Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller)

by Todd Borg

  “Sorry to intrude like this,” I said. “But we’re in a jam.”

  “Good Christ! What is happening?! A few minutes ago, I saw the flames over at the Lassitor place, so I called nine-one-one and reported the fire. But it never occurred to me that you were over there. Is everyone okay? You don’t look okay.”

  “We’re alive,” I said. I didn’t feel like mentioning the men who were probably now dead in the fire. “This is my girlfriend Street Casey. Street, this is Craig Gower. And this is Gertie O’Leary.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Gertie,” Gower said. He reached out his hand to shake.

  Gertie slowly raised her arm.

  Gower grabbed her hand, spun her around, and jerked her down onto his lap. His other hand came out from under the lap blanket. He held a gun. He wrapped the hand with the gun around Gertie’s waist and angled it up toward her chest.

  “No, not again,” Gertie pleaded, her voice high and tiny.

  “Do exactly as I say,” Gower said. “Any sudden moves, she’s dead. Both of you turn around and go down the ramp. Slowly. I’m following. McKenna, you keep your hand on your dog’s collar.”

  I took Street’s hand, and we slowly turned and walked down the ramp. Street limped and skipped, trying to hold her bare foot up off the ice and snow. She gripped my hand as if to cut my skin with her fingernails. I heard the motor of Gower’s wheelchair.

  “Stay calm, Gertie,” I said over my shoulder as we walked. “I’m sure we can convince Mr. Gower to let you go.”

  “That’s rich,” Gower said. “Have you considered the investment I’ve got into this little operation? No, McKenna, you won’t talk me out of this. Either I succeed or it’s a suicide mission.”

  Street and I got to the bottom of the wheelchair ramp, Street still skipping.

  “Turn down the path to my dock,” Gower said.

  Street and I turned. Like all the other paths, the snow had been cleared with a big blower. The sound of Gower’s chair followed us. We came around a curve and had a straight shot to the dock. The lower part of Gower’s boat was visible under the canopy.

  I studied the boat hull as we approached. It looked to be a custom-built yacht, about 50 feet long with a large aft deck, a gunnel-to-gunnel cabin with saloon on the main level and forward cockpit, which was part of the saloon. The galley and staterooms and head would be down below. How Gower would get to them in his wheelchair, I didn’t know.

  There was a gangplank entrance wide enough for Gower’s wheelchair. There was no walkaround deck, upper level bridge, or any other rigging that would require a non-disabled skipper.

  Gower rolled up next to the gangplank and pointed.

  “Street, you go on board first, Gertie will follow, and then I will board. Don’t get any ideas about what you might find on the boat. There’s nothing more dangerous than a towel. And I’m not afraid to use this gun.”

  He lifted it up and gestured with it. In the darkness of night, all I could tell was that it looked like a small, semi-auto pistol.

  Gower pointed to the bow line. “McKenna, you man the bow lines. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to cast off. And don’t take your hand off your dog.”

  We all did as told.

  Gower kept his eyes on me as he drove across the gangplank.

  The boat had large windows. I could see Gower usher Street and Gertie through the rear door into the saloon. He motioned for them to sit on the rear settee. Then he rolled over to the front of the saloon, rising as he went, moving up an unseen ramp to the cockpit. He flipped some switches. I heard a bilge exhaust fan turn on. After a minute, he hit the starter, and the big diesel below the aft deck rumbled to life. More lights came on in the saloon.

  Gower opened a window. “You can cast off. Spring line first, then stern, then bow. Swing the fenders onboard.”

  I did what he said.

  He called out, “Now bring your hound aboard.”

  We walked up the gangplank. I flipped the electric winch button to draw in the telescoping gangplank.

  Gower motioned for me to come inside. I opened the saloon door.

  “Leave your dog on the aft deck.”

  “Spot, stay.” I gave him a pet, went inside, and shut the door behind me. Spot could see all of us through the windows.

  The boat rumbled and started to move as Gower shifted into Forward.

