Tahoe Silence Read online

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE HEAT

  “WILL KEEP READERS TURNING THE PAGES AS OWEN RACES TO CATCH A VICIOUS KILLER...”

  - Booklist

  “A RIVETING THRILLER... HARD TO PUT DOWN”

  - Midwest Book Review

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE NIGHT

  “BORG HAS WRITTEN ANOTHER WHITE-KNUCKLE THRILLER...A sure bet for mystery buffs waiting for the next Robert B. Parker and Lee Child novels”

  - Library Journal

  “AN ACTION-PACKED THRILLER WITH A NICE-GUY HERO, AN EVEN NICER DOG...”

  - Kirkus Reviews

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE AVALANCHE

  “BORG IS A SUPERB STORYTELLER...A MASTER OF THE GENRE”

  - Midwest Book Review

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE SILENCE

  WINNER BEN FRANKLIN AWARD

  BEST MYSTERY OF THE YEAR!

  ONE OF THE FIVE BEST MYSTERIES OF THE YEAR!

  - Library Journal

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE KILLSHOT

  “A WONDERFUL BOOK...FASCINATING CHARACTERS, HARD-HITTING ACTION”

  Mystery News

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE ICE GRAVE

  “BAFFLING CLUES... CONSISTENTLY ENTERTAINS”

  - Kirkus Reviews

  “A CLEVER PLOT... RECOMMEND THIS MYSTERY”

  Booklist

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE BLOWUP

  “RIVETING... A MUST READ FOR MYSTERY FANS!”

  Addison, Illinois Public Library

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE DEATHFALL

  “THRILLING, EXTENDED RESCUE/CHASE”

  - Kirkus Reviews

  “HIGHLY LIKABLE CHARACTERS”

  - San Jose Mercury News

  TAHOE SILENCE

  By

  Todd Borg

  Published by Thriller Press at Smashwords

  Copyright 2007 Todd Borg

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Thriller Press, a division of WRST, Inc. www.thrillerpress.com

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real locales, establishments, organizations or events are intended only to give the fiction a sense of verisimilitude. All other names, places, characters and incidents portrayed in this book are the product of the author’s imagination.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from Thriller Press, P.O. Box 551110, South Lake Tahoe, CA 96155.

  Library of Congress Card Number: 2006911140

  ISBN: 978-1-931296-15-1

  Cover design by Keith Carlson.

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  TAHOE SILENCE

  PROLOGUE

  At the first roar of the motorcycles on Pioneer Trail, Silence shut her eyes, tucked her sketchbook under her left arm and plugged her ears with her fingers, turning inward, retreating to her safe zone. She took a deep breath and dropped her head toward the ground as if she were meditating. She rotated on the ball of her left foot and propelled herself by pushing off with her right foot.

  Her pace began as a leisurely adagio drumbeat. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand...

  Each slow push was forceful enough to rotate her body 360 degrees. She pushed off again, her foot landing on the exact same spot each time she came around.

  Soon she picked up the pace. Andante.

  As the motorcycles grew louder Silence accelerated like a conductor gradually building the tempo. Spinning kept the bikers and their ear-ripping noise at the fringes of her awareness, as if by centrifugal force. She went faster, then faster still until eventually she was spinning in a blur and her foot was slapping the gravel of the driveway. Allegro.

  Silence knew the musical terms from the visit to Sacramento a couple weeks before. Not counting Reno and Carson City, it was her first time out of Tahoe. Every detail was still vivid.

  One detail came back to her now. The radio was on, tuned to a classical station and a show about music tempo. The announcer was describing musicians playing to different beats. He talked about beats that were stately and classical, worthy of a grand orchestra in a big city concert hall. Some beats were forceful and driven like those of a marching band on the gridiron at a college football game. And some beats hopped and jumped around like a bluegrass fiddler at a country dance in the hills of coal mining country. The announcer’s descriptions made pictures of tempo.

  It was the same way Silence saw musical time and movement. In pictures. Silence’s entire world was made of pictures.

  Moderato. Prestissimo. Everything had a beat, and she could see the beats.

  Some of the bikers on Pioneer Trail slowed as they approached the street where Silence lived. But Silence didn’t notice. She was lost in her spin, in the pictures of rhythm.

  Silence didn’t know the words of tempo to speak them. Speech, or even sign language, was something inaccessible to her, in the same way that playing improvisations on the tenor sax or piano was inaccessible. But like music and beats, she knew how words sounded and what they meant by the pictures they made.

  The radio announcer even talked about some people seeing pictures when they heard sounds. He called it synesthesia.

  Silence held those pictures in her mind as she spun.

  Other people didn’t understand spinning. Especially her mother Marlette, who tried to stop her, tried from the time Silence was a little girl to derail her impulse to spin.

