by Todd Borg
I wormed my way back out of the tunnel and climbed out of the snow pit.
It was obvious that Spot had smelled the death. He eyed me with drooping eyes and limp ears. His tail didn’t move, and he didn’t come forward to greet me as I got out of the snow cave. Honey G sat next to Ellie. His head hung low, his energy and enthusiasm gone.
“Honey G found the driver of the pickup, didn’t he?” Ellie said.
I walked to Ellie’s side and put my arm around her. “He found a body, yes, but it’s a young woman.”
Ellie gasped. “But you said they identified the truck as belonging to a young man. And the boy’s uncle said his nephew had driven off in it, right?”
I nodded.
“Then who is the young woman?”
“I have no idea, Ellie.”
I pulled out my cell. There was no reception.
“Let’s go up to the highway. I can try calling the Sheriff’s Department from up there.”
We hiked up slowly, drained after the depressing discovery. Spot stayed next to me, not looking around, walking like a refugee. Honey G hung back behind Ellie. Ellie tried to cheer him up, using her glove to entice him into a game of tug-of-war, but he wasn’t interested.
Back in the Jeep I started the engine and turned on the heat. I pulled energy bars and dog cookies out of my pack and handed them to Ellie. While she waited with the dogs, I walked down the highway until I found some cell reception and got Sergeant Bains on the phone.
“I’m out at Emerald Bay,” I said. “I brought Ellie Ibsen, the search dog trainer. Her dog found a young woman’s body buried about a third of the way down to the water. Not far below the truck in the tree.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You said woman?”
“Yes. Early twenties, I’d guess. Buried in the slide about eight feet down.”
“She have identification on her?”
“Don’t know. She’s still buried. I dug a pit, then the dog tunneled a little distance sideways. I went in and just managed to get to her head before I backed out. You’ll have to dig down from above to get her out.”
Forty minutes later I was snowshoeing back down the mountain with Bains and two deputies. Ellie had decided to stay with the Jeep and the dogs.
One deputy towed a toboggan behind him. On the toboggan were two shovels and a variety of gear. I showed the cops my snow pit and then walked over to where I thought they should dig.
Bains and I stood to the side while the younger men dug.
“You got a take on this?” Bains said.
“Not a clear one. The simplest explanation is that March Carrera drove off with the girl. He got stuck and they got out to walk. The slide caught both of them. We found her. Now we still have to find him.”
“Why do you say you don’t have clear take on this?”
“When I talked to the uncle he said March had no girlfriend and wasn’t dating. March’s friends didn’t know of anyone, male or female, who might have ridden with him to Tahoe City. Something about this feels wrong.”
Bains looked at me and chewed his lip. “You worked homicide for the SFPD, right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Bains nodded thoughtfully. “Okay. Your warning lights are good enough for me.” He stepped over to where the men were digging.
“Boys, when you get to the girl, go slow and easy so you don’t disturb her. We’re going to treat this as a potential homicide.”
The men stopped digging and looked at Bains.
“I want a large excavation, photos at each stage. Bag her hands and feet. Any snow stuck to her goes into the body bag with her. Sift all nearby snow and dirt. You know the drill.”
It took ten minutes to reach her, another twenty to carefully excavate around her.
They were very thorough with the scene, carefully following Bains’ instructions.
I left as they were strapping the body bag onto the toboggan.
SEVEN
“We should go back for the boy,” Ellie said when I returned to the Jeep.
“We’re tired, the dogs are depressed, and it’s already mid-afternoon. You’ve put in a long day.”
“As you look at the slide below the highway, Honey G never searched the upper right quadrant.” Ellie said. She slouched with weariness, but her eyes were clear and intense.
“Shouldn’t I be taking you out for a hot meal?”
“We stopped where he found the girl. We never went past that point,” she said.
“I know a good restaurant with tables by the fireplace,” I said.
“If that young man is buried, Honey G will find him,” she said.
“Grilled salmon, a good pinot noir,” I said.
Ellie opened the back door of the Jeep and spoke to the dogs. “Okay, boys, nap time is over.”
On our way back down we passed Bains and his men. They’d hauled the toboggan almost up to their SUVs. The toboggan would just fit in the one with the rear seat folded down.
“Going back to look for March Carrera,” I said.
Bains looked at Ellie, then at me.
“At her insistence,” I said.
“You know where to call.”
Ellie was less effective at getting Honey G excited the second time around. But he did his job, hiking up the slide at an angle, nose in the air. Periodically, he turned and looked back for Ellie’s hand signals.
Without saying a word, she maneuvered him across the portion of the slide we hadn’t searched. He zigzagged his way up past the tree with the truck in it. Ellie and I hiked slowly up the slope. I was tired. Ellie’s stamina was amazing. Spot followed us.
In ten minutes, Honey G alerted.
He put his nose to the snow, ran several feet away and stopped so quickly it was as if he’d hit the end of a leash. Then he started digging.
Spot finally got interested, trotted up and again found his own place to dig a few feet away. I joined them with my shovel and we reached March Carrera fifteen minutes later. His body was smoothly curved around a tree trunk as if, like a rag doll, it had no bones.
