Tahoe Payback (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 15)

by Todd Borg

  The man was silent. I wanted to provoke him. “The Vegas bartender said you mentioned kids with unisex names. You’d probably been waiting a long time to tell that story.”

  When the man spoke, his voice was a hiss of anger. “We’d been in the orphanage less than a year when my sister Kelly killed herself. I’ve been planning to punish that bastard slime ever since. I finally tracked him down. Now he has a nail through his head and a bullet through his heart.”

  I said, “The charity guys you hung from the flagpole and train didn’t hurt you.”

  “First, I avenged the crimes against Kelly and me. After Dory was killed, I realized how easy it was to find other scammers and avenge their crimes the same way that Dory was killed. Dory showed how the charity scam could be perfected. I admit that. So I’m rebuilding her charity to beat the scammers at their own game, and I’m using their deaths as warnings to the other scammers. It’s easy to find them. They’re listed on charity websites.”

  “Doesn’t that make you as bad as them?”

  “You get old enough, you realize that Darwin was right. Life is survival of the fittest, not survival of the ethically pure. As I eliminate more scammers, I make the world a better place.” The man was petting Spot, watching me with a look of contempt.

  I realized that even though I was hanging upside down, I could influence my swing by how I flexed my body. Because my legs were tied, I couldn’t swing my legs like a kid on a swingset. But I could swing my head and chest. That realization did me no good unless I could find a useful purpose in swinging one direction or another. I got myself turned around, facing another direction, but with no control. However, I now saw the tall black spray can on a shelf above the workbench.

  Wasp killer.

  When someone is about to kill you, the rule is always to fight back. If you can’t fight back, try to stall the killer. “Dory’s brother told me about how Dory was into Lagrangian points, scientific curiosities that could also be a metaphor for aspects of business.”

  By doing a slight crunching motion, I’d increased my amount of swing. Now I just needed to learn how to change direction.

  I continued. “So it was your interest in Lagrangian points that caused you to look up the professor and read about him. You learned that he was a loner with a heart problem. So you hatched a wild idea.”

  My swinging ellipse had rotated so that I was now arcing almost directly over Lynn. If he noticed my change of direction, he either didn’t care, or he thought it was just the result of randomness.

  “Probably you really wanted to be a scientist when you were young. You were smart, but you didn’t have that level of mental power. You were a dilettante, a wannabe. You knew enough science to pull off the substitution of yourself for Professor Calvarenna. That was an inspired fraud, stepping into Giuseppe Calvarenna’s shoes, taking on his identity. And it was especially bold moving into his house.”

  Lynn boosted himself up and sat on the workbench. “Rewards come to those who take risks,” he said. “I didn’t know whether the professor knew any of his neighbors well. His closest neighbor was the old water-color lady who lives in the little bungalow. But she accepted me in his place. So either she never met him up close, or she’s a demented old fool.”

  I continued, “What perfect timing that Dory got killed while you were off playing the lecturing scientist on a cruise ship. You had an alibi, so you could embark on copycat killings and be out of suspicion.”

  My head was throbbing with blood pressure from hanging upside down. But I wanted to keep the man distracted from his plan for me. As I looped around the barn, looking at my surroundings upside down, I searched for any possible way out of my situation. I’d managed to change my path so I didn’t come as close to him. I didn’t want him reaching up and striking me with one of those sticks of wood.

  I kept up my chatter, thinking that it couldn’t hurt and could possibly help. And if I angered him, maybe he’d make a mistake.

  “I get that you feel it’s okay to kill charity scammers. But why the kid Matt? He seemed too young to be a scammer.”

  “He was a thief, and probably on his way to getting into the business. I hired him to do computer work for me. Then I came home and found him copying my files onto a memory stick.”

  My brain felt about to rupture. I had to make a mental map of everything in the barn that was at my level. I had to find some way to cut myself down.

  “So you took care of that with your boldest killing yet. Killing him at the charity party sent a powerful message of hate aimed at scammers.”

