Tahoe Hijack

by Todd Borg

  The early morning air was chilly. The lake’s humidity had washed over the woods and left a layer of hoarfrost on the bushes and the beach that was now visible in the thin light of the stars. Spot pulled his head down to sniff the ground. I stared, trying to see if I could perceive footprints. Nothing was visible except some faint marks in the frost that may have been raccoon footprints tracing an ambling pattern down the beach.

  We walked east toward town, toward Valhalla. I didn’t want to get too close and scare anyone off. But it was so dark, and we were still far enough away that I thought it was okay to stay out of the forest for a bit.

  I kept watch on the woods to the right. When a dark opening appeared, I stared, willing my eyes to sense something. There were some short steps up from the beach. We walked up. In the darkness was another opening of sorts in the forest. I could just make out the outlines of a large building. The Baldwin Estate, a massive log home and the first of three early twentieth century houses that made up the Tallac Historic Site.

  Spot and I stood motionless, waiting, watching, listening. And for Spot, sniffing. I tried sniffing, too, but all I could detect was cold humid lake air mixed with the scents of pine and fir.

  Nothing appeared. We continued along a path.

  After a few minutes, we came to another mansion, this one bigger and more modern in design but still from the same period. The Pope Estate.

  We continued on through the darkness.

  There was another opening in the forest. The Heller Estate, with its grand rustic hall named Valhalla. Around Valhalla are old-growth Ponderosa pine, giant trees that, thanks to the foresight of Santa Anita Racetrack founder Lucky Baldwin, were spared in the clear-cut that took nearly all of Tahoe’s forests and reconfigured the wood as reinforcements for hundreds of miles of mining tunnels under Virginia City.

  I pulled Spot behind one of those Ponderosas, and we waited. Periodically, I peeked around the tree, looking for movement on the grand lawn between Valhalla and the lake.

  Other than the vast darkness, there was nothing to see but a few distant lights flickering through the trees over at the cabins of Camp Richardson.

  Nothing moved, and there was no sound other than the waves that made a gentle lapping in the darkness, a soft murmur like the song the mermaid Lorelei sang as she lured sailors to their death on the Rhine.

  If Valhalla had any beautiful feminine spirits wandering the grounds since the roaring ’20s, I would have to rely on Spot to detect them.

  The ad had given no specifics of location other than the lawn in front of me. I imagined that any people meeting would walk out in the middle of the lawn, the better to be seen in the darkness.

  I’d worn a dark jacket and hat. By staying close to the tree, I thought I would remain incognito to all except another dog. And if someone brought a dog to the meeting, Spot would give me advance notice.

  If anyone coming stayed off in the trees like me, I’d never see them. But then, neither would the person who placed the ad. It made sense that a person responding to the ad would wander around looking for their contact, perhaps calling out a ‘Hello, anybody there?’

  The air was still and quiet enough that I would likely hear their words over the lapping waves.

  I paid close attention as 6:00 a.m. approached. Except for the sound of a few vehicles out on the distant highway, there was no indication of any person.

  It seemed that the person placing the ad would likely wait in an obvious location. How else to let a potential purchaser of information know where to go? But I saw no one.

  Nor did I see Glennie, though I assumed that she was out there, probably sitting and shivering in her car.

  By twenty after, I started to wonder if I should walk out and pose as someone responding to the ad. The downsides were obvious. It could be dangerous if someone was lurking, waiting to leap out and harm the person who showed up. Another possibility would be that I’d find the person who placed the ad and, while talking to him or her, scare off the person the ad was intended to attract. And I wanted to know who would be attracted as much as the identity of the person who placed the ad.

  I waited longer. Maybe the person who placed the ad was waiting in a warm vehicle on the drive at the back side of Valhalla, watching with binoculars, disappointed that no one responded to the ad. Although I noticed as I had driven down the highway earlier, the Forest Service gate at the entrance to Valhalla was shut and, presumably, locked.

