Tahoe Dark (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 14)

by Todd Borg

  “You are already perceptive about him and I haven’t said a word.”

  “My business,” George said. “The fact that you called me suggests that he’s not your everyday dirtball, blaming his constant stupid decisions on bad parents, or no parents, or his sexual abuse as a child. Of course, many bad guys are morons. But I know that this one isn’t so stupid for the simple reason that you haven’t yet found him. A bad guy who isn’t easily caught is often smart. Because of that mystery, he’s got you struggling to figure out what turns the gears on his clock. You’re hoping that if you can learn something of the mechanism, you might find a clue to his identity.”

  “You are correct. I should let you know that the crimes are a bit gritty.”

  “Wonderful!” George said with what seemed like too much enthusiasm, a trait I remembered from our previous conversations.

  I said, “It began with a kidnapping of a young man and a twenty-five thousand dollar ransom demand made to his con artist stepfather. The stepfather withdrew the money from his bank, and presumably paid the kidnapper. Then the stepfather, who was already dying of cancer, was murdered at his home in Incline Village by a blow to the head with a stand-up paddle board. Most likely, someone threw it at him. Three days later, I found the kidnap victim. He was tied up in a boat and near death, but he survived.”

  “A very good beginning,” he said. “Go on.”

  “The morning after the kidnapping, just before dawn, there was an armored truck heist on the South Shore. Four men in black hoodies and white hockey masks held up the truck on its way to deliver cash to a casino. The men relieved the armed guards of their burden, which was five hundred thousand in unmarked, untraceable cash.”

  “Even more promising,” George said.

  “I was brought in by the armored truck company. On the armored truck’s tire, my dog found some pine pitch. It turned out that the pitch contained a bit of pine bark beetle and a piece of an endangered plant called the Tahoe Yellow Cress, which only grows in Tahoe. Neither the pitch nor beetle nor plant could have easily been acquired on the truck’s route to the casino. So it seemed that one of the robbers may have had the pitch on his boot and scraped it off onto the tire. With the help of a biology prof, we correlated those components together onto a map and found a campsite here on the South Shore of Tahoe near where one would find pine pitch and bark beetles and Tahoe Yellow Cress. That campsite also featured a bit of cash blowing in the bushes, along with two of the four robbers. Both had been murdered with spears made from old ski poles from which the baskets and handles had been removed. Each victim had been thrust through from front to back.”

  “Nothing more exciting than a new murder method, right?”

  “Well, excitement isn’t the way I think of it.”

  “Owen, I’m a shrink. Never forget what motivates us to go into this profession.”

  “Got it. Because of the rarity of such crimes in Tahoe, I’m assuming some kind of connection exists between the kidnapping and murder of the man who paid the ransom and the ski pole murders of the armored truck robbers. But I haven’t found a breakthrough. Perhaps if I knew what you know, I’d be better at finding the perpetrator.” I paused.

  George spoke. “First, let me say that the robbery and the kidnapping and the murders could, as you suspect, all be connected. I believe they very likely are. Why? The answer lies in the twisted maze of the psychopath’s mind. You see, psychopaths are very unlike the rest of us in that they have no empathy, no ability to feel someone else’s pain. If they accidentally step on a kitten and hear it scream, they are interested in how much pain the kitty has experienced, but they don’t feel it themselves. There is no emotional distress for them in stepping on kittens. They may even step down harder just out of curiosity about how loud the kitty can scream or at what point its bones crush.”

  I remembered back to when I talked to George about firestarters. He seemed a little too eager to talk about their mental peculiarities. I sensed the same thing now.

  George continued, “So the key to knowing and understanding the psychopath is to remember that singular characteristic. No empathy. And with no empathy comes no remorse. Those two things are cousins, and we find them in all psychopaths. Psychopaths are also very good at planning crimes. And because of their careful planning, they often get away with them. So, based on this aspect of these crimes – the fact that you haven’t caught the perpetrator or perpetrators – I suspect they were all committed by a psychopath.”

