Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) Read online

  “In the end, the charges against the bullies were dropped, and no one paid any price except for the mother who was fired from the cleaning job. Worse, the bully’s family knew most of the mother’s other cleaning clients, and they convinced all of those families to fire her as well.”

  “The making of a killer,” I said.

  Ramos nodded.

  “Mikhailo withdrew into his own internal world. He played violent video games. He broke off what few friendships he had. Just a few years later, he started taking steroids and working out. He went to a gym with a reputation for catering to young men with problems. There he met a guy who ran an MMA school.”

  “Mixed martial arts,” Diamond said.

  “Right. That man coached Mikhailo in fighting techniques. Mikhailo got better and more fanatic. He lived in a world of violence, bodybuilding for strength not show, and fighting in non-sponsored MMA events.”

  “By that you mean, shadow matches?” Diamond said. “Not sanctioned by the regular fight promoters?”

  “Right. Like dog fights or cock fights. Mikhailo was christened Mikhailo the Monster. He won every fight he entered, all in the heavyweight class. And in two of them, he reportedly killed his opponent with kicks to the head, but the shadow matches are so secretive that nothing came of it. He was twenty-eight when he became a kind of unofficial national heavyweight champion, and the rumor was that the sanctioned champion on the regular circuit was afraid to fight him in any kind of match.”

  Ramos, as if suddenly cold, unrolled his sleeves and buttoned the cuffs at the wrists.

  “That was the year the first murder victims were found,” he said.

  “The kids who had bullied him,” I said.

  “Right,” Ramos said.

  Diamond said, “And on each body’s arm was written, ‘The American Dream.’”

  Ramos nodded. “Two of the bullies had grown up to become soldiers, but that didn’t deter their killer. In fact, we think it might have inflamed him.”

  I asked, “How were the victims killed?”

  “The first ones were all drowned. Their bodies were each found within a dozen miles of where they lived or worked, two in Brooklyn, one each in Newark, Atlanta, Hartford, and Buffalo. As with Amanda Horner’s body, the victims’ bodies were displayed in obvious ways so that passersby would see them, although none of the previous victims was completely submerged under water. Two were found on ocean beaches, one near a creek, two near lakes, one near a slough.”

  “No witnesses?” I said.

  “No.”

  “And the three bodies that have been found more recently?” I said.

  “Victims seven and eight were burned. Number nine was drowned. The burn victims had a type of insulating metallic tape over the writing on their arms.”

  Diamond made a slow head shake. “So that when they found the charred bodies, they could peel off the tape and still find the writing.”

  “Right.”

  “The more recent victims weren’t bullies from Mikhailo’s past, were they?” I asked.

  “Not that we can tell. We think that Mikhailo’s transformation from injured, persecuted kid to vigilante killer sated him for a few years. But it is likely that, as he endured other insults or slights over the years – as we all do – he cracked further. He was already a murderer, used to playing God with peoples’ lives. So it is possible that he couldn’t resist the pull of resurrecting his brand of justice.”

  Ramos paused as if to take a breath.

  “The two burn victims were being blackmailed. Apparently, they had collected cash as instructed and gone to a meeting where they were to make payment.”

  “Where they were relieved of their cash and then burned?” Diamond asked.

  “Yes. One was an unlicensed doctor who’d been banned from practicing medicine, yet who sold quack cancer cures to desperate, unsuspecting cancer patients. The doctor was found in an old cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. The cabin had been torched. The other burn death took place in a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. That man made his money as a Miami pimp. A couple of his sex workers had been killed by johns over the years, leading people in the trade to accuse the man of not providing even the most basic protection for his workers.”

  “So both of those killings could have a vigilante component?” I said.

  Ramos nodded. “And the blackmail also suggests that money was a secondary motivating factor. We don’t know how much the doctor brought to the blackmailer before he was killed. But the pimp’s associates said he was being blackmailed for a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “You mentioned the six people who bullied Mikhailo when he was a boy, a pimp, and a predatory doctor,” I said. “That’s eight murders. What was the last murder?”