  Lynn made a dismissive snort. “You spin a story,” he said. “But now we’re done.” He picked up the remote from the workbench and pressed a button. The winch started lowering me. With his other hand, he lifted the can of wasp killer off the shelf.

  I was desperate, unable to think clearly.

  A tense, deadweight of dread knotted my insides as I swung back and forth, hanging from my ankles. I’d made every possible mistake. I’d fallen for every possible trap. The man had complete control over me and Spot, and he’d outsmarted me in ways I never should have let happen.

  I started a gentle bucking, bending at the waist, trying to twist, using my limited movement in an attempt to keep myself gyrating and be hard to grasp.

  But my arms were tied. It wouldn’t be hard for him to grab me and give me a lungful of wasp killer.

  I took several deep breaths to calm myself and give myself more oxygen to aid in holding my breath, if it came to that.

  When the winch lowered me so that my head was five feet off the floor, Lynn pressed another button and the winch stopped.

  He picked up the bamboo pole and used it to poke into me and stop my swinging. He held out the wasp killer.

  “This can go easy,” he said. “I tape your mouth shut. Then I pinch your nose shut. You’ll make it easy on yourself if you take a big breath when I release your nostrils and direct the spray into your nose. Trust me, it works very fast. If you try to resist, you’ll just make it so you experience agonizing torture before you die. There’s no glory in that.”

  I tensed my stomach muscles to prepare. As he reached for me, I contracted my abdomen, bending forward at the waist in an explosive movement. My upper body came up and forward in a fast arc. I tilted my head forward as well.

  I heard the hiss of wasp spray in the air as he panicked and tried to back away. But he wasn’t fast enough.

  My forehead struck him a hard blow on his upper lip and nose. I felt teeth crack and heard nose bones splinter. The wasp can flew through the air as Lynn was slammed backward.

  He tried to take a step back to stop his fall. But he was staggered by the blow and moved with no coordination. His foot caught on something, and he went over backward. The back of his head struck the edge of the workbench. He went down and collapsed on the floor in a messy heap, blood oozing from mouth and nose. He moaned loudly, the sound seeming to twist in my ears as I swung back and forth.

  Spot sniffed at the motionless man, no doubt confused, possibly sad.

  Now came the hard part. The thin paracord around my ankles was like wire, cutting into me just as it had with the other victims. The only difference was that I hadn’t been forced to inhale wasp killer. But I would still likely die, as I had no way to cut myself down. My head felt so much pressure, it seemed certain that I would rupture major blood vessels. My heart thumped audibly in my ears. My vision blurred.

  I had to focus and put aside the stress of knowing that Lynn could come to at any moment and finish the job he’d started. I turned to take in the rest of the room.

  I looked for the remote. If it was close enough to grab, I could lower myself. I swiveled and rotated, trying to see where it went. There. On the floor.

  Could I reach one of the pieces of wood? Use that to get the remote? As soon as I thought of it, I realized there was no way I could grab a piece of wood or pick up the remote.

  What else could I grab with my arms bound at my s
ides?

  I pictured an ellipse, a path I could swing through the room. What was near that path?

  Nothing that would do me any good.

  I thought about trying to yell for help. But the closest house was Aubrey’s bungalow apartment, and even that was too far to expect anyone to be able to hear me. And she wasn’t home.

  I re-examined those portions of the barn that were within the distance that I could swing. There was nothing except two wall sconce light fixtures on either side of the fireplace and two more on each of two other walls, a total of six in all. They had bases made of brass and frosted glass chimneys. The ones on the walls were far enough from me that, even if I could swing over to them, the arc of my motion would bring me too high to reach them. But it appeared that I could possibly reach the sconces near the stone fireplace.

  So I did the hula hoop swivel, gyrating this way and that until I got a sense of what made me swing. Sometimes I just contracted my abdomen, lifting my head up to stare, momentarily, at the ceiling. Other times, I made a full twist with an accompanying shimmy. In time, I had myself swinging in a loop like a comet on a very long and lopsided orbit around the sun.

