Tahoe Silence Page 11

The man called Babe Ruth said, “Isn’t that gang run by some kind of Mexican drug lord?”

  “The leader of the group is Antonio Gomez, a felon convicted of rape and murder and released on a technicality. He leads a group of bikers who are drawn to him for all the usual reasons. He’s a natural general with a few colonels who also have ties to the Granite Mountain State Prison, and the losers who follow him need some kind of leader to give purpose to their lives.” Some of them nodded as if it were old news.

  Arturo spoke up. “Do you have specifics on what you’d like from us?”

  “Go about your regular activities. Cruise the lake, attend the concerts, camp out with everyone else. Don’t do anything you wouldn’t normally do. But watch and listen for anything that could suggest involvement with a kidnapping or the location of any child or any talk that might be revealing.

  “If you hear of anything at all, no matter how slight and unlikely, please call me.” I pulled out my cards and handed them around.

  That night Street called me just after I’d fallen asleep.

  “I heard glass break,” she said in a whisper.

  Adrenaline shot through me. I was wide awake in a second. “You’re at home?”

  “Yes. In the bedroom.”

  I thought about the layout of her condo. “Go into your bathroom and lock the door. Pop the towel rod out of its mounts. If you’re careful you can do it silently. Do you remember how?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a good weapon. Turn off the bathroom light, stand in the shower and wait. I’ll be there in a couple minutes.”

  EIGHTEEN

  I hung up, pulled on my jeans, and Spot and I were out the door in moments.

  I raced down the mountain and stopped at the side of the road well before Street’s condo complex. I grabbed Spot’s collar.

  “Quiet,” I said, laying my finger across his nose.

  We ran through the dark forest to approach her door from the side. I whispered to Spot, “Find the suspect!” as I put my key in the lock. I turned the key and opened the door.

  He ran inside, claws scraping the floor. It was dark inside Street’s condo, but it doesn’t matter with a dog. In less than a second I knew no one was there because Spot hadn’t alerted. I went to Street’s bedroom and flipped on the light. Spot was standing at the closed bathroom door, tail wagging.

  “It’s okay,” I called out. Street opened the bathroom door. She hugged Spot, then me.

  “After you hung up,” she said, still holding me, “a couple of motorcycles started up. They were so loud they probably woke everyone in the building. They roared off.”

  I walked through her condo, checking all the windows and the deck door. Nothing was broken.

  “Keep Spot in here with you,” I said. “I’ll check outside.”

  I went around to the back side of the condo building. On the ground below Street’s bedroom window was a broken beer bottle. I picked up a piece of glass. The beer smell was fresh. Next to her window was a wet mark where the bottle had hit the wall.

  It could have been vandalism. A couple guys drinking in the woods, tossing the last unfinished beer at the condo. But I didn’t believe it. It looked like a warning. The warning said, “We know where your girlfriend sleeps.”

  I stayed at Street’s that night. We sat up late in her bed, discussing the possibilities. Street was convinced that it was only a scare tactic. If they really wanted to harm her, they would have kicked in her door.

  It was an image that kept me awake long after Street fell asleep.

  In the morning I asked Street if she’d like to join Spot and me in some exercise.

  “Good idea. You want to do your road?” she asked, referring to our normal course up and down the steep private drive I share with my neighbors.

  “I was thinking about going out to Meyers and having a go up the old Meyer’s Grade.”

  “And you want to stop by the Echo Summit chain-up area and look at where the boy’s body was,” Street said.

  “The thought occurred to me. We could have a quick look, then head up the grade. But first I have to buzz up to my cabin and get my running shoes. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  My phone rang as I walked into my cabin.

  Diamond Martinez said, “Surprised you’re awake at this hour. White Irish-type boy like you. Thought you’d still be asleep.”

  “Scottish, mostly, sergeant,” I said. “And some Welsh along with the Irish. Either way, I won’t take it as a racial slur.”

  “No slur. It’s just that while you Scottish types are sleeping, brown boys like me get up before the sun gets too hot. Pick the food you eat. Wash your car. Clean your hotel room.”

