Tahoe Blowup

by Todd Borg

  I was looking at the mountains around Emerald Bay and their three thousand foot faces when I saw a small insignia that looked like a drawing of an old oil derrick. According to the elevation lines it was at 8,600 feet. Checking the map key I saw that it marked a mine.

  On an impulse, I looked up at the newer map on the wall. A glance across the same region showed that no mine was marked.

  I went back to the old maps in the book and searched for another mine. In a moment I found one in what is now the Desolation Wilderness. Going back to the new maps revealed that, once again, the mine did not show.

  Apparently, the mines had been closed or forgotten before the new maps were drawn, or else they were locations that the newer map makers didn’t feel were important enough to put on the new maps.

  As I continued to study the old maps, I found other mines and a few cabins that were not marked on the new maps. But I saw no more Xs.

  So was this the reason for the old maps? Did Winton use them because they showed the locations of old mines?

  There was obviously something significant about the maps that I still hadn’t seen. I continued studying them, scanning left and right, up and down. I spotted it on the second to the last map, a region that included Freel Peak and its companion mountain, Job’s Sister.

  Another red X.

  The Xs designated the fire locations. We’d had three major fires, not counting the small one at the airport. This X was the fourth.

  It was in South Lake Tahoe, just off Westwood Trail near the Freel Creek Elementary School. Next to the red X was a single word written in pencil and underlined.

  Blowup.

  Around the word flowed penciled arrows and an irregular outline lightly shaded with diagonal lines. Nearby was writing, again in pencil, ‘Original Freel Peak Fire, constrained by unexpected rain.’

  Another irregular outline was drawn in red pencil. This one had the same general shape as the former, but was three times as large. Next to it, in red pencil was written, ‘Repeat of Freel Peak Fire with same north wind but no rain.’

  The weather report had said the wind was going to shift to out of the northwest sometime in the afternoon. I glanced at my watch. 1:00 p.m. I pulled Winton’s dirty drapes aside and looked out the windows. The nearby pines were waving in the wind. As near as I could tell, it was a northwest wind.

  I picked up Winton’s phone and dialed 911.

  “Nine one one emergency,” a woman said.

  “This is Owen McKenna calling with a fire emergency. I work for the fire department,” I said, seeing no reason to differentiate between different departments in different states. “Please patch me through to Captain Mallory on the South Lake Tahoe Police Department.”

  “Sir, is this fire near your address in Carnelian Bay?”

  I tried to sound calm, but it came out closer to a yell. “Ma’am, I know of no fire on the North Shore. This is another fire on the South Shore and I will tell Mallory about it just as soon as you connect me.”

  “Sir, we are required to get a description and address.”

  What I said next was rude and abusive, but it worked.

  “Yes, sir. Please hold.”

  I stared at the arrows Winton had drawn from the red X. They went across several inches of the old maps, around the side of Trimmer Peak and on up toward the saddle between Freel Peak and Job’s Sister. But it wasn’t a fire in the mountains that made the prospect of a blowup so frightening. It was what the fire would go through before it even got to the steep slopes.

  It took a minute to compare old maps and new maps.

  According to Winton’s arrows, the fire he was planning would burn through most of what was now the Freel Creek Subdivision neighborhood.

  From their origin at the red X, the arrows broadened out unlike any of the arrows he’d drawn to represent the other fire locations. I had no idea how many houses this potential blowup would encompass, but I’d been through the Freel Creek Subdivision neighborhood on a few occasions. If my memory was correct, there were certainly several dozen houses at risk. Maybe a hundred or more. Winton had demonstrated by his previous fires that he knew exactly what he was doing. If he intended this one to be a blowup, it almost certainly would turn out to be one.

  How many people would perish if he lit this fire?

  And where was Street? Was she in one of those houses? In the fire’s path?

  I heard several clicks on the line. Then, “I’m still trying, sir.” Then, “I’ll have you connected in a moment.”

