Tahoe Silence

by Todd Borg

  Doubts began to permeate my thinking. Was I planning another folly? Would I burst in on more innocent kids? Without the benefit of a search warrant executed by the El Dorado Sheriff’s Department, I was taking a huge risk. Like before, the house might be the wrong one. If so, I would be convicted of Breaking and Entering and if someone got hurt, Assault and Battery. With Spot involved, it could escalate to Assault with a Deadly Weapon.

  I could spend the rest of my years in prison.

  The alternative would be to try again what I did with Mallory. Because I was out of the city limits of South Lake Tahoe, I’d need to contact the county sheriff and try to convince him that I had a case.

  But I had no real evidence. Two of the three motorcycles looked like two other bikes I’d seen. The house looked like a drawing. In a court of law it was nothing. The sheriff would never even ask a judge for a warrant. He’d think it a joke.

  I had no other options. Play it safe for me and others and leave Silence at serious risk. Or go in myself and risk my future. And not only mine. I was asking both Street and Diamond to help me. If Silence wasn’t in the house, they’d be accessories to my mistake and be charged with crimes along with me.

  I took several deep breaths to try and clear my head. I was nuts. I couldn’t put my lover and my best friend at risk. I was too close to the situation to see it clearly. The video of Silence spinning, trying to cope with a frightening world, had played too many times in my head.

  I decided to call it off.

  I put the binoculars in my pocket, and I started to slide out of my hiding place when something caught my eye.

  Movement at the house. The front door opening. I put the glasses back on the house.

  A man stepped out of the door. He walked over to the blue Low Rider. He set his half-helmet on his thick pile of long brown hair and pulled the chin strap through a bushy beard. He turned back to the house and said something. I watched the door as Marky and Tiptoe came out. Marky spoke, then both of them watched as the first man started up his machine, made a big sweeping turn into the street and roared away, the intense rat-tat-tat of his engine noise shaking every window for a mile.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  I was walking down North Upper Truckee, several blocks away from the house, when Street pulled up as planned. I jumped in and she drove away.

  “How did it go?” she said.

  “I saw Marky and Tiptoe.” Spot was sniffing me from the little backseat of the VW bug.

  “Any sign of Silence?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re still convinced this is the house and you should go in.”

  “Yes.”

  Street drove home while I turned on my cell to check for Diamond’s message. He’d called around the time Street picked me up. The message was short. He was able to acquire a tranquilizer gun from Solomon Reed, the large animal vet down in Carson Valley.

  I dialed Diamond.

  When he answered I said, “Doc Reed ask you why you wanted a tranquilizer gun?”

  “I told him we might have another mountain lion to capture.”

  “Were you able to get off work?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes or so. Got a sandwich and a thermos of coffee. Come evening, I’ll move into the woods, stretch my legs and such. So don’t worry if you see my truck empty. At the appropriate time, I’ll get into position in the trees across the street.”

  “Thanks.”

  Street dropped me off at home and kept Spot with her.

  Diamond called just as I walked inside.

  “I’m in position and I saw the old neighbor lady,” Diamond said.

  “Tillie Bilkenstein?”

  “Yeah. She’s kind of cute. Walks real straight up and stiff. Takes little steps. Real little. She went to her mail box and then, get this, she walked over to her side yard and looked around at the grass like she was looking for something. Then she looked up over the fence and stared at the upstairs window of the neighbor’s house.”

  “Where we think Silence is,” I said.

  “Right.”

  “She’s our letter carrier.”

  “Looks like it,” Diamond said.

  “I’m glad you saw that,” I said. “Remember to put your phone on vibrate.”

  “Already did.”

  I ate a large enough meal to cover both lunch and dinner, then went over my plans in my head. I sat on the deck chair, staring at the lake, and visualized each step of the next few hours.

  Late in the evening I rode the Harley through South Lake Tahoe, headed out past the airport and on out to the little community called Meyers that lies just before the long climb up to Echo Summit. I kept the exhaust valve on the loud setting as I went through the Meyers commercial district, which is little more than a couple of gas stations and a small gourmet grocery store.

  The fall evening was bitter cold to a motorcyclist, and the hard moist wind blowing up from the Central Valley formed lenticular clouds that hovered over the mountaintops and caught a mystery glow from the stars and the rising moon.

  I cruised past the chain-up area where Charlie’s body had been found, crossed the Truckee River and began the incline up to the summit. Once again, I came to North Upper Truckee. This time I drove past the turnoff. Although my destination was the house just a couple blocks off North Upper Truckee, I wanted to sneak in from the woods behind.

  So I continued on up the summit. The next road was Chiapa, which led into a small closed neighborhood of expensive homes. I cruised on by, then slowed as I approached the first big curve in the highway that turns to the left and crawls up the side of the cliff. I backed the throttle to idle, leaned hard into a right turn and coasted into the small parking area where Caltrans has their avalanche control tower.

