Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller)

by Todd Borg

  Another curve made me stop and turn off my light so that I could once again feel my way forward in the dark and be prepared to see the slightest bit of light coming from down the tunnel. Again we moved several feet. Again there was no other light.

  I turned on the penlight, and we continued.

  One of my feet slipped. I shined my light down. There was moisture on the floor, seeping in from the ground, joining the lake water that was still draining from my pants. I turned my broom around, bristles up at my chest, so I could use the broom end as a safety cane in case I slipped again.

  As I went farther, I began to feel two strong emotions. The thought that I might be close to Street and Gertie and that they were prisoners encouraged my rage. But the fact that I’d heard a scream, a clear indication that they were in severe distress, made me despondent. Despair was the antipode of rage, one driving a person to inaction, the other the opposite.

  I focused on my rage.

  Forty paces down the tunnel, Spot stopped walking. Then he stopped panting. I paused and angled my head for a clearer look. My penlight shined on something other than stone and mortar. The tunnel was blocked by another door, similar to the one we’d come through.

  I stopped, turned off my penlight, and waited in the blackness for my eyes to adjust. A minute later, I could see nothing. I turned my light back on, shining it down on the floor, and moved forward. We walked slower as we approached the door. I worried that Spot would smell something and make a noise. I put my finger across his nose, the sign for silence.

  This door had a regular knob. There was no lock. There could be a deadbolt on the other side, but there was no way to tell from the tunnel side. A regular knob suggested that this tunnel entrance was not hidden from the other side. The architect must have figured that once you were in the secret chambers, there was no point in hiding the passages.

  As we approached the door, I was aware of Spot’s nails clicking on the stone floor. There was nothing I could do about that. Moving very slowly, I again turned off my penlight and put my ear up against the door and listened for a long minute.

  Nothing. No sound, and no light escaped from the edges of the door.

  I let go of Spot’s collar, grabbed the doorknob, and gave it a slow, gentle twist. The knob turned without making a sound. It reached the end of its motion. There was no way to know what I was walking into.

  Still holding my broom in my right hand, I pushed the door inward with my left.

  I tried to ease the door open, but Spot was eager to find out what was on the other side of the door. Or maybe he smelled Street. He pushed forward next to me. I let go of the doorknob and reached for Spot’s collar. I missed.

  A dim light came through as Spot’s nose hit the door and it opened. I took a step forward trying to understand what I was looking at. There was a wall sconce throwing off low light like that in a castle in the movies. The dim light showed a stone wall off to the left but curving to the right. A room that stretched out to the right.

  There was a muffled woman’s scream as I sensed a streak of movement to my left.

  A baseball bat swung at my chest.

  The bat came as fast and hard as the swing of a major league lefty hitting a line drive out to right field.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  The bat struck the broom that I held at my chest. The blow was so intense that the plastic bristle base seemed to explode, bristles flying into the air. A chunk of the handle hit my abdomen as the broomstick broke into pieces.

  The blow was hard and mean and deadly. It threw me back against the door frame. The impact blew the air out of my lungs. The shock was astonishing. But the plastic piece and the bristles probably saved me from a collapsed lung or a ruptured aorta.

  At first, I didn’t see the batter. My attention was on Spot, whose head was just below the bat’s arc. In an instantaneous movement, Spot reached up under the batter’s leading right arm and grabbed the man’s left elbow. Like other dogs, Spot was quicker than a person. Unlike other dogs, Spot’s jaws are bigger than a mountain lion’s.

  Spot’s mouth fully enclosed the man’s elbow. I couldn’t see the details, but I knew how it worked. Spot would initially bite medium hard, enough to hold on no matter what happened. The assailant who acts subdued is held but not critically injured. The assailant who resists gets a harder bite. If an attacker is foolish and tries to throw the dog off, the bite gets serious.

  I saw the man try a big jerk to pull away from Spot or maybe swing Spot into the stone wall. The crack of breaking bones came fast and loud, three or four crunching sounds. The man screamed a high yelp of pain. He dropped the bat and fell to his knees as Spot pulled him down. The bat bounced and rolled away. As the man tried to kick, Spot growled his deep guttural rumbling, not unlike a lion’s roar. He shook the man’s arm. The man screamed louder, terror creeping in as he realized that the huge dog was able to crush his arm and maybe rip it off.

  I sucked air into my burning chest and ran towards the bat. As I bent down to grab it and then straightened up, I saw the women.

  Street and Gertie were over in a far dark corner of what looked like a windowless dungeon room. They sat back-to-back on the hard stone floor. Their arms were pulled behind their backs and down to some kind of anchor bolt in the floor, their wrists handcuffed to the bolt. Across their faces were pieces of duct tape, sealing their mouths shut. And in their eyes was a terror that nearly broke me.

  My rage welled up, a searing anger. My vision narrowed.

  I carried the bat over to the man.

  “Spot, let go,” I said. I nudged Spot with my foot. He moved away.

  The man looked up at me from the floor.

  “You sick, twisted bastard,” I said.

  “Go to hell,” the man said. He pushed up onto his knees, then stood. He spat at me.

