Tahoe Dark (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 14)

by Todd Borg

  “Jim, Randy Bosworth said that you recognized the robbers’ rifles.”

  “Sure. I did two tours in Iraq. I carried an M-Sixteen A-Two myself, but I know the AK-Forty-Sevens.”

  “The robbers all had the same weapon?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Anything about them stand out?”

  He shrugged. “Just like any other.”

  “Could they be fakes?”

  Jim was shaking his head before I’d finished the question. “No. I know a real AK when I see one.”

  “Why do you think they used AKs?”

  Jim shrugged. “Easy to get,” he said. “I’ve seen some internet chat circles. Guys are selling AKs all the time. The world is awash in AKs.”

  “Did you come into contact with explosives when you were in the service?”

  “I saw some IEDs that military dogs found, but that’s it.”

  “Did you see it when the robber tossed the duct-taped bundle under your truck?”

  “Yeah. Not up close, but I saw it.”

  “Did it look real?”

  “No way to know. You wrap something in duct tape, it could be C-Four or pieces of wood.”

  “Thanks, Jim.” I walked Jim out of the office, told them all that I’d call if I had more questions, and he and Matt and Larry all drove off in the shiny Buick.

  I told Randy Bosworth that I had everything I needed, and I would be in touch.

  “That’s all you do?” Bosworth hooked his thumbs into his belt. “I guess I expected a response with more action. You think you’re going to find the robbers after what you did here?” Bosworth said.

  “I don’t know. I’ll see.”

  Bosworth breathed air like he was frustrated. “There’s a gang of psycho robbers in hockey masks out there. They carry assault rifles and explosives, and they terrorized our men. Your response is to ask a few questions and drive off with a smear of pine pitch that could have come from anywhere. It seems pretty lame.”

  I looked at him. “Right. That’s what I do. Collect crime scene material that could be evidence and see where it leads me. Like I said on the phone, if you’re unhappy, you can dismiss me at any time.”

  Bosworth was doing a slow, dismissive head shake. “The cops were all about checking the video for hints of the robbers’ identities and other profiling-type characteristics. They said they’ll be scouring data on past armored truck robberies. They’ll be checking gun dealers and gun show promoters. And they’re going to have computer technicians analyze the video feeds. They had lots of solid stuff to investigate.” He looked at my shirt pocket with the little baggie with the pine pitch as if to emphasize that my approach seemed worthless.

  “Cops do all that you mention and more. They do a good job of it. They have more resources than I have. Why would I try to do the same things?”

  Bosworth seemed to think about it. “Sure, you have a point. But pine pitch… I don’t know.”

  “You can just pay me for today and I’ll walk away.”

  Bosworth flared his nostrils and spoke with derision in his voice. “No, keep at it. No doubt you’ll catch the robbers with that pine pitch. I’ll report to Howard and see what he says. Meanwhile, you get to work another day.”

  FOURTEEN

  I put Spot back in the Jeep and drove south toward Carson City. I switched my phone to speaker, slipped it into my shirt pocket, and called Street while I drove. When she answered, I asked how she was doing and where she was and if I could stop by and get a quick bug consult.

  “I’m okay. I’m at the lab, but remember that I’m expensive,” she said, joking.

  I was glad that she sounded cheerful. She must not have heard yet about the outcome of her father’s parole hearing.

  “I haven’t been paid yet,” I said, “but I could compensate you with non-cash favors.”

  “You want me to play hooky from work,” she said.

  “You’re the one who often says that any exercise that’s good for the body is also good for the brain.”

  “Yes, but I was speaking of running. You know, getting your heart really pumping and making your breath really short and breaking a serious sweat.”

  “Exactly what I was talking about. Anyway, primary function is indicated by primary form. I’m just the lonely drone bee helpless against the draw of the queen’s lovely attractions.”

  “You think I emit all-powerful pheromones?”

  “Whatever it is, it’s definitely all powerful. So consider my request, please. Light the candles. I’ll be there in less than an hour.” I hung up.

  A long time later, we were sitting on the rug in Street’s lab storage room, leaning back against the cot that she keeps for such emergencies. Spot snoozed on the far edge of the same rug. The rug was without Harlequin camo pattern, but he slept just the same.

  “I can’t believe that I’m sitting in candlelight in my dark storage room drinking champagne in the middle of a work day.” Street held up her glass in front of the candle and looked at the rising bubbles. The candlelight refracted through the glass and liquid and made waves of light and shadow dance across her torso, still moist with sweat.

  “Shakespeare’s sonnets deal with love, right?” I asked.

  “Well,” Street said, “he wrote one hundred fifty-four sonnets. Some are more specific than others, but taken together, yes, he deals exhaustively with the subject of love.”

  “How many of his sonnets do you think he composed in a candlelit storeroom?”

  “I suppose some of them might have been penned in this kind of situation. But I don’t think he ever had to be careful not to knock over shelves of jars with insects in them.”

  I glanced around at her samples.

  “Speaking of which,” Street said, “you had a bug question.”

  “Which your magic spell caused me to forget. Let me think. Oh, yeah. I found a bit of pine pitch in which was stuck a small bug. I wondered if you might identify it.”