  “You stink of gas, so you stand there, behind the port-side captain’s chair,” he said, pointing. It was the easiest place for him to keep an eye on me. “I don’t want you touching anything. You can hold onto the back of the chair. And crack that window.”

  I squeezed Gertie’s shoulder as I walked by her and Street. I was dizzy. I held onto the back of the left captain’s chair, facing a bit sideways toward Gower.

  Gower’s gun was on his lap, close for quick grasping. No matter how fast I moved, he would have enough time to shoot me. In the light, it looked to be an older Walther PPK. Probably only seven rounds in the magazine, but that was enough to kill three people and one dog and still have three shots left over. With all of us sunk in the lake, Gower could drop his gun overboard. It would be hard for the police to bring a case against him.

  I looked around the boat’s interior. It was tidy and clean with not even a loose map on the chart table. The only visual warmth and comfort came from a big bowl that seemed attached to the center of the dining table. Just like the bowls in Gower’s house, this one was filled with oranges.

  When we were a hundred yards out from shore, Gower eased the throttle forward, and we sped up a bit. The bounce of the boat as it cut through the swell set the hammer in my head pounding at double time.

  “I’m surprised you figured out that the Lassitor castle was where the women were held,” Gower said.

  “Your elderly neighbor lady gave me the information about how you can come and go through the ground and that the castle was like the Thunderbird Castle. Finding the tunnels was easy enough. And Mikhailo wasn’t the tough guy you thought. You should have been more careful choosing your men.”

  Gower looked at me. “You know about Mikhailo?”

  I wanted to unnerve Gower, get him tense. I didn’t think he would shoot us until we were well out into the lake. But maybe I could anger him enough to get him to make a mistake.

  “Yeah. Mikailo and I have met a couple of times.”

  “I figured he’d do something foolish,” Gower said. “So you followed him to Lassitor’s.”

  “Yeah. He even tried to fool me for a minute with a lot of talk about being a martial arts wizard. He put on a little dance trying to make it believable. Of course, I didn’t buy it. But these talkers, they can fool an old guy like you. What is it about age that makes you oldsters so gullible?”

  Gower tensed his hands. I’d found a sensitive point.

  I said, “Too bad he poured gasoline on everything and then set it afire, himself included.”

  Gower’s jaw clenched.

  In my peripheral vision I saw the flames from the Lassitor castle shooting into the sky. There were still no flashing lights from fire trucks. Gower hadn’t called 911 as he’d said.

  I was thinking about what Diamond said about the ghost boats. A device that works as a negative feedback loop, always correcting when the inputs went one way or another.

  “Your thermostat company makes a nice little cover for you. But you should have known that being in the business of manufacturing what is essentially a negative feedback loop device made you our prime suspect for the ghost boat assault. I called Sergeant Santiago a bit ago and told him that he could probably come and pick you up at your house. I also said that if your boat was gone when he got there, that you would have us out on the lake trying to put us on the bottom. He said he has access to a speedboat and will be out on the water in a bit.”

  Gower made an angry little motion of his head. His teeth were clenched. His lower lip was pushed up making both lips bulge.

  “The ghost boat concept was brilliant,” I s
aid. “You must have provided the tracking mechanisms to Lassitor before you took over his operation.”

  “Ghost boat,” he said, his tone derisive.

  “That’s your neighbor lady’s name for what you do. She’s been keeping track of you. She knew you were evil. She told me how your ghost boats run all night, slow and relatively quiet. No lights, so no one can find them. Most people don’t know that they’re out there. And the ones who do never know that there’s no skipper, just a bit of electronics and a motorized steering mechanism. It was a good idea for how to gradually map the entire lake bottom near the West Shore in your search for the Lucky Baldwin gold.”

  Gower held his head at an angle as if trying to keep a hard wind from blowing in his ear.

  “So you had Mikhailo and his men put the boats out every night and bring them in before dawn, downloading the scans onto flash drives to bring to Lassitor.”

  Gower stared ahead at the black lake. Light from the burning castle behind us flickered on the inside of the windshield.

