by Todd Borg
An ambulance had been waiting down the street. It suddenly jerked forward, its siren turning on and off twice in quick succession to let the firemen in the street know it was moving.
The ambulance turned sideways in the street and stopped. The back doors flung open and two paramedics ran out carrying a stretcher. They sprinted into the smoky woods and met the other fireman halfway. The paramedics set the stretcher down in the blackened dirt and the fireman lowered his load down onto it. With a flash of movement they had the victim lashed down and the paramedics were off and running.
As they came near we saw the victim up close. She was middle-aged and wearing a light blue bathrobe. One foot had a maroon velour slipper on, the other foot was bare. Her skin was the color of old concrete. The paramedics slid the stretcher into the ambulance, which immediately started forward. As it raced away, one paramedic strapped an oxygen mask over the woman’s face as the other reached out and pulled the back doors shut.
I turned to Linda. She was pale and shivering and the shock in her eyes was startling. “I’m sorry, Linda,” I said.
“Oh, my God!” she said over and over.
I put my hands on her shoulders and could feel tremors shaking her body. She grabbed the front of my jacket and bowed her head. Tears dripped onto her bunched knuckles. Watching them bring a fire victim through the flames was an upsetting experience to say the least. And I knew that Linda had been under a great deal of stress. Yet I wondered if there was something else that troubled this woman who clutched onto me.
SIXTEEN
The various agencies fighting the fire produced a massive assault that grew to two helicopters, one tanker, a dozen fire engines and what looked like a hundred men, half of them wielding chainsaws. Even so, it was well into the evening before they had cut fire breaks on both sides of the fire and containment started to seem like a believable proposition.
Several hundred acres had burned.
Along with two houses, just as the note said.
Linda Saronna eventually headed back to her office. Frederick and Francisco had long since disappeared, perhaps still keeping the press at bay.
Joey Roberts stayed in command of the fire, with the South Lake Tahoe departments and the Forest Service contingents on the scene. Terry Drier remained to help Joey, but sent one of his Tahoe Douglas teams and their truck back to their station on the East Shore of Tahoe. I followed them as evening turned to dark night. When the fire truck turned into the fire station, I continued on past and headed up the mountain to my cabin.
It was late, but Street usually worked late. I dialed her number at the lab and she answered immediately.
“Thought it might be you,” she said. “I just heard about the fire on the radio. Were you there?”
“Yes. It was bad. One woman was sent to the hospital with smoke inhalation.”
“Do you think she’ll be all right?”
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. I didn’t add that the only time I’d ever seen the gray color of the woman’s skin was on dead people. “The good news,” I said, eager to change the subject, “is that Spot didn’t hurt the mountain lion.” I told her about my trip to the UC Davis Veterinary Hospital.
Street shrieked with pleasure. “So Spot was dragging Pussy Cat up the mountain to try and help her?”
“Only explanation that fits.”
“Oh, my God, that’s wonderful, Owen,” Street said.
“Yes, it is,” I said, looking over at my dog, prostrate in the corner. His water-balloon neck had dissipated, but he was morose as ever.
I said goodbye to Street, then coaxed Spot into eating a small amount of dog food while I resumed work on the sandwich I’d started so many hours before.
The next morning, Street came over. We sat together on the deck drinking coffee. Despite a breeze, a brown haze from the fire filled the Tahoe Basin.
“I heard on the radio that they couldn’t revive the woman,” Street said, her voice very sad.
“No.” I’d already spoken to my doctor friend John Lee who pulls night duty at the Barton Hospital ER. “Her name was Joanie Dove. Doc Lee says she was home from work with a bad cold. The fire caught her napping in bed. By the time she awakened the house was in flames. She only made it into the living room before collapsing from smoke inhalation.”
Street gave a little shiver in the chair next to me. “The second note said two houses would burn, didn’t it?”
“Yes. But nothing about any people.”
“Are they sure it is arson?”
“I called Terry Drier first thing and he said they called Diamond across the state line because Bill Pickett, the Fire Investigator from South Lake Tahoe, is on vacation. Diamond said the matches from the two fires look to be identical and the MO was the same. But this fire didn’t reveal any gasoline.”
“Did Ellie and her dog already check it?”
“No, we didn’t need to call them. Turns out one of the South Lake Tahoe canine units is accelerant trained. A search revealed nothing.”
Street put her feet up on the deck railing and gazed off over the water. “Maybe the gas at the first fire was the only way to assure that Jake Pooler would burn. But on the second fire no gas was needed because the woman was in her house.”
“That could be,” I said. “But this second death doesn’t look like it was intentional. Joanie Dove was supposed to be at work, so how could the arsonist have known? And Jake Pooler’s death might also have been an accident.”
“True,” Street said. “But in both cases it is possible that the fires were set to cause the deaths.”
“Yes, it’s possible. It just doesn’t seem likely.”
“I suppose,” Street muttered, “that what will tell you will be if you can find any connection between Jake Pooler and Joanie Dove. If so, that would make the deaths more likely to be murder.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“Where did Joanie work?” Street asked.
“Heritage Title Company.”
We were both silent a moment.