  I hit him with the bat. Again. And again. He fell. My rage made my vision go dark and my ears numb to his screams. I didn’t give him any deathblows as he’d tried with me, and as he and his pals had no doubt attempted with officers Denell and Galant. But I disabled him. Permanently. Elbows, wrists, knees, ankles. When he went silent, I ran to Street and Gertie. Spot was already next to them. I kissed Street’s forehead and held the side of her head for a moment.

  “This is going to hurt,” I said as I ripped the duct tape from their faces. Each in turn gasped with shock. But they both stayed relatively quiet. Spot sniffed Street, then Gertie. Gertie shut her eyes, then leaned her face over so that her cheek was against Spot’s chest.

  I wanted to grab Street and hold her. Gertie, too. But there wasn’t time.

  “Do you know where the handcuff key is?”

  “No,” Street said, her voice shaky with stress and fear. “One of the other men had it.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know. I think they left. They went out that door.” She looked toward a door I hadn’t seen. “An hour ago. We haven’t heard anything.”

  “Earlier,” I said, “maybe a half hour ago, I thought I heard a scream. Was that one of you?”

  Street nodded. She glanced at Gertie. “After the other men left, the man you just hit groped her. He was rough and mean. She was brave. Even with the duct tape on, she screamed through her nose.”

  “That’s why you think they left,” I said. “Because he wouldn’t have gone near her if the others were here.”

  Street nodded. I noticed that she had on just one slipper. Her other foot was bare. A little part of me broke.

  I reached over to Gertie and put my hands on her shoulders. Her eyes were red. She shivered with fear. I squeezed her shoulders.

  I ran back to the unconscious man and went through his pockets. I found a wallet and some keys, but no handcuff key. I put his stuff in my pocket and ran back next to Street and Gertie.

  “Have you been anywhere in the house? Do you know what’s on the other side of that door?”

  “We’ve only been in this room,” Street said. “They brought us thr
ough the tunnel, then locked us to the floor.”

  I nodded. “Spot,” I said. He looked at me. I pointed to Street and Gertie. “Guard them.” I grabbed Spot’s head for emphasis. “Do you understand? Guard them.”

  I turned back to Street. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  The bat would make a good weapon. But it wasn’t where I thought I’d dropped it. The man was clearly unconscious if not dead. I turned around. The bat must have rolled someplace. The tunnel door was broken and partly open. Maybe the bat bounced back down the dark tunnel. There was no time. I picked up the longest portion of the broken broomstick, walked over to the other door, opened it.

  There was a stairway lit by another wall sconce. I didn’t want Spot to be tempted to follow me. Street and Gertie needed his protection and presence. I shut the door behind me and walked up the stairs, out of the dungeon. There was another room. White sheetrock walls. A bed. Four doors. One of them was open.

  I walked through, my little broomstick raised and ready.

  The room was lit with another wall sconce.

  The only furnishings in the room were a narrow mattress on the floor, a small desk, and a chair. On the desk was a computer. Sitting in the chair was a man. Attached to his ankle was a long chain that stretched to another bolt in the stone floor. The man was in his forties but hunched and wan and skinny as an emaciated 80-year-old. I recognized him from the photos that Nadia Lassitor had shown me of her husband.

  The man we thought was dead.

  Ian Lassitor.

  FIFTY-NINE

  As the man turned toward me, the terror on his face was obvious. He was severely bruised on his face and neck. A purple knot of swelling protruded an inch from his left jaw.

  “I’m Owen McKenna, here to get you out,” I said. “Is there a phone in this house?”

  He shook his head and spoke in a small, weary voice. “No. No landline. No wifi either. They disconnected it. This computer is isolated, too.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Three men. Big and brutal.”

  “Where are they?”

  “One was down in the cellar. The other two left. At least I think they left. That’s their pattern.” He pointed to one of the doors.

  “When do you expect them back?”

  “If it’s like most nights, they’ll be gone another two or three hours.”

  “How long have you been chained in this room?”

  “Almost three weeks. I’m starving. My brain has mostly stopped working. Are you a cop?”

  “Private. I was brought into this by Nadia.”

  Lassitor looked away as if it took him a moment to process the thought that Nadia might have been worried about his absence. His confusion looked genuine, although I didn’t trust that to be the case.

  “Why do they have you here?” I asked.

  “It’s a long story. I wrote a new type of facial recognition software.”

  “What does that have to do with you being chained here?”

  “My software uses an unusual kind of algorithm that analyzes nodal points. By changing the nature of the nodal points, I can use it to recognize not just faces but objects that we can describe in general terms, even when we don’t know their size or what they look like.”

  “So?” I said.

  “Objects, for example, that are underwater. Objects that we don’t have photographs of but that appear on sonar scans.”

  What he said didn’t make any sense to me. “I don’t... Oh, you’re looking for the Lucky Baldwin gold. A chest of gold.”

  “Yes,” Lassitor said. “Somehow, these men found out about what I’m doing. I don’t know how because I’ve told almost no one about my facial recognition software.”

