Tahoe Payback (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 15)

by Todd Borg

  Aubrey struggled toward her van, crutches stabbing the ground, her scissors gait going at a fast rate and making her lean back and forth precariously.

  My oscillating, partial view gave me some hope. It looked like she’d make it to her van before Lynn could get to her.

  Then she fell.

  Aubrey sprawled out face down on the path, still ten feet from her driver’s door. She held onto one crutch, but the other skittered away.

  Her motions were frantic. She lifted her head off the ground, trying to see. She reached out for the wayward crutch, but her fingers couldn’t grab it. With great effort, she rolled onto her side, raised her knees, pushed herself back so that she was supporting herself on her hands and knees. She got the one crutch jammed down into the dirt and leaned on it to pull herself up so she was supported on her knees.

  I saw her make a great jerking motion. I couldn’t tell why, but then I realized that she was trying to jerk one leg forward and get her knee up high enough to plant her foot on the dirt.

  Lynn got to the barn door, hitting his shoulder against it, almost losing his balance. Then he pushed outside after Aubrey. His lurching made him grab the door as he went out. It slammed behind him, shutting Spot inside with me.

  Through the window, I saw Aubrey get her foot planted. She put both hands on her one crutch and pushed. I thought I heard her yelling at herself, screaming for motion. She got to her feet.

  Lynn stumbled toward her, closing the gap.

  Aubrey got her door open. Got into the driver’s seat. Started the engine. She backed up, turning the wheel. Shifted into drive, turned the wheel the other way.

  The van started forward, curving back toward the street. I stared from where I still hung, my vision of Aubrey’s escape going in and out of view.

  In the far distance, barely even registering in my consciousness, I saw something else. Something familiar. It took me a couple of swings back and forth to recognize what was coming in and out of my focus. Douglas Fairbanks was down on the street, still walking his bicycle, his head still held low, heading back to where he would catch the shuttle bus. Because the barn was largely out of view, he was oblivious to what was happening.

  Aubrey drove toward the street.

  Lynn found his strength and took two running steps toward Aubrey’s van. He brought the piece of lumber back over his shoulder, then hurled it toward Aubrey’s driver’s window as if it were a javelin. The wood smashed through the glass.

  From where I swung by my ankles, I couldn’t see if it hit Aubrey. But the van’s horn sounded and didn’t stop. The van seemed to speed up and drive straight for the street. It hit the pavement, bouncing up and over the crown of the street, then continued across to the field on the other side, speeding up as if Aubrey’s foot was on the accelerator. Lynn watched as the van headed straight for the drop-off, its horn still honking.

  Fairbanks continued to move slowly. Then he noticed the van. It took him long moments to realize what was happening.

  He jumped on his bicycle and began pedaling fast. He got up some speed and then arced off the pavement and into the field of tall grass, angling for the van. Aubrey’s van went faster. But Fairbanks closed in on it from the side like they were two vehicles merging together on the freeway. As he was about to crash into the van, he thrust his hand through the broken driver’s window and hung on. He got his other arm through the window. His bicycle fell away from him, then veered away.

  I couldn’t clearly see what happened next. But I could tell that the bouncing van slowly began to turn. The turn became more pronounced, and the van veered away from the cliff. The bicycle, still rolling, tracked a straight path, crossed behind Aubrey’s van, and shot off the cliff into the air.

  The van continued to curve and went out of my view.

  But Lynn came back into my view, returning toward the barn.

  SIXTY

  I didn’t know if Aubrey had survived or what had happened to Fairbanks. Maybe Lynn was coming back inside because he saw that Aubrey had died. Either way, he was determined to finish me off.

  I took another look down toward the couch, gauging my movement. I gyrated enough to bring my orbit closer to the couch.

  Then I did a quick countdown practice, trying to figure out just when I should perform the super-human sit-up motion so that I could reach one hand up to the cord at my ankles and use the other hand to swipe at the cord with the broken glass and attempt to cut myself free.

