Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller)

by Todd Borg

  There was one more option.

  Instead of assembling an official Placer County Sheriff’s team and playing by the rules, I could bring my own private backup. Diamond had helped me before despite the threat to his career if he should be caught doing something outside of his jurisdiction. Once he heard my plan, he might sign on out of desire to save Street and Gertie and catch the men who attacked his deputies.

  But as I thought about it, my doubts grew. Not only did I still not have a phone to call him, I had no evidence. My past inspection of the castle revealed it to be empty.

  By every measure, my idea of a secret tunnel was outlandish.

  But what better idea did I have?

  I decided to go alone. Just me and Spot. One more inspection of the castle. I would have the advantage of stealth and surprise. And if I found nothing, I wouldn’t have engaged local law enforcement on a worthless mission.

  As I drove up the dark, deserted East Shore, I once again regretted my personal prohibition against guns. I wanted a gun. Multiple guns. I wanted to shoot the men who took Street and Gertie. Not kill shots. Thigh shots that would incapacitate and cause much pain. But that was the very reason why I no longer carried a gun. Because I might use it. Because I’d used it in the past with tragic consequences.

  There was a small amount of traffic on Highway 50 as I headed up Spooner Summit. But after I turned north on 28, I didn’t see a single vehicle until I got to Incline Village. There were a couple of cars and a few late-night delivery trucks near Incline’s shopping areas. Otherwise, the highway was empty. I checked the dashboard clock. One a.m.

  As I came around Crystal Bay, the wind had shifted out of the south. There was a fine layer of lake-effect snow on the highway and a frozen mist in the air as moisture, picked up from the lake, cooled off once the air came back over land. The cooling condensed the moisture molecules into micro ice particles. Occasionally, my Jeep drifted on the corners. I realized that my tension had me pushing my speed. I backed off on the gas.

  From Crystal Bay, I drove through the dark, silent towns of the North Shore. Kings Beach, Tahoe Vista, and Carnelian Bay all slipped by. There was a bit more traffic as I came into the lights of Tahoe City, a few locals coming home from working late shifts as slope groomers at the ski resorts.

  I turned south on 89, drove across the Truckee River on Fanny Bridge. Again, the traffic disappeared, and I had the dark highway to myself. A couple of miles south I went by Sunnyside, and a mile after that I went by the drive that led back through the trees to Lassitor’s castle on Hurricane Bay.

  Without slowing, I continued south then turned right into the eccentric lady’s neighborhood. I drove a few blocks, turned left and parked on the narrow street. Because the snow walls were so tall, the Jeep was mostly hidden.

  I grabbed the penlight from the glove box, got out, and let Spot out of the back seat.

  Whenever I wanted to be incognito, walking with Spot created a challenge. Unless it was completely dark, the white splash of his coloring would catch the light. And the darkest nights always motivated people to turn on lights if they heard a sound.

  My best approach when I didn’t want to be seen and noticed was to go when no one was around and go alone. The middle of the night worked well except where there were other dogs. Bringing Spot would increase the chance that other dogs would bark. But if I left Spot behind, I would be leaving behind my best multi-use resource.

  Spot wasn’t brilliant. But like all dogs, his ears and eyes and especially his nose were much more sensitive than those of people. In a quiet situation like walking at night, Spot would alert to any human presence long before I could tell anyone was around. And in addition to standard dog abilities, Spot also had bonus characteristics. His size made him intimidating. And his weight and strength were such that no man could fight him off without a good weapon and a focused ability to use it.

  We got out of the Jeep. I walked over to the snow wall and kicked at the base. In and down. Harder. Farther. I came to the shoulder of the road. Kicked more. Hit dirt. Like so much of Tahoe, the ground under all the insulating snow wasn’t frozen. I scuffed some of it up and rubbed it on my face and hands. Gathered more and rubbed it over Spot’s white areas of fur. He didn’t protest. I’d done it before. When I was done, he was no longer a standout. The blacks spots blended into gray-brown background. I’d transformed him from a Harlequin Dane to a Merle Dane with black spots on a gray background.