  I had no doubt that, thinking me a crank caller, she was directing officers to intercept me at the same time she was trying to get Mallory.

  “Here is Captain Mallory, sir,” she finally said, and then Mallory was on the line.

  “McKenna!” he barked. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I’m in the firestarter’s cabin on the North Shore.”

  “Is that where Winton Berger lives?”

  “Yes. I’m calling because the Kingsbury location isn’t accurate. If he hasn’t already lit his next fire, he is about to. According to a map I found in his mattress, the ignition will be someplace near the Freel Creek Elementary School.”

  “What?!” Mallory sounded truly shocked.

  “Hello?” another voice got on the line. “This is Diamond Martinez. Owen, are you there?”

  “Yes, Diamond.” I repeated what I’d told Mallory. Then I continued. “Winton’s maps show that this fire will be a repeat of the Freel Peak blowup from fifteen years ago, the fire that killed his mother. That was made possible by an unusual wind, strong and warm and out of the northwest. Now we’ve got the same thing happening, winds picking up and coming out of the northwest,” I said. “I’d consider the entire Freel Creek Subdivision neighborhood at risk.”

  “Goddamn it!” Mallory yelled over the phone. “Are you saying we should move out of the Kingsbury area and evacuate the Freel Creek end of town?”

  “Yes. I’d get every unit you have and go door to door. Start at the lower elevations and work your way up.”

  “How many hundred kids are in that school? Goddamn it!” he said again.

  At that moment there was another click and a fourth voice got on the line. “Captain Mallory? This is Fire Marshal Joey Roberts. I’m told you’ve got something for me.”

  “I’ve got Owen McKenna and Diamond Martinez from Douglas County Sheriff’s Department on the line,” Mallory said. “Tell him what you told us, Owen.”

  I repeated myself again.

  “Excuse me,” Roberts said. “We’ve had no reports of fire. And we’ve put on two more lookouts since the fire that killed Linda Saronna. One up at Heavenly and one on Tahoe Mountain. Along with the Angora Ridge lookout, that makes three on the South Shore. I just spoke to all of them and they see no smoke anywhere in the basin. Now you want me to send men and rigs to the Freel Creek Elementary School based on a guess about the firestarter?”

  “This ain’t a guess, Joey,” Mallory said.

  “I send even one strike team to one part of the basin, it would jeopardize our readiness everywhere else. Maybe this firestarter is setting us up. Maybe that’s what he wants.”

  “Owen,” Mallory said. “You still stand by your assessment?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Joey,” Mallory said. “You better do it. Owen’s been wrong before, but I’m not betting on it this time. You’ve got a reasonable warning about a potential blowup. Hate to think what the town will say afterward if you didn’t act on that warning.”

  There was a pause. “Okay, consider it done,” Roberts said and hung up.

  “You better be right, Owen,” Mallory said before he hung up.

  “Diamond, you still there?” I said.

  “Yes. You’re in the gringo’s lair, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s your next move?” Diamond asked.

  “I’m looking for a clue to Street’s location. She’s got to be in the fire’s path.”

&n
bsp; “If it could be a big fire, then she could be anywhere in a big area. If you get any sense at all of where we should start looking, call me right away?”

  “Thanks, Diamond.”

  I continued to sit in Winton’s chair, staring at his maps, trying to think as he would.

  He’s trying to orchestrate the biggest fire in the history of Tahoe.

  Why?

  His note said the fires were punishment for crimes against the environment. I now knew what those crimes were.

  The government and its Smoky Bear policies put out all fires which deprived the forest of its natural cleaning process. No fires meant a drastic buildup of fuel levels. Which meant that any fires that did occur tended to be much worse than they otherwise would have been.

  The epitome of that was the Freel Peak Fire fifteen years earlier. The blowup raged out of control and killed a woman. Her son Tommy became an understandably recalcitrant foster child, a psychically wounded survivor who grew up angry, nourishing his anger into an obsession. He changed his name to Winton Berger, took a job working for Jake Pooler all while he focused on his obsession with the Forest Service, the very agency that kept in force policies that destroyed his earlier life.

