Tahoe Blue Fire (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 13) Read online

  A few miles down the river valley, I went past the River Ranch Lodge and Restaurant and the road up to Alpine Meadows ski area. After another mile, the Olympic rings and the Olympic gas flame came into view, leftovers from the big snowfest back in 1960. I turned left and drove into Olympic Valley. The snow-capped peaks of Squaw Valley ski area came into view, a picture with a postcard quotient as high as they come. In the distance ahead, I saw the little dot of cable car carrying skiers from the base village up to High Camp atop the 2000-foot cliff.

  My intersection approached up ahead. I turned off to the right and drove up to a curve that matched what Scarlett Milo described over the phone. I stopped and got out and dialed her number.

  As it rang, I scanned the slope that rose above me. There were several nice homes visible in the forest and, no doubt, several that were hidden but nevertheless had views down to the valley floor, me included.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Ms. Milo, Owen McKenna here. I’m at the turn you described.”

  “Okay. Hold on.” There was some background sound, a sliding door maybe. “Okay, I’m out on my deck,” she said. “I can see you down there. You’re standing near your car door and… Oh, what is that big black-and-white animal protruding from the rear window of your car? There’s something pink, too.”

  “That’s my dog. His name’s Spot. The pink is his very large tongue.”

  “I see. Well, I don’t see anyone else, and that was the purpose of this little exercise.”

  “The result of a prime obfuscation session,” I said.

  “Okay, come on up,” she said. She proceeded to describe where and how I should turn and what to look for to know which house was hers, and then there was a snapping sound in the phone, followed by a deep crack that thudded in the air where I stood.

  “Ms. Milo?” I said, sprinting for the Jeep. I jumped in, jammed the shifter into drive, and floored the gas. “Scarlett? Can you hear me?”

  But there was nothing.

  I raced up the slope, reciting what she’d said about left turns and right turns as I pushed the Jeep around the corners.

  The house sat by itself on a section of curving road, out of sight from its neighbors. My tires scraped sand and grit as I stomped on the brakes. I jumped out, let Spot out, and ran for the woman’s door.

  “Scarlett Milo?!” I shouted as I tried the door. The doorknob was locked. There was also a deadbolt, and the door looked too heavy to easily kick in.

  I ran around the side of the house. Spot anticipated my movements and ran ahead.

  The house was on the lower side of the road, and the ground went down at a steep angle. I scrambled down a landscaped path to a broad stairs that climbed in a dogleg up to the deck. I took them two at a time while Spot took them three or four per leap.

  Scarlett Milo was sprawled on her side at the far edge of the deck where she had probably stood to look down on me. Her throat was blown open, and blood gurgled out in large volume. I’d seen enough wounds to know this one was fatal. Because the blood was bright red and pulsed, I knew the bullet had hit her carotid artery.

  By the shards of shattered vertebrae that mixed in with the messy, shredded wound, I knew her neck had largely been destroyed. There was no way to prevent further blood loss without strangling her.

  Nevertheless, I knelt down and put my thumb across the main part of the blood flow. The blood gurgled out elsewhere. Just then, she made a kind of a coughing contraction. But there was no connecting windpipe to her mouth, so the exhalation just sprayed blood from her neck into the air and all over me and Spot, who stood a respectful several feet back.

  I reached my phone out of my pocket with my other hand and set it on the deck to dial 911, a reasonable, if futile, move.

  Her hand rose up, demonstrating that at least part of her spinal cord was still intact. She clutched at my shirt and pulled me down. Her mouth was moving. I realized that she was still conscious and wanted to say something. I bent down, my ear next to her mouth.

  Because her windpipe was destroyed, she had no way to run air from her lungs through her vocal cords, if there were any vocal cords left. All she could do was make mouth movements.

  Her hand shifted and reached for her pocket. In an astonishing feat of focus and control, she pulled out a pen and held it up.

  I realized she wanted some paper. I let go of my phone and felt my pockets. There was a gas station receipt. I held it on the deck boards.

  She scrawled some marks.

  A voice came over my phone. “Nine-one-one emergency,” a woman said. “Please state your name and location.”

  I reached for the phone.

  Scarlett Milo tapped her pen on the deck boards.

  I let go of the phone and looked at her. Except for the flowing blood and her moving arm, nothing else moved. She appeared paralyzed.

  She tapped the pen again, the point making dots on the receipt paper.

  I stared at it, trying to figure out the jerky writing.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell what you’ve written,” I said. “Can you try again?”

  Scarlett once again raised her pen. Then her hand collapsed to the deck boards, and she was still.

  TWO

  I explained to the 911 dispatcher that the victim had died from a gunshot wound, and I told her who I was and where I was.

  “Please keep the line open,” she said. “I’ll have officers en route immediately.”

  I looked at the scene, speaking as much to help me focus as to provide information to the dispatcher and anyone who would eventually listen to the recorded call.

