Tahoe Avalanche

by Todd Borg

  “It’s a hiking pass up from Hope Valley on the southern slope of Freel Peak.”

  “Oh, I’ve been up there. That’s not too far from Hell Hole Canyon. Are you saying she’s up there, now?”

  “That’s my guess,” I said.

  “There’s a big storm coming in. The first wave is supposed to begin later this morning. Light snow is already starting here at my house. The main brunt of the system is supposed to hit in the early afternoon. Hundred-mile-per-hour gusts on the ridgetops.

  Two to three feet of snow above seven thousand feet. How high is Armstrong Pass?”

  “Around nine thousand feet,” I said. “Hold on.” I set the phone down and used my arm to make the turn onto the highway, then went back to steering with my knees. I picked the phone up. “I’m back,” I said.

  “So even without a murderer, we’d have a life-and-death situation up at that elevation if we don’t get her off the mountain by late morning.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Heading south from Incline Village,” I said.

  “You got a plan?” Bains asked.

  “Even if we could get a chopper, we couldn’t land with the cloud cover that’s currently racing through. So that leaves snowmobiles. But the snow might be too soft and deep for them. We’ll have to bring skis as well. The problem is that the killer thinks that April is the only one left who knows about the coins.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that if the killer hears us coming on noisy sleds, he’ll probably kill her immediately and make his escape, thinking he can come back later and get the coins himself.”

  Bains thought about it. “So we get up the mountain on the machines, stop a good distance away and go in on skis.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “It’s a lot of activity and department dollars based on your hunch,” Bains said.

  “I’m going whether you join me or not. But I’d like to have your help.”

  It was moment before Bains spoke. “You were right on your other hunches. I’ll make some calls, see if I can shake loose some department snowmobiles. Oh, long as I’ve got you on the phone, I should let you know I tracked down some background on Sisuug, the mountain man.”

  “Yeah?” I was struggling to steer with my knee. I leaned forward with my elbow and sling to help. My biceps burned with fire.

  “There was a restraining order on him back in Montana. He was obsessed with a woman he was dating, stalking her and such. She was seeing him and another guy, too. Sisuug beat up the other guy pretty bad. I’m here to tell ya, Sisuug is wicked with his fists. He pulverized the other guy’s face. They emailed me the reports, pictures and all. I’ve never seen anything done with bare hands that was so vicious.”

  “He go to prison?”

  “No. Turns out three witnesses said the other guy started it by pulling a knife on Sisuug. He tried to stab Sisuug but didn’t have a chance. The DA had pursued this knife fighter twice before and won convictions both times. So he prosecuted again, and the jury convicted a third time. The guy is still in prison.”

  “What about Claude?”

  “He left the state, came to California. Aren’t you glad? Anyway, if Sisuug’s our man and you get near him, watch out.”

  “Will do. Call me back when you find out about snowmobiles?”

  Bains said he would and hung up.

  I set the phone down on the passenger seat. As I came around a curve to the right, my headlights briefly pointed out toward the lake and illuminated a snow squall rushing toward the shore with such speed and power that I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, bracing for the impact of the wind.

  SIXTY-ONE

  I fought the buffeting snow that lashed the Jeep. I’d slowed down from 50 to 25 and still I could barely make out the road in the whiteout. Then the snow squall blew on past and I was back in clear weather. I dialed Uncle Bill. He mumbled a groggy hello into my ear.

  “McKenna, here,” I said.

  “Hey,” he said. “What time is it? I fell asleep. Where are you?” It sounded less like a question than a complaint about being awakened.

  “I’m coming your way. I need your snowmobiles. Are they working? Do they have gas in them?”

  “Sure they work. And I always keep them gassed up in the winter.”

  “Good. Get them ready, will you? Hook the trailer on your SUV. Collect some extra clothes, jackets, and such.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I think April is up on the side of Freel Peak.”

  “What?”

  “I think she’s been in town for some time, working on the same project that March was working on, digging for treasure that her avalanche class found back in November. But there is a big storm coming through later today. We have to get her off the mountain before then.”