  “A lawyer in New Orleans who sued small businesses for disability-access infractions, businesses that he’d never even patronized. He was non-disabled himself, and he drove around looking for potential victims to prey on through the court system, businesses without wheelchair-access restrooms and such. A journalist ran a series on one of the businesses that was forced to close after one of the lawsuits and reported that the owner committed suicide. The lawyer who sued the business owner was found drowned in a bayou. We have no specific evidence of blackmail. However, the lawyer withdrew fifty thousand dollars in cash from his account the day before his death.”

  “All this fits with Lassitor’s drowning because he engaged in predatory patent infringement lawsuits,” I said. “And whether or not he paid money to his killer – if he was killed, that is – his widow Nadia is being blackmailed after the fact.”

  Diamond was shaking his head. “But how would Amanda Horner’s drowning fit into this? The death method fits, but there is no vigilante aspect and no other apparent motive.”

  “No,” Ramos said. “And that is disturbing. To have Mikhailo step outside of his MO and find other targets for his twisted violence gives us less chance of anticipating his moves.”

  “It seems like he might be a suspect in Gertie O’Leary’s kidnapping,” I said, “if only because her step-child connection to Ian Lassitor seems like too much of a coincidence. But do you have any indication that Mikhailo has kidnapped in the past?”

  “Not in a ransom sense, no,” Ramos said. “But it appears that he abducted several of his other victims simply for the purpose of dragging them to their death sites. The main thing we know about him is that he has no moral boundaries. In the beginning, he saw his life as a war against people in power. It may now be that he sees his life as a war against anyone in his way. If he thought that taking Gertie O’Leary was part of striking back against what he hates, the evidence suggests he’s capable of that.”

  “Does he always work alone?” Diamond asked.

  “We have no indication either way. But if he did bring in comrades, one would expect him to use men from that same shadow world where he grew up, disaffected men who live in a world of violence, psychopaths who’ve been burned by society and have developed into predators who can kill without remorse.”

  Ramos turned to me. “Tell me about these predatory lawsuits you said Ian Lassitor was involved in.”

  “According to Nadia’s account,” I said, “Ian earned some or maybe even most of his money by suing companies for infringement of patents that he’d bought cheap from a company going through bankruptcy. He chose targets that were rich enough to pay a handsome settlement but poor enough not to be able to afford to fight a prolonged case. Nadia said he’d been called a patent troll.”

  Diamond said, “A predator who Mikhailo might murder.”

  Ramos nodded. He looked at me. “Have you found anything to suggest that Ian Lassitor’s drowning was murder?”

  “Santiago said that there were marks on the boat wreckage that could have come from a boat collision, but there was no evidence beyond that. But it would have been easy for someone to run over his little woodie with a bigger boat.”

  “And Amanda Horner?�
� Diamond said.

  “If we assume that she was working for Mikhailo, maybe she learned about Lassitor’s death and was trying to squeeze Nadia Lassitor herself,” Ramos said. “If Mikhailo found out that she was running a blackmail scheme on the side, he would want to punish her and get her out of the way.”

  I said, “Or she could have been exactly what she told me, a worker who botched the job of following Nadia. Her boss had warned her that the punishment for that was death.”

  Ramos nodded. “The bottom line is that Mikhailo could be our murderer. If so, I can’t overestimate how dangerous he is. Coming from a professorial family, he is probably very bright. And of course, his fighting skills are significant.”

  “Do you have any pictures of him?” I asked.

  “No. For obvious reasons, photos are banned in the shadow MMA fighting circuit. He’s never gotten a license or any other ID under his given name. We also think that he’s changed his looks. One account said he was shaved bald. Another gave him a goatee and a ponytail. He’s never held a regular job under his given name. So he’s effectively stayed out of all the databases that we take for granted. The only photo that we could find was from his class picture in seventh grade.”