  His hatred grew while he made his plans to exact his revenge.

  His first victim was Jake Pooler, an abusive boss who stole his girlfriend.

  The next two victims, Joanie Dove and Linda Saronna, were probably killed because they had been his foster moms and they tried, unsuccessfully, to be substitutes for his real mother. Further, they represented the authorities that he blamed for his real mother’s death. Linda had even worked for the Forest Service. So he hatched a plan to exact his revenge.

  Linda Saronna must have heard about him and, realizing that he was living in Tahoe under a new name and working for the first man killed in the fires, suspected that Winton was the arsonist.

  Then came the fire that killed Joanie Dove, and Linda’s suspicions grew. But either her suspicions came too late, or else it was her suspicions that caused her death. Either way, she burned.

  Now there was to be one more victim to punish me for trying to find the killer.

  Street.

  But where was she?

  I looked again at the maps. As the topographic lines morphed into a mountain landscape in my mind, I thought of the Bierstadt painting. In essence, it depicted a mountain paradise not unlike what Tahoe must have been before white man came. As I saw it in my mind, I thought of the words on the last fax, words that Street had given him.

  Achorutes nivicola.

  Snow fleas. Minute insects, unrelated to real fleas. They lived in moist soils, decaying organic material, near fungus, under fallen leaves. And they swarmed on snow.

  We’d been looking at the Bierstadt picture when Street mentioned the snow fleas, so I kept thinking that it contained a clue. But there were countless places in the Bierstadt landscape where snow fleas could live. And even if I could pinpoint a location, there were few places in the Bierstadt picture where I could find a corresponding place in Tahoe. It made no sense. Besides, much of the Bierstadt landscape was covered in snow, and in Tahoe in the fall there was almost no snow left from the previous winter.

  But there was some snow.

  Did Street’s mention of snow fleas mean she was near snow?

  I stared at the map. Looking over the area he had marked to burn in his next fire, there was only one place where there was snow this time of year.

  The snowfield I could see from the deck of my cabin.

  I looked out Winton’s window. Across the highway was a condominium complex, obscuring any view of the lake. But up above, in the distance, were the mountains of the South Shore.

  The snowfield was little more than a white speck from such a distance. But I knew that it probably was hundreds of feet across. It sat in the shadow of Freel Peak and Job’s Sister, probably around 10,000 feet, and was not too far from Star Lake.

  There was no marking on the map for snowfields. But I knew roughly where it was. And at that spot the map showed a mark for a mine and another structure I took to be a mining cabin.

  I thought back to what Frederick had told me about the Freel Peak Fire.

  He’d said that the woman who died soaked herself and her son in the water of Star Lake and then took cover in an old mining cabin.

  If Winton was going to recreate the fire, then maybe he planned to recreate his mother’s death in the mining cabin.

  Street.

  I tried to stay calm, tried to think despite my hammering heart and breath that came in staccato bursts.

  If Winton had her captive in the mining cabin near Star Lake there had to be a way to drive up to it, as hiking up to a lake at over 9000 feet was not something he could reasonably do while dragging Street against her will.

  Four-wheel-drive trails were often depicted as dotted lines on topo maps. The Forest Service had reclaimed many of them over the years by blocking them with logs and other erosion-prevention measures. Those routes were often marked on maps as ‘old Jeep trails.’

  I looked over the newer map on the wall. Not only did it not show any Jeep trail leading up to the snowfield, it didn’t even show the mining cabin, suggesting it might not even exist anymore. Had it burned in the Freel Peak fire of fifteen years ago? From the way I remembered Frederick describing it, Winton’s mother had died from smoke not fire and the cabin may very well still exist.

  Then how did Winton get up to it with Street?