  We stayed next to the snow walls as we walked out to the highway. When we came to the corner, I looked out. There were no vehicles on the road.

  “Let’s go, Spot,” I whispered. I held his collar as I ran. He trotted next to me. We went down the highway a couple of hundred yards. Instead of turning in Lassitor’s drive and risking the attention of any cameras that might be mounted in the trees, I turned into Gower’s drive. By using the connecting path between the houses, it was the most direct route to Lassitor’s boathouse.

  I slowed to a walk as we approached Gower’s house. Although it wasn’t as big as Lassitor’s castle, it loomed in the dark, two stories high, with all its windows dark. Assuming Gower pulled his car into the garage, there was no way to tell if he was home or at his place down in Carson Valley.

  Spot stopped moving and panting, something he does when he hears a faint sound.

  I heard a faint sound. A low moaning in the distance.

  Another ghost boat?

  I listened. I couldn’t place the direction. I watched Spot. His direction sensitivity is far better than mine, and he turns his head and ears toward sounds he’s interested in. But so far he didn’t seem interested in the moaning sound. He looked left, then right, listening, sniffing.

  I cupped my hands behind my ears, increasing my sensitivity. The moaning sound seemed to rise and fall.

  Then came a light in my peripheral vision. On for a moment, then off. Then twice again. Was it in the trees toward Lassitor’s castle? At the castle itself? It happened so fast that I couldn’t tell if it was someone with a flashlight or something else.

  I turned toward the trees. Watching, listening. At the same time, I was aware of Spot’s head below my own. He turned away from the castle and faced the lake.

  Then Spot jerked his head toward the castle. He went rigid.

  I saw nothing. Heard nothing. Spot began a low rumble in his throat. I jerked on his collar.

  “Quiet,” I whispered.

  Then a woman screamed.

  FIFTY-SIX

  The scream was distant and muffled but no less terrifying for it. My heart thumped. My breaths were shallow pants. I couldn’t recognize any quality to the sound that suggested that it was Street or Gertie. Screams don’t reveal much about the voices that make them.

  Like the moan, the scream seemed to come from everywhere at once. But the muffled quality sounded like it was deep inside a building. I couldn’t sense any direction to the scream. But Spot did. He stood rigid and stared through the dark toward the castle.

  We ran toward the castle. I followed the path from Gower’s drive over to Lassitor’s. There was a dusting of new snow that made it quiet but slippery. Still hanging onto Spot’s collar, I leaned on him for extra support. With his tough claws, he had more grip than studded snow tires.

  My left shoulder bumped the snow wall as we ran. Spot’s right shoulder rubbed against the other snow wall.

  Fifty yards down, we came to Lassitor’s drive. There were no vehicles and no tracks in the recent snow. I looked toward the massive stone walls, trying to see the few small windows in the dark. With no light inside or out, they were nearly impossible to pick out. Up along one of the roof peaks was an area of darkness that looked different from the stone walls. I realized that it was the row of clerestory windows. I walked with Spot toward them. I got close to the big wall with no windows. That would be the windowless wall in the entertainment room. Or else it was the wall that people were supposed to think was the entertainment room wall. The row of clerestory wi
ndows was at the peak of the room. Regardless of whether there was one wall or two with a secret room between, if anyone turned on any light in the entertainment room, it would give a glow to the clerestory windows.

  I stood in the dark, my neck cranked up, staring at the windows. Eight large panes in a row. A big enough expanse of glass that, even if someone in the house below were using a flashlight, a chance moment of reflected light would probably produce a glow visible through those high windows. But they remained dark.

  I turned around to head to the boathouse when Spot jerked again. I sensed a brief glow on the snow around me. I spun around. Nothing. No glow in the clerestory windows. No glow from any of the other small windows off to the side of the big windowless wall.

  Turning slowly, I scanned the forest around the castle. Looking for movement, for any light. My hand was still on Spot’s collar.

  Maybe I was imagining the light.