  “While I wait for your officers, I’ll give you the details for your recording,” I said into the phone. “A woman named Scarlett Milo was shot. I heard only one shot, and the wound appears to have been made by a single round. The entrance wound is at the back of the neck. It is a clean and symmetrical hole and I see no tattooing from gunpowder, so I’m guessing the shot was fired from a distance. Looking at the territory around the house, I’m guessing the shooter was some distance up the mountain.

  “The exit wound shows substantial tissue shredding and what appear to be pieces of a broken vertebrae. It appears that the wound was caused by a high-powered round, which, despite likely deformation, exited the body and fell out of sight someplace below the house.

  “The position of the body doesn’t reveal which direction the shot came from. The victim may have twisted as she went down. But I see a faint spray pattern of blood on the back of the victim’s collar. There is a much larger pattern of blood and other tissue on the deck, presumably from the exit wound at the front of her throat.”

  I turned and looked behind me to my right. “Behind me to the north is an opening in the trees on the mountain slope above. There is a grouping of large boulders. It’s a south-facing slope, and the snow has mostly melted. I’m guessing the shot came from up among those boulders. Your approaching officers should know that there is access to that point from both Sandy Way and Squaw Summit Road. The shooter could still be up the slope, but I doubt it.”

  I thought of running up the slope with Spot to search for the shooter, but I was unarmed, and the dispatcher wanted me to stay on the line and report any critical information. And if I was up the slope when officers approached from multiple directions, I would be a distraction. They might even mistake me for the shooter.

  Sirens sounded in the distance, a faint discordant warbling as some rose in pitch while others fell.

  A minute later, the sirens swelled in volume as vehicles raced into the valley on Squaw Valley Road. Looking down from Scarlett Milo’s deck, I could see two Placer County Sheriff’s vehicles followed by a black-and-white CHP unit. One of the Placer County vehicles turned up the road I’d taken. The CHP vehicle turned off the main road, heading for a point east of the shooter’s possible location. The other county vehicle drove past the road I’d taken. It went out of my sight before its sound indicated that it had turned onto another road to the w
est. They were trying to outflank the shooter, a smart move but one I didn’t think would produce results. There were too many ways for the shooter to escape.

  Two more vehicles with flashing lights came into the valley. One was another CHP vehicle, and the other looked similar to the Placer County vehicles but with different lettering. I guessed that it was a sheriff’s vehicle from Truckee, which is in Nevada County, the next county to the north. Yet more sirens sounded in the far distance, a huge response for a rural mountain community, but a normal one for a place with vacation residences owned by celebrities, high-ranking government officials, business magnates, and foreign royalty.

  One siren grew loud as it came up Milo’s street and stopped at her house.

  I disconnected from the 911 dispatcher and walked partway down the deck stairs so I was visible from the street. Placer County Sergeant Santiago ran over while his deputy stayed at the side of the SUV patrol unit, sidearm in his hand, crouching behind the vehicle, looking up at the mountain.

  “McKenna,” Santiago said.

  “Sergeant.”

  Jack Santiago was the kind of man who most people would overlook. He seemed medium in every way, unremarkable in looks, height, size, demeanor, presence. Yet, when observed up close, one saw the intelligence in his eyes, the determination in the set of his jaw, and the strength in his shoulders. Santiago drew no attention to himself, but he won citations and respect. I’d rarely seen a more dedicated cop.

  He looked around at the forest, taking in the lay of the land, the access points, the view corridors. Then he trotted up the stairs to the deck.

  Santiago looked at Scarlett Milo’s body for a long moment. He would be struck by the violence of the scene, but I knew he was also noticing everything about position and blood spray that I noticed and more. I was never good at taking an instant inventory of a crime scene. But Santiago would remember the victim’s clothes and makeup and condition of her fingernails and skin and teeth, and from that he would already be building a picture of Scarlett’s lifestyle and socioeconomic status on top of the obvious descriptors of height, weight, hair, and eye color.

  I pointed to the slope above. “I think the shooter may have been up in those boulders.”

  Santiago looked up the mountain, then trotted down the deck stairs as he spoke into his radio. I couldn’t make out the words, but the anger and frustration came through. Santiago stayed in the shadows next to the house as he continued to talk into his radio.

  Down the street to the west, I saw a sheriff’s vehicle come to a fast stop. Two deputies jumped out, looking up the mountain. Both had their guns out. One ran up the slope, then stopped as the other one played leapfrog. Each covered the other as they made their way up the slope.

  “Any chance the shooter could have come down the mountain right here?” Santiago asked me. “Be near this house? In this house?”

  “A chance, I suppose,” I said. “But I doubt it. The front door is locked, and I’ve been up on the deck or down at the base of the deck stairs the entire time. No one could get to the deck door. Maybe there is an unlocked door around the other side of the house, but probably not. The woman was very concerned about her safety. I’d guess the shooter had an escape route planned. A mountain bike or skis or something. He could have run down to a vehicle on a nearby street and driven out of the valley as you came in. By now he could be on Interstate Eighty heading up over Donner Summit or driving down the canyon toward Reno. Or, he could have headed toward Tahoe City and melted into that community.”