  Because my weight was stretching the cord very tight, I reasoned that it might cut more easily than the one that had bound my arms to my sides.

  My hands were still numb. I shook my arms to try to get more circulation into my hands.

  I doubted I had the strength to bend up against gravity far enough to grab the cord at my ankles. It seemed like something only a young, accomplished gymnast could do. And it seemed clear that whatever strength it would take to do it was not something I could produce more than once.

  But I had motivation that few gymnasts ever had. Either I would succeed at this, or I would die by wasp killer and ankle hanging or bludgeoning with another piece of wood.

  I got ready. I tensed my muscles. As I began my backswing away from the couch, I did the hardest abdominal crunch of my life, lifting up, reaching up, straining.

  My left index and middle finger wrapped around the paracord. I pulled and got my ring finger around it. Next, I got the other hand up, wrist hooked over the fingers of the first hand. I took care to look carefully at the glass shard and position it at a good angle to cut into the paracord.

  I came to the apex of my backswing and started back the other way toward the couch.

  I positioned my glass shard between my ankles where the paracord was taut between them, then cut into it as hard as I could. I felt fibers part. I saw the cord fray, strands spinning and growing.

  But it didn’t cut through.

  My timing was destroyed. I swung past the couch.

  I heard Lynn stumble through the door.

  I got to the other end of my swing. The cord frayed further. It seemed the cord casing was melting before my eyes. I took the glass shard and held it away from the cord, then swiped at the cord in a hard motion, changing my sawing motion to a machete hack.

  The cord broke, snaked free from my ankles, and seemed to disappear as I fell away.

  I didn’t fall where I wanted.

  I’d been arcing back on another trip to the couch, but I wasn’t quite there.

  I got my hands in front of my head before I hit. They hit the arm of the couch. My body crumpled and went off the end. I hit the floor hard.

  I was bruised. Maybe even broken in places.

  But I was alive. I clawed my way up onto hands and knees. I tried to stand, but my feet felt dead. I couldn’t even feel pinpricks. It was like I had peglegs, wooden stubs, no feeling, no balance.

  Spot was jumping around me, excited to have me back on the ground.

  Lynn came toward me.

  Still kneeling, I put my arm over Spot’s shoulder and gave him a vibration, the prep for a command. I pointed toward Lynn who was reaching for the wasp killer, which lay on the floor between us.

  With my head next to Spot’s, I spoke in my meanest, growling voice. “Spot, that’s the suspect! Do you see the suspect? Do you? I want you to take him down, boy. Take him down hard!”

  In a moment, Lynn transformed from angry to fearful, from confident to nearly frozen with terror. But then he sprinted toward the door and slammed it shut before Spot got to it.

  I tried again to stand on my peglegs. Pain was starting to replace numbness. I got up on my feet. I was standing on electric pinpricks. I reached out with my hands for stabilizing holds. Hand-walked from the couch arm to the couch back. Transferred to an end table. Made a jerky, stumbling, falling motion toward the closest wall. Caught myself. Took a breath. Hand-walked along the wall toward the door.

  Spot stayed next to me. I leaned on his back. Together we got to the front
door. There was a jacket on a hook. Probably Lynn’s. I grabbed it and went out.

  Lynn was running across the street and heading into the field. He must have decided that his house was too far away, and instead he could seek shelter by climbing down the cliff.

  I took Lynn’s jacket and put it over Spot’s nose. “Spot! Smell this scent! This is the suspect. Do you have it?” I shook his chest, raised my hand next to the side of his head and said, “Find the suspect and take him down!” I dropped my hand in the takedown motion, pointed at the running man, and hit Spot on his rear with my other hand.

  Spot took off running. He went down the drive and across the street, a blur of black-and-white motion, 170 pounds at 30 miles per hour.

  Spot probably now knew that Lynn was a bad guy. He’d seen Lynn’s threatening moves toward me.

  From the side came Fairbanks, running hard.

