Tahoe Payback (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 15)

  TAHOE

  PAYBACK

  by

  Todd Borg

  THRILLER PRESS

  PROLOGUE

  The person with the gun said, “Get out of the boat.”

  The woman hesitated.

  “Go!”

  The woman’s hands were tied behind her back. She had no way to catch herself if she lost her balance. She lifted her foot up and set it on the edge of the boat, her dress sandal teetering. The waves were large, and the boat bounced against the rocky shore. The woman made a wobbly step onto the boulders of Fannette Island.

  “This isn’t something to joke about!” In another situation, her husky voice could have come off as tough. But it was filled with strain and the vibrato of fear.

  “Shut up and hike. Up over those rocks. To the side of that big tree. See where the granite rises up? There are steps to the left, cut into the rock. Follow them. They go up and around.”

  The person with the gun wore a long rain jacket and dark pants that were hard to see as twilight began to render the roiling storm clouds invisible. The captive woman wore a stylish, red cotton wrap that provided no rain protection. Under it was a starched white shirt with a wing collar designed for a bow tie, but it was open at the neck. Her shirt tails hung out over a shiny black skirt of thin, sinuous fabric that wrapped her bare legs and rippled in the wind. The woman’s open-toed sandals were made of narrow leather straps. It was an ensemble suitable for the restaurant from which she’d been taken at gunpoint, not for climbing a boulder-strewn hill of granite on an island in Emerald Bay during an evening storm. A violent shiver shook her body.

  The June storm was unusually cold, even for Lake Tahoe. Clouds like charcoal smudges grappled with each other as they raced around the mountains above. Above the Sierra Crest, a sudden orange light appeared in the dark sky. A narrow opening, like a tear in the viscous, misty fabric of water vapor, let in a bit of sunset glow. Then, just as quickly as the light appeared, the sky was dark again.

  The icy rain, an intermittent drizzle before, grew intense. The wind-driven spray was violent enough to sting exposed skin.

  The captive woman cried out, “Why are you doing this? Why?!” The word stretched into a long, mournful wail.

  The captor reached up and flipped on a headlamp. The blue-white LED cast a bright cone of light through the sparse, island forest. When the victim slowed, the captor prodded her in the back with the gun.

  The victim whimpered. “I don’t deserve this.”

  “Keep going.”

  After a minute of hiking up steep steps, they came to an open area of rock. Now that they were above the trees, the wind was ferocious. The rain came in waves. At the top of Fannette Island, looming in the dark, was the stone tea house, nearly 100 years old. It was built by Lora Knight, the same woman who built the Vikingsholm Castle on the west end of Emerald Bay. The one-room building perched at the highest point on the island, on the edge of a granite cliff that dropped down to the water.

  The tea house no longer had a roof or door or glass in the window frames. But the stone walls, with their irregular, crenelated top edge, still stood strong.

  “Over there,” the person with the gun said, the words nearly lost in the roar of the wind, directing the woman to the outside of the tea house. The captor had the woman stand facing the corner closest to the cliff.

  “The ground drops off below you, so don’t try anything or you’ll take a backward dive onto those rocks below.”

  The victim appeared frozen in place on the thin ledge. Trying to escape the wind, she leaned forward against the tea house corner, pressing her shoulder against the stones, her cheek against the rough, rain-soaked rock.

  The captive woman pleaded. “I’m sorry about what I said when you called. I’ll do what you wanted.” Her voice betrayed her terror.

  “Too late,” the person with the gun said.

  The captor angled the headlamp so that the beam shone briefly in the captive’s eyes, keeping her night blind. The woman’s hair was soaked, and it drooped down around her face. Her wet clothes stuck to her wet skin, which glistened in the light.

  The captor pulled a packaged coil of thin line from a pocket. It was paracord, a type of weave that was originally developed for parachutes. It was sold at countless places, marketed as utility line for hunters and campers. This version was rated for 750 pounds. The captor pulled the cord out of the package.

  “I’m going to put this line around your ankles. If you even twitch, I’ll shoot you in the leg, and you’ll fall off the cliff. It won’t be a quick, painless kill. It will be agonizing. And no one will hear a gunshot out on a deserted island in this storm.”

  “I don’t understand. Why are you…”

  “I’m not going to tell you again.”

  The captor looped the line around the woman’s ankles, then tied a slip knot and pulled the cord tight.

  The captive woman jerked and shook with fear. “If you let me go, I’ll make you rich. Seriously. You have no idea how much money I have.”

  “Shut up.” The person with the gun took the coil of paracord and tossed it up and over the top stone on the corner of the roofless tea house. The line fell inside the tea house and landed on the floor. The captor stepped through the open doorway, inside the single room. There was no worry about the woman trying to get away. With her wrists tied behind her back and her ankles tied with a line that went up and over the wall of the tea house, there was no way she could escape.

  The captor was wearing a heavy backpack containing a battery and a waterproof electric winch. It took just two minutes to make the preparations, connecting the battery cables, tying the lines, getting the angles right. The captor had previously climbed up and found a smooth groove next to the cornerstone at the top of the wall. A flick of the wrist put the line in place.

  The captor carried the backpack out of the tea house.