  “Lassitor tweaked his facial recognition software to look for the shape of a small chest,” I said. “It was a great idea, and it yielded the results you wanted over a week ago.”

  Gower looked crazed.

  “But of course, Lassitor kept that secret from Mikhailo. Lassitor put the location on the flash drive, which is now in my pocket.”

  Gower turned toward me. He lifted up his gun. Even with the dim cabin lights, I saw his finger tighten on the trigger.

  “Give it to me,” he said.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  “I won’t give you the flash drive. You can shoot me dead, but you’ll have to roll back down your ramp and come get it out of my pocket yourself. In the meantime, my blood will be making a big mess all over your nice boat. How are you going to explain that to the police? And if you don’t shoot me, I go and find the chest and keep the gold for myself.”

  I saw movement in my peripheral vision. I turned just the smallest amount. Street was shaking her head in a way that was minimal, almost unnoticeable, but also frantic. She sensed that I was pushing Gower too far.

  Gower took a deep breath and spoke, his own rage just beneath the surface.

  “Lassitor died in the fire, right?” he said.

  I didn’t know what Gower knew. Maybe Gower had a hidden webcam in Lassitor’s room so he could keep an eye on him. Maybe he saw the whole thing. I decided the truth might be the best distraction from his mission.

  “Yeah. I tried to save him, but Mikhailo killed him with a splitting maul.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that,” Gower said. “I hope he suffered. Tell me that he really suffered. I can die in peace.”

  “Yeah, he suffered.”

  “Lassitor was the worst person I’ve ever known,” Gower said. “A natural predator. One of the first patent trolls. I was one of his first victims. He sued me for patent infringement, citing obscure aspects of one of the patents he bought cheap. He had no case, but he didn’t choose me based on the merits of the case. He chose me based on my business assets.”

  Gower turned and looked at me. On his face was pure hatred.

  “At the time he sued me, I had invested nearly all of my money in my business. It was a big risk that many entrepreneurs take, trying to grow their sales. I could have brought in outside investors and spread the risk, but I didn’t want to lose control of the company I’d started. I even mortgaged my Tahoe house, which has been in my family for three generations.

  “Along comes Lassitor suing me for twenty million for infringement damages. I had about about eight million in cash, and two million of that came from the mortgage I’d taken out on my house. Every cell in my brain was screaming that it was an illegitimate suit, that I would win in court. Even my lawyer told me that I could possibly win in court, but that the litigation might cost twenty million and many years. Lassitor said that he would settle the case for eight million. How he knew that was the amount I had, I have no idea.

  “My lawyer said it was a no-brainer. That I should give that thief the money because it would be less costly in the end. He said that settling would leave me solvent. Not settling would bankrupt me. It was the most revolting money grab, the most audacious theft that I’d ever heard of. And it was all legal. Legal theft. It’s hundreds of times more lucrative than robbing a bank, and it’s legal! And Lassitor chose me not because my thermostats really infringed on his patents, but because I didn’t have enough funds to fight the lawsuit! He knew I’d settle!”

  Gower was breathing as if he’d just sprinted a quarter mile.

  “So I paid. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I still had my company, but I was broke, and I still owed two million on my mortgage.” Gower’s eyes looked demonic, the lower lids raised up over the bottoms of his irises.

  “Nasty business,” I said.

  “That’s just the beginning. Two months after the settlement, I found out that Lassitor bought the castle next door to me. He used my money to buy that castle! When I told him he was scum, he just grinned and said, ‘Hey, buddy, no hard feelings. Lawsuits are just business. We can still be personal friends.’ I almost killed him right then and there. I remember, I was holding a tree-trimming saw, and I wanted take his head off with it.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “It gets even worse. A thousand times worse.” Gower was shaking. “I had a wife and daughter. They were both sweethearts. They were everything in the world to me, all I ever wanted, all I ever really cared about. It was for them that I settled the lawsuit. It was because of them that I couldn’t bear to lose everything fighting the lawsuit.”

  “I heard they died in the car accident,” I said. “And you were paralyzed.”

