10 Tahoe Trap Read online

  Paco tried on every pair in the expensive rack. He finally chose a pair of gold reflective Oakleys.

  “But these are fifty dollars,” I said.

  Paco gave me a serious look. “They’ll protect my eyes.”

  As I paid for the glasses, I was pretty sure that I had never paid more than $20 for my own sunglasses.

  Paco asked the clerk to cut off the little nylon cord. Then he went back to the mirror on the stand and slipped the sunglasses up on top of his head, the lenses nestling in his bristle-brush black hair. He angled them just so until he looked very cool, and we went back out to the car.

  “I thought the glasses were to protect your eyes,” I said.

  “They are,” he said.

  We drove off.

  Paco stared out the window. A very young kid was riding a bicycle on a side road. He wore a green helmet and matching green bicycle clothes, skin tight, like a famous racer. His mother rode behind him.

  “Do you have kids?” Paco asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?” he said.

  I wasn’t sure how to answer him.

  “Why not?” he said again.

  “Never thought I was dad material,” I said.

  Paco’s frown intensified.

  I drove back to the school.

  “Stay in the Jeep with Spot?” I said.

  Paco nodded.

  I went back in to talk with Pam Sagan.

  “How come you didn’t tell me that your friend’s son got in a fight with Paco?”

  Her face colored.

  “I didn’t see that it was germane to our conversation,” she said.

  “With somebody after Paco, anything that suggests animosity for Paco is germane.” I watched her. She didn’t react. “Did you talk to Cassie about it?” I asked.

  “Yes. It was a painful subject around here.”

  “Paco said that Bobby Burns jumped him first,” I said.

  “That’s what he said. Robert says otherwise.”

  “And you believe your friend’s son.”

  “I didn’t put stock in either boy’s story. I just wanted to make it so our students get along.”

  “Did Cassie react?”

  “Not in any significant way.”

  “You remained cordial,” I said.

  She nodded. “I appreciate that about Cassie. She always keeps a broad perspective. Neither of us would want to let our students’ disagreements poison our relationship.”

  I nodded. Sagan’s words sounded sincere, but her face revealed little.

  “Tell me about when the cops took Paco in.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. McKenna. I can hear the judgment in your tone. Like all schools, we have a zero-tolerance policy with weapons. If a student brings weapons to school, we must call the authorities. They took him down to the county office and held him until Cassie came to get him out. Later, he made an appearance at court.”

  “Paco said that they were harvest tools,” I said. “And they were in his pack, not in his hands.”

  “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t matter. In the eyes of the police, a knife is a knife.”

  “What was the court’s decision?”

  “I don’t know the details. I think the judge sounded very stern to Paco, trying to scare him. But he let him go without any punishment as long as Paco didn’t get into any further trouble. As I said earlier, our community has tried hard to keep Paco here, safe and out of trouble.”

  “The Burns’ family’s lawsuit punished Cassie,” I said.

  “It certainly did,” Sagan said in a low voice. She looked around to make sure that no one was close to her office door even though I’d shut it as before. “If the Burns boy did in fact initiate the fight, then it was a serious miscarriage of justice. If not, then, well, I don’t know. I can’t say that I like that part of our legal system. Lawsuits against individual people seem so... so unfair sometimes. Either way,” she said, lowering her voice further, “it looked like a money grab to me. I found it dis...” she stopped talking.

  “Paco gave me a note that Cassie wrote me. It suggests that she thought she might be in trouble. Does that ring any bells for you?”

  “You mean something separate from being sued?”

  “Right.”

  Sagan shook her head.

  “She also wrote that Paco was only to give me the note if something went very wrong.”

  Sagan raised her closed hand to her mouth, and her forehead wrinkled with worry. “That’s terrible. Cassie must have been so afraid to write such a note. She must have been in bad trouble.”

  Sagan looked out the window. “I don’t have any ideas about what to do with Paco, but I’ll talk to his teachers and the parents of his friends. Perhaps we can come up with some ideas.”

  “Thanks. If Cassie had problems, with Paco or anyone else, who do you think she would talk to? Who would she confide in?”

  “Well I don’t know. To my knowledge she doesn’t belong to any groups. She doesn’t go to church. Maybe she would talk to Dr. Mendoza. He runs the town clinic. He is kind of stern when you first meet him, but underneath his facade, he can have a warm way about him. He’s kind of a father figure to many in this town. I imagine that many people would confide in him.”

  I got the clinic’s address from Sagan, thanked her, and left.

  SIXTEEN

  The Fan Palm Family Clinic was another old building made of concrete block, but with modern windows, a fresh coat of beige paint and generous flowers out front.

  “You okay with staying in the Jeep again with Spot?”

  “Yeah,” Paco said.

  I parked in the shade of a huge palm and got out.

  “Don’t open the door for anybody. I don’t care what they say.”

  He nodded. His eyes were foggy with fatigue. He’d likely be asleep in minutes.

  I cracked the windows a bit, locked the doors, and went inside the building.