“There is one more wild card,” I said. “But if I could find a link there it would be revealing.”
“What is that?”
“Pussy Cat.
“How do you mean?”
“What if the arsonist was the person who shot the mountain lion? If I could find the gun that fired the bullet I might have my arsonist.”
“That seems a stretch. Why would an arsonist shoot a mountain lion?”
“Good question. Maybe the guy was Jake’s friend. They were out together and saw the lion. The guy pulls out his gun, which incidentally was too small a caliber to kill big game without an incredibly accurate shot. Jake doesn’t want him to do it and they argue. The guy shoots the lion anyway and it runs away. Now Jake is very mad at the shooter. They fight, Jake gets gas spilled on him and dies when the shooter strikes a match.”
I could see Street mulling it over. “It seems an improbable scenario, but pick up any newspaper and you see improbable scenarios happening every day.” She stood up, walked over to the edge of the deck, turned toward me and leaned back against the railing. “What’s that aphorism you talked about once? About the simplest explanation?”
“Occam’s Razor. He was an English philosopher, Fourteenth Century, I think, who said that in any puzzle or mystery the simplest explanation is the likeliest to be the truth.”
“So have you applied that to these fires and deaths?”
“I’ve tried,” I said. “The problem is, I can’t find any explanation that fits, let alone a simple one.”
At that, Street walked over to where Spot was sprawled, bent down and rubbed his head. “Next time you rescue a pussy cat, you drag it to my house, okay? With me you’re innocent until proven guilty.”
With that, Street headed off to work while Spot and I drove into town to The Red Hut, breakfast restaurant extraordinaire.
“Hey, Mr. detective,” a familiar voice said as I sat on the last open seat at the coun
ter.
“Michelle, my belle,” I said as she poured delicious smelling coffee into one of the thick Red Hut cups.
“How’s the hound?” she asked as she craned her neck to look out the window. Michelle was a former champion skier who turned champion waitress when she reached the ripe old age of twenty-five and retired after competing in the last Olympics. Unlike a lot of Olympic skiers from Tahoe who go on to careers in the ski business, Michelle decided she wanted to focus on raising her two young kids, and working in a breakfast restaurant allowed her to get home just as they finished preschool. “I bet your dog is waiting with bated breath for a piece of your breakfast,” she said.
“Bad breath,” I corrected. “But yes, I’ll have to save a few bites to take out to him.”
“You want the usual?”
“Please.”
“One Owen’s Omelet coming right up.”
Five minutes later she brought me an omelet with cheddar cheese and fresh tomato inside, salsa and sour cream on top, and hash browns on the side. It looked and smelled so good I couldn’t imagine saving any for Spot.
“I read about you in the paper,” Michelle said. “About how you found the first body. That must have been gross, all burned.”
“Yeah, it was pretty nasty,” I said. “Speaking of which, is your uncle still working for the FBI?”
“Uncle George the shrink? Last I heard he was. But it’s been a while since we’ve spoken. It’s embarrassing how bad we are at keeping up. It’s not like he lives on Mars or something. But since I had my boys, well, you know how it is. Hey, you want to talk to him about the fire and the arsonist?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Here, I’ll write down his number. My little brother and I used to go into San Francisco to visit him. Mom’s way of getting us out from under her feet while she went shopping was to dump us on Uncle George. It’s amazing how nice he always was about it.” Michelle wrote his number on a napkin and gave it to me.
“Thanks,” I said.
Later, she gave me a goodbye pat on the shoulder as I left with the last few bites of my breakfast in a doggie box.
Spot rallied a little when I approached smelling of omelet. “A small offering for your largeness,” I said as I opened the box and offered it to him. He made one swipe with his gigantic tongue and the food morsels shot into his cavernous mouth like a slap shot from Gretsky’s hockey stick. Then his tongue returned for a repeat trip into the box, smacking into the corners hard enough that I had to grip it with both hands. A drop of saliva hit my cheek.
“That does it,” I said, wiping my cheek. “I’m sending you to finishing school for dogs. There’s probably one in L.A.” Spot put his head back down on the seat and went back to acting depressed.
Back at my cabin, I dialed the number Michelle had given me for George Morrell, the psychologist who did profiling for the FBI. George answered directly, no answering machine, no secretary. When I explained what I wanted he agreed to see me that afternoon.
As long as I was going to be in San Francisco, I remembered that Terry Drier had said that Arthur Jones Middleton could give me the “wacko environmentalist perspective” on forest management. Middleton wasn’t available to talk on the phone, but a secretary took the call and said I should come to his house at 5:00 p.m.
I took Spot out for his walk, then left him in my cabin. It is a four hour drive across California to the Bay Area, and by early afternoon I was on the Bay Bridge heading to my old hometown, the place that San Francisco locals refer to as The City.
SEVENTEEN
I had just enough time to stop at the ballistics lab that was tucked into an old warehouse south of Market. I dropped off the slug that Dr. Selma Peralta took out of Pussy Cat’s neck. The technician said he’d have a report for me in a couple of days.
