Tahoe Silence Page 10

  Henrietta nodded.

  “One plus two gives you three. Two plus three equals five. Three plus five equals eight. So the sequence would be one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one and so on.”

  “Yes,” Henrietta said. “I couldn’t imagine why Silence cared about Fibonacci numbers.”

  “Is she really good at math?” I said.

  “I don’t think so, but you know what is really cool?” Henrietta’s eyes sparkled. “She carried the book over to the window and looked out at that bush in the corner of the yard.”

  “The bush?” I leaned forward to look and saw a withered little thing that most people would probably uproot and throw away.

  “Come with me, I’ll show you.” Henrietta’s excitement was effervescent.

  I left the textbook on the chair and we went outside.

  Henrietta walked to the corner of the yard, knelt down and pointed at the bush. “Look at this. The main stem adds its first branch at this point, so then you have two. Then one of the branches divides, so you have three. Then two of the branches divide so you have five. Then, at this point, three of the branches divide so you have eight branches. Now, when I raise my finger one more level you have a total of thirteen branches.”

  “The Fibonacci sequence,” I said.

  “Yes! And Silence saw it immediately! But get this, there’s more!” Henrietta was doing a little bounce on her toes.

  “She found something else with the same sequence?”

  “Yes. When she finished looking at this bush, she picked up one of these huge Jeffrey pinecones and turned it around in her hand.” Henrietta picked one up and handed it to me. “Careful of the prickers,” she said. “I didn’t realize how it worked because there are hundreds of prickers on it. After Silence looked at it, she ran to the side yard and picked up one of those little Lodgepole pinecones and turned it over in her hands.”

  “She saw something in the pattern of both,” I said.

  “Right, only I couldn’t figure it out. So I asked Nelson at the school. He’s one of the math teachers. He didn’t know either, but he said he’d look it up. The next day he told me it was the whorls. The spirals. Here, look at it this way.” She took the big pinecone from my hand and angled it. “See how the pattern spirals to the left at one angle, but also spirals to the right at a different angle? If you count the spirals one way you get eight, if you count the spirals the other way you get five.”

  I stopped her. “Wait, let me remember. One, one, two, five, eight, thirteen and so forth. So the five and eight relationship is part of the Fibonacci sequence.”

  “Exactly.”

  I walked over and picked up one of the little Lodgepole cones and began counting. “I’m not sure this one works.”

  “Here, let me see.” Henrietta almost grabbed it away from me. She counted, frowning. Turned it over and counted

  again. “Look, it works from the top. Watch.” She put a fingernail at one point and counted one direction. “Five spirals.” Then she counted the other way. “Eight spirals. You were counting from the bottom.”

  “It only works from the top?”

  “No, you just grabbed a cone with a defect.” She pointed. “It gets screwed up at this point. Nature isn’t always perfect.”

  “This is a Fibonaccilly-challenged cone.”

  “Right. It needs a Special Ed teacher.”

  “Is it a weird coincidence that your bush and pinecones exhibit the Fibonacci characteristics?”

  “No. Since then, I’ve read about it. It turns out those numbers are all over the place! For example, pineapples have eight spirals one way and thirteen spirals another.”

  “Fibonacci numbers.”

  “Right. And if you look at those tiny little bumps in the center of a daisy you can usually count twenty-one clockwise spirals and thirty-four counter-clockwise spirals.”

  “Thirty-four being the next number in the sequence.”

  “Right. Eight plus thirteen is twenty-one. Thirteen plus twenty-one is thirty-four.”

  “Can Silence just spot this stuff, nature patterns that have mathematical significance?” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s amazing.”

  “Do you think she was always aware of the mathematical patterns in nature and only later learned that mathematicians wrote about it? Or did she first learn of it in your textbook and was immediately able to recognize it in nature?”

  Henrietta shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve thought about that, but I don’t know.”

  We went back inside and Henrietta talked about Silence Ramirez for a couple more hours.