  It didn’t matter. Spinning shut out a world of far too many inputs that assailed her hyper-sensitive nervous system. If she opened her eyes when spinning – something she almost never did – everything would be comfortably blurred. The crush of detail that overwhelmed her vision would be gone. Spinning pushed away the scouring brightness of the sun and the burning glare that bounced off cars and windows and water. The sharp smells that caused her sinuses to fill were softened on the circular breeze of her own making. The sounds that so often stabbed at her ears and made her cry became jumbled in the Doppler shift of spin, and they lost some of their harshness. Spinning even soothed the constant burning itch of her hot skin, washing her arms and legs in a rush of cool air. And the choking, throat-cracking dryness in her mouth went away, replaced by the soft spiraling wind.

  Although the outside world was gone to her now, Silence heard her brother calling. Charlie’s was the only voice that could penetrate her spin.

  “SalAnne, stop spinning! Come inside. Some of those bikers turned down our road. They’re looking at you!”

  But Silence knew that if she stopped, the world would close in on her, nothing but sharp edges making her flinch and recoil. Spinning could keep it away. She worked her foot harder. Turned even faster.

  Without actually counting, she nevertheless kept track of her revolutions. It was automatic, the same way a musician always knows where she is in a twelve-bar blues or a thirty-two-bar waltz or an eight-bar pop song. If someone had asked, Silence would know she was at twenty-seven revolutions, a moment later, twenty-nine. Though she couldn’t have said the words.

  “SALANNE!” Charlie yelled.

  Whenever Silence didn’t respond Charlie yelled louder. Everybody talked way too loud. And because she didn’t talk back, they talked louder as if she were deaf. It only made her withdraw more.

  “SILENCE!”

  That was unusual, coming from Charlie. Everybody else w
ho knew her well called her Silence. But not Charlie. Her brother always called her SalAnne. He thought her nickname was the one thing that was too focused on her way. That was how he phrased it. He always said things like, “I know it ain’t your way, Sal, but other people like to touch each other. It’s how they show they care. They touch you. I know it makes your skin burn, but you gotta get used to it.” Or, “Sal, your way of not looking at someone’s eyes when they talk helps you think. I know that. Your way works for you. But other people got different wiring.

  They think you should look them right in the eyes. It’s hard, but you gotta try.”

  Charlie was the only one who even knew her way.

  Her mother didn’t, never had. Marlette was like the video camera she constantly pointed in Silence’s face. Her mother was deeply engrossed in a world that she arranged for the camera and she ignored everything that happened outside the picture frame. Marlette wanted to live in a make-believe place, a place like her videos where unhappy moments didn’t exist.

  But Charlie lived in the real world, and he helped Silence get through the tough times. He was her personal valet, attending to her every need. He was a mind reader. Even though he was three years younger, Charlie knew what helped her to function. Reduce the inputs. Keep it basic. And always, always keep it quiet.

  “You call her Silence,” he’d say to their mother. “Didn’t you ever wonder why she doesn’t speak? You know she understands what you say. Maybe not the same way the rest of us hear words, but you know the comprehension is there even if it’s jumbled up. Well, maybe she doesn’t talk because she likes it quiet. Maybe you could learn to not have the TV blaring all day long. You know how she always goes to her room to draw whenever you turn that thing on. Did you ever think of reading a book? Maybe if you tried things her way, you’d understand her better.”

  “SILENCE!” Charlie shouted again.

  Silence was spinning so fast her name was just a distant voice on the wind. If she slowed, the motorcycle roar would pierce her ears and suck the air out of her lungs and send electricity through her brain.

  She kept spinning as the roar intensified, bass rumbles shaking her chest, reaching through the spin barrier and searing her nerves.

  She kept her eyes shut as Charlie grabbed her, stopped her spinning and tried to pull her away.

  Suddenly, a blast of hot air, thick with odors of gas and exhaust, blew over her.

  Charlie yelled something, but not to Silence.

  She heard him grunt, but she couldn’t open her eyes. The motorcycles were too loud.

  Then Charlie grabbed her again. A bear hug. Silence smelled some kind of leathery cologne mixed with sweat and sour body odor.

  But Charlie never wore cologne.

  Silence tried to pull away, but the bear hug grew tighter and lifted her up. Other hands grabbed her ankles, big hands, rough as tree bark. They lifted her legs off the ground. She kicked and twisted to the left. Jerked her head and body like a hooked fish. Jammed her right elbow back into soft belly flesh.

  Everything familiar in her life was suddenly gone. Panic rushed over her like a cold surf holding her under, drowning her. She gasped for air and clutched her sketchbook with all of her strength as they hauled her away.

  ONE

  “Mr. McKenna! Mr. McKenna!”

  The words were tiny against Spot’s sudden barking.

  “Mr. McKenna!” A yelled whisper. Female.

  I turned in bed, pulled at sheets that were twisted around my left leg. Looked at the red numbers on my alarm clock. 4:00 a.m.

  “Mr. McKenna!” Rapid pounding on the door.

  “Holdonaminit,” I called out, my words garbled. I freed my leg from the sheets and sat up. The room tilted.