  “Of course. I love those kinds of mysteries. Where did the bug come from, and does it speak of a murderer’s travels?”

  “Well, not a murderer that we know of, but maybe of an armored truck robber. Four of them, in fact.”

  “That’s even more exciting. Where is this bug?”

  I reached for my shirt and removed the baggie with the business card. I handed it to her.

  “Unfortunately, I can’t identify bugs in candlelight,” she said.

  “Does that mean you have to re-cover yourself in all of those pesky clothes?”

  “Such are the downsides to work,” she said.

  “Ah.”

  FIFTEEN

  “Fully clothed and yet still a dream,” I said when Street had dressed.

  “The power of champagne,” she said.

  Street turned on the light and slid the business card out of the baggie. She put on her mad-scientist magnifier glasses and looked at the sample.

  “Well, it certainly is a bug. But it would be more correct to say that it is a bug part. This is the head and thorax of one of the bugs I deal with all the time. It’s a Western Pine Beetle, Dendroctonus brevicomis, scourge of the forest and very effective killer of giant trees.”

  “How do they do it?”

  “The female burrows through the bark. If there aren’t too many attacking beetles, and if the tree is healthy and unstressed, the tree will kick out enough pine pitch to overwhelm her attack. But if the attacking army is too large, and the tree is weakened by drought, the beetle gets through the bark. Once under the bark, she tunnels out what we call galleries, and lays her eggs in those galleries. When the larvae hatch, they feed on the tree’s phloem, which is the inner layer of bark where the tree transports its nutrients.”

  “Wow. So this is the little guy who takes down our forest.”

  “Sort of. There are several notable species that are trouble makers. This one primarily attacks Ponderosa Pines. Although sometimes it expands its diet to include all pines.”

&nb
sp; “Any idea where one would find both the beetle and the Ponderosa Pine near here?” I asked.

  “All over. While our most numerous pine is the Jeffrey Pine, there are Ponderosa scattered all through the forest. And wherever you find Ponderosa, you’ll find the Western Pine Beetle.”

  I reached for a magnifying glass that lay on Street’s workshop counter.

  “May I?”

  “Of course.” Street moved back, and I leaned it to look at the piece of insect. Even in the magnifier, it seemed very small.

  “You said this is the head and thorax?”

  “Right. We’re missing the abdomen, the largest part.”

  “Yes, of course, the abdomen. Hate to lose those abdomens,” I said. “It’s kind of amazing that this little mini beetle has the audacity to attack such a beautiful giant,” I said.

  “That’s what bugs do. They’re audacious by nature. Beetles, especially. If you list all the species of plants and animals on Earth and then sort them into categories, you’d find that most of the species of all living things are beetles.”

  “I remember you saying something about that in the past. More than all the plants, large and small, and sea creatures and microscopic bacteria and germs and worms in the dirt and no-see-ums that get in your eyes?”

  “Way more by species count. Entomologists estimate that the vast majority of all different types of creatures are beetles.”

  “And they are so numerous because?” I said.

  “We don’t know. Maybe their success is because they are, as a group, so bold. A tiny critter smaller than the eraser on a pencil goes after a giant tree. The critter is so numerous and effective that it can bring the tree down.”

  “Because of the bug, we can probably assume that the pitch is Ponderosa Pine pitch, right?”

  Street nodded. “That is likely, yes.”

  “What about Jeffrey Pines you mentioned, Tahoe’s most common tree? Does the Western Pine Beetle attack Jeffreys?”

  “Not so much. The main parasite of Jeffrey Pines is the Jeffrey Pine Beetle. Similar but not the same.”

  “How would you imagine that this bug and pine pitch got stuck on the tire of an armored truck that only drove from Reno to Stateline and back?”

  “I have no idea.” She leaned over the bug once again and then made a little adjustment with her monster glasses. “There’s something else stuck in the pitch.”

  I looked with the magnifying glass. Near the beetle was a brownish, greenish fleck. “A different bug?” I said. “This one more green?”

  “No,” Street said. She made another adjustment of her lenses. “It’s not a bug part. More like a piece of a plant. Not a leaf. A piece of stem. But it has a specific shape and some distinct markings.” She took off the glasses. “I bet if you showed it to a botanist, you might get some more useful information.”

  “Any botanists hang out in your scientific circle?”

  Street frowned. “I know one who teaches at UNR.”

  “I just came from Reno,” I said, not relishing a return trip. “Is there no one at the LTCC?”

  “I don’t recall the Lake Tahoe Community College having a botanist on staff. But they do have two biology professors. They teach a wide range of biology. They probably know a great deal about botany. It might be worth it to show them this sample.”

  “Do you have their names?”

  “Let me look.” Street flipped through an address book. “Here is the one I met. Frankie Blue.”

  “Sounds like a showgirl’s stage name,” I said.

  “Yeah, except not many showgirls have a masters from UCLA and a doctorate from UC San Diego.”

  “She must be a very smart Frankie Blue,” I said. “A Dr. Frankie.”

  Street picked up her phone. “I’ll see if she’s in. Do you have time to run your sample by if she’s in?”

  “Absolutely.”