  It is shaped something like a modern lighthouse. Tonight it was dark, awaiting future snowfalls on the mountain above the road up to the summit. When the danger of avalanche is imminent, Highway 50 is temporarily closed, the big doors are opened, and the explosive artillery is fired up onto the huge granite slope above. The explosive charges release the snow in small controlled avalanches preventing an unplanned catastrophic slide that could bury all traffic on the highway.

  I braked to a stop at the edge of the small parking area, checked to make sure that no one was in view, then reached down and turned the valve that rerouted my exhaust through the hidden muffler.

  The result was as dramatic this time as before. The deep, throaty blat-blat of the Harley went silent, replaced by a soft, airy whish-whish. I still looked like a bad-ass biker, but I was a phantom.

  I hit the first switch that Slider had put on the handlebars. My headlight and running lights went dark as I toggled it off. When I braked, no red light would come on. Using only moonglow from the mountains and clouds to see, I went around the locked gate and onto a trail that is used by hikers and mountain bikers in the summer and snowmobilers in the winter. I followed the dark twisting trail a short distance down into the forest.

  As soon as I was away from the highway, I stopped where a group of trees hid me from view, then pulled out the roll of duct tape that I’d stashed in the left saddlebag. I ripped off a piece and stuck it over the upper half of my headlight, curved like a visor. Then I used a socket wrench and screwdriver to adjust the headlight so it would shine more to the ground than normal. I wanted to minimize any chance that anyone out enjoying the moonlight would notice me riding through the woods. I flipped the second switch and my new, lower beam headlight came on, while all the other lights stayed off.

  The soft muffled putter of my bike along with my truncated headlight beam was reassuring. I felt the strange lonely comfort that comes from being in the mountain woods at night when everyone else is indoors watching TV.

  I rode slowly, the suspension providing a cushioning bounce and wallow as I went up and over bumps and humps, in and around trees and giant boulders, following a trail carved through the thick forest.

  The trail led to a sm
all meadow directly below Flagpole peak, rugged and frosty in the cold moonlight. Then I was back into thick forest where I joined another trail, well worn from hikers and mountain bikers. I drove at five or ten miles per hour, crawling a mile and then two into the forest. I went up a rise and for a moment saw the slow crawl of a headlight on one of the ski trails at Heavenly twelve miles distant, a snowcat doing a test groom on the heavy snow that fell at 10,000 feet the previous week.

  I slowed to nearly a stop, went past a huge fir tree and turned off on a small access trail. Fifty yards ahead I pulled off the trail, drove through a thicket of trees, turned back around and stopped so that my bike was pointed back through an opening that led straight to the trail.

  The forest floor was too soft for the kickstand, so I leaned the bike against a tree and turned it off.

  Although the newly muffled engine had been relatively quiet, the sudden total silence was thick in my ears. I stood in the dark forest, smelling the cold humid air, heavy with scents of pine and the peppery herbal aroma of a late fall nightshade plant. The bitter wind was softer in the trees than out on the highway, but it still made a hum in the pine needles, rising in pitch, then falling.

  I pulled a penlight from my pocket and used it to move through the thicket, trying to figure a plan for how I was going to find the bike. Despite the moon, it would be dark under the tree canopy, and I’d be in a hurry. I’d have the girl with me, and I’d be pursued by angry men with guns.

  I decided to make a barricade and put down some kind of marker to precede it. For a barricade, I wedged a broken branch across the trail, bridging it from one tree to another at stomach height. I placed it just after a turn on the path. Watch for it carefully and you could get past it by crashing through the thicket to the right. Be less careful and you’d be likely to run straight into it and knock the wind out of yourself.

  For my marker I heaped a pile of needles in the middle of the trail ten yards before the obstructing branch. I could kick it aside as it warned me. Anyone coming behind me would be unaware. But it would require that I had a good feel for the path in the dark.

  I walked fifty yards toward the nearby neighborhood and turned off the penlight. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark, then gave my marker a test.

  Running at medium speed, penlight off, straining my eyes for a sense of the trail in the dark, I watched for the pile of pine needles. The path went left, then straight, then right. A branch slapped my face. I leaned sideways to let it slip off. My left foot hit a small boulder. I spun to the side, hit another boulder and sprawled into the dirt.

  My chin bounced on gravel and I rolled to a stop. As I rose on my knees, grabbing a sore elbow, my head bumped the barricade.

  I never saw the pile of pine needles.

  The solution was to make the pile bigger. Then I’d have a better chance of plowing into the pile and knowing the barricade was soon after.

  After another, more successful practice run, I continued on through the woods toward the house where I believed Silence was being held.

  I checked my watch. 10:50 p.m. Ten minutes to liftoff. I’d chosen the time because the moon would be high and night vision would be good.

  The small knoll where I crouched had a view of the house and the street. To the side was the house where Tillie Bilkenstein lived, the lady who picks up paper airplanes that glide down over the fence into her backyard. Her house was dark. She was gone or she’d gone to bed.

  I looked at my watch. Four minutes. Diamond would be in the trees across the street, veterinary dart gun ready and trained on the front door.