  “I could call her on her cell and let her know we’re coming,” Bill said. “She could dig a snow cave for shelter until we can get up there to rescue her.”

  “No, you can’t do that.”

  “Give me a break, McKenna. I’ll do whatever I want. She’s my niece.”

  “We found the killer’s list. She’s the last one on it.”

  “What?”

  “The killer is probably with her or nearby. If she gets a phone call and the killer thinks someone is coming up there, the killer may move up his plans and kill her immediately. If April has a companion helping her, that person would probably get killed, too.”

  “You know who the killer is?”

  “Not for certain. But it’s looking like the avalanche instructor, Claude Sisuug. He has a history of violence. Circumstantial evidence points to him.”

  “He will hear our snowmobiles coming,” Bill said.

  “We’ll stop a good distance away and switch to skis.”

  “When will you be here?”

  “I’m approaching Spooner Lake, but it’s slow going. Maybe forty minutes.”

  “You want me to meet you someplace?”

  “We’ll be heading out over Luther Pass, so let’s meet in the supermarket parking lot at the Y. Bring some food and water, too.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Bill,” I added, “choose the lightest-colored clothes you can. We want to blend into the snow.”

  I hung up, and went back to steering with my hand. My vision wavered. It was my second night without sleep. I struggled to concentrate. The snow was bad as I came down the steep grade toward Glenbrook. I pushed my speed, focusing on keeping the Jeep on the road. The traffic was almost nonexistent, just a long-haul truck up ahead and moving at a crawl through the blowing snow. I eased my way into the left lane. Snow and ice chunks sprayed off the big truck wheels and hit my windshield so hard I thought it might break. I kept floating to the left, but I was still too close to the truck as I pulled alongside of it. There was a heavy blanket of frozen slush at the center of the highway. The slush pulled hard on the Jeep, and I thought I was going to spin out and slide under the truck trailer.

  I wrestled the wheel with only my right hand, tense as a pilot bringing a jet down toward an unseen runway in a blizzard. The wheel vibrated and shook as I tried to pass the big rig. The trucker veered my way, fighting the wind. Frozen slush shot out from the truck’s wheels as if from a snow cannon, slamming the windshield, overwhelming the wipers. I drove blind as the wipers struggled on high speed to scrape away the crud.

  Spot sensed my tension, sticking his nose over my shoulder, jowls next to my ear. He made a high whine.

  And then I was past the truck. I eased back to the right, blasting down the steep highway, my wheels straddling the white line between the two lanes, nothing in front of me but an invisible road choked in snow.

  At the bottom of the slope, I slowed around the curve by Glenbrook and then hit the gas on the straightaway and felt the Jeep fishtail as all four wheels spun in the thick, slick slush. I shot up to 40, then 50 before I backed off.

  I
grabbed the phone off the seat and dialed Street. She answered in two rings, sounding, as always, fully alert regardless of whether she’d been sleeping or not.

  “It’s late, hon. Anything wrong?”

  “Sorry to wake you. But I wanted to let you know my plans. Bains and I are heading up to Armstrong Pass. I think April is up there, digging for treasure.”

  “That’s what April meant when she talked about Armstrong?”

  “I think so, yeah.” I gave Street an abbreviated rundown of what I’d learned from Josie King.

  “I assume you don’t want my help,” she said.

  “Thanks, but I’m worried enough confronting a killer.”

  “I don’t like you going up on the mountain in this weather. You only have one arm. You haven’t slept. So many things could go wrong.”

  “I don’t like it, either,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”

  There was a long silence before Street spoke.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you.”

  I disconnected and set the phone down on the seat as I raced around the curves just north of the Cave Rock tunnel. In clear weather, the view across the lake would be the one they use on postcards, the mountains above Emerald Bay shimmering across the lake, a perfect view much the same now as it was before the Comstock Lode was discovered. Before they found the rich veins of silver and gold ore, before they cut down Tahoe’s forests to prop up the mining tunnels, before they stamped those first few Double Eagles.