  As I arced around, I did more of the hula gyrations to alter my swinging orbit. My head pounded with pain from hitting Lynn’s face. My feet were numb.

  As I swung around, I contracted my abdomen to intensify my movement. My orbit gradually shifted and gradually elongated.

  My arms tingled. My left hand seemed to light up with jolts of nerve pain. The pressure of hanging upside down threatened to blow a pipe in my brain.

  As I gyrated and hula-hooped, I gradually changed my orbit about the room. I was soon swinging over Spot and the prostrate man, increasing my amplitude so that I approached the fireplace wall with the sconces.

  Spot watched me, confused, worried.

  I swung farther. Two more trips back and forth and I could possibly grab one of the sconces.

  I went out and back, abdomen flexing, a cramp building in my muscles. Out and back again.

  At the top of my next arcing swing, I gyrated so that my right side was facing the sconce. Although the cord around my chest bit severely into my elbows, I stretched my right hand out from my side. I tried to grab the glass chimney of the wall sconce.

  My fingers touched glass and then slipped off as I swung away.

  I swung back out, flexed my abdomen to increase my swing, then arced back.

  This time my fingertips got over the top edge of the glass chimney.

  I held on as I swung away. Glass shattered in a sharp loud crack. Pieces fell away. But I felt the reassurance of a shard in my fingers.

  I concentrated on gripping the shard, trying not to shift my fingers, which might cause me to drop it. I tried to turn the broken glass in my grip so I could angle it toward the cord around my chest. I felt a sharp point poke hard into my palm. Maybe it cut me, maybe not. I couldn’t tell.

  The cord around my chest burned my elbow as I bent my arm to bring the shard of broken glass against the paracord at my chest. I sawed one edge against the paracord, back and forth, over and over. I was still swinging in a large arc. The swinging made it hard to concentrate on how I was using my glass shard. My sawing motion felt like it did nothing. I had no sense that the edge of the glass was cutting the cord. There wasn’t enough light to see. I might have been sawing at my shirt and into my chest. I couldn’t even tell if I was trying to cut the cord with a broken edge of the glass or the smooth edge that had originally been at the top of the chimney.

  Complicating the situation was the fact that my hands were numb from the constriction of the cord. And the pressure in my head was growing worse.

  I kept sawing. Sawing and swinging.

  I heard the man groan. I strained to look down at him. His arm was moving, his hand at his face as if trying to brush away his brain fog.

  My fingers had lost all sensation of the glass shard. I tried to pinch harder just to reawaken awareness. I was still making sawing motions. Or at least, I thought I was.

  I paused and tried to reposition the shard, more to establish the sense of feeling it than anything else. I began sawing again. But I wasn’t able to cut the cord. Had I even nicked it? Was I really holding a broken shard of glass? Was I making motions, or was I imagining it? I felt like I was beginning to hallucinate.

  Then it occurred to me that, if I had made even a little abrasion on the cord, perhaps that would weaken it.

  Even though I was upside down and tied at the ankles and elbows, maybe I could create a breaking force just by jerking hard. So I took a deep breath, tensed all of my muscles, and made a total body jerk, trying to drive my elbows away from my body.

  The cord around my chest broke.

  My arms were now free, but I was still hanging from my ankles.

  Lynn made a louder moan.

  To cut the cord at my ankles would mean I’d have to tense my stomach muscles enough to reach up and grab the rope that suspended me. I’d already been doing the upside down sit-up move so much that my abdomen felt paralyzed. I didn’t know if I could do a major crunch again. To make it worse, if I succeeded in cutting myself free, I’d fall to the floor and land on my butt or even my head. At the lowest part of my arc, my head was five feet above the floor. At the highest part of my arc, eight or nine feet. Even if I could make my arms work and get my hands out first, I might not be able to absorb the force of the fall enough to prevent me from breaking my neck and paralyzing me or killing me immediately.

  There was a couch in front of the fireplace. If I could alter my ellipse enough, maybe I could cut myself down at the precise moment that would allow me to fall onto the couch.