  Lassitor looked away, then back as if he’d thought of something new. “Except Nadia. I told Nadia about it.” He paused. Processing. “The men came into my house and took me prisoner. They took my project from me. Now I do the same thing, looking for the Lucky Gold, but I do it for them. Somehow they knew about these secret rooms. I didn’t even tell Nadia about the rooms. They put me on this chain. I’m kidnapped in my own house. They’re forcing me to perfect the software so that it will recognize the gold chest. They’re using my boats to make the scans. Each morning the leader brings me a hundred sonar scans loaded onto a flash drive. I analyze them. Every day I have to show him what I’ve done with the previous scans, and how I’ve adjusted the software. He knows just enough about coding that he can tell if I’m faking it or not. So I keep working on it. But if I succeed, I know they’ll kill me.”

  “They’ve already killed you once,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A man died piloting your Gar Wood when he was struck by another boat. Everyone thought the skipper was you. Including your wife.”

  Ian stared. He made two, slow shakes of his head. “God, what is happening?! That was... I was making a movie. A fictionalized documentary. That man was my stand-in. He looks just like me. I found him by using my software on actor databases. I hired him, trained him on the boat, then sent him out on his first rehearsal. I’d mounted a tiny fish-eye lens camera on the bow of my Gar Wood. The guy was a method actor, and he wanted to rehearse with the camera on. But right after he drove my Gar Wood out of my boathouse, the three men turned up, brought me into this room and kept me chained here ever since. I assumed they scared off the actor.”

  “That’s all you know?” I said.

  “Yeah, but there’s something else going on that I don’t know about. A few days ago, I heard noises in the room next door. Then tonight I heard a scream in the cellar.”

  I gestured at the door. “That’s what you call the room down the stairs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They kidnapped your stepdaughter Gertie. She’s tied down there with my girlfriend.”

  “Why?” he was pleading. “What would that have to do with the Baldwin gold?”

  “It doesn’t. It has to do with ransoming the insurance payout on your death.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Lassitor said.

  “You think the men will be gone until when?”

  “It’s usually three or four a.m. when they come back. I think it’s because that limits the chance that anyone will see them. I only know the times because I can see the time on the computer. I pay attention because when they’re gone, I try to signal with the desk light.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can never be sure they’re gone, so I can’t make noise. They’ve made it clear they will kill me if they hear me try anything. The leader is sick. He says he’ll use his power drill with a very long bit to drill holes all the way through my head until I die. So I’m quiet. But when I think they’re gone, I shine the desk light up at the overhead windows.” He pointed. I looked up.

  There were two clerestory windows high above in the small room.

  “Those windows are part of a long line of windows,” I said.

  Lassitor nodded. “There are eight in a row. Two are here. The other six are in the entertainment room on the other side of that wall.” He pointed at the wall behind his desk.

  “So I turn the desk light up and down, hoping that someone, somewhere will see my distress signal. Three short flashes, followed by three long flashes, then three more short. SOS. The problem is that the trees outside the windows are so thick that I don’t imagine that anyone could ever see my dim light. But I kept trying in case there is a strong wind blowing the branches, making temporary openings.”

  “Tell me about this house,” I said. “Do the men always come and go through the boathouse tunnel?”

  “No. Usually they come in that door.” He pointed. “There’s a room through there with a bathroom and a storeroom off the bathroom. You’ll see the secret door that leads to the entertainment room.”

  “Does that door open in the bookcase unit in the entertainment room?”

  Lassitor nodded. “Yes.”

  “So they
come and go through the front door of the house?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Even though this room is pretty soundproof, there’s a very soft thud you can hear when the front door shuts. I’ve only heard it a few times since they put me in here. I’ve wondered if the thuds might be someone else, if I should yell and try to get their attention. But when I first tried that, the men were in the house. They came in here later and beat me nearly to death. So I didn’t dare call out the next time I heard it. Anyway, I think they come and go through the landscape garage tunnel.”

  “Is that like the boathouse tunnel?”

  “Yeah. There’s another hidden door in the bookcase next to the piano in the living room. The tunnel goes out to the landscape garage on the far side of the property. There is a small drive in from the highway. The lawn-mowing tractor and the utility Cushman are in the landscape garage. It is also close to the lake, but it doesn’t look like a boathouse, so that’s where I hid the aluminum fishing boats that I used for my sonar scans. I assume they are still keeping the boats there. The boats are automated and run off GPS signals.”

  “So someone can come and go from the landscape garage tunnel, and it never looks like anyone is ever here in the house,” I said.

  “Right. Unless they turn on lights in the entertainment room at night. Then the glow is detectable out the clerestory windows. Of course, someone on the lake could see in the big windows on the lake side. But if you keep all the blinds closed, then the clerestory windows are the only ones in the house that let any light out.”

  I raised my hand to stop him talking and trotted back down the stairs into the cellar.

  “I haven’t found a handcuff key, but I’m making some progress,” I said to Street and Gertie. Spot jumped up. “Spot, stay,” I said. I pointed again at Street and Gertie. “Guard them,” I said again.

  Spot didn’t lie down, but he stopped and stood still.

  I walked over to the prostrate man on the floor.