  In most ways, it made sense that no one would show. Even though the Herald was the biggest paper in Tahoe, there were locals who didn’t read it, and many tourists probably never even saw it. The chance that the ad was seen by the intended person were small at best. I kept waiting. No one ever came.

  At 6:30 Spot and I walked out from behind my tree. In case the ad writer was still waiting, I strolled down the lawn for all to see me. I paid attention to Spot, wondering if he would suddenly swing his head toward a scent. But he just maintained the standard countenance he exhibits in the dark, ears forward, nose sniffing aggressively, his head swinging left and right.

  After crossing the lawn, I turned to go down to the beach. The sky was pinking to the east, and it threw oscillating magenta reflections onto the lapping waves. I strolled down the frosty sand toward the Beacon Restaurant, then about-faced and headed back west, toward Kiva Beach.

  I didn’t see the body until Spot made a sudden look toward the water and pulled me off balance.

  The man was face up in the water, eyes open, arms straight out from his sides, legs spread wide. Even in the faint dawn, I could see the ugly hole in the center of his chest, black with blood.

  The body bobbed head-first against the shore just below the grassy picnic area. His long hair, undulating in the waves, was ghostly white. His out-sized, walrus moustache was white, too. It was likely that he was the man watching Anna from the street the previous evening.

  I put in a call to 911, and because Spot doesn’t like dead bodies, took him over to the lawn and waited.

  When I was done explaining to the 911 dispatcher, I called Agent Ramos. He sounded awake and alert despite the early hour.

  “Got something that may be connected to the hijacking,” I said. I explained about the ad in the paper and how I came to find a body on the beach. He said he’d be over in about an hour.

  Two El Dorado Sheriff’s deputies showed up first. I showed them the body and told them what I knew.

  Sergeant Bains showed up a bit later, a model of what a sergeant should be. With a sharp combination of smarts, knowledge, and people skills, he took charge of the scene without any firm words, and the other cops seemed pleased to do exactly what he asked as if they wanted nothing more than to earn his respect and praise.

  I explained about the ad and showed him where the body was.

  He put his men to work, and I gave them space. Ten minutes later he came over to where I sat with Spot on the bank where the Valhalla lawn broke and went down to the beach.

  “An ad seems an unreliable way to find someone,” he said. “Did you just happen to come upon it?”

  “No. Glennie Gorman called and told me about it.”

  “Oh. How is that girl?”

  “Same old Glennie,” I said.

  Bains and she had met each other during the avalanche case, dated intensely for a time, but then pulled back from each other. My sense was that Bains would have liked to stay connected. But Glennie was high-strung and high-energy, and it would take an unusual man to keep her happy for very long.

  “Kind of miss her,” Bains said.

  “Anybody would,” I said.

  We heard someone approach and turned to see Agent Ramos walking across the grass, squinting against the morning sun, carefully lifting his polished shoes up and down to minimize the effects of moisture from the melted frost.

  We all shook. Then Bains explained what they’d found.

  “The victim is an unidentified male, approximately fifty-five to sixty, his pockets empty.
He suffered severe trauma to his chest. It appears that something large penetrated his chest from front to back, entering through the sternum and exiting just to the left of the spine.”

  “Shot with a shotgun slug?” Ramos said.

  “Probably not,” Bains said. “The entrance hole looks to be an inch or more. Larger than even an eight-gauge shotgun slug, not that anyone uses eight-gauge anymore. And if the victim had been shot with a shotgun slug, the exit wound would have been extensive. As it is, the exit is not much messier than the entrance wound. Never seen anything like it. The body was also in the water, so the cause of death could technically be drowning. But I doubt it. It looks like whatever penetrated his chest may have gone directly through his heart.”

  “Let’s have a look,” Ramos said. He bent over, wiped the dew off his shoes, then headed down the beach.

  The deputies stood near the body, which they’d pulled out of the water and up onto the sand. The body was face up.

  Ramos pulled up on the creases of his trousers and squatted down to take a look.