  “What about sociopaths,” I said. “Isn’t that another word for the same thing?”

  “No, they are very different. Where the psychopath has no empathy, the sociopath has a little bit of it. The sociopath is more like a normal person but much more impulsive and without the ethical constraints on his behavior. The sociopath is perfectly capable of committing serious crimes because he doesn’t have a governor on his behavior. Sociopaths primarily commit crimes of opportunity, crimes of passion.”

  George stopped. I didn’t interrupt his thoughts.

  “It’s quite easy to diagnose,” he continued. “If you see a crime, ask yourself if it looks like a crime of passion or a crime that was carefully planned out. The former will lead you to a sociopath, the latter to a psychopath.”

  “Because the psychopath does so much planning, he probably doesn’t leave many clues,” I said.

  “You’ve got it,” George said. “And if he does leave clues, they are often designed to mislead. All is in service to his ultimate goal, the money, or world domination, or whatever it is. If it suits his plan to kill two men with ski poles or a paddle board, he will do it without pause. All that matters is his end game.”

  “How would you suggest I look for this killer?” I asked.

  George paused again. “Years ago, I told you about the homicidal trinity, a fascinating set of characteristics that often come together in serial killers.”

  “I remember,” I said. “If you find a boy who tortures animals and also wets the bed and also commits arson, look out when he grows up.”

  “Right. Boys with those three behaviors often grow up to be thrill killers. And if you look at it in reverse, it’s creepy how often a known serial killer exhibited those behaviors as a boy. But now I want to tell you about something that we psychologists call the dark triad,” George said.

  “Just the name sounds bleak,” I said.

  “It is. The dark triad is another set of three traits. It is in some ways, a great darkness, so to speak, nearly as dark as the homicidal trinity. The first trait is psychopathy, the second is Machiavellianism, and the third is narcissism.”

  “I think I know what you mean by Machiavellianism, but why don’t you clarify it,” I said.

  “Of course. During the Renaissance, around the time of the Medici Pope Clement the Seventh, Niccolò Machiavelli lived in Florence, and he wrote a political treatise called The Prince. This would be in the early fifteen hundreds. In The Prince, he discussed forms of government and rule and the way that rulers acquire power and keep it. Much of his focus was on the manipulative aspects of how those in power operated at the time. And, of course, it applies to the way those in power today still operate. Thus the adjective machiavellian is pejorative and describes all of those cunning and subversive techniques used by politicians then as well as now. You see machiavellianism everywhere you look, from Shakespeare’s tragedies to the U.S. Congress. We can all think of people we know who are manipulative and manipulate in a cunning way. That is machiavellianism.”

  “You said the dark triad was psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism,” I said. “Machiavellian psychopaths would clearly be people to avoid. But why would narcissism be such an evil personality trait?”

  “The term of course came from the Greek myth about the young man Narcissus who fell in love with his own image that he saw reflected in water. By itself, narcissism just produces vain, self-important, self-aggrandizing, arrogant, irritating people.”

  “Is that all,
” I said.

  “Right, that’s all. The problem with narcissism is when you combine it with psychopathy and Machiavellianism.”

  “The dark triad,” I said.

  “Exactly. When you find that combination in an individual, you often see a whole range of predictable results. Such dark triad men – and they are mostly men – are usually sadistic. They enjoy watching others suffer. They are bullies. They push around other people to get what they want. They can bully to the point of destroying another person, whether it be emotional destruction or financial destruction or physical destruction. They can torture, and they can murder. They use whatever tools they can find to achieve their desires, regardless of who they have to step on.”

  “Is it easy to spot the three characteristics of the dark triad?”