  Street would have parked off North Upper Truckee, on a side road a block away. She was going to walk through the dark, Spot at her side. I’d reminded her how to lay her finger across his nose and whisper “Quiet” in his ear. At this moment, three minutes before eleven, she and Spot would be waiting near Diamond, in the shadows of the giant firs.

  She would tell Spot to “Sit-Stay” in the dark of the trees. Then she would walk across and knock on the door of the house. Whether Marky and Tiptoe peaked out the upstairs window or looked through the peephole in the door, all they would see was a thin woman standing in the dark at the front door, obviously unarmed, obviously no threat at all.

  The moment they opened the door, Diamond would draw a bead on them with his dart gun. Street would sob and point toward the dark curb and tell them about the terrible situation she’d come across, the sweet Golden Retriever that lay in the road, the Golden named Honey Bun from three blocks over, the same Honey Bun who was the darling of every neighborhood kid, wounded from a hit-and-run. Could they please come and help! Could they lift the dog into her car? Could they come quickly and maybe save the dog’s life?

  As soon as either Marky or Tiptoe got more than thirty feet from the house, she’d point at him and yell, “Spot, take down the suspect!” Neither one of them would be quick enough to get back to the safety of the house.

  If any comrades came out of the house, Diamond would attempt to hit them with a tranquilizer dart.

  While Spot held one of them and Diamond ran to help, I hoped to kick in the boards over the upstairs window, get Silence out onto the garage roof and down into the forest where we could escape on the silent bike with no running lights.

  I checked my watch. 10:57 p.m.

  There was no light on in the upstairs room where I thought Silence was being held. From my position in the trees, I could see just a glimmer of light shining out into the yard from the living room. I heard a few grunting sounds like muffled laughter coming from big men with deep chests. A poker game, maybe. Or guffaws generated by a porno movie.

  I waited, watching, nervous as a kid about to confront a Grizzly bear being let out of its cage.

  At two minutes before eleven, I climbed up into the Lodgepole pine at the rear corner of the house and snaked my way out onto the branch over the back of the garage. I found a good set of handholds and swung down. I held there a moment, hanging from my hands, visualizing Street telling Spot to stay and then walking across the street to knock on the door.

  I was about to drop to the garage roof, silent as a cat, when the branch I hung from broke, and I fell in a loud crash to the roof.

  FORTY-NINE

  Before I’d rolled to a stop, a shout roared from the house. I couldn’t make out the words. It sounded like a command. What happened next was like a Green Beret unit suddenly going on red alert. The lights that had shined out onto the yard below went dark. The movements of heavy men thudded through the house.

  The evacuation was going according to plan.

  I could try to interrupt it.

  I ran to the upstairs window that opened onto the garage roof. I kicked out at the glass and frame and the boards that went across. Once. Twice. Glass exploded into the dark room. Boards cracked, splintered, then fell away. I swept my foot around the opening once more to knock out protruding shards, then ducked through into the musty darkness.

  “Silence,” I whispered, “Can you hear me?”

  I was too late.

  More footsteps pounded below. I turned on my penlight and shined it around the room. Silence was not there. The only sign that she’d been in the room was a small torn sketchbook on the floor by the door. One page faced up at me. It was a self-portrait of Silence. Her eyes were huge and sad in my penlight. One side of her face was on paper that had torn off.

  I ran through the bedroom door into the hallway. The stairway went down the center of the house. I ran down the stairs as the back door slammed. I followed them at a run.

  Once outside I realized I could call Spot from the trees on the other side of the house. But I thought better of it. Street would need him for protection.

  I heard men going over the fence and into the trees away from where I’d left the bike. Not knowing the trail they were on, I followed the sounds, running blind, trying to stay close.

  The sounds turned. I took several more steps, then turned the same direction.

>   I saw movement up ahead. In the faint glow of a distant post light were moving shadows. One of them had a strange shape. A big man carrying a thin girl.

  I raced on.

  Although it was hard to see through the trees, it looked like the men were angling toward where I parked the Jeep. They stopped and got into a panel van. There was a distant streetlight and I saw at least two men. There might have been a third. I’d expected three or four from the thud of footsteps leaving the house.

  The giant man, Tiptoe, held Silence. She was strangely rigid, and as he put her into a van it was more like he was holding a stiff 2x12 than a 17-year-old girl.

  I couldn’t get to them in time, so I sprinted to the Jeep. I was fumbling my key into the door when I heard footsteps behind me. I jerked the door open and was swinging my body inside as I heard the same sliding snick I’d last heard when Diamond cocked his nine millimeter Glock the night a killer came into his house down in Carson Valley.

  “Don’t think about it.” The man panted from running.

  I turned to see Marky standing fifteen feet away, the gun up and pointed at my chest. Marky’s heaving lungs made the gun waver. But I didn’t think he’d miss at short range.

  I started to get out of the Jeep.

  “Un, uh. Stay where you are. You’re driving.” He pulled open the back door and got in behind me. I felt the cold blunt end of the automatic against the back of my neck.

  I turned the starter. “How far are we going? I need gas.”

  Marky leaned to look at the gauge. “You’re okay. See that van? Follow it.”