  Henrietta stopped for a time, thinking, and stirred the coals of the fire and put another log on it. “I think much of her interaction with the world was done through Charlie,” she continued. “In most ways he was a gift. An absolute gift. But I’ve also thought at times that he hindered her.”

  “Because with him she didn’t need to learn to communicate with others?”

  “Yes. He could tell what she needed, and he automatically provided it for her. Without him she might have come out of her shell a bit.”

  “You mean, learn to talk?”

  “No. I don’t think anyone believes that Silence will learn to talk. She hears okay, and she understands what people say. Maybe not in a linear sense the way you or I do, but she gets the gist of anything you say. But I think the nerve connections for talking just aren’t there.”

  Henrietta turned and blew on the coals under the log. The swirl of smoke disappeared in a puff of flame. She sat down on the hearth. “I think the closest that Silence ever comes to direct communication is her drawings.”

  “I’ve seen some of them. Marlette told me she is never without her sketchbook.”

  “That’s true even at school. It’s like the way some young girls carry dolls. Even when she has no intention of drawing she clutches it to her for reassurance.”

  “Reassurance that she won’t lose her one communication tool?”

  “Precisely. Although I might be the only one who sees it that way.”

  “Who doesn’t?” I said.

  “The doctors, mostly. And Marlette a little bit, too.”

  “The doctors don’t think she uses drawings to communicate?”

  “No.” Henrietta said it with a certain disgust in her voice. “They say she is recording, not communicating. They say she is a savant who replicates her surroundings with her sketches. But I’ve spent hundreds of times as many hours with Silence as they have. In some respects I’ve even spent more hours with her than her mother has, at least the kind of hours that are focused on learning rather than mealtime hours and such. Don’t get me wrong, Marlette is a good mother. She loves those kids. But mothers have to spend so much of their time taking care of children’s physical needs. I have the luxury of focusing on their intellectual needs.” Henrietta suddenly stared at me intensely. “I know that child, Owen. Her drawings are a form of communication with others. She shows them to me. She wants my reaction. Why would she do that if she were just recording the world for herself?”

  We talked a little longer and then I stood up and said I had to go. Henrietta stopped me as I was going out the door.

  I was down on the front steps, which put Henrietta’s eyes level with mine.

  “You think there’s a chance, then?” she said.

  “There’s always a chance.”

  Once again she stared at me hard. Her voice was a whisper when she spoke.

  “Silence is the closest thing I have to a daughter. I know what her world is like. To have a universe of feelings that you keep to yourself, that no one knows...” Henrietta trailed off.

  I reached out and shook her hand.

  “Good luck,” she said, then turned quickly and went inside, pulling the door closed behind her.

  SEVENTEEN

  I still hadn’t heard back from the deputy who studied the Granite Mountain Boys, so I decided I couldn’t wait any longer to probe in the directio
n of the bikers.

  I have an old friend who sells mutual funds. Geoff Lambdon is a small man with red hair and freckles on his cheeks like a kid. He’s 39 and looks a virginal 19. He wears a thin gold necklace, shaves a very careful pattern into the stubble on his chin to accentuate a look he calls Hollywood Hot. Geoff puts oil in his hair and combs his eyebrows with a miniature brush. His wife is a beautiful blonde with a huge appreciation for his devotion to their three kids. She’s also a sweet woman who’d love him even if he didn’t have a quarter-million dollar income. For fun, Geoff likes boating and golf and chess and five-card stud and going to the jazz shows that the Reno NPR station helps sponsor.

  And Geoff loves his Harley.

  I called Geoff, and he agreed to meet me for a very late lunch.

  I walked into the Cantina on Emerald Bay Road at four o’clock. Geoff was at the bar. He had a margarita in front of him.

  “McKenna! It’s been, what, two, three years? I think the last time was at that Rotary meeting where you came and talked about the quiet life of a detective in Lake Tahoe. I guess your last few cases made a liar out of you! Here, sit down, sit down!” He patted the barstool next to him. I sat, held a finger up toward the bartender and pointed to Geoff’s drink.

  “Linda and the kids are well?” I said.

  “Yes, yes. Thank you.”