  “I’m worn out just listening to you and I haven’t even started my run-walk,” I said.

  “You’re going out for a jog. Maybe I should come along. I could talk to you then.”

  “I pick Street up in twenty-five minutes. Going out to Meyer’s Grade.”

  “On my way,” Diamond said and hung up.

  I didn’t know if he planned to intercept me at my cabin or at Street’s condo. I filled my water bottles, put on my running sweats and let Spot out the door just as Diamond pulled into my short drive in his old pickup.

  “Your civilian wheels make you look more like a lettuce picker than a sergeant for Douglas County Sheriff’s Department.”

  “I spent a couple summers picking lettuce. Only been a sergeant a couple months. I could show you how to tell the best heads. Maybe I should load up your laundry, too.”

  “You can strip the bed when we get back.”

  Diamond climbed into the Jeep and Spot got in back. Spot was excited because Diamond was his favorite person on the planet, the result of several inappropriate gifts of Danish pastries that irreparably destroyed his proper appreciation of chunked-sawdust dog food.

  Street was waiting outside her condo, stretching, one leg up on the railroad-tie retaining wall, her body arced forward, fingertips to toes. She’d put on tight periwinkle Spandex shorts that came to mid-thigh and a tight matching shirt with sleeves that came down to just below her elbows. Her running shoes were bright white and she wore those little girl socks that just peek out from her shoes so that her perfect ankles can glow in the sun. Her hair, more black recently than her natural auburn, was pulled back in a tight bun revealing little gold loop earrings. Although Street was very slim, in her case thin meant she had just enough meat in just the right places, but not one ounce of extra in a not-so-right place.

  Diamond looked at her, then glanced over at me.

  Street straightened up from her stretch, came over and jumped in behind Diamond, crowding Spot over to the side of the small backseat.

  “Diamond, what a nice surprise.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek, with Spot sticking his nose in and making it a threesome. “You going to join us on our run?”

  “Somebody gotta protect you from this predacious lout.”

  “Predacious?” I said.

  “The look in your eye when the lady came up to the car,” he said. “She looks good, sure. Doesn’t mean you should salivate like this hound, here, before he eats a filet mignon.”

  “Wow,” Street said. “I’ve never been compared to a filet mignon.”

  “You’re a beautiful lady. You should find a sophisticated gent. With this guy you’re FDA Prime Number One Grade A.”

  “I’ll work on it,” Street said.

  I headed south down the highway, drove through Stateline and turned onto Pioneer Trail, the shortcut out to Meyers and Echo Summit. When we got to the chain-up area in Meyers, Street reached forward from the backseat and pointed.

  “Up there. Way off to the side.”

  I pulled up to where she said and stopped. Diamond and I followed as Street walked off the pavement and stepped around a group of manzanita bushes. “Right there,” Street said, pointing to an area of ground that had been disturbed by hundreds of footprints. “The body was on its side, one knee up, one
arm back. There is general agreement that the boy was already dead before they threw his body out of a vehicle. His head wound had bled copiously prior to death, but there was no blood on the ground. One shoe was missing. Maybe it didn’t get tossed out with the body. Or it could have gotten carried away by a dog.”

  Diamond walked across to look at the patterns in the dirt, patterns that were mostly obscured by the footprints. I stepped next to Street and put my arm around her shoulder. I felt a shiver go through her thin body. Without moving I looked across the area she had indicated. There wasn’t much to see. Despite our proximity to the Sierra Crest and its high level of precipitation, there was some sagebrush, the result of rain-shadow variations that play out in yards rather than miles. Manzanita bushes were scattered on the edge of the meadow area. The soft sounds of the Truckee River burbled from just beyond, overwhelmed by the rush of traffic on the highway behind us.