  I charged into the Cave Rock tunnel. The sudden transition into air that wasn’t filled with snow, air that I could see through, was jarring. In a moment I came to blowing snow at the end of the tunnel, a wall of white in my headlights, and I blasted back out into the wind.

  I focused on trying to see through the blowing snow, divining with a sixth sense where the highway went. A mile south I went by a single car, chains rattling against its front fenders, chugging along at 15 miles per hour. For a moment, its headlights in front of me made it easier to see. Then I flew past it, back into the night, my headlights making a feeble attempt to pry open the darkness.

  Eventually, the snow showers let up again, and I had clear driving through Stateline. The lonely lights of the hotels and casinos lit up the highway and reflected off the bottom of the clouds. For once I could see well enough to stop focusing on staying on the road and think for a moment about how to get to April.

  There was no approach that seemed best. But I cobbled together a possible chain of events that put me and Bains’s sheriff’s deputies on skis in the night, approaching April’s likely camp spot without giving ourselves away to the killer.

  At the far end of town, I pulled into the parking lot at the Y intersection and saw Esteban’s Escalade with the snowmobiles on the trailer. I parked next to him and let Spot out. I transferred my gear into the back of Bill’s huge SUV, then let Spot in the back door. He jumped up on the plush seats, his nails digging into the soft leather. Bill may have noticed, but he didn’t comment. Bill pulled out of the lot.

  “Where are we going?” he said.

  “Up and over Luther Pass. About halfway down to Hope Valley is an old Forest Service Road that goes off to the left. It won’t be plowed, but I’m hoping that Caltrans has made a little place there where we can park. We’re taking the sleds up that road. It runs about a half-mile below Armstrong Pass.”

  “What happened to your arm?”

  “Another bomb at my cabin.”

  “Jesus, McKenna. I never realized what I was getting you into.”

  I got Bains on the phone as Bill drove.

  “Any luck?” I said when he answered.

  “Yeah. Deputy Rosten and I just finished loading a department machine in his pickup. We’ll be leaving in a few minutes. We’ll take Pioneer Trail out to Meyers. Where are you?”

  “Heading out fifty past the airport. You bring skis?”

  “In back with the sled,” Bains said.

  “We’ll wait for you where eighty-nine turns off to Christmas Valley. By the way, what color are your jackets and pants?”

  “I don’t know, navy, I think.”

  “It’d be good if you could find stuff that’s white. To blend into the snow.”

  “I’ll see what we can rustle up.”

  Bill took it slow because he was pulling a trailer with over a thousand pounds of snowmobiles on it. He drove out through Meyers, turned left on 89 and pulled over to wait. My phone rang.

  “We’re here,” Bains said as the pickup with Bains and Rosten appeared behind us. “I hope you got a plan and a real good sense of the territory, because I looked everywhere and couldn’t find a topo map. I found a road map of Hope Valley that includes that area south of Freel Peak, but it’s not like I could use it to find my way up the mountain in a storm.”

  Bill pulled out and drove down the highway.

  “I’ve got a topo map and I’ve pretty much memorized it. We’ll park just down the other side of Luther Pass. I’ll show you where we’re going on the map.” I hung up. To Bill I said, “That’s Sergeant Bains and one of the deputies behind us.”

  We headed out the deserted highway, through Christmas Valley, past darkened houses, whose residents were asleep in warm beds. At the end of the valley, we headed up the long grade to the top of Luther Pass, the snow getting even heavier as we gained elevation.

  Bill had his wipers and the defrost both turned on high, but the slush was building up on the windshield, and we could barely see the white road through the snow squalls. The snow had built up four or five fluffy inches on top of another layer of heavy compacted snow mixed with slush. Bill’s Escalade went through it pretty well, but a few more inches and we would be forced to stop and go the rest of the distance on the snowmobiles.

  I hoped the SUV was heavy enough that the wheels could continue to crush through the freezing slush and find traction as we went higher and the snow got deeper. I could just make out the pickup behind Bill’s trailer, its headlights dim and shining up at an angle because of the weight of the sled in its bed.

