Tahoe Chase (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller)

by Todd Borg

  “Your progress is fantastic news, Simone,” Street said. “We’ll chart your progress on our map. We’re proud of you.” She paused and listened, then said goodbye and hung up.

  “It’s great that she’s so pleased with her progress. This gives us every reason to think that she may pull this off.”

  Street nodded, but her face wasn’t bright.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “It’s just that on the way up to your cabin the radio report said that the air masses out in the Pacific have started to change. They had thought we were in a stable high-pressure system. But now they’re talking about the Jet Stream dropping south of us and sucking moisture into the Tahoe area.”

  “A potential storm?”

  “Maybe,” Street said.

  “When?”

  “They don’t know. Everything is iffy right now. But if it keeps changing fast, we could have snow as soon as two days.”

  “Simone would still be out in the high country,” I said.

  Street nodded.

  “Well, we’ll watch it. If it begins to look bad, we can call her in before she gets to the end.”

  “Where would that be?” Street asked.

  “I saw Joe draw emergency exit points on Simone’s maps. Squaw Valley or Alpine Meadows. Blackwood Canyon. Emerald Bay. Glen Alpine. Her trail is a long way from any of those, but they would still be better than her trying to press on south.”

  Street nodded, her face clouded with worry.

  I called Joe and gave him Simone’s progress report.

  He was very glad to hear that Simone was doing well, and I think it sent him to bed with a smile.

  FORTY-FIVE

  The following day I did catch-up work paying bills, returning phone calls and emails that I’d long neglected.

  That evening, Simone called from the Ludlow Hut. She was cheerful, excited, and totally worn out. She said she had blisters on her feet, and she felt like she’d never completely thaw her toes. But she was looking forward to the rest of the trip, and she kept saying that it was the greatest thing she’d ever done.

  I told Street and again called Joe to report her progress. He seemed even more pleased than the night before.

  The next morning, I headed to my office. As I went south down the East Shore, I noticed the big, chinless, yellow pickup with the overbite tailgating me.

  Ned Cavett must have been waiting near the base of my road and followed me as I turned out.

  I dialed Diamond.

  “I’m talking on my cell while driving,” I said when he answered.

  “Should I come and give you a ticket?”

  “Maybe. Ned Cavett is following me, and if I had to guess, I’d say he’s out to vivisect me before he goes on trial for beating up Simone.”

  “What would you like me to do?”

  “I thought you might want to watch.”

  “The vivisection,” Diamond said.

  “Yeah. Hold on for a dropped call. Cave Rock tunnel approaching.”

  I drove through the tunnel. I was surprised that Diamond reappeared in my ear when I came out the other side.

  “I’m going to my office,” I said. “Ned will follow me there.”

  “I’ll get there as soon as I can,” Diamond said and hung up.

  I went south past Skyland and headed toward Zephyr Cove. In another few miles, I came to the South Shore and turned left at Kingsbury Grade. Ned tailgated me the entire way. He wanted me to know he was there. No doubt, he thought it would intimidate me. He was right.

  I pulled into an open space and parked. Ned didn’t bother to find a parking space. He just stopped in the middle of the lot and got out, leaving his engine running and the driver’s door open. Leaving Spot in the Jeep, I got out and walked toward the office entry as if Ned weren’t there.

  “McKenna! You made my girl file assault charges against me! That’s punishable by death.”

  I got to the office door and turned. Ned was standing in the lot, his hand held out to the side of his belt. He had another knife holster, and he looked like he was imitating a gunslinger ready for a duel.

  “You beat on your girl like she’s a punching bag,” I said.

  Ned ignored my words. “You took my girl! You brought her to that Truckee ski race! You think I didn’t notice her skis missing? You think I’m stupid?”

  They always say not to aggravate a violent suspect, and that instead one should minimize tensions by being calm and reassuring. I said, “Yeah, you’re stupid. In fact, there are no words sufficient to describe the astonishing breadth and depth of your stupidity.”