  It wasn’t a place where someone would carefully hide a body, hoping the discovery of its desiccated remains would be delayed until the following spring or summer. Whoever had left it here was only looking for a place to dump it. They may have been in a hurry and pulled over before they headed up Echo Summit and out of the basin. Or they were driving around, looking for a wide place on the road to pull over. None were wider than the broad apron of the Echo Summit chain-up area, designed to accommodate large semi-trucks. The kidnappers could pull well away from the traffic lanes and it would be unlikely that anyone would notice the door opening up and a body being thrust out onto the dirt.

  After a moment, chilled by the cold morning air and the imagined scene playing in our heads, we left.

  I drove across the bridge over the Truckee River and started up the long incline that leads to the summit, then quickly turned left on South Upper Truckee Road.

  I followed the road as it wound back a short distance, then turned right on the old Meyer’s Grade. A block ahead were several parked cars belonging to early-morning walkers and bicyclers. I stopped and we all got out, Spot sprinting around with such enthusiasm it was as if he’d just discovered the joy of running.

  We started off at a walk, waiting for our bodies to warm up before we picked up the pace.

  Meyer’s Grade is the old road up to Echo Summit. Although it is solid and paved, it is steep, and long ago was replaced by the new road which comes down the cliff at a shallower angle. When accidents or avalanches close the new road, Meyer’s Grade becomes the detour route. The rest of the time Meyer’s Grade has locked gates, top and bottom, which makes it a magnet for those looking to exercise on a paved surface. Hikers and dog-walkers and bicyclists can enjoy the great views down Christmas Valley and across the basin without having to constantly look down to check the trail for roots and animal holes and ankle-twisting rocks.

  After we’d walked a half-mile up the road Street said, “Warmed up, yet?”

  “I was worried about this moment,” Diamond said, puffing much harder than Street but no harder than me.

  “We don’t have to run,” she said. “Just pick it up a little.”

  “A little,” Diamond muttered. “Scary words coming from you.”

  Street began jogging, thin thighs bulging, hamstrings taut under the Spandex, calves flexing easily, the separate muscle groups distinct beneath shiny skin. With her angular physique and her acne scars, no one would ever call Street beautiful. But she was striking to a superlative degree, and the sight of her body working in perfect tune always ratchets up my hormone production.

  Diamond and I began a slow jog as Street gradually pulled away from us.

  “Hate it when a young broad does that,” Diamond said in a low voice. “Makes me feel old.”

  Street turned around and began jogging backward. “I heard that. I’m not very young and I’m not broad.” She kept jogging backward, moving up the mountain with more ease than we had moving forward.

  Diamond was panting. “Okay. You’re narrow. And you’re almost as old as me. Makes me feel even worse.”

  Spot noticed that Street was running backward and he ran over to her, jumping from her left side to her right, bouncing up and down. Wow, it’s fun when people run backward.

  “The thing I wanted to talk about,” Diamond said, panting. “Been wondering about this kidnapping. Ever since the boy was found murdered.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Something seem off to you?”

  “Yeah,” I said, conserving words so I could breathe.

  “What?” he asked.

  I huffed and puffed, storing up oxygen. “Can’t see the girl as a random victim,” I said.

  “My thought, too.”

  Street had slowed so that we were closer to her. She was still running backward. “Why not?”

  “Couple reasons,” I said. “She doesn’t look the type for bikers to pick up. I’ve tried to put my mind into those of gang members looking to get into trouble, wanting to grab a girl for some dirty sex or worse. I’m no good at that kind of empathy, but I see them cruising until they find a girl hitchhiking.” I stopped talking to breathe. “Or possibly they see a girl at a bar or down the street. If the girl were wearing revealing clothes or looking loose, that would figure in as well.” I sucked in some more air.

  “But this ain’t blame-the-victim reasoning,” Diamond said.

  “No, not at all. A woman should be able to dress as she pleases, go where she pleases, when she pleases. I’m just recognizing that a gang is more likely to grab someone who is dolled up like a streetwalker than someone who looks like Silence. The streetwalker would look more provocative.”

  “What’s the other reason she doesn’t seem like a random victim?” Street asked.