Ellie tried to praise and reward the dogs, but they were listless. Again, we walked up the mountain until I got cell reception. Bains answered immediately.
“Found March Carrera’s body about six feet down.”
“The boys and I are in town. We just dropped off the girl at the mortuary where she can stay the night. I was making arrangements to have her brought to Sacramento. Now you want us to come back? You think we’re running a morgue shuttle service?”
“Something like that.”
“You have similar suspicions on this one?”
“Maybe.”
I heard Bains sigh. “Back soon,” he said.
EIGHT
“Time for a meal?” I said as we drove back to town.
“First, we have to cheer up the dogs.”
“Got it,” I said, my stomach growling.
I called Street Casey at her bug lab. I told her about our day and asked if she would get lost for the dogs.
“Of course, but I can’t bury myself in snow. I’d need help. And I’m not exactly dressed for it.”
“A variation would work. I’m thinking about that giant boulder out back of your lab. It’s got that overhang?”
“Good idea,” she said. “I’ve got my snowshoes in the car trunk. When should I head out?”
“Now?”
“Advance notice is so helpful. Okay, let me turn off the scope and put these samples back in the incubator. I’ll bring my cell and call you when I’m in position.”
Ellie and I were waiting in my office parking lot just up the street on Kingsbury Grade when my phone rang.
“It’s very cold and dark under this ledge of rock,” Street said. “The dogs better find me soon.”
“Three or four minutes, max,” I said.
We drove down the block to Street’s lab.
“In the interest of not breaking pattern, I’ll follow my normal procedure,” I said to Ellie. I kno
cked on Street’s lab door, called out her name, opened the door with my key, called Street’s name again. “She’s not here,” I said. Spot looked at me, puzzled. Honey G stood nearby.
Without turning, I said to Ellie, “She’s hiding in the woods about a tenth of a mile directly behind me. If you look at the big Jeffrey pine where lightning split the top, she’s just down to the left.”
“I see it,” Ellie said. “There’s no breeze over on this side of the lake, so it’s not clear what kind of scent cone he might find. But we’ll send him out. Honey G, come.”
Honey G obeyed as before, albeit with no enthusiasm. He sat and Ellie held his chest and gave him an intense vibrating shake. “Find the victim, Honey G. Find!” She pointed toward the boulder and sent him on a search. He did a kind of slow leaping canter through the deep snow.
I kneeled down and gave Spot the same command.
Spot acted bored as if the exercise were a waste of time. Nevertheless, he followed Honey G at a fast walk.
In a minute Honey G had veered far to the left and Ellie corrected him when he looked back. In another minute he stuck his nose straight up and stood up on his hind legs for a moment. Then he ran out into the woods, leaping like a deer through the snow. Spot ran after him.
Honey G’s enthusiastic sprint was 45 degrees off from Street’s location, and I worried that he had picked up someone else’s scent. But then he turned in a big gradual arc and homed in on Street’s boulder as if he knew exactly where she was.
Spot figured it out, too, and they both converged on the boulder and dived out of sight under the overhang.
Street emerged from behind the boulder, romping with the dogs, their moods completely changed.
Ellie turned to me. “Thank you.”
“No. Thank you.”
NINE
We drove back down to the foothills and finally found food at a roadhouse near Placerville, a comfortable five or six minutes before I would have expired. We dropped Ellie and Honey G at the Three Bar Ranch and headed back up the mountain. I called Sergeant Bains and volunteered to tell Bill Esteban about his nephew’s death. But it was late when we arrived home. It could wait.
The next morning I headed to the Tahoe Keys. Bill Esteban’s house was a big modern box on one of the inland canals, a short boat ride to the freedoms of the big lake. It had a three-car garage with all the doors open. Inside were his Escalade, a Seville and a snowmobile trailer with two machines on it.
It took Bill a couple of minutes to get to the door. He ushered me in and up the stairs. Many Keys houses have the bedrooms on the ground floor and the living area upstairs to take in the views of lake and mountains and sky. Bill had me go first.
The living room was huge and lavish. Teak furniture glowed against Prussian blue carpet.
We sat on two of six opposing chairs. Between the chairs were small tables. On the one next to Bill was a chessboard with a game in progress. The black king was well guarded. The white queen cavorted with the bishop while the white king stood like a lonely pariah in the corner.
From where I sat I could see out one window toward Heavenly with its network of ski runs and out another window toward Mt. Tallac. We were in a break between storm fronts, and the variegated clouds were sparse and high allowing a view of the mountain peaks. A plume of blowing snow streaked off the summit of Mt. Tallac into the blue sky. It was relatively warm down at lake level, but that plume indicated deadly weather at 10,000 feet.
A giant garish TV screen showed the Vikings butting heads with the Cowboys. The volume was turned down.
“You came unannounced,” Bill said. “I suppose that means you’ve learned something about March?” He braced himself, hands on the arms of his chair.
“Yes. I’m very sorry to say that he died.”