  I had no other choices.

  The man moaned again, then rolled onto his side, pushed himself up to a sitting position, and looked up at me. Holding onto the workbench, he pulled himself to his feet. He reached under the bench to a shelf I hadn’t seen. Moving too fast for me to see, he pulled out a Taser gun, pointed it up at me, and fired. There was a percussive burst of compressed gas as the cartridge shot its load. Maybe I could have shouted “Weapon Hand” to Spot, but it was too late. Two sharp, electroshock darts, each trailing thin wires that supplied fifty thousand volts of electricity, arced through the air toward me.

  FIFTY-NINE

  O ne of the electroshock darts speared into my shoulder. The other grazed my neck as it shot past. As it brushed my neck, I felt a brilliant, shocking, lightning bolt of pain that lasted for a camera-flash moment. It focused all of my attention, but it was over so fast that it didn’t paralyze me.

  I pulled the dart out of my shoulder.

  Lynn picked up a piece of two-by-four lumber about six feet long.

  Maybe he intended to bludgeon me with it and then fill my lungs with wasp killer. But I was distracted by movement beyond him, outside the windows. In my oscillating view, I saw Aubrey Blackwood’s van going past her bungalow parking place and pulling up the drive to Giuseppe’s barn. Her van came to a stop near the door, close enough that she was out of view from where I swung.

  I didn’t have a clear view out the windows, but I sensed that Aubrey had gotten out of her van and was coming up toward the front entrance to the barn.

  Was she working with Lynn? Had she been in on his plan from the beginning?

  If I called out to her and she was his employee, nothing would change. But if she was innocent, it might give her a few extra moments to get away.

  I shouted out as loud as I could. “Aubrey! Go away! Don’t come in, it’s dangerous!”

  I didn’t know if she would be able to hear me, but I had to try.

  There was a knock at the door and then it opened.

  “Professor?” she called out. “It’s your neighbor Aubrey.” I saw her crutches reaching in the open doorway and clicking on the floor. “Professor, I saw the light and I wanted to tell you that I brought you a...”

  “Aubrey!” I said. “Run! Get out of here. Hurry. You’re in danger! This
man is a killer.”

  Aubrey Blackwood looked up and saw me swinging through the air. Her face showed puzzlement and confusion.

  “Aubrey, the professor is the murderer we’ve been looking for. He killed the men in Kings Beach and Truckee and the South Shore. He’s going to kill me, and now he’ll come after you. RUN!”

  It was clear that Aubrey didn’t comprehend. Maybe she hadn’t heard about the murders. Maybe her world was so focused on painting that it was hard to shift gears and absorb such shocking news. She stared at me and then at Lynn, who was holding himself up with his grip on the workbench. Her face showed no comprehension of threat, as if the only things that registered were what she talked about when I helped her carry her art supplies. Color and shape and value and emotion. A focus on beauty. An innocent pursuit that helped to shut out the meanness of the world.

  But what I couldn’t do to impress the danger on her, Lynn did.

  He leaned on the two-by-four, then pushed himself up away from the workbench. His face was running with blood as he stumbled toward Aubrey.

  “You have bad timing, neighbor,” he said. He sounded mean and focused and terrifying. “Now I have to silence you, same as I have to silence McKenna.” He turned away from me, focused on Aubrey, and lurched toward her.

  “Run, Aubrey!” I shouted.

  Aubrey seemed all at once to realize what was happening. Her eyes showed terror. She swung her crutches around, turned, moved her crutches farther. In a few moments, she got out the door of the barn and started toward her van.

  I heard whimpering cries of fear, the innocent sounds of horrible distress that someone makes when they realize that they are about to die at the hands of an evil person they thought was benign.

  Lynn took several awkward steps, using one hand to guide him along the workbench and the other on the piece of lumber. He paused and hung his head as if to prevent a bout of fainting. Then he seemed to find his balance. He began moving toward the door. His motion smoothed out. He let go of the workbench and moved faster.