  Lynn saw Fairbanks in his peripheral vision. He reached into his pocket and pulled out something black. I realized it was the stun gun. Even though he’d already fired the electroshock darts at me, the gun could still be used like a cattle prod, where you push it up against your target and then pull the trigger.

  He held the stun gun out, preparing. He kept running toward the cliff, desperate to get to the drop-off and climb down among the rocks of the cliff to escape.

  Lynn again glanced over at Fairbanks, getting ready to fire his stun gun. He never saw that Spot was coming from behind him and much faster than Fairbanks.

  When Spot was ten feet away, he leaped. At the same moment, Lynn raised the stun gun.

  I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted as loud as I could. “WEAPON HAND!”

  It was a lesson in one of those laws of motion that the real Giuseppe studied. Spot probably outweighed the man by twenty pounds. And he was going the speed of a race horse when his jaws locked onto the arm that held the stun gun.

  Once Spot had a grip on Lynn, his motion jerked the man forward and launched him into the air.

  Maybe Spot had been aware all along of the cliff edge. Or maybe he saw the edge only at the last moment.

  But Spot let go of Lynn’s arm in time to land all four paws on solid ground and skid to a stop, while Lynn flew off the cliff.

  SIXTY-ONE

  I struggled across the street on my pinprick peglegs. Aubrey’s van was on one side of the open area. Fairbanks was already trotting back to the open driver’s door. He reached in. As I got closer, I saw him holding tissue to Aubrey’s face. The bright red blood stains were obvious, but it didn’t look like a lot of volume. Spot was next to Fairbanks.

  “How is she?” I said when I got to the van.

  “She seems okay,” Fairbanks said. “Dazed but…”

  “I’m fine,” Aubrey said.

  I looked in the door. Aubrey had her hand on Spot’s neck for support, physical or emotional or both. “You sure you’re okay?” I said.

  She nodded. “The board cut my face. But I don’t think any bones are broken.”

  “I called nine one one,” Fairbanks said. “Was that right to do?”

  “Yes, that’s good,” I said.

  “You’re walking funny,” Fairbanks said. “Are you wounded?”

  “He was upside down,” Aubrey said. “Hanging by a real skinny rope. His feet are probably half cut off.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I said. “I’m going to see what happened.”

  “I tried to catch the man,” Fairbanks said. “But Spot got him first. I think the guy might be dead.”

  “I’ll be right back.” I hobbled on pinprick feet over to the edge of the drop-off and looked down. Lynn was about 50 feet down, his head mashed face first onto a boulder, and his body turned at an impossible angle. I saw no movement and would have been surprised if I had. I walked back to Aubrey’s van.

  “The man won’t give us any more trouble,” I said.

  “Aubrey just told me that the man was going to kill you. Does that mean he was the murderer?”

  “Dory was killed by the daughter of a man whom she scammed. The other three victims were killed by this man.”

  Two Washoe County patrol units came down the street and turned off onto the open, grassy area. Washoe Sergeant Lori Lanzen got out and saw me as she walked over.

  “We meet again just a short time after you saved those women on the boat. Mia and Evan, the girl who had dreams of going to law school. And now you’ve got what?”

  I gestured toward Aubrey. “Sergeant, meet watercolorist extraordinaire Aubrey Blackwood. She and I just escaped being killed by a man who is down on the rocks below this cliff.” I pointed to where Lynn had gone off. “A man named Lynn, AKA Giuseppe Calvarenna. The real Calvarenna was a famous scientist who died a year ago, and Lynn took his identity and moved into his house. Lynn is the one who murdered the victims in Kings Beach and Truckee, and at the park in South Lake Tahoe.”

  A fire truck and rescue vehicle came down the street next, sirens blasting.

  Lanzen and the EMTs dealt with Aubrey and the body down on the rocks. I gave a brief statement as did Aubrey and Fairbanks. After many questions and understandings that there would be more questions in the future, Lanzen said she’d contact Sergeants Martinez and Santiago and Bains. Then she let us go.