  The air was artificially cool and permeated with an antiseptic-meets-sickness smell. Behind the counter was a chubby woman wearing a tight baby-blue sweater and tight baby-blue pants. On the left side of her head was a baby-blue hair clip.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” she said in an enthusiastic, high-pitched voice. She appeared grateful that I’d interrupted whatever she’d been doing. “Do you have an appointment with Dr. Mendoza?”

  “No. I’m calling on a different matter. I’m Detective Owen McKenna. I’m investigating a possible murder in Tahoe. Pam Sagan over at the school believes that Dr. Mendoza was the victim’s family doctor. I’d like to ask the doctor a few questions.”

  The woman’s cheerful demeanor changed to a mixture of horror and excitement. “Oh, wow, that’s terrible! What is the victim’s name?” She asked with a little too much eagerness in her voice.

  “I should discuss that with the doctor. Is he available for a few minutes?”

  “Oh, of course, that would be hush-hush information at this point, wouldn’t it? I’ve seen that on TV. Let me look.” The woman flipped open a baby-blue appointment book and scanned down the schedule which, from my angle of vision, looked to show only four names for the entire day. “I’m sure I’ll have to ask him. Please wait.” She pushed back her chair and hurried down a hallway that I couldn’t see.

  I heard a door open and shut. There was a murmuring of voices, the woman’s high voice and a man’s deep voice. I heard the same door open followed by heavy footsteps. A big man wearing a white doctor’s smock came out into the reception area.

  “I’m Dr. Mendoza. What can I do for you?” The doctor was hairy in the extreme. Except for his nose and forehead, every patch of visible skin on his big, round body and huge head was covered with fur. Most of it had been cut back, especially on his cheeks and ears, but it looked to be a daily job that would require an electric hedge trimmer.

  “Owen McKenna,” I said, shaking a paw that had more fur on it than any two of Spot’s paws combined.

  “Mindy said you have a murder
victim who was one of my patients?”

  “It appears that way. Can we go someplace private and talk for a few minutes?”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m busy, and I can only answer the most basic questions, anyway. Doctor patient confidentiality, you know. Please ask me here and now. If I can be of help without violating patient trust, I will. Although I can’t see what that would allow me to tell you.” His voice was loud and gruff, and the level of garlic on his breath was sufficient to defoliate my nose hair.

  “It sounds like I need more information than you are willing to give. I’ll go to the D.A. first, and we’ll come back with papers. Of course, the initial deposition will probably take several days. And if you need to appear in court, that would be additional. But I can see that taking time from your practice is preferable to spending a few minutes with me, talking off the record.”

  I turned to go.

  “Just a minute,” he said.

  I turned back. The man’s eyes were narrowed so much that his eyebrows almost joined with the upper crest of his beard.

  “So you’re going to play tough,” he said.

  I shook my head. “No. I’m the gentle type, easy to like. You want to chat? Great. Save us both a lot of time. If you don’t, I still have to do my job.”

  He gave me one of those looks of antipathy that I’d seen doctors give lawyers in a courtroom.

  “We’ll talk in my office.” He turned and went back down the hall. I followed.

  Mendoza’s office was a small cubicle with a single small window.

  Every surface in the office was covered with disorganized piles of papers, books, and periodicals. The papers that I could see were filled with medical and scientific terms. The books were medical reference manuals. The magazines, scientific and medical journals.

  There were no golf clubs in the corner, no travel magazines, no brandy snifters on the shelf. The man was one of the serious workers. I couldn’t tell from his office detritus if his main focus was treating local patients or something else, but his dedication was obvious.

  He sat down on his desk chair and uttered a large sigh.

  “What law enforcement agency do you work for?”

  “I used to be Homicide Inspector, San Francisco. Now I’m private.”

  His reaction was dramatic. “You mean to tell me that you have no official involvement with a law enforcement agency in this case?” He stood up. “You’ve deceived me. Get out.”

  “No deception at all,” I said. “Everything I said still applies. I work with law enforcement in the county where your patient was assaulted. I currently have temporary custody of the victim’s foster child. I can think of both civil and criminal procedures where the legal people involved will listen to my recommendations. In fact, those officials appreciate that my footwork doesn’t come out of the county’s budget.”

  The doctor sat back down. “So what do you want?” He made the question sound like a command.

  “Paco Ipar and Cassie Moreno are your patients, correct?”

  The man nodded. Looked at his watch. Sighed again.

  “At six-thirty yesterday morning, Paco Ipar called me using his foster mother’s cell phone. Paco was near panic, claiming that he’d witnessed Cassie’s shooting.” I explained how Paco had ended up hiding in the shooter’s pickup, how he’d escaped near Heavenly Ski Resort and run down the mountain to me. “We have verified some of the boy’s story. I’m inclined to believe the rest.”

  “But you don’t have a body,” Mendoza said, seizing on it as if it were proof that I was wasting his time.

  “Correct. The woman may not be dead. The FBI confirmed that they have been looking for two men who match the description of the shooters as described by Paco. These men are wanted in three separate murders.”

  Mendoza said, “What does this have to do with me?”