Bill looked like he’d been sucker punched. He exhaled hard and didn’t breathe back in for a long time. His eyes seemed focused somewhere far beyond the house. Then he suddenly inhaled and gasped for air as if he’d been a long time under water.
“I brought in an avalanche search dog and he found March’s body buried under six feet of snow. They got him unburied late yesterday. His body is at the morgue in Sacramento. Eventually, they’ll get the truck out of the tree. Perhaps there will be something more we can learn about what happened.”
“You think it was an accident?” Bill was sitting on the very edge of his chair, elbows on his bad knees, his eyes large and dark and wet and imploring behind his glasses.
“Hard for an avalanche not to be. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just that March was careful. He took risks, but he was smart about it.”
“It wasn’t very smart for him to be out driving in the storm that night.”
“No.” Bill leaned back in his chair. He forced a deep breath in an effort to stay calm. “But I can’t see him stopping and getting out in the path of an avalanche. He was a backcountry skier. He knew the risks.”
Bill started breathing hard again. “What do I do now? I feel like I’m responsible.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I should’ve done things different.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something.” Bill was panting, his chest heaving. “I was March’s closest family. Maybe his closest friend. He was buried and suffocating in that avalanche while I was oblivious. I should have been there for him.” Bill gasped like a drowning man. His face was red. He looked like he would have a heart attack any moment.
I walked over in front of him. “Bill, you’re hyperventilating. Hold your breath.”
Bill gasped harder than before.
“Bill, stop breathing and hold your breath!”
My shout startled him. He reached up and clamped his thumb and fingers over his nose like a little kid. His cheeks puffed out. There were bits of dried blood in the cracks of his cuticles. His fingernails were chewed back so far it was as if he had done it to inflict pain on himself.
“Good. Hold it a little while longer. That will calm you down. A little more. Okay, let your breath out slowly. Now take a small short breath.”
“I have anxiety medication,” he whispered. “In the cabinet in the bathroom. Brown bottle.”
I fetched the pills and brought him a glass of water. He shook one out and swallowed it.
“Sorry,” he said after a minute. “Death in the family... it’s something I...”
“What?” I said.
Bill didn’t respond.
“Death in the family is what?”
Bill hesitated. I waited.
“It’s very hard,” he finally said.
When he calmed, I said, “March have other family?”
“Just April, his sister, and me. No other relatives.”
“March wasn’t alone in the slide.”
Bill jerked.
“There was a young woman. Her body was also buried in the slide. We found her about fifty yards away.”
“Do you know her name? What did she look like?”
“Thin and delicate, with blond hair. I’d guess she was younger than March by a couple years. We don’t know her name, yet.”
Bill looked ill. “They’re going to do autopsies, aren’t they? They’ll want permission from March’s closest of kin. That’s his sister April. I don’t know how they can even reach her.”
“They will give April or you a courtesy call. But they don’t need permission to do an autopsy in California.”
In time, Bill calmed, got up on his crutches and moved around. “Get you something to drink?” Bill said.
“Whatever you’re having,” I said.
“I don’t touch alcohol, but I keep beer for visitors.”
“Sure.”
I looked out the windows while Bill fetched libations. Down in the drive, Spot had his head stuck out of my Jeep’s rear window. Snow was blowing off Bill’s roof onto Spot, tickling his ears. Spot shook his head. Snow and saliva flew and his jowls and ears flapped and he turned and loo
ked up at me.
Bill came and stuck a tall glass of amber in my hand. He sat down on a different chair, sipped what looked like iced tea and, with a struggle, got his bad legs up on the matching hassock. He glanced at the TV, two rows of giant men lined up to trample each other into the turf, then turned back to me.
“Do you want me to keep looking into March’s death?”
“Yeah.”
“Even though I’m unlikely to uncover anything other than more details about an accidental death?”
“Yeah.”
“I will have lots of questions and it may take a long time.”
Bill looked at me and raised up scratchy misshapen eyebrows that looked like two-inch pieces of barbed wire. His face was still red.
“That’s okay,” he said.
“March lived with you?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“He spend much time with you?”
“Some. We ate dinner together a few times a week.”
“He confide in you?”
Bill frowned. “You mean, like tell me his personal problems? No. He was a man. He could figure things out himself.”
“So he slept here, ate a few meals here, but that was it. You didn’t really know him well?”
Bill stared at me, his rough complexion looking like 40-grit sandpaper in the morning sunlight. “Christ, this is what it turns into, doesn’t it? One minute, I’ve got a nephew who is everything to me. Then he’s dead and I need to talk about what he ate and who he knew and his personal habits...”
I waited for Bill to see the sense of it.
“Sorry,” Bill said. “No, I guess I didn’t really know him well. He was mostly here alone. I live in Houston.”
“You’ve had this place long?”
He looked around at the room. “I picked this up six years ago. It was built by another guy from Houston. A customer of mine. I came here a few times to vacation with him and his wife. I was always interested in Tahoe because I had a Washoe grandmother who visited my sister Maria and me when we were young. Grandma was an incredible basket weaver from Carson Valley. She told us stories about Tahoe, the sacred lake where her ancestors hunted and fished. I wanted to come to Tahoe just because of her stories.