  “Mr. McKenna! Wake up!” Thuds echoed through my cabin, loud enough to suggest bloody knuckles.

  “Gimmeeasec,” I shouted.

  I pulled on a robe and stumbled into my little living room.

  Spot was at the front door, reaching his giant head up five feet high, growling and barking.

  “Easy,” I said, grabbing the loose skin of his neck to let him know he could cool down.

  I turned the bolt and pulled the door toward me. Flipped on the switch for the outside light.

  A woman stood in the glare of the yellow bulb. A thick serape wrapped her shoulders and torso, covering most of her blue work shirt and part of her faded green khakis. Veins roped her brown hands, which clutched the edges of the woven fabric. Her fingers were long and graceful but callused. She was very thin, thinner even than Street Casey, and she shivered in the cold October night air.

  “Mr. McKenna, you have to help me!” she said. Black eyes scorched the air between us.

  I once knew a Washoe Indian woman whose eyes, when angry, had flecks of orange light behind the blackness, like obsidian on fire. This woman had the same eyes.

  Spot pushed through the doorway. The woman was tall, but still he could reach up and sniff her chin.

  The woman glared at him but didn’t recoil.

  “My babies are gone! They took them! You have to find them!”

  I stared at her, trying to wake up.

  “Will you!” She screamed.

  “C’mon inside,” I mumbled, trying to gain a moment for my brain to come to life, circadian rhythms at the lowest dip on the sleep curve.

  We walked into the dark. She hesitated behind me and I realized I should turn on some lights. I hit the kitchen switch. Spot put his nose on her, up and down.

  “Got coffee,” I said. “Takes a minute.” I’d loaded it four hours earlier. I pushed the button.

  “You have to help me,” she said, her voice high and strident. “I’ve got nowhere to turn. You have to...”

  I held up my hand. “Wait.”

  The woman stood rigid at the entrance to my kitchen nook. Her eyes were wild, ransacking my homemade butcher block table and Shaker chairs, the old, yellowed plastic coffee maker, the ancient propane stovetop, the chipped kitchen sink. I didn’t know who had put her onto me, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t measuring up to her expectations.

  I didn’t struggle to pull Spot away from her. A person who barges into a dog’s cabin in the middle of the night has to expect the standard canine inspection, even if the nose of a 170-pound Harlequin Great Dane is six times bigger, wetter, and colder than that of your average dog.

  Her eyes narrowed and radiated impatience. Her smooth redwood skin was strung tight on two sharp cheekbones that were set up high and wide and gave her a warrior’s countenance.

  Spot was sniffing her feet, long, narrow and sockless in running shoes. Her ankles were like Street’s, smooth skin over nothing but bone and sinew. Shaped to intrigue running coaches and seduce artists.

  I pointed to one of the chairs. “Sit,” I said. “I’m going to change into some clothes.”

  I went into the bedroom and pulled on jeans and a flannel shirt. I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. She was still standing when I came back out. Spot had lost olfactory interest and was lying at her feet. The coffee was done. I grabbed two mugs and poured. I put the mugs on the table and sat down. “Black okay?” I said.

  She stared at me, wordless with fury at my slow transition to wakefulness.

  “Sit,” I said again. My brain was still wandering. The coffee would work in a few minutes.

  She stepped over Spot, pulled the chair back and lowered herself down to the seat. She didn’t bend but kept her back straight like someone with dance training. She crossed her very good ankles under the chair. I remembered the Alvin Ailey dance performance Street had taken me to in Oakland. Put this woman in dance slippers and she’d fit right in.

  I gulped coffee. Too bitter and too strong. Perfect.

  “I can’t wait forever while you drink your coffee,” she said, exasperated. “Are you awake, yet? My kids are gone and you look like you’re about to order eggs. Are you going to help me or not!”

  “You’re a dancer,”
I said.

  She flinched, an involuntary look of disgust. Her lip lifted in a little sneer.

  “Ankles,” I said. “Posture while you sit. And you’re too thin.”

  “Years ago,” she finally said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Marlette Remmick.”

  “What happened, Marlette?”

  “They were kidnapped!”

  “Who?”

  “I told you! My daughter and son. SalAnne and Charlie.”

  “When?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Where?”

  “Out of my front yard.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Yes, of course. I dialed nine-one-one immediately. They came. Two young men questioned me, then two more after a few minutes. They took notes and talked on their radios. One of them went outside and talked to the neighbors. But they didn’t do anything to find my kids. Then a woman cop came. They called her sergeant. But she was as worthless as the others. After an hour an SUV arrived. Plain, without any markings. A middle-aged guy got out. He was a cop, but he didn’t wear a uniform. He didn’t do anything, either.” She squeezed her hands in each other, twisting her fingers as if to wring out her psychic pain. “You have to help me! I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

  “How did you get my address?”

  “The older cop. He said that if I was unhappy with how the cops were handling it, I could call you, that you used to be a cop and now you were private. He said I could hire you.”