  Several miles up the pass, the rear end of the Escalade broke loose on a curve. Bill backed off the gas and gently steered to correct the skid. But the trailer whipsawed around, pulling us sideways. Bains and Rosten backed off to keep space between us and give Bill plenty of room to maneuver.

  Spot was standing in back, his legs spread wide for stability, preparing himself for something bad.

  Bill counter-steered one way, then the other, and kept some power to the wheels so that he wasn’t pulled to an incapacitating stop. Maybe his Escalade had computer control on all four wheels, or maybe he was the best snow driver that Texas has ever produced, but he got his rig and trailer straightened out, and he eased back on the gas to keep from bogging down in the deep snow at the top of the pass. But a half mile up the road, he hit a patch of ice, and the Escalade and trailer went sideways as a unit and slid off the highway into five or six feet of snow.

  I watched out the snow-caked window as Bains and Rosten did the exact same thing. They skidded 90 degrees and came to a stop broadside at the rear of Bill’s snowmobile trailer.

  Bill was smart enough about snow to know that there was no point in spinning the wheels. We weren’t going anywhere until a tow truck could pull us out.

  We were leaning at an angle to the right, and when I tried opening the door, it was blocked by a wall of snow. Bill was able to push his door open, but I could see it was going to take him some time, so I rolled down my window and, my bad arm screaming, slithered out into the deep snow.

  Rosten’s pickup was immobilized and jammed tight enough against Bill’s trailer that there was no hope of getting the sleds off the normal way.

  Rosten was able to get out his driver’s door, but because the passenger door was hard up against the trailer, Bains had to follow Rosten. Bains introduced us to Rosten, a serious man in his late twenties with a large Roman nose and a heavy brow topped with a single six-inch eyebro
w.

  While Bill watched, frustrated, and Spot ran around, Bains and Rosten, with a little help from me, muscled the sleds off the trailer sideways, lifting them over the trailer’s edge rail and into the deep snow. Then we pulled the department’s sled out of the pickup bed.

  In my pack I carry a thin, custom windbreaker vest that Street made for Spot. I brushed the snow off his back, then put his front legs through the shorty sleeves and zipped it up so that it snuggled up from his deep chest back to his little show-girl waist. He went back to running around while the four of us did an equipment check. A snow shower moved in, so we tried to be fast.

  Bains had a digital recorder in the event that April or Claude or anyone else got loose with their mouths and said something incriminating.

  Bains produced pocket flashlights and strap-on headlights.

  All of us but Bill had folding shovels strapped to our backpacks, including the new one I’d picked up after breaking my other one digging out Paul Riceman’s body.

  We had no transceivers, a stupid mistake, but one we’d have to live with.

  Bains and Rosten each had ski goggles and, by a miracle, Bill had brought two pairs he had for snowmobiling.

  Last, Bains and Rosten had their side arms, Glock nines. Bill and I had no armament but our wits and Spot’s teeth.

  I’d wondered during the drive about the appropriateness of bringing Bill along on the sleds. With his disability, he might make the situation more difficult instead of less. But I realized that he would make severe protest if I tried to prevent him, so I decided not to try.

  Bill pulled snowshoes and custom crutches with huge skipole-type baskets out of the back of his vehicle. Bains and Rosten and I lashed our skis to the snowmobiles with bungy cords.

  With a few pointers from Bill, I started the first sled and drove it out of the deep snow and onto the highway where Bill could easily get on. Then I started the machine that Spot and I would ride.

  I’d debated about taking Spot. The downside was that he could get marooned in bottomless powder or get lost and suffer hypothermia. On the other hand, Spot had demonstrated his worthiness in difficult situations many times in the past. I decided to defer to past experience. When in doubt, have Spot on your side. I pulled a can of high-energy dog food out of my pack. I stomped an area of snow down, opened the can, and dumped it out for Spot. He inhaled it in about half a second. Having some fuel on board wouldn’t prevent hypothermia in a dog, but just as with people, it would help.