  Ramos pulled two photos out of his manila folder and handed them to us. “Here are two copies of that photo. Extrapolating from a twelve-year-old boy to a man in his thirties is, of course, difficult, but it’s all we’ve got.”

  “You said he had an older brother,” I said.

  “Yes. Petro. A cardiac surgeon at Brooklyn Hospital. Several years ago, he fell off the Staten Island Ferry and drowned.”

  “Did anyone see this accident?”

  “No. It was late. He didn’t show up at home. The body was found the next day.”

  Diamond asked, “Do we know if Petro and Mikhailo got along as children?”

  “No. There’s no one to ask. The mother went missing some years ago. They didn’t have friends as I’ve already outlined. All of their relatives are back in Russia or Ukraine.” Ramos looked at the wall clock. “I’m sorry, but I’m out of time. Please keep me informed if you learn anything.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Back at my cabin, I spent the next hour online trying to find information on the paint palette logo that Street found imprinted in the concrete of the tire anchor. I took a break to eat some lunch, and then went back to the computer. After another hour, I’d gotten nowhere.

  I paced my little cabin, trying to see the logo in a new way. Spot watched me for awhile, no doubt wondering why I kept going to the deck door, then turning around without going outside. After several circuits, he gave up watching, put his head down and sighed.

  Perhaps I was using the wrong words. So I looked for substitutions. The words tire, concrete, and anchor seemed required. But palette wasn’t. I wrote down substitutions. Painter, Paint, Mixing, Artist.

  That was obvious. Only took me two hours to think of it.

  A short time later I found a listing for a website called The Dock Design Artist.

  I clicked through to the website. It took a bit for the banner at the top to load. It was a picture of a dock projecting out into a lake. Next to the picture was the palette and the line-drawing logo that was pressed into the concrete in the tire.

  There were several pages showing designs, most of which featured dock posts with tire anchors for bases rather than posts that had to be sunk into the lake bottom. Once the posts were set out into the water, the posts were attached to each other with X braces.

  I scrolled down and found the address of The Dock Artist. It was located in Carson City not far from where the new 580 freeway crossed Highway 50. The posted hours said The Dock Artist was open until 5 p.m. There was still enough time to make the 40-minute trip.

  “Okay Spot, time for another ride.”

  He scratched the floor with his nails as he jumped up and ran the two steps toward the door.

  We went up and over Spooner Summit, then dropped down 3000 feet to the desert floor and Carson City. As I drove, I tried to puzzle out the reasons why someone might have a dock business in the desert.

  The cross street on Highway 50 was easy to find. A block down was a small sign attached to a chain link fence that surrounded The Dock Artist’s outdoor show space.

  I pulled over, parked, stepped around a white cargo van that was parked in front, and walked in through the open gate.

  It was like walking through a junkyard, stepping on crusted snow, winding through piles of materials. Metal posts, white pre-assembled dock sections, what looked like treated wooden posts, an open shed sheltering stacks of concrete bags, tires. In the rear, right corner was a building sided with corrugated metal sheathing. The front wall had a walk-in door and a garage door. Three drooping power wires ran from a utility pole to the corner of the garage. Music thumped loud enough to be heard outside.

  Outside the door stood a metal sculpture as tall as me. It was made of metal pipes and automobile components welded together. It was both crude and effective and clearly showed a man standing on one foot, his other leg kicking out and up as if in a karate move. The man’s hands were fists in front of his face.

  I stepped past the sculpture, opened the door, and went inside. Heavy metal rock boomed in my ears. It sounded like Black Sabbath.

  The garage was dark with only two four-foot fluorescent light fixtures. Above them were four panels of skylights. They probably provided great lighting most of the time, but they were currently covered with enough snow to block out most daylight. The dim surroundings were punctuated with staccato flashes of strobe light. A large man was in the corner using an arc welder. He wore a heavy leather shop coat and a big helmet with a darkened face plate. The electrical arcing hissed and snapped and popped. The flashes reflected in his face mask.