  “Could be the white-haired man that Anna Quinn described before she was snatched,” Ramos said as he studied the entrance wound. “Roll him so I can see his back?” he said, obviously reluctant to get his nice clothes wet and dirty.

  The deputies each took hold of the body, one at the shoulder and one at the hip. They lifted it up onto its side.

  Ramos looked at the exit wound and frowned. “I’ve never seen anything like it, either, Bains.”

  “Notice how the flesh projects both rearward and forward,” Bains said. “If a projectile went all the way through, it would just project rearward.”

  “Looks like somebody killed him with a stake,“ I said. “Then he wanted to retrieve the murder weapon. Maybe it didn’t protrude far enough out the back side to grab. So he pulled it back out from the front.”

  “That would take some strength and some guts,” Ramos said. He used his finger to draw a diagram in the sand. I saw what he was getting at.

  “A stake through the sternum would be caught by the fragments of shattered bone,” he said, “all angling back, making it nearly impossible to pull the stake out the way it came.”

  Bains looked at me. “Be like getting a barbed fish hook in you. It can’t go in reverse. You have to push it on through the flesh to get it out.”

  I nodded.

  “But,” Ramos continued, “if there was nothing to grab on the back side, the killer would have no choice but to pull from the front, maybe placing his foot on the victim’s chest as he yanked it out. That would explain the flesh going both ways.”

  Bains looked a little sick.

  Ramos stood up, brushed his pants off. “At least, we have a clue where to start looking,” Ramos said.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “The victim is Davy Halstead, leader of the Red Blood Patriots.”

  I reached down and pulled up on the right sleeve of the body’s shirt. The blue squiggly lines were similar to what I remembered from Nick O’Connell’s tattoo. Like two infinity symbols, one over the other.

  “Militia tattoo,” Ramos said. “Probably all the Red Bloods have it.” He turned to Bains. “Sergeant, the Red Blood Patriots are in your county. Let’s you and I compare notes on this.”

  Bains nodded.

  I said, “Makes it look like the Red Bloods were involved in Anna Quinn’s kidnapping.”

  Ramos nodded.

  “Do you have enough information about the Red Blood Patriot’s world to know where to look for her?” I asked.

  “If we find probable cause, yes.” He glanced down at the body of Davy Halstead. “We’ll see if this body provides any evidence. I’m not optimistic.” Ramos looked back at me. “And your next move?”

  “Breakfast.”

  The van arrived to take the body away.

  “Let’s keep the victim’s identity private for the next day or so,” Ramos said. “We don’t technically know the ID for sure, anyway.”

  Bains looked at the deputies, then at me. We all nodded.

  “Where are you parked?” Ramos asked me.

  “Over by the Taylor Creek Visitor Center.”

  He looked at my dog.

  “I don’t need a ride,” I said. “I’m happy to walk. But thanks for the thought.”

  He nodded.

  Glennie Gorman appeared over by the Valhalla grand hall. She walked across the lawn, nodded and exchanged a few words with Agent Ramos as they passed each other. I walked up to meet her. She pet Spot, then gestured at the men sliding the gurney with the body on it into the van. “Looks like I missed some excitement.”

  “A dead body. No one else showed.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Looks like it. Has a good-sized hole in his chest.”

  “Gunshot?” she said.

  I shook my head. “Looks more like he had a stake driven through his chest.”

  Glennie’s eyes grew very large. “Do you think he was killed by the person who placed the want-ad?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he placed the ad. I’ve told you everything I know about the situation.”

  Bains walked up at that moment.

  “Hi Glennie. Long time.”

  Glennie smiled. “Has it been that long? I guess so. I have such clear memories.” Slight pause. “We had a good time together.”

  “Yeah.” Bains gave her one of those lugubrious smiles where his mouth was cheery at the same time his eyes looked a little misty. “If you ever…” He stopped, swallowed, smiled some more. “Good to see you, Glennie.”

  She nodded at him.