  “Yes and no. Our gut sense about them is pretty accurate. You see someone who is vain and self-absorbed and arrogant, and they exude a sense of entitlement, you know they’re narcissistic. You see someone who is manipulative and nasty, lying and cheating their way through life, you know you’re witnessing what Machiavelli described. And in addition to your visceral sense of these things, there are a host of psychological tests that easily reveal these characteristics as well. Psychologists are always studying these things for their predictive possibilities.”

  I said, “So you can easily tell about narcissism and Machiavellianism. What about psychopaths?”

  “The third part of the dark triad, psychopathy, is much harder to diagnose. The reason is that psychopaths are good students. They may not have any empathy, but they can pretend that they do. They may not care about you or your wishes, but they can say the appropriate things to make you think they care. This characteristic makes them better able to plan and commit heinous crimes. They may have no remorse about committing terrible crimes, but they know what it takes to make other members of society think they would never do something horrible. They may be sexually promiscuous, but they won’t reveal it. They may fail to take responsibility for their actions, but they will pretend otherwise. And because they are often very bright, they can play the psychologist interviewing them, which of course, is another aspect of Machiavellianism. Manipulating the shrink is just another fun pastime for a smart psychopath.”

  “You’re saying they’re good actors,” I said.

  “Absolutely. They can play a role with the best.”

  “Are psychopaths common?”

  “Very. And because they have a single-minded determination to get what they want, they are often very successful. You’d be surprised how many CEOs of major corporations are psychopaths.”

  “That implies that other people believe in them,” I said. “You can’t get to be CEO without the people on the corporate board considering you to be a compelling person, someone who they’d be proud to have lead their company.”

  “True. Psychopaths are also risk takers. That combined with staying cool under stress and exhibiting a great deal of confidence bordering on arrogance, makes them often seem charismatic. In fact, there have been studies that show that women are more attracted to men who exhibit dark triad characteristics. They’ve even studied men with dark triad characteristics and found that dark triad men have many more sex partners than other men. And they are more likely to have casual sex.”

  “Getting back to my original question,” I said, “do you think it is reasonable to consider the truck robbery and the murders and the kidnapping as the work of a single man?”

  It was a moment before George spoke. “Yes. Except for the killing by throwing a paddle board. That seems impulsive, the crime of a sociopath. Of course, that, too, could be acting. The psychopath may have purposely committed a crime that would look like a crime of passion rather than a crime that was carefully planned. The other crimes all required careful, advance planning. The robbers took meticulous steps to succeed at taking down an armored truck, and they took pains to disguise themselves. While some of the robbers may just be foot soldiers, the crime shows the planning of a psychopath. Committing murders with a ski pole and getting away with it shows equal planning. And pulling off a kidnapping demonstrates yet more complex planning. I can easily see one man behind it all.”

  “Does it make sense that his motive was the money?”

  George thought about it. “Yes, I think so. A half mil is a big piece of change. The murders were no doubt to cover it up and make it so the mastermind didn’t have to split the money.”

  “As best as we can tell, the kidnapping only netted twenty-five thousand,” I said. “By comparison to the truck robbery, the kidnapping hardly seems worth it.”

  “Perhaps the wildly divergent amounts of money were intended to make the crimes appear to have been committed by different individuals. But they could be connected in some unforseen way. They could have been planned concurrently.”

  “Why would this guy kill the other robbers and not kill the kidnap victim?”

  “That’s right,” George said. “You said the kidnap victim was tied up and left to die, but he survived. That indicates punishment. The kidnapper may have wanted the relatively small ransom fee. But it seems that the primary motive was to torture the kidnap victim. A classic crime of a psychopath. Torture is as dark as the human psyche can get. No empathy at all.”

  We were silent for a bit. I said, “Here’s a thought. If I could find someone who hated the kidnap victim and also exhibited dark triad characteristics, I might have a good suspect?”

  “Indeed,” George said.

  We spoke some more, I thanked him, we said goodbye, and I made a mental note to send him a case of wine.