  I didn’t want to startle him, so I waited. In the corner of the garage was an open area covered with a padded floor mat. Hanging over the middle of the mat was a large punching bag of the type that I’d seen used for kickboxing practice.

  After a minute the man turned off the welder and lifted his face mask to look at his work.

  “Afternoon,” I called out.

  “Oh. Didn’t see you,” he said with a very slight accent. He lifted off his helmet and gave me an unusual look. I couldn’t immediately tell what it was. Recognition combined with wariness, maybe. After a moment, his face shifted to something more pleasant, like one that a businessman would use with a potential customer.

  “I’m Dan the Dock Artist. What can I do for you?”

  He shrugged off the big shop coat and hung it on another sculpture. Without the coat, he was still large, and his hard muscles were thick under a tight sweatshirt.

  “I’m Owen McKenna, a private investigator from up at the lake. Sorry I’m not here for a dock,” I said. “We’re trying to track an anchor we found that may have been purchased from you. May I bring it in for you to look at?”

  He looked at me for a bit longer than is normal when you first meet someone. “I’ll come out,” he said.

  I turned and walked out to the Jeep, wondering if the man following me was Mikhailo the fighter and killer. I wanted to open up the Jeep’s back door and let Spot out. But that would be awkward, and if in fact Dan the Dock Artist was really Mikhailo, letting my dog out would telegraph that I may have figured out Mikhailo’s identity.

  The man followed me out to the Jeep. I opened the rear hatch, reached in past Spot’s probing nose, and lifted the tire out. The man looked at it.

  “Yep. That’s my tire.”

  “I don’t suppose it’s easy to tell who got it from you,” I said.

  “I go through a lot of tires,” he said. “People think, what’s a Dock Artist doing out in the desert? But we have lakes and reservoirs and man-made waterski parks. This one is a buoy anchor. I have two kinds. The ones that are fully prepped and filled are for small boats. But they’re too heavy for some people who need to pull an anchor up and down frequently. For my lig
ht anchors like the one you have, I only fill those with concrete on one side. Of course, with less weight, they won’t secure anything that takes heavy stress from waves or wind. I always tell clients that even a small dinghy can get blown away with a light anchor.”

  “Why would someone need a light anchor?”

  “Lots of reasons. For example, swimming instructors like to put up a perimeter of colored, floating markers to keep students inside a certain shallow area. Party hosts like to put up a line of markers to mark the boundaries for water volleyball and other games. A light anchor is perfect for that.”

  “Have you sold any of these lately?” I asked.

  He shook his head, then looked down, as if thinking. “But two were missing when I got here... Was it two, no, three days ago. The marks in the snow were as obvious as can be. Here, look. They’re still here.” He walked over to the corner of the fence and pointed. “See? Someone climbed the fence, walked across here, and took them right off the top of the pile.” He pointed to some vague footprints that had been degraded by sunshine. “Maybe the anchor you’ve got in your Jeep is one of the stolen ones.”

  “Yeah, you might be right. I’ll give it back to you as soon as I finish my investigation. You don’t have an alarm here?”

  Dan pointed over at the garage. “Sure. On the garage. But out here in the yard? Everything is too heavy to be worth hauling up and over the fence. At least, that’s what I thought before that theft. The fence is ten feet tall. Even that light anchor you’ve got, it would take a real big guy to hoist that over the fence.”

  “And you’d need a ladder to get over a fence that tall,” I said.

  Dan nodded, then pointed at the cargo van. “Or a van like mine to climb on top of.”

  “I assume you don’t have a surveillance camera,” I said.

  “No, but look at the convenience store across the street.” He pointed. “They’ve got cameras everywhere. Inside, out at the pumps, at the corner looking back at the store. You could check with them.”