  The house seemed deserted. The scream could have come from another house in the area.

  My only hope was probably a fantasy. A secret tunnel that would allow me to get into the house where Street and Gertie were being held. It was a ridiculous idea that seemed more ridiculous the longer I considered it.

  But even if I’d been hallucinating, I still knew that someone had screamed. Spot had heard it.

  Spot and I ran to the intersection of the path that went to Lassitor’s boathouse. We turned toward it and the lake.

  I slowed Spot as we got closer to the shadowed building, then pulled him to a stop. We waited, both of us listening, Spot sniffing the air. He didn’t alert. Which meant that no one was hiding in the shadows.

  We walked up to the boathouse door. The only light was dim starlight that reflected off the snow. Spot sniffed the knob and the deadbolt and the doorjamb. It was his casual sniff. Nothing like I would have expected if he smelled scents from Street’s condo.

  The deadbolt looked strong, and the door looked solid. I remembered that the overhead garage door was the only other sizable opening, and it was at the end of the boathouse out in the icy, black water. The water would be deep enough to handle the draft of the average boat. Probably four feet. Spot wouldn’t want to go swimming any more than I did.

  “Spot, stay,” I whispered, touching the palm of my hand to his nose. I put the penlight in my teeth and waded into the water.

  The cold rush of ice water into my shoes and clothes, around my legs and up to my waist was nothing compared to when they’d dropped me in the lake to die. The water rose to the bottom of my ribs as I went around the boathouse corner to the overhead door. Without the light reflection off the snow, it was even darker out in the water. I reached out and felt the door. Its bottom was about two feet off the water’s surface, probably to minimize damage to the door from waves. I could get underneath it without ducking my head, but not much else.

  I bent forward at the waist, the front of my chest dipping down into the water as I ducked under the door. It was cave black inside. But the loss of all vision inputs was curiously made up for with audio inputs. In the enclosed space, every little water movement and wave sound was huge in my ears. My breathing was loud. The splash noises of my movements were loud.

  I flipped on the penlight. It was like a searchlight, a bright blue-white LED beam that was hard on my eyes. Anyone within a mile of the boathouse would be able to see light in the windows. I cupped my hand over the beam, took three fast steps to the side door, and called Spot into the dark space.

  He pushed past me, much less handicapped by darkness.

  The inside of the boathouse was as I’d seen it before, a few items hanging on hooks, some other things on the shelves. There was a white rag. I could wrap it around the light beam, but that would light up the balled-up rag.

  On one of the shelves, there was a dusty cardboard box with a little illustration of a kayak sinking beneath the surface of the water. I picked it up. It said, ‘Kayak Repair Kit.’ I opened it. Inside was a small plastic bottle of some kind of solvent, a flexible rubberized sheet, and a roll of blue tape. It looked like electrician’s tape. I tore off some small strips and positioned two of the strips over the edges of the light, blocking most of the beam. There was enough light to see, but it wasn’t quite so obvious.

  I turned to the wooden shelving unit. It covered most of the back wall of the boathouse and went from floor to ceiling. There were three vertical sections. One was built out into a closet with doors like those on an armoire. Another had wooden dowels positioned such that water skis and kayak paddles could stand on end on the floor and be held in place by the dowels. The third vertical section had shelves for storing miscellany. I opened the closet door and looked inside. There was a rod at the top. Flotation vests and windbreakers and wetsuits hung on hangers. There was nothing behind them but the same wood panel that backed the shelves.

  Nowhere on the organizer unit did I see an indication of where there might be a hidden door. I pushed and prodded at different points near the edges of the back panels, looking for some give. It was all solid. I ran my fingertips along the trim boards and down every corner and intersection, feeling for a catch of some kind. There was nothing.

  I wanted to knock on the back portion of the organizer to listen for the sound of a hollow area. But I knew that would resonate like pounding on a bass drum. If anyone was around, it would give away my presence.