  FORTY-ONE

  My cell phone rang while I was out walking Spot and drinking my third cup of coffee.

  “Hey McKenna, Bains here. Courtesy call.”

  “It should be a hallmark of cops, right, sergeant?”

  “Yeah. Protect and serve and be courteous. Anyway, after you told me about Evan Rosen and the evidence connecting her to the robbers who were murdered, I drove up to Tahoe Vista yesterday afternoon after we spoke. Because she lives in Placer County, I’d informed Sergeant Jack Santiago of Placer County. He had me meet one of his deputies, Deputy Russo, to accompany me when I spoke with Evan Rosen. She was not especially forthcoming.”

  “She didn’t answer your questions?”

  “She did. Reluctantly. Lots of anger. But to be fair, I think the anger was because I caused her to miss a cleaning appointment. She claimed to be worried about losing the client on account of she really needed the money. But I think that was probably a false representation.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Wait ’til I explain. Her answers to my questions didn’t all add up. When I said that she’d been seen with a lot of cash, she got all bent out of shape and started yelling that I didn’t have a clue what it was like to live on the margin of society, having to pay everything with cash. When she raised her arms and stomped around in a circle, Deputy Russo put his hand on her elbow to try to calm her down.”

  “No, don’t tell me,” I said, knowing where he was going.

  “Sorry. She struck him on the shoulder, closed fist. That girl can pack a real punch. So he arrested her.”

  “You and the deputy didn’t see that as unnecessary escalation?” I said.

  “You know how it works. In a situation like that, a cop has to rely on his gut instinct. In fact, it seems to me that you talked about the whole gut instinct thing just yesterday.”

  Bains didn’t say it like a barb, but it felt like it anyway.

  “Anyway,” he said, “it was her reaction, to use your words, that was an unnecessary escalation. Before he arrested her, Mike asked me what I thought. The truth is that her actions made me think that there was something else going on. So I told him that he knew the rules. He nodded and arrested for her for assaulting a police officer. We put her in the back of the Placer County patrol unit. Of course, that arrest allowed us to do a protective sweep and warrantless search of her res
idence. It didn’t take long for us to find two thousand-plus dollars hidden behind her garbage under the kitchen sink. That gave us probable cause that a crime had been committed. So we had to seize those assets.”

  I was breathing hard. When I’d originally told Bains what I knew about Evan, I knew it could come to this, but I hadn’t wanted it, nor did I expect it.

  “Are you there?” Bains said.

  “Yeah. Go on.”

  “Her closet has one of those shelves across the top. The shelf was stacked with pants and sweatshirts. At the back, under the clothes, was a ski pole. No basket, no handle. The open end was notched and flared just like the murder weapons. It had been wiped down, but it was still a bit slippery.”

  “Olive oil?” I said.

  “Smells like it. Considering the hidden ski pole spear and cash, and what you said about Ms. Rosen having substantial animosity toward the murder victims as well as the shirt with the missing button that matches the one found in the robber vic’s hand, and we’ve got a good case against her.”

  “Where is Evan now?” I said, even though I guessed the answer.

  “We requested her transfer from Placer County to El Dorado County. At this point, I don’t know if Placer County is charging her with resisting arrest. We’re now holding her in the South Lake Tahoe Jail. The El Dorado Assistant DA was informed about what we found, and he’s charged her with two counts of first degree murder.”

  When I got off the phone with Bains, I had to sit and think a minute. I hadn’t moved, yet I was breathing hard.

  It had been the information I provided Bains that led to Evan’s murder charge. The evidence was mostly circumstantial, although the shirt button found in the victim’s hand would maybe turn out to be direct evidence, compelling enough to convince a jury to convict her.

  In providing the information to Bains, I hadn’t done anything technically wrong. But I felt like I’d made a grave mistake, and I’d just been too dense to have seen a better approach. It gave me a giant discomfort, a hollow feeling that felt like a precursor to a heart attack.