  “And business is good?”

  “Oh, ho, ho,” he laughed like Santa Claus and slugged my shoulder. “You know, you’re about the only one at the lake I haven’t put together a plan for. Is that why you called? Are you ready to settle down your savings into a good long-term plan?”

  “Maybe next year,” I said. “Gotta get some savings first.” The bartender brought me my drink. I took a sip, salt off the glass rim mixing into sweet icy fire. “What I wanted to talk to you about was your Harley.”

  His smile widened. “McKenna, you are a surprise. I got me a new Fat Boy just last year. I knew it would turn heads here, there and everywhere, but I didn’t think your head’d be one of ‘em. Ready to jump into the game?”

  “No. But I’m curious about the game. Where do you ride. Who do you ride with. That sort of thing.”

  “What’s this for?”

  “General info,” I said.

  He nodded. “Sure. Like when my mother said she wanted to check my pockets before I went off to school. General info. Oh, now I remember reading that you were working on that kidnapping. So you think bikers took those kids?”

  “We’re considering it. The Tahoe Biker Heaven Festival,” I said. “Are you part of it?”

  Geoff beamed at me. “Certainly am. Baddest mutual fund guy in the basin. I can talk one-year, five-year and ten-year returns right up there with displacement, horsepower, compression ratios and tread patterns.” Geoff laughed, picked up his drink and took a sip. Then he leaned over and knocked his elbow against mine. “Know what the coolest accessory is that I’ve found this year?” He paused, then continued. “Grip fringe.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Really,” he said. “They attach to the ends of the handlebar grips. Just like on our bicycles when we were little kids. Only these are real leather. When you’re cruising they flap like a flag on an F-Sixteen.” He drank more margarita. “To fringe or not to fringe a bike is like to load or not to load a fund. The essential dilemma of the millennium.”

  “Where do your ride as part of the festival?”

  “Some of the rides are organized with cookouts and beer tastings at the finish. Others are impromptu. It’s funny. Mostly we ride the same places as always. Us locals can push it harder than the tourist bikers because we know the roads. We cruise the passes and all the tight switchbacks. Kingsbury grade from Dagget Summit down to Carson Valley and back up, of course, is prime. Real prime. Echo Summit doesn’t have as many tight curves, but riding on the edge of a thousand-foot cliff for a couple miles is enough to make you trade your beer for a bourbon.

  “Riding around the lake is always a must. Counter-clockwise being my favorite. I still love where you come off Emerald Bay and hit that section where the land drops away to the bay on the left and Cascade Lake on the right, and you are on the knife-edge with the whole world below you and Tahoe stretched out in front of you. I call it the Great Wall of China. You take it fast for thrills, then hit those calipers hard because that first switchback is a ten mile-per-hour one-eighty, and if you miss it, well, let’s just say it was fun to see your red taillight arc in a free fall toward the big water.”

  Geoff picked up his margarita and, aided by the daydream, took a big gulp.

  “The trip from the Mt. Rose Pass down to Reno is the best of all. Nine thousand feet of elevation down to forty-five hundred in just a few miles of twisty turny asphalt ribbon. Doesn’t get better than that. Talk about Biker Heaven.” He turned to me. “You done any of those rides?”

  “All of them, one time or another. Who else do you know who rides in the festival?”

  “Hell, practically everyone. My dentist Bill Massenruud, Reverend Vitale, my stockbroker Arturo Rodriguez...”

  I interrupted, “Mutual fund salesmen have stockbrokers? I thought you’d do that all yourself.”

  “Oh, McKenna, my man, Arturo is the NYSE’s offering to the investment gods. If you’re not on board, well, you gotta get on board. Arturo’s analyses are what’s going to get all of us into financial heaven.”

  “Who else,” I said.

  “Well, there’s my barber Babe Ruth, the softball phenom of Tahoe, and Smilin’ Joe Johnson who owns the snowboard shop by your office on Kingsbury. My lawyer Pierson Giovano-vich and his wife Myra. You should see her in her leathers on her Low Rider. She’s perfect. Those hips. Absolutely perfect.” Geoff looked at me. “You want me to keep going?”