  “I gotta go,” I said. I took Spot’s collar, made a little wave and headed back down the beach.

  I turned at Ski Run on my way home and went into the new Red Hut for an Owen’s Omelet, hashbrowns, and coffee.

  I saved a third of the omelet and brought it out to Spot. He was standing on the back seat as I came out. Because he’s too tall to easily get his head out the window without having to hang his head, he does this thing where he puts his right legs on the floor. That puts his head at the proper height to fit out the window while his left legs are bent on the seat. His tail was on high-speed, going back and forth between the front seat and the back seat, slapping them hard enough that I could hear it from outside.

  “Got a treat, your largeness. But you’re gonna have to fight for it.” I stood close and held the box behind my back. He used his snout against my waist and elbows to push me left and then right, trying to get at the box behind my back. Great Danes were developed in the medieval ages for hunting wild boar. They were bred to be tall so they could grab the boar from above. And they were bred to have incredibly strong necks so they could hold the boar until the hunters came. My game was for Spot to use his neck strength to muscle me off balance. I spread my legs to brace myself, and still he pushed back and forth hard enough that I had to take a step sideways.

  “Score,” I said.

  I pulled the omelet from behind my back, opened the box and Spot used his professional omelet-vacuum technique to make the egg levitate and shoot into his mouth like in a cartoon. I couldn’t even see him swallow. Spot licked his chops and then licked the cardboard box.

  I pulled it away before he could eat the cardboard.

  The landscape didn’t register as I drove home. All I could think about was Anna. I wondered who had her now that the man who had watched her the night before, the man I assumed was her kidnapper, was dead.

  TWENTY-NINE

  When I got home, I called Diamond.

  I got voicemail at all of his numbers. I left messages.

  I sat down to think and try to make a picture in my head of how the pieces fit. But they wouldn’t go together.

  Nick O’Connell put on an elaborate, tragic show in an attempt to get Thomas Watson arrested for Grace’s murder. Watson had sold weapons to both Nick and Davy Halstead, leader of the Red Blood Patriots. All three apparently had reason in the form of a valua
ble journal to go after Anna. Davy, the only one who had been both alive and free, was watching Anna last night. Then Anna was kidnapped and Davy was killed, probably, but not necessarily, by the same person. Of the three men involved, only Watson was still alive, and he was in jail.

  I had no other suspects.

  What I kept thinking was that the militia called the Red Blood Patriots was at the center. Davy started it. Nick was involved at least to the extent of helping acquire weapons. And Thomas Watson was connected as the weapons supplier.

  I needed to find out more about them.

  I looked online and found a few references in old newspaper articles, but nothing else. No names, no addresses, no emails, no websites. In an era when everything was now online, it was a remarkable level of privacy.

  Diamond called back.

  “About to have lunch,” I said. “Come up the mountain to join me? I can update you on what happened this morning.”

  “Would love to, amigo, but work calls. I’ll stop by later.”

  I called Street and asked her the same thing. She was sorry that she had to meet a bug census deadline for the Forest Service.

  “Any news about Anna?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately, no.” I told her about finding Davy Halstead’s body.

  “So Anna’s disappearance could be connected to the Red Blood Patriots,” Street said.

  “It looks like that, yes.”

  We said goodbye, and I spent the next two hours trying to figure out who had Anna and where they had taken her. My frustration was extreme. When my brain was sore from stressing and worrying about her, I attempted to distract myself with some aimless paper work, then did some aimless housework. I tried to ignore the building pressure, tried to focus on something less dark than men who prey on others.

  Spot and I ate in, barbecued cheeseburger and fries for both of us, although in different proportions. As always, I marveled at Spot’s focus and concentration as the burgers cooked. If researchers studying the science of desire put their electrodes on Spot’s head when I fired up the charcoal, they’d shelve Pavlov’s most famous work as trivial. Spot’s enthusiasm for cheeseburger was an order of magnitude beyond any previously-known life force.