Back across Market and the Financial District, I headed through Chinatown. After ten minutes of circling various blocks I found a parking space just below Russian Hill, wedging my Jeep into a spot on a street that pointed impossibly up like those near-vertical streets in a Wayne Thiebaud painting. It took a few minutes of walking and then backtracking to discover that the street number for George Morrell’s office was not actually on a traditional street, but instead was where a street would have been if San Francisco had been built on the flat. The number led me up a steep cascade of trees, bushes and rocks that were bordered on both sides by stairways. The steps went up for hundreds of feet, boring twin tunnels through the steep arboreal darkness. The houses were a mixture of candy-colored Victorians and weathered cedar boxes with rooftop gardens. Between the houses were decorative gates opening on narrow passages that wound back through small, private jungles so lush it was hard to believe I was in an urban setting.
Morrell’s house number was on a wrought iron gate in front of one of the Victorians, this one painted in two tones of peach with light blue trim. I paused to catch my breath after hiking up a couple hundred feet of stairway, wondering why my high-altitude fitness efforts didn’t make a sea-level climb any less tiring. After a moment I pushed the button. I heard a door open behind thick foliage and a man came around a curved, brick path. He was broad through the shoulders, and narrow everywhere else. His clothing was California-chic, chinos, sandals, and a thin, off-white sweater with the sleeves pushed up onto his forearms exposing an expensive gold watch. He stopped and looked up at me.
“Good afternoon, Mr. McKenna,” he said as he opened the gate and shook my hand. “I’m George Morrell.
“Please call me Owen.”
He nodded. “George for me. Come in.” He gestured toward the stairs that passed for the street. “Did you come from above or below?”
“Below.”
“Oh, then you’ve had your exercise for the day.” He grinned at me.
“Indeed,” I said.
He led me along the brick path, through the large front door and into a formal entry hall about the size of my entire log cabin. “We’ll talk in my study,” he said, “that is if you don’t mind climbing a few more stairs.” He turned and smiled.
“Not at all,” I said. I followed him up a curving stairway. “Do all FBI people live in such nice places?” I asked as we climbed in a half-circle to a wide second-floor balcony.
He chuckled. “All the ones who inherit as I did. But actually, I’m not an FBI employee.”
“Oh? I thought your niece Michelle referred to you as such.”
“I think Michelle finds it much more interesting to think of me as an FBI man than as a psychologist.
“You have a private practice?” I asked. We turned down a hall and went into a room at the end. Large windows looked out at the San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge.
“Used to,” George said. “But after my mother died I had no more need for income and, well, private practice is interesting but not that interesting. Twenty years of it is enough.” He gestured me toward a pair of large leather easy chairs. We both sat. George crossed his legs, laced his fingers together and propped them over his knee. Casual, relaxed, yet a touch intimate. I could see that people would feel comfortable telling him anything.
“Yet you do work for the FBI?”
“Only as a consultant. Frankly, they present me with such horrific but, dare I say, fascinating problems that I cannot resist.”
“I imagine you’ve seen it all by now. Doesn’t the macabre get wearying? The FBI must hand you some pretty ugly stuff.”
“The worst of the worst. But that’s the point.” He leaned back in his chair. “We shrinks are all somewhat on the edge of the bell curve when it comes to matters of psychological balance. Why else would we choose such an occupation? The individual who follows a career of, say, growing roses or running a vineyard is fundamentally a different kind of person than one who studies tumors in rats. Neither, of course, is better. And the world needs both. But shrinks belong to the second group. The most bizarre manifestations of human behavior are what motivate me to get up in the morning. What sick mind will t
he FBI present me with next? And how can my analysis help them catch the individual?” He suddenly stood up. “Excuse me, but I forgot to offer you something to drink. Perrier? Lemonade?” He looked at his watch. “Not too early for scotch. I have what may be the largest private collection of single malts in Northern California.”
“I’d love a beer if you have any,” I said.
“Anchor Steam?”
“Perfect,” I said.
George opened one of those miniature refrigerators and pulled out a bottle. He popped open the cap and set it and a tall glass directly down on a low, walnut burl cocktail table. Despite the fastidiousness made obvious by the perfectly neat and clean house, there were neither coasters nor doilies visible anywhere, something a guy who lived in a log cabin could appreciate. The cold Anchor Steam sweated immediately and the condensation ran down onto the nice table. Being a psychologist he probably lived by a Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff mentality. And doing what he did for the FBI, he had plenty of Big Stuff to concentrate on. I sipped the beer. Delicious. George poured himself a healthy belt of Laphroiag and returned to his chair.
“So what can I help you with, Owen?”
“You are what the FBI calls a profiler?”
“I review information on certain individuals that the FBI is particularly concerned about and from that information I construct likely personality traits and responses to various scenarios. Profiling isn’t my favorite term, but yes, it refers to what I do.”
“We used the term when I was with SFPD homicide,” I said. “Periodically we worked a case in conjunction with the FBI. On two occasions where I was involved the FBI brought in a profiler to help them understand a killer’s motivations.”
“Interesting that you don’t betray the usual animosity when you refer to the FBI,” George said. “It’s been my experience that cops universally don’t like them.”