  Was I wrong in thinking that he was recreating the Freel Peak Fire, wrong in thinking that he would want to burn Street in the same cabin in which his mother had died?

  Again, I went over the old maps in the book that smelled of urine.

  The coloration showed areas of forest separate from areas that were mostly rock. When I followed the topo lines away from Star Lake and the nearby snowfield, I found a long cliff face with a narrow, but nearly level stretch of barren ground just below the cliff. Farther to the side was an open area void of trees. According to the map key, this was a large meadow at roughly 9500 feet. On the other side of the meadow there was a Jeep trail.

  I traced the dotted line down a ridge where it turned and descended a steep face in a series of switchbacks, zig-zagging down to a forest at about 8000 feet. At the bottom, the trail meandered through forest and glen until it intersected Highway 89 near the top of Luther Pass.

  Was the old Jeep trail still there?

  I looked up at the newer wall map for the same area. Scanning the highway, forest and ridgeline made it clear that it was no longer marked. Which suggested it had long since been overgrown.

  But how did Winton get up there? Was the trail still in use? Or did Winton have his own secret route? I’d find out shortly.

  In Winton’s pen jar on his desk was an Xacto knife. I used it to cut the appropriate portion of the new map off the wall, grabbed the old map book and left.

  At the broken front door was a coat rack with a collection of baseball caps on it. I grabbed one for its scent and was just stepping through the door when a cop car pulled up at the end of the driveway. Another stopped down the road behind my Jeep, blocking it. Two officers jumped out, guns raised, feet spread in the stance.

  “Drop what you’re holding! Hands above your head!” the leader said.

  I kept walking toward them. Spot was tense at my side. I gave him a touch to calm him.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  “No, you won’t,” I yelled back. “Call Captain Mallory on the SLTPD. I’m Owen McKenna investigating the fires for the Tahoe Douglas F.P.D. You can call them or the Forest Service. Or call Captain O’Reilly on the Truckee PD.”

  The cops kept their guns on me. “Spread ’em and we’ll check your story out.” His eyes went to Spot.

  “What I’m going to do is slowly reach into my pocket and show you my license. Then...”

  “Shit!” the second cop said. “He could be carrying!”

  I could see their
trigger fingers tightening on their guns.

  “Then,” I continued, “I’m going to get in my Jeep and drive to the fire. If you don’t move your cruiser I’ll ram it until I can squeeze by.”

  “Nine, one, one got a suspicious call from this address.”

  “That was me,” I said, softer now as I drew close to them. “I also kicked in the front door,” I said as I pulled out my license and held it up. “This is the residence of Winton Berger the arsonist. He is no doubt lighting another fire as we speak. This one will be over by the Freel Creek Elementary School on the South Shore.”

  As I spoke, the radio on the first cop’s belt squawked. He punched a button. I couldn’t understand the words, but they were angry. The cop said a few words and then let his gun down.

  “Seems you’re okay,” he said. He turned to his partner. “The South Shore is marshalling everything they’ve got in the Freel Creek area, all based on what this guy told them. He must be legit.”

  The second cop protested. “But this guy committed a B and E. He admitted it. We can’t leave the scene.”

  “You’re free to go,” the first cop said, as he glanced at Spot. “What the hell kind of dog is that, anyway?”

  “A Mondo dog,” I said as Spot and I got in the Jeep where Natasha waited.

  FORTY-ONE

  I got Diamond on the phone as I raced around the lake. I told him my suspicion that Street was being held in a mining cabin up near Star Lake and under the peaks of Freel and Job’s Sister.

  He wanted to know the exact location and I explained that I wasn’t sure and was operating off of an old map that might not be accurate. Nevertheless, he said he would try to pull strings with the fire agencies and see if he could send the chopper waiting on Red Alert up to scout it out. I told him thanks and concentrated on speed as I went down the West Shore.

  Then I called Glennie at the paper.

  “Hello, Glenda Gorman speaking.”