  “Don’t do this,” the prisoner said with her mouth against the cold wet stone. “You don’t need to kill me.”

  “I’m not gonna kill you,” the captor said. “You’re going to die all by yourself. Exposure. Hypothermia. Mental stress. Especially mental stress. That’s what’s going to kill you. That’s what should kill you after what you’ve done. You’re going to live just long enough to consider how bad you screwed up. You had a chance to do right. But you ignored that chance.”

  “I mean it,” the woman pleaded. “I’m very, very sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry. I’ll give you whatever you want.”

  The person with the gun ignored the statement and bent back as if to shine the headlamp at the dark storm clouds. “The weather forecast says that this rain will turn to snow by morning. There’s a high wind and high surf warning on Tahoe for the next fifteen hours. Ridgetop gusts on the Sierra Crest are predicted to be over one hundred miles per hour. No one will be out here tonight. No one will find you. You’ll be frozen solid by morning. They’ll be talking about your death grimace for years. You should make a good example for anyone else. Everyone else.”

  “Please! Don’t you hear me?”

  The captor planted a foot to the side of the woman’s sandals, then pulled on the woman’s arms, tugging her off balance.

  The woman screamed. “What are you doing!” as she fell over, helpless with her wrists tied behind her back.

  The captor broke her fall. The woman hit the ground with a relatively soft impact that would give her hip and arm bruises but nothing more.

  The captor reached into the pack, found the electronic remote, and pressed a button. A high whirring sound came from the winch inside the tea house. The
paracord snaked up and over the wall of the tea house. It drew tight around the woman’s ankles and then began lifting her up, feet first.

  She screamed. But her voice was small against the gale winds whipping over the Sierra Crest and down into the Tahoe Basin.

  When the woman was hoisted upside down and raised high enough that her head was four feet above the ground, the captor released the remote button. The winch stopped. The woman’s skirt flipped inside out, draping down over her head, leaving her legs bare from her ankles to her underpants.

  While the woman swung in the breeze, her screams gradually getting softer, the captor went back inside the tea house, disengaged the paracord from the winch, threaded it through a piece of one of the window frames in the tea house, and tied it off.

  The winch and battery went back into the pack, and the captor went back outside.

  Next, the captor reached into the pack and pulled out a roll of duct tape and three red roses. The flowers were not fully mature, their petals closed. The thorns were hard. The headlamp beam shined on the roses. The captor lifted up the woman’s skirt to uncover her head.

  The captive woman saw the roses in the headlamp beam. She gasped. “What are you doing?! I don’t understand!”

  “Yes you do,” the captor said. The captor crammed the roses into the woman’s mouth, the flowers and stems sticking out either side. “One of your victims fell for your roses, your story. Because of you, his last hours were torture. This is your payback, dying the same way.”

  The woman’s agonizing, guttural cry was lost in the wind as the captor wrapped duct tape around her head to hold the roses in place.

  Next, the captor took out a silver necklace from which hung a little pendant shaped like roses. The captor poked it into the woman’s cheek, stuffing it in with the real roses.

  The captor pulled one last item out of a coat pocket. It was a tight roll of paper about the size of a cigarette. The paper was made of cotton, and the message on it was written in waterproof ink. The captor stuffed it into the woman’s cheek next to the necklace. The thorny rose stems, taped into the victim’s mouth, would prevent her from using her tongue to push the necklace and paper out.

  After the captor walked away and was hiking down toward the boat, the upside-down woman, too cold to even try to form words with the roses in her mouth, managed to scream and shake her head violently. The movement dislodged the necklace and paper roll from within her cheek. The necklace fell down the cliff. The paper roll bounced off a rock, tumbled through the night wind, and landed in the lake.

  ONE

  I was sitting in my creaky desk chair, my feet up on the chipped desk surface. I’d managed to get through much of the day ignoring the substantial stack of bills for which funds were in short supply. Because a cold front and storm had come through the night before and dropped a couple of inches of June snow over Tahoe, I spent much of the day hiding indoors, sipping hot tea.

  Now I was using up the remaining time before Sierra Nevada Pale Ale hour by perusing a heavy, hardbound monograph of paintings by the Spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla, Spain’s national treasure before Picasso took over the position. I’d paused on the two women in “Walk On The Beach” when a knock sounded on the door, a triple bump-bump-bump as if someone used the heel of their palm.

  Spot had been asleep, lying on his side on the spotted, splotchy, black-and-white camo rug, custom-designed for a Harlequin Great Dane. At the sound of the knock, he rolled onto his chest, propped up with spread elbows, his head up, watching the door. Apparently his doggie detection powers hadn’t determined that we had a familiar visitor for whom he would jump up and greet with wagging tail. So he was motionless, except for the tiny flickering disco flashes that emanated from his faux-diamond ear stud.

  I didn’t immediately answer the knock because the women in the painting – Sorolla’s wife and daughter, dressed in grand white dresses, hats, and fancy shoes, yet strolling on the sand just inches from the rolling waves – had such powerful personalities that I was captivated by their world, and I wanted to remain in it. But eventually, the sway of elegant women and beach lost out to the pressures of daily work.