  Aubrey had multiple butterfly bandages on her face. But she was adamant that she did not need ongoing medical attention. So Fairbanks and I helped get Aubrey back to her house. Spot stayed next to her as if he knew what would help her most.

  When we were confident that Aubrey would be okay, Spot and I drove Fairbanks to his condo, then headed back home through advancing twilight.

  It was dark outside when I got to my cabin. My phone rang as I turned on the lights.

  “Hello?”

  “Owen! He’s here! Tom Casey! He’s trying to kill me!” It was Street, her words sharp cries of fear. She was panting. Gasping from stress, or, possibly, she was running.

  SIXTY-TWO

  “ Where are you?”

  “I’m running.” Heavy breaths. “Up the road to your cabin.”

  “I can be down there in one minute,” I said, moving fast toward the front door. Spot jumped to his feet. “I’ll pick you up.”

  “No!” More panting. “I want him to... follow me. Your Jeep will scare him away. If he keeps after me… you could get him.” She was breathing like a sprinter.

  “That’s dangerous! He might...”

  “He’s running, too.” Her strong breathing in her cell phone made the words difficult to understand. “He can’t catch me on foot. You can hide. Below your cabin. Waiting. Let me run by. You grab him.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “At the second tight curve. I’m coming to the long straight section.” She hung up.

  “Spot, come!” I said.

  We ran out into the dark, my hand on his collar. The time might come to let him go and give him the command to take down the suspect. Until then, holding his collar meant I could keep him from growling or barking. You can communicate better with a dog when you’re touching them.

  We sprinted down the dark private road that I shared with my vacation-home neighbors. All of those homes were dark, the residents waiting until the real warmth of summer came in July.

  I thought about the dark forest as we went down the same road that Street was running up. It wasn’t clear to me where she’d be at this point. But I guessed that she was now in the middle of the straightaway. Near the top of that section, the road made a hard right. If I could be in the dense woods near that point, I would be invisible to a person trying to navigate the dark road.

  As we came to that hard curve, we slowed, and I let Spot guide me into the trees, using his see-in-the-dark nose to keep us from walking into tree trunks.

  I got us positioned behind a group of fir trees, their dense foliage being a visual block. We stood still and waited. The only noise was Spot’s panting, which seemed loud to me, but was below the hearing threshold of anyone doing their own panting
as they trudged up the mountain.

  Street’s description of her situation sounded dangerous, even if she claimed it wasn’t. Yet I was in no position to second guess her. But if her father really was running after her, then Street was right. By any measure, she was a serious athlete, skinny like a long-distance runner, and very strong. No way any man old enough to be her father could catch her running up a mountain at 7000 feet of elevation. I couldn’t either.

  But an arrogant man who thought women were for decor and cooking might think he could tough it out and catch any woman after she wore out her pretty little feet. Some men wouldn’t face the truth of a woman’s abilities despite all evidence.

  In a few moments, Spot tensed. Leaning out from the trees, it seemed like there was nothing. Then I saw a lithe form moving past us, on up the road toward my cabin.

  Street.

  Next to her ran Blondie. I heard Blondie’s toenails click on the asphalt. But Street, despite her hard breathing, was silent. Blondie turned her head toward us but stayed silent as they ran by.

  We waited. I had no idea how far behind her Tom Casey was. As the man who blamed her for his long prison sentence despite his obvious guilt in the beating death of Street’s younger brother, he might have more than the usual stamina.

  Spot stopped panting, listened a bit, then started panting again.

  After a few minutes of no sound, I walked Spot to the edge of the road and stared down into the darkness. There was no sign of any person.

  Then I had an unsettling thought. There were trails in the forest. What if Tom Casey had explored them during the day? He might have found one of several ways to hike from near Street’s condo up to my cabin without walking on the road. He might know where my cabin is. It was also possible that he would anticipate that Street might run to my cabin.

  But even if he had taken a trail, he would still be far behind her. The trails were no more direct than the road, and there was still 1000 feet of vertical elevation rise.