  Diamond spoke up. “The other one I can think of is that her house isn’t directly on Pioneer Trail. The bikers had to turn down the street and drive more than a block to get to her. They could possibly have seen her from Pioneer if they knew exactly where to look, but it’s a stretch.”

  “Suggesting,” Street said, “that they were specifically looking for Silence.”

  Diamond said, “Yeah. And they wanted her bad enough that they had to fight off Charlie in the process.”

  I nodded. Both of us were sucking air like vacuum cleaners. Street didn’t seem to be breathing at all.

  A woman with a Black Lab appeared around a curve up ahead, coming down the mountain toward us. The lab spied Spot and stopped, hesitating. Spot ran toward it. Suddenly, the lab sprinted toward Spot, having decided Spot would be fun, not dangerous. I don’t know how it works. Doggie body language. They flew around in circles, intensely interested in each other and then, just as suddenly, they lost interest and went separate ways, the lab rejoining the woman and Spot continuing on up the mountain.

  “If what you’re saying is true, then that changes everything, doesn’t it,” Street said.

  I nodded again.

  I said, “If bikers take just any girl at random, there’s not too many clues to follow. But if bikers take a specific girl, it suggests they knew her. Or knew of her. Makes for lots more clue possibilities.”

  “Clue possibilities being your business,” Diamond said.

  We were approaching the top of the old grade where it joins the newer highway. I knew that Diamond was as relieved as I was that we could turn around and go downhill.

  “Shall we continue on to Echo Lake?” Street said, impossibly cheery and unwinded.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Diamond said. “Love the way gringas like to kid.”

  “I looked on the map before we came,” she said. “We’ve only come up one and a half miles and six or seven hundred feet of elevation. Echo Lake would bump that to three miles plus and over a thousand feet of elevation gain.”

  “Yeah, but that’s just one way. Then we gotta go all the way down,” Diamond said, his voice weak with effort.

  “Something any real man would want before breakfast, right?”

  “I like exercise before breakfast. Just a different kind.�
�

  Street turned around and ran facing forward. Diamond and I focused on breathing. A little pain in my left calf muscle hinted at an oncoming cramp so I tried to shake it as I ran. Diamond turned to look, no doubt wondering what creature must have crawled up my sweats. But he was too winded to speak.

  We went around the locked gate at the intersection of old road and new, waited for a break in traffic and ran across Highway 50. For a short block we turned and ran downhill to the intersection where another old route leaves the uphill side of the highway and climbs in steep zigzags up the mountain. Street, of course, led the way up the switchbacks, not slowing at all despite the major increase in steepness.

  After an excruciating sprint we popped out at the top and stopped to rest next to the old Echo Summit Lodge that belongs to the California Alpine Club, a hiking club that dates back decades.

  Just as the black dots in my vision began to recede, we started again and followed Echo Road up a gentle climb and out a mile to Echo Lake.

  There are few places on the planet that are as picturesque as the glacier-forged cleft in the mountain where the ice cold waters of Echo Lake lay at 7400 feet. Talking Mountain rises to the left, Flagpole Peak is on the right, and the narrow water stretches back several miles with Pyramid Peak in the distance. Even at this late date, there were patches of snow left over from the previous winter.

  It is the water from Echo Lake that flows out the Tahoe side of the granite ridge and tumbles down Echo Falls, a rushing cascade that distracts drivers coming into the basin from Echo Summit. There is an old hidden tunnel that dates back to when the early water engineers made their imprint all over the basin. The Echo Lake tunnel diverts water away from its natural flow toward Tahoe and adds it to the American River. From there it all cascades down toward Sacramento and the hydropower plants that help keep the city’s air conditioners humming.

  We stopped at the crest of Echo Road where the view of Echo Lake is straight ahead and the view of Lake Tahoe is off to the right and 1200 feet below. Street jogged in place. Diamond and I leaned over, hands to knees, and tried to catch our breaths. Spot was tired, too, and realizing we might be there for several seconds or more, he seized the opportunity to lie down in the dirt to the side of the road and rolled over onto his side. His pink tongue lolled out, flopping with each breath like a fresh-caught salmon.