futility of standing in the dark at the top of a bluff on a mountainside where no one was going to arrive with searchlights anytime soon if ever.

  I headed back down as more sirens sounded in the distance.

  There seemed no familiar route down off the bluff. I looked for the slope to the side of the rocky cliff, the area where I’d climbed up. It seemed like entirely new territory. As it got steeper, I had to turn to face the slope, once again using both hands and feet to climb down without falling. It was very difficult to turn my head to shine the light behind me.

  Mostly I descended blind, not noticing my surroundings, my mind occupied with the person I’d probably killed.

  I knew that it was an accident.

  But to be an agent of death was very difficult. At best, I was guilty of bad judgment. At worst, I’d made a terrific error of running where I should have been moving very cautiously.

  Ten minutes later, I got to the bottom and walked out of the dark woods into the light of the fading fire.

  There was still a perimeter set up. But this time it was officers in uniforms, Douglas County Sheriff’s deputies. There was another officer talking to a small group of party-goers. One officer was stretching yellow crime-scene tape.

  In the center of the perimeter, there was a group of people bent over the crumpled body on the ground. But for several flashlight beams, it was very dark, shadowed from the firelight by a rise in the ground and a large fallen log that lay on the ground nearby. In a surreal way, the officers vaguely looked like they were in a football huddle, plotting strategy.

  At the center of the group was Diamond, obvious not by his face, but by the way he held himself. Diamond was a natural leader. He took charge the way a good ship’s captain takes charge when the hull is ruptured on a reef.

  I moved toward them tentatively.

  “Sir, stay back!” one of the deputies shouted at me.

  The rest of the men looked up.

  “McKenna’s okay,” Diamond said. “Let him in.”

  I walked in toward the group. Two men and one woman were bent over the body. If they’d tried life-saving measures, they’d given up. The body was crumpled, head deformed and jammed down into the neck and chest in a manner from which no one would survive.

  Next to the body was a stretcher.

  “Okay,” one of them said. “Roll over on three.” It was a maneuver to save people with spine injuries from further injury, though unnecessary in the current context. But their efforts might help the medical examiner.

  “One, two, three,” the young man said.

  They rolled the body over onto the stretcher. Diamond shined his light on the body’s face. It was a young man in his late twenties, with curly, almost angelic brown hair that cupped his face.

  One
deputy said, “I sure don’t get how the perp got a line tied around this guy’s ankles without him yelling for help.”

  I was still dumbstruck by what had happened, breathing a fast pant, my heart pounding a rapid beat. You kill someone, even inadvertently, it still renders you useless. I tried to force myself to think and respond, but I couldn’t come up with words.

  One of the party-goers said, “The guy was really swinging when he was first raised up. I couldn’t believe it! It’s like he was lifted off the ground some distance away from the spot below the hanging point.” A pause, then the person clarified, “Some distance away from where the body is now.”

  “Okay, guys,” Diamond said. “The victim has no ID on him, nothing in his pockets. Search in circles, moving away from the body. Look for anything that doesn’t belong in the forest.”

  Three deputies started searching, training their flashlights on the ground. Again, I thought of how much Spot could help. But I couldn’t motivate myself to go get him. I could barely breathe.

  “Hey, Sarge,” the female deputy called out. “Found a wallet behind this Manzanita bush.”

  Diamond walked over and looked where the woman was shining her light. He had on his latex gloves. He reached down and picked up the wallet. “Put up an additional perimeter around this spot. Don’t mar the ground. We want anything else, no matter how small. In the morning light, we’ll search again.”