  “I’m gonna kill you, McKenna. Then I’m gonna find that bitch Simone and kill her. I saw a show on wolves, and there was a lone wolf that ran out of the woods and cut a baby elk out of the herd. No one will know where or when I’m gonna strike.”

  Without looking down, Ned reached into the holster on his belt, a move that was as practiced as Billy The Kid drawing his six-gun. He pulled out a knife, brought it up above his head and then down behind him in a dramatic, circular swing like a softball pitch. His movement accelerated through the backswing as if his arm were a mechanical wonder, and the knife shot toward me like an arrow from a bow.

  I jerked to the right and sprinted toward him. The knife cut the air near my face.

  I wanted to do what Ned would least expect, so I kept up my charge.

  Ned raised his fists like a boxer in a defensive posture and planted his right foot behind him to brace himself. As he prepared for my impact, I dove through the air toward him, hoping the snow and ice would lessen how much skin would burn off on impact.

  My knees hit the asphalt as my arms locked around his waist. He hit the ice with his butt. His upper body went down, and he slid backward with me on top of him.

  He pulled out another knife. I shot my arm out, but he raised the knife out of my reach. As he stabbed down, I rolled away. I did a fast pushup and jumped to my feet, staying bent, minimizing the target I presented. He jumped up. I leaped forward, grabbed his throwing arm with my left hand, and put my shoulder to his middle.

  We went down again.

  Before we stopped moving, I lifted his knife arm and slammed his elbow down onto the pavement. The knife clattered away. His hand came up and clamped onto my neck, fingertips like hooks in my throat.

  I swung my right arm and made a solid elbow punch to his face. Ned let go of my neck as his nose turned bloody. I rolled off him and pushed back up onto my feet. He was still on his back. I thought he was dazed, but his hand shot to his holster and pulled out another knife. I kicked his hand hard. The knife skittered away. I stomped the throwing hand. He screamed, rolled, cupped his hand to his body. I stood bent, panting, hands to knees. He writhed in pain, but I stayed focused. I’d been suckered too many times. He rolled partway onto his stomach, but not enough to keep me from seeing his left hand snake to the holster and pull out a knife as a Douglas County Patrol vehicle pulled into the far end of the lot.

  I kicked Ned’s elbow. He screamed, rolled, and tried to shoot a knife at me from the ground. It was a serious attempt to put me down for good. The knife shot past my shoulder.

  I stomped his left hand, then his elbow. I bent down, fumbled at his belt, got my hands on his holster of knives, yanked it off and hurled it toward the trees, the second time I’d disarmed him. Across the parking lot, Diamond was walking toward us, holding a video camera pointed toward us.

  Ned twisted and rolled the other way and made an impressive front snap kick up toward my face. His boot caught my jaw and snapped my head back. My vision went blurry. I jumped onto the front of his knee, hyper-extending the joint, grinding the bones against the pavement.

  He screamed again.

  I turned and walked to my office building, my head lolling. My legs wouldn’t work right. My sense of balance was off. I listed to the side, toward the scaffolding. I felt faint.

  Behind me came the sound of a vehicle door slamming, then an engine revvin
g. I thought Ned was down for good with crushed and broken joints. Shows what I know. Wheels screeched. The engine roar grew.

  I grabbed the scaffolding for support and blinked hard, trying to bring back my vision. The roar grew louder.

  Maybe if I jumped to the side at the last moment.

  I ducked under the scaffolding and took three fast steps. I grabbed a scaffolding support pole that someone had leaned at an angle.

  Ned hit his brakes, then screeched backward, changing his direction to aim at my new position.

  I was still light-headed, my visual field seeming to tilt sideways. In my fading consciousness, it seemed like it would be good to have a weapon even though I knew that Ned would still drive over me with his truck. I thought the pole I’d grabbed was free and unattached, but it turned out to be stuck at the top. I jerked the bottom of the pole out from the ground. The bolt holding the pole at the top came free and arced through the air just as I heard Ned’s truck strike the first part of the scaffolding.