  SIXTEEN

  Street got ahold of Dr. Blue and set up an appointment for me the next day at 4 p.m. We said goodbye, and I drove away with the thought that Shakespeare’s sonnets would have been even better had he a storeroom companion like Street Casey.

  Spot and I had an early dinner of barbecued turkey breast, squash, and green beans followed by vanilla ice cream drizzled with creme de cacao. I knew that chocolate in quantity could be toxic to dogs, but he was a big guy, and our dessert was more about sugary ice cream than the chocolate flavor. Of course, Spot liked the turkey better than the squash, and the squash better than the green beans. But the most focused look he gave me was after he’d finished licking dry the bowl of ice cream and chocolate liqueur.

  “Sorry, Largeness, you’ve already achieved multiples of your full ration of added sugar in your diet.”

  He looked back at his bowl, then turned and looked at the freezer door with such intensity that it was as if he had x-ray vision and could see the Ben & Jerry’s within.

  After a walk, we went to bed.

  I jerked awake cold and with a disturbing thought. It had been almost 72 hours or more since Jonas Montrop’s kidnapping. It’s axiomatic in law enforcement that if a kidnap victim isn’t released or found within 24 hours, the likelihood of a positive resolution plunges to a very low level.

  I fumbled my way to the kitchen nook and turned on the coffee maker.

  Spot was sprawled across his bed, head on one corner, hips on the opposite corner, tail three feet onto the floor. Maybe there was still enough residual heat from the wood stove to keep him comfortable without having to curl up, nose under a paw. But it felt cold to me.

  I looked at the clock. It was five in the morning. I had to leave in less than two hours to pick up Evan and Mia and take them on their cleaning rounds.

  While the coffee brewed, I opened the wood stove, stirred the ash until I saw a bit of red glow, then set two Sugar Pine cones on the mostly spent coals. At 24 inches in length and 7 inches in diameter each, they covered the bottom of the fire box. I set two splits on top of the cones, shut the door and opened the air intake. I wasn’t sure that the tiny nuggets of remaining coals were enough to kindle a fire, but it was worth a try.

  When the coffee was done, I poured a cup and sat on the rocker next to Spot’s bed. I sipped coffee with one hand, and reached down with the other to pet Spot. I thought about this kid I’d never met. The unfortunate odds were that he was probably dead, his body dropped into the lake or cast away into the woods not to be found for months or years, if ever.

  I went back through what I’d seen and heard, from Jonas’s disappearance to the signs of struggle at his house. I thought about David Montrop’s bank withdrawal and the comments the house cleaner Evan Rosen had made about Montrop getting rid of stuff before he died from his cancer.

  The Sugar Pine cones burst into flames and made an instant, lively fire with the splits crackling and popping sparks.

  As I watched the flames, I remembered the framed photo Montrop had kept on his desk, a picture of an old boat. I also remembered that the unfinished note on Jonas’s computer referred to a leak and something about transferring a title.

  So I played the game, ‘What if?’

  What if Montrop had the photo of his boat on his desk because it was an important part of his past rather than his present? What if Montrop had wanted to get rid of his boat? I remembered that it was an older cabin cruiser, a Thompson cuddy, I thought, 17 or 18 feet, what looked like a mid-’60s model. It had what’s called a cuddy cabin, a small indoor space large enough to bunk in and cook a simple meal.

  So what if he decided to give it to his stepson Jonas?

  A young man might think it was a great party boat if only he could figure out an affordable way to moor it or dock it. But as the maintenance bills grew, many kids would consider converting the boat into a bit of cash.

  In Jonas’s unfinished letter to someone named Flynn, he’d written that he didn’t know about the leak and that he’d give him his money back. He referred to Flynn thinking he was trying to kill him. He also said tha
t he hadn’t transferred the title.

  The meaning of the letter was unclear. But it certainly could be that Jonas was referring to a boat. The tone of the letter intimated that Flynn was unhappy. Jonas said he swore that he didn’t know about the leak.

  Maybe I was building something out of nothing.

  I remembered the little scrap of paper I’d found on Jonas’s bedroom floor. It was a bit of a brochure that talked about Mercury sterndrives. I looked on the computer, Googling Mercury sterndrives at Lake Tahoe.

  Up popped lots of links that the Google brain thought were relevant. One was Brilliance Marine, a marina on the South Shore, not far from where Jonas lived. I clicked on the link. The website that came up presented itself as a small family marina, west of Stateline, tucked into a neighborhood of homes that occupied a narrow strip between Lake Tahoe Boulevard and the lake. On the first page of the website was the full picture of the boat I’d seen on the scrap of paper at Jonas’s house. The caption said, ‘All of our boats feature Mercury sterndrives.’

  Just like on the scrap of paper.

  Maybe I was getting somewhere. But first I had to go give Evan and Mia a ride to their house cleaning appointment.

  SEVENTEEN

  Spot and I went out to the Jeep, headed down the mountain toward the lake, and were at the Rosens’ apartment at 7:30 a.m.

  I helped load her cleaning equipment in the back of the Jeep. Evan had Mia sit in the front passenger seat, and Evan shared the back seat with Spot, who was behind Mia.