  “What you’re saying is that a whole lotta regular guys go out on their Harleys and cruise to these different events.”

  “What else would anyone do with a Harley in Tahoe’s mountains and an entire celebration devoted to it?” Geoff said.

  “Do any of these guys know any real bad-ass bikers?”

  “You mean, like, gang types? Hell’s Angels and such?”

  “Yeah. Are your friends all Boy Scouts, or do any of the guys you know flirt with the darker side of biking.”

  Geoff was shaking his head. “McKenna, I’m surprised you even ask the question. These are all upstanding citizens. They go out for fun. We put on the leather uniform and rev up the machine, cruise around and make a lot of noise. But nothing else. It’s a good time, nothing more, nothing less.”

  “But you and your friends are aware of the wilder side of biking.”

  “Sure,” Geoff said. “That’s part of the fun. You know it’s out there and so it gives you a little buzz, like playing pretend when you’re a kid. Hey, didn’t you used to have a bike?”

  “Twenty years on my seven-fifty Yamaha. Thing finally wore out. Thought about getting a replacement some day.”

  “Then you know what it’s like. You hit the gas and lean into a curve on a mountain road. There’s nothing better. Doing it with friends only adds to the fun. But it’s just clean fun. You look around at these festivals. Hell, even the giant ones like Sturgis, South Dakota. Ninety percent of the bikers have regular jobs, probably more white collar than blue collar. Doctors, lawyers, architects and accountants. Of the rest, probably five percent are on the margins, sketchy employment history, maybe some run-ins with the law. It’s the last five percent that you’re wondering about. The idiots and serious crooks. But the rest of us so out-number them that no one can tell who’s who.”

  “Because except for a few standout dirtballs, you all look the same,” I said.

  Geoff drank more margarita. “I never thought of it that way, but, yes, you’re right. Interesting, now that I think about it. I suppose it’s a herd thing. We mostly look alike, ride the same machines, go the same direction and make the same noise.”

  “I have a request for you and your biker buddies,” I said.<
br />
  “Shoot.”

  “I’d like to talk with a bunch of them. Here at the Cantina or at my cabin, wherever works. I’ve got a favor to ask.”

  That night, we met at Geoff’s house in Skyland, the fenced community over on the East Shore just north of Zephyr Cove. Despite the last minute notice, several of Geoff’s friends showed up. There was Bill and Arturo and Pierson and Myra and Babe Ruth and a guy Geoff hadn’t mentioned, Marven Anderson, a guy with a ruddy face and amazing red hair who looked like a Swedish lumberjack but was actually an industrial designer from Des Moines, Iowa.

  Geoff and Linda served beer and chips and salsa and after about fifteen minutes of idle chatter Geoff interrupted and said, “Yo, guys, Myra. My friend Owen McKenna here is a detective working on the murder case of that kid, and he would like to say something. Right, Owen?”

  I stood up and faced the group. They were loosely arranged around the table with the chips and salsa. The men quieted down except for Bill and Arturo who were seriously engrossed in a conversation dissecting the pros and cons of various fuel mixtures.

  “Arturo, Bill,” Myra scolded.

  They stopped talking and looked at me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Yes, I’ve got a request for all of you. You’ve all heard of the Ramirez kidnapping and murder. I can add very little to what you’ve already read in the paper. Charlie was fourteen. Silence is seventeen. No one saw the kidnappers, but several people heard and saw motorcycles in the neighborhood. One neighbor heard bikers revving their machines in front of the Ramirez house.

  “So, while we don’t know that bikers were involved, we’re looking. There is also some indication that a serious biker gang called the Granite Mountain Boys is in Tahoe for the festival. They have a bad reputation, some of it based on rumor, some on truth. The name comes from the Granite Mountain State Prison, a Super Max facility near the Oregon border.

  “The reason I’m here is that if in fact bikers were involved, we need to infiltrate the biker groups all over the basin. I’m asking you to be our eyes and ears.”