  Standing back, I began to think my idea was just silliness, a feeble attempt to imagine that Street and Gertie were in a place where I could rescue them. The Lassitor castle had probably always been empty since the day when Ian Lassitor drowned.

  Nothing stood out.

  If I wanted to get into the house, it might be easier to break in the front door. Then I had an idea.

  “Spot,” I whispered, getting his attention, wondering how to communicate what I wanted. “Can you smell Street? Can you, boy?” I put my hands on his chest and gave him a shake, a standard way to excite a dog on a search mission. I had nothing to search him on, but maybe the concept of simply smelling people would translate.

  I turned Spot’s head toward the wooden organizer. “Spot, find Street! Find!”

  I made the hand motion in front of his face the same as if we were out in the forest and I was sending him on a search. My fingers pointed toward the organizer.

  In a normal situation, Spot would take off running, looking for whatever smell I’d scented him on.

  This time, I had nothing to scent him on, and there was nowhere to run. Nevertheless, he walked over to the armoire closet, poked his nose between the wetsuits and windbreakers and wagged. He turned around and looked at me, then looked back in the closet.

  “Good boy, Spot,” I said. I gave him a pet, then I pulled out all the wetsuits and windbreakers and laid them on the floor.

  I pushed on the back panel. It was solid. I looked again at the side corners, the top and bottom corners. I ran my hand over the panel feeling for any irregularity.

  Nothing.

  I backed up from the closet unit and tried to look at it in a broader way. Never mind how thoroughly I’d inspected it. What hadn’t I touched? What hadn’t I really looked at?

  The closet rod.

  I’d moved everything that hung from the closet rod, but I hadn’t studied the rod itself. I shined my light on the rod, moving from left to right. The middle of the rod appeared a bit darker than the ends.

  Smudged.

  I gripped the rod. Gave it a twist.

  The rod rotated a half turn. The back of the closet swung out an inch. A gentle, humid breeze blew through the opening into my face.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  I reached out and pushed the door farther. It opened with a gentle resistance. Maybe there was a silent alarm. If so, it made no difference

  “C’mon, Spot,” I whispered. I shined my dimmed penlight into a dark, narrow stone tunnel. I realized that I was possibly walking into the killer’s lair and I had no weapon other than Spot. I took another look around the boathous
e. There was no potential weapon but kayak paddles. But they would be too big to swing in an enclosed space. I played my penlight in another circle, finding nothing smaller except a broom, the kind with a small paddle of bristles on a wooden handle. Because I had nothing else, I picked it up. Then Spot and I stepped through into the tunnel and let the door swing shut behind us.

  Spot panted, excited. He’d never been in a tunnel before. I didn’t want him trotting ahead, so I held his collar with my left hand while I carried the broom and penlight with my right.

  I turned around and looked at the door. It was a heavy, solid-core door with a metal handle in place of a knob. A hydraulic closer at the top held it shut. On the stone wall to the side of the door was a swing handle that no doubt operated the latching mechanism, just as the closet rod did from the other side. There was no lock. Security came from the fact that the door was hidden from the other side.

  Like the rest of the castle, the tunnel was made of stone, flat pieces for the floor with more irregular pieces for the walls and ceiling. My light showed nothing in the distance ahead.

  Ten feet in from the secret door, the tunnel began a slight curve to the right. It made me wonder if we’d bump into people should we come around a curve too fast. Better to anticipate if possible.

  I pulled Spot to a stop, then turned off my penlight.

  The darkness was as black as it gets. My eyes had already adjusted to the relative darkness, but I waited a full minute, letting my irises open fully. With one hand on Spot’s collar and the other on the wall, I moved forward slowly, hoping to round a corner and see something. But after ten or fifteen feet, I still couldn’t perceive the tiniest glow of light. I turned the penlight back on. Spot and I continued walking.

  I counted my steps, making a crude guess that the distance from the boathouse to the house was half a football field, or 150 feet. With my steps being slow and tentative, I guessed the length of my stride to be about two feet long. Which meant the tunnel was about 75 steps from the castle. So far I’d come 25 paces.