  “Your local school principal, Pam Sagan, said that Cassie had no close friends. Sagan thought that if Cassie would confide in anyone, it would probably be her doctor. So my question is, did she ever say anything to you that would hint at why she became a victim of a violent attack?”

  Mendoza made a single, exaggerated shake of his head. Left, then right. “No,” he said.

  “Did you prescribe any controlled substances that she could sell on the street for money?”

  “No.”

  “Was Cassie healthy enough that she could live a normal life substantially unaffected by medical issues?”

  “Yes.”

  “So nothing in your relationship with her gives you any idea of how or why she could end up driving to meet someone who planned to assault her.”

  “Correct.”

  I decided to switch the subject to Paco. “Cassie’s foster child Paco Ipar... Are you aware that he is an illegal alien?”

  “Of course. The entire town is aware, just as they are aware of all the other children who are illegal aliens. This is the Central Valley. Food basket of America. The economy of every town in this valley would collapse if we didn’t have the Mexicans who do the work that American-born citizens refuse to do, because they think it is beneath them. Not to mention that the work is also brutal in its exertion and involves extreme high temperatures in the fields and orchards.”

  “So you wouldn’t do anything to report Paco to the authorities or anyone else who might then target Cassie for harboring an illegal alien.”

  “Damnit, McKenna! I’m a doctor, sworn to heal, not to inflict misery! I leave my personal judgments about the law and our border problems at home. When I come to work, it’s to make sick people better and keep healthy people from getting sick. Doctors do their work in all places. We work in prison and heal murderers. We work on the battlefield and heal soldiers and, if necessary, heal enemy soldiers. We are a force for good at the personal level. We try our damnedest to keep issues of government from coming into our exam rooms!”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. I have the boy outside in my Jeep. He has suddenly gone from a somewhat stable life to a life of uncertainty at best. He’s witnessed traumatic events. I’m trying to find out what happened. Asking questions of people who’ve had contact with Cassie is my most likely source of information.”

  Mendoza looked at me, the disgust in his eyes softening a bit. “I don’t even remember when the last time was that I saw Cassie. What I do remember is that she was healthy as an ox and stubborn as a mule. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would generate warmth in most people. But anybody would respect her. Probably everybody did respect her.”

  He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “You think she’s dead?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. The two suspects reportedly use a Taser to paralyze their victims, then use plastic-wrap around the victims’ arms to immobilize them and around their heads to suffocate them.”

  “Christ,” Mendoza said. “And you have no idea why she would be assaulted by these men.”

  “No.”

  “Why would they come after Paco?” he asked.

  “He witnessed the assault. They would want to silence any witnesses.”

  Mendoza looked a little sick.

  “I wonder if you can tell me something I’ve always wondered about,” I said. “We all know the basic effects of a stun gun. But can you explain in medical terms just what happens when someone is shocked with a stun gun?”

  Mendoza made a little jerk of surprise at the question.

  “Well, I’m hardly the person to ask. I’m a family doctor working in a farming community. Violent crime here is when two guys drinking in a bar get into an argument and settle it with a fist fight outside in the parking lot. I wouldn’t be surprised if no one has ever been Tasered in this county.”

  “But you could explain its effects,” I said.

  He took a deep breath.

  “Okay, this is a very crude explanation. I’m a doctor not an electromedical researcher.

  “Think of the body’s nervous system as a set of electrical circuits that the brai
n uses to turn the muscles on and off. Of course, the reality is hugely more complicated, but the analogy will serve for your question.

  “The electrical voltage that your brain sends to your muscles is very small, probably less than one hundred millivolts.” He looked at me to see if I was processing.

  “Less than a tenth of a volt,” I said.

  “Right. It doesn’t take a lot of juice to make our muscle cells fire.

  “A stun gun is simply two electrodes across which a large voltage is sent. The amperes, or the total current flow, is low, but the voltage is high. I’ve heard figures ranging from fifty thousand to over a million volts. I should back up and say that the amps are kept low because amps are what stop your heart and kill you.

  “If you take a stun gun, put the two electrodes on your skin, and pull the trigger, you send this very high voltage into your body. When you put voltage into your muscles that is hundreds of thousands of times greater than what your muscles are used to, the result is total body chaos. Your muscles start contracting, and you lose all control. You fall to the ground in a seizure, unable to do anything about it.

  “Even though the electrical shock is brief, it takes a long time for your body to recover. You want to stand up and make your legs and back and arms work, but the signals your brain sends out to make that happen are like candles against the Klieg lights of the stun gun.”

  “Do stun guns cause permanent damage?”

  “They can. People have had heart seizures and died after being shocked. Other people have ongoing problems. But most people usually recover given enough time.”

  “Let me ask a different question, if I may.”

  Mendoza looked at his watch again.

  “If in fact Cassie is dead,” I said, “Paco will need a place to live. Do you have any ideas?”

  “I run a medical clinic, not a bed and breakfast.”

  “I’m serious,” I said. “Have you learned anything about the places that other illegal alien kids stay?”

  “They stay with their families. Obviously, Paco isn’t the only orphaned illegal, but he’s the only one in our immediate town. I have no idea where he could stay.”