  What happened next was hard to comprehend even though I saw it clearly.

  When I jerked the angled pole free, the joint where it had been attached came undone. Three poles simultaneously spread apart. Then, like some kind of magic toy, the entire scaffolding began to come down like multiple, linked, open scissors closing shut, one after another, in a grand design. Every fourth joint popped open, and the rest of the joints scissored closed.

  I leaped to safety, but Ned, in his truck, was underneath the collapsing structure.

  The scaffold poles came together in a neat pile. As they all stacked up, a significant portion of them landed on top of Ned’s truck. The big, yellow, chinless vehicle made a terrific screech and moan as its body panels were crushed to the ground.

  I stumbled toward the wreckage.

  Diamond appeared, video camera in hand.

  We both stared.

  “Bad idea to drive into scaffolding,” Diamond said.

  I was still holding the heavy pole I’d pulled from the scaffolding, the real trigger point for the collapse. But I didn’t have the mental wherewithal to explain.

  I leaned toward the truck wreckage. “Hey, Ned. You in there? Can you hear me?”

  There was no sound. All I could see was twisted yellow metal crushed by thousands of pounds of scaffolding. As I looked down into the metallic morass, there came another screech as more metal under duress finally gave way and tore apart.

  I couldn’t tell if Ned was squished flat or if he might be alive while contorted into a pretzel by the twisted truck body.

  “Ned, did you push Rell Rorvik off the deck?” I called out. “Did you kill Manuel Romero? Jillian Oleska? They were in your notebook, Ned. Was that your murder list?”

  But there was no answer.

  FORTY-SIX

  I watched for a bit while the firemen came and used their Jaws-Of-Life equipment on the scaffolding and crushed pickup. A half hour later, they still hadn’t exposed much human flesh. I took Spot up to my office. I made some coffee and drank it with aspirin while Spot lay down near my office door and went to sleep.

  Diamond came in thirty minutes later. He pointed at Spot sprawled across the dirty carpet.

  “He got tired from watching you dodge Veitsi Mies blades?”

  “Looks like it,” I said. “I was hoping to get some information from Ned, but no answer. Was he merely reticent, or dead?”

  “Ain’t no coroner here when the paramedics finally hauled his ass off. But based on what I saw, not much of him was intact. We each have two hundred and six bones. I’m guessing his broken count was in the high one-fifties.”

  “Was he still breathing?” I asked.

  Diamond made a little scoffing noise back in his throat.

  “They paddle him?” I asked.

  “They’re supposed to, but you gotta know where to put the paddles. This was like twisted roadkill. Not clear which end was which.”

  “You want to take my statement?”

  “Sure.”

  So he asked me the questions, and I gave him the answers, and then Street rushed into my office.

  “My God, Owen, are you okay?” she asked.

  Spot was suddenly awake. He jumped up, wagging.

  Street came around my desk and stood next to my chair, holding my head against her chest. “I heard a big crash from down the street. A minute later, Diamond called me at my lab. He said you’d been in a fight. All the scaffolding on your building has come down! The entire parking lot is a disaster zone. I’m so glad you didn’t get caught up in it.”

  “Yeah, I was lucky,” I said, not mentioning that the pole I jerked free started the collapse.

  “Is Ned dead?” she asked.

  “Sounds like it,” I said.

  Street looked at Diamond.

  He nodded.

  “Good,” she said.

  “I ain’t complaining,” Diamond said.

  “He was going to kill Simone,” she said. “It was just a matter of when.”

  “Agreed,” he said.

  My cell rang.

  I picked it up. “Owen McKenna,” I said.

  “Owen! It’s Simone!”

  “Hey, Randonnée Extreme trekker girl. How are you and where are you?” I was still dizzy, and my words were a bit garbled.

  “Sounds like you’ve had some cocktails,” she said.

  “Just the rush of a hard workout.”