  “C’mon in,” I called out.

  Spot and I both waited as the door opened.

  A short, thick man in his fifties stood in the opening. I could see part of a fat-tire mountain bike in the hallway.

  The man was breathing hard. Maybe he was excited to see me appreciating art. Or maybe Tahoe’s high elevation and the hike with a bike up the office stairs had cranked his heart/lung system up to the highest setting. What didn’t fit was his over-the-top sports uniform, a skin-tight, shimmery, yellow-and-orange-and-blue bicycling spandex that showed off every bit of body flab. The man wasn’t obese, but he had enough rolls and folds to give a cardiologist financial anticipation. The outfit seemed, to my naive view, like something that only a person in supreme shape would have the guts to wear out in public. The presentation was vaguely humorous. Then again, maybe this man was just beginning a fitness regime, and the uniform was an attempt to embarrass himself into getting in shape. I reminded myself that I shouldn’t be so judgmental.

  The man rolled his bike to the side of the door, leaned it against the hallway wall, and stepped through the doorway.

  “Mr. McKenna?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Are you available to work? I’d like to hire you. How much do you need to start?”

  He was frowning, and he couldn’t have telegraphed any more awkwardness if he’d been wearing a magenta tutu and figure skates. Awkward facial expression, awkward speech, awkward body language, awkward posture.

  “Let’s slow down a bit,” I said.

  “I don’t understand. Does that mean you’re not available?”

  “I might be. It depends on what you need. We have to talk first and get to know each other a little bit. There are different kinds of investigation, and I don’t do all of them. So please come in and introduce yourself and let’s chat a bit.”

  Now the man seemed even more agitated and worried. He took a step into my office. “I need help. Something terrible has happened.”

  I thought of showing him my book. Maybe Sorolla’s women on the beach would calm and soothe him. But he didn’t appear to even notice the beautiful art monograph. Shocking.

  Spot stared at the man, but still saw no need to move from his comfy new rug. The man didn’t appear to have even seen Spot. Spot probably thought it was his camouflage setting that made him invisible, a unique experience for any Great Dane, especially one with Harlequin coloring.

  But then the man sensed something. He jerked his head toward Spot, a sudden shock of alarm widening his eyes and creasing his brow. After staring for a couple of intense seconds, he appeared to arrive at the thought that my dog, although a 170-pound carnivore with large fangs, might be benign.

  The man softened. He took a deep breath as if my dog gave him an opportunity to change the subject away from his stress. He said, “I love dogs. But I’ve never seen one so, you know... really large.” He held his hand out and took a step toward Spot. “Are you friendly? You won’t eat me, will you?” His voice was calmer.

  “He’s friendly. Meet Spot. Spot meet our visitor, Mr...”

  “Douglas Fairbanks,” the man said. Although Spot was still lying down, Fairbanks didn’t have to bend over much to pet him.

  “Like the swashbuckling movie star who played Zorro?” I said.

  “Yes,” the man said, “minus the swashbuckling and the charm and the enthusiastic personality and, of course, the beauty. The name is the curse of my mother, who had an incurable crush on the man. When she married the jerk who became my father, she apparently thought to mitigate the situation by naming me after the famous and charismatic Douglas. Thank you, mom. What a gift to constantly suffer that comparison.”

  After three little strokes along the top of his head, Spot closed his eyes and began panting. With some effort, Fairbanks lowered himself down next
to Spot and sat on the edge of the Harlequin camo rug, the better to pet Spot. Fairbanks had his legs stretched out straight in front of him the way a little kid often sits.

  He spoke as he pet Spot. “E.B.White wrote a little poem about these dogs. Something like how if one were in a city, one would have to be insane to keep a Great Dane.”

  I said, “White wrote about pigs and spiders in Charlotte’s Web, right? So he might not have been a Great Dane expert. They could be perfect town hounds. Of course, it would help if you had an apartment of ten thousand square feet and an indoor running track. Even so, it’s probably a good thing I live at Lake Tahoe.”

  “Of course. The lake and all,” Fairbanks said, nodding, still petting Spot.

  Sorolla-inspired or not, all the soothing and petting going on seemed to be working on both man and beast.

  “Likes to swim, does he?” The man’s hand looked small between Spot’s ears.

  I said, “Not so much. Spot thinks the lake is for drinking. And, on warm sunny days, running along the beach at high speed at the water’s edge, a raucous display of canine daring as he ventures six or sometimes even eight inches into the surf. A brave dog, that one.”

  Fairbanks nodded, then frowned and looked very serious again. He was still petting Spot with his right hand. So he reached his left hand up to massage his forehead, literally wiping the frown off his face.

  “What can I help you with?” I said.

  “My friend is gone. My… my girlfriend. She’s missing.”

  “How long has she been gone?” I asked.

  “Twenty…” he looked at his watch, “twenty-seven and a half hours. I last saw her at lunch yesterday. She went out for a smoke and never came back.”

  “Maybe she got a phone call and had to rush off?”

  “No. She would have told me. She had nothing on her schedule. For a long time, she’d planned on coming to the Tahoe Mountain Bike for Charity event and was so excited about it that she cleared her schedule through to next week.”