  “Go ahead and say the rest,” Gower said. “That I was driving. Say it.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said. “I just heard about the result.”

  Gower’s hands were white-knuckled on the yacht’s wheel. I wondered if this would be a good time to make a grab for the gun. I might have risked it had I been alone. But I couldn’t with Street and Gertie in the mix.

  “I was driving,” Gower said. “When we left home, I pulled out of our driveway and turned toward Lassitor’s. I accelerated normally. I wasn’t going fast. I was only at the speed limit. Maybe a little more. As we approached the entrance to Lassitor’s, he came flying out from his driveway. Lassitor was always a lead foot. He must have been going forty or fifty down his own driveway. He didn’t appear to slow down at all. In the past, I’d seen him skid out onto the highway without stopping and almost without slowing. This looked like one of those times. It scared me so much that I swerved away. At the last moment, Lassitor slammed on his brakes. He came to a stop right before the highway.”

  Gower’s voice was loud, almost a plaintive whine.

  “But it was too late for us. As I swerved, it made our car skid. We veered into the oncoming lane. We were struck head-on by a bus-sized RV.”

  Gower went silent. The only sound was the rumble of the big engine below us.

  “I told the cops what happened,” he continued. “I told my lawyer. They all agreed that there was likely no law that Lassitor broke. They didn’t think reckless driving applied on his own property. My lawyer said I could sue Lassitor in civil court, but he didn’t think I’d win. After all, Lassitor had stopped. Even I admitted that. And I’m the one who swerved. My lawyer pointed out that Lassitor had the funds to defend against such a suit, while I did not have the funds to pursue it.”

  “You had lots of reasons to hate Lassitor,” I said. “It must have been crushing.”

  “No one understands! When a sociopath destroys you, takes away everything that ever mattered, and does it with a grin, no one will ever understand what that’s like.”

  Gower stopped to catch his breath. His chest heaved.

  “This wasn’t about getting money for me,” he continued. “This was about taking from Lassitor. This was about revenge. Justice. Payback. This was
about making him work for my gain instead of him stealing everything I had.”

  “So you found Mikhailo to exact your revenge?”

  Gower nodded, his breath slowing a bit.

  “It was so easy,” he said. “You post on certain Internet sites. You work through emails, always changing the email address and signing in through a virtual private network, which makes them impossible to trace. After arranging a couple of substantial, anonymous payments, you can get a psycho like Mikhailo to do anything in the world just on your request.

  “Of course, Mikhailo never knew my real name even though I’d learned his. We never even met. He thinks he was hired by a guy in Montana, an ex-business associate of Lassitor’s. He thinks I’m just the old guy neighbor who runs a thermostat business in Carson Valley and is sometimes up at the lake house. I even told him through email where to steal the boat to use to drown you.”

  “But that’s no reason to take it out on us. Gertie and Street had nothing to do with Lassitor’s actions. You’ve already tried to have Gertie killed. For what purpose? She never hurt you.”

  “I came through the secret door once when Mikhailo and his men were gone. She was in a different room than I anticipated. I thought she saw me through the door. I couldn’t risk her identifying me later.” Gower focused on the black lake ahead. He made a steering adjustment.

  “My wife and daughter were everything!” Gower was panting. He shouted, “Do you hear me?! Lassitor took them away! Nothing matters anymore!”

  Gower picked up the gun from his lap, raised it up and aimed it at me.

  “No!” Street shouted.

  I slowly raised my hand toward Street and Gertie, palm out. I spoke in low tones.

  “Think before you pull the trigger, Gower. You’ll make a mess. Go back to your plan and you might pull this off.”

  Gower’s hand and gun shook. Not with the stress of holding up a gun, but from anger and rage.

  I said, “I’ve got a friend who talks about the value of a plan. She’s a softball pitcher. She says that you can pull off nearly anything if you have a plan and follow it. But if you ignore your plan, you’ll mess it all up. Her plan made her a great pitcher. It’s amazing what she can do with a softball.”