  “Me too,” she said. “I’m on the very tippy top of Rubicon Peak! I did it! I climbed the steepest, rockiest peak around. I had to take off my boards and pack them the old-fashioned way. No skins can get you up rocks. Now I can see the entire lake. If I had a telescope, I could probably see your office. But I wanted to let you know about a problem,” Simone said.

  “What’s that?” I asked. I saw Street and Diamond and Spot all looking at me.

  “The solar charger I got for my phone? I can’t make it work while I’m skiing. It’s supposed to sit on the top of my pack, but the velcro straps don’t stick right. It keeps falling off. So I thought, no big deal, I’ll just charge when I stop. But that was stupid because I’m skiing all day until night and then some. Anyway, I really have to make my calls short so I can save power to take photos of me at each peak to document my trip. I’ve already used up a lot of battery power on the mountains I’ve climbed. So I’ll be turning off my phone to conserve power. Not that you’d call me, but I just wanted you to know.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” I said. “Can you hang the charging panel around your neck?”

  “But then it won’t face the sky.”

  “It might face the setting sun. You’re traveling south and southwest. It might work.”

  “I never thought of that!” Simone said. “It doesn’t have to face the sky. It can just face the sun. I’ll try it.”

  “How’s Street?” Simone asked, and I felt a jolt of happiness that Simone had so transformed in her short escape from Ned that she was suddenly concerned about other people.

  “Good,” I said. “It sounds like you’re doing great, Simone.”

  “I am,” she said. “I can’t tell you how great this is to be free.”

  “No doubt,” I said. “Where do you expect to camp tonight?”

  “I’m still shooting for the Ludlow Hut.”

  “Sounds good. Call me tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. Thanks for your help. Bye. Oh, one more thing.”

  “What?” I said.

  “On my last peak, I was looking out to the west. From up here, you can see all the way to Mt. Diablo, maybe even the coast. That’s probably over a hundred miles away, right?”

  “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “Anyway,” she said. “There are cirrus clouds in the distance. Doesn’t that mean that weather is coming? I thought we were in a prolonged high pressure system. But now I’m wondering. Have you heard anything?”

  “There is some talk about the jet stream possibly dropping south. That could bring some weather in a couple of d
ays.”

  There was a silence on the phone.

  “You remember the escape routes out of the high country that Joe showed you, right?”

  Another silence. “Yeah, sure. But hopefully, I’ll be done before any weather gets here. I’m pretty confident about that,” she said.

  “Yeah, you probably will,” I said. “I also have some news. Ned attacked me in the parking lot an hour or so ago. He drove into the scaffolding at my office building, and the scaffolding fell and crushed him.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry to say it.”

  “Oh, wow. That’s... that’s amazing. After all of this. I don’t feel bad that he died. I’m finally free of him. I can’t believe it. I don’t have to worry any more.”

  “So I have a question. It’ll just take a minute.”

  “Sure.”

  “I found a list of names under the seat of Ned’s truck. It had Rell’s name on it. Another name was Manuel Romero and another was Jillian Oleska. Are you certain you don’t know them?”

  “You already asked me. I don’t.”

  “They are people who recently died in what looked like accidents that were similar to Rell’s fall. Of all the names, Rell’s and Manuel’s and Jillian’s names had lines drawn through them.”

  “And you think that Ned arranged these accidents,” Simone said. Her normally small voice was loud.

  “Yes.”

  “God, that’s terrible. Ned is so evil!”

  “I asked you once before, but I want to ask you again. Do you still believe that Ned is capable of planning and carrying out murder. Not something impulsive, but something premeditated.”

  “Yes. I have no doubt.”

  “Simone, I can close this case if I can find a solid connection between Ned and Manuel and Jillian. Is there any chance you know them by face but not by name?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Like when you go to the supermarket. You recognize the checkout clerk or the person behind the meat counter, but you don’t know their names.”

  “I see. I could know them by face in that sense. But they could be anybody to me. How would I know that I knew them?”