  I glanced through the trees down to the pedestrian village at the base of the Squaw Valley ski area. “Otherwise, he’s probably in the crowds down in the village, having changed clothes, maybe taken off a wig and wiped the perspiration from his brow. He could be sipping a beer at a cafe and listening to the sirens.”

  Santiago lifted his radio to his mouth.

  “Forman, you and Johnson head up to that group of boulders and see what you can find. Rodriguez, you and Kylie take the streets. Start at the upper edge of the neighborhood and work your way down. Most of these houses are vacation homes, so there might not be anyone at home, but be persistent. Don’t assume the houses are empty. Anyone answers, use the standard questions. Have they seen or heard anything unusual in the last two hours? Have any strange vehicles been cruising the neighborhood or parked on nearby streets in the previous week or two? Make them comfortable. Get them talking. Get their names and numbers. Leave them your phone number. If they want to know what happened, you can tell them that there was a shooting but no details are being released at the moment.”

  Santiago looked across at the deputy who’d ridden in his vehicle. “Fairbanks, stay put behind that boulder. Keep your eye on the slope and this street. Holler if you see anyone who isn’t an officer.”

  Santiago walked back up onto the deck. I followed with Spot. Santiago looked again at Milo’s body.

  “Are you here as a friend?” he asked.

  “No. Scarlett Milo called me at my office and hired me over the phone. She was afraid for her life. So I came up to Squaw Valley to meet her. She’d asked me to call her from that curve down below to get directions.” I pointed to the place where I’d temporarily parked. “I heard the shot over the phone first. The crack came through the air about a half second later.”

  Santiago looked down toward where I’d parked to call Scarlett. “Sound travels a thousand feet per second. That intersection is about five hundred feet down. So your idea that the shooter was up in those rocks makes sense. The rifle crack would get to the woman’s phone first, which you would immediately hear in your phone. Then the crack would get to you through the air a second later. Maybe less.”

  Santiago looked down at the body. “Looks like death was instantaneous.”

  “Not quite.”

  Santiago turned and looked at me.

  “When I heard the shot, I raced up here. She was still alive when I got here. She couldn’t speak because her neck was blown apart. But she wrote me a message.” I handed him the receipt with her scrawled marks.

  Santiago looked at it. “It kind of looks like ‘Medic’s BFF.’ What’s that mean?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You know the victim?” Santiago asked.

  “No. She called me for help and said she was afraid someone was planning to kill her. She wouldn’t tell me why over the phone. She wanted to meet, but she wouldn’t tell me where she lived because she thought someone would get the information from me. She gave me her credit card number and told me to charge her twenty thousand dollars because she believed I would have a lot of expenses dealing with her mysterious problem.”

  Santiago raised his eyebrows. “That’s a lot of bank. Did you run the card?”

  “Yeah. I assumed it would be rejected, but it went through. She told me to drive to that place below her house and call her. So I did. When she answered, she walked out on her deck and told me that she could see me and that it looked like no one had followed me. So she told me her address and how to come here. I thought the whole thing was the elaborate melodrama of a paranoid woman. Obviously, I was wrong.”

  Santiago scanned the deck, looking at the blood spatter. He didn’t comment on my understatement.

  “How’d her blood get on you?” he asked.

  “I put my thumb on her carotid artery to try and slow her bleeding, and she coughed,” I said. “It sprayed out of the wound.”

  Santiago winced. “She have family?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “She live here full time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What was it that made her think someone wanted to kill her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Santiago looked at me. “Do you know anything about her?”

  I shook my head. “Just what I’ve already told you.”

  “I guess we’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said.

  I nodded.

  THREE

  A
s Incident Commander, Santiago directed all the law enforcement officers in the investigation.

  He had them set up a roadblock at the entrance to Squaw Valley. No vehicles were allowed out without a check.

  When I heard him say that, I had a disturbing thought. A shooter could put a rifle in a ski bag, loop the bag over his shoulders, ride one of the chairlifts up to the ridge at the southern boundary of Squaw Valley, and ski the backcountry down to Alpine Meadows Ski Resort, which is in the next valley to the south. From there he could leave by car and not have to worry about being stopped by any police. I told Santiago. He nodded.

  Three more officers from Nevada County arrived, along with four more from the CHP. A half-hour later, a CHP helicopter appeared in the sky and flew overlapping circles above Scarlett Milo’s neighborhood. Thirty minutes after that, an additional six Placer County deputies came up from the foothills.

  The suspect search was spread out over a large territory, but the law enforcement response was huge. There were a dozen vehicles with flashing lights, multiple search parties, some officers combing through the neighborhood while others went up into higher elevations to search those areas that hadn’t seen enough spring sun to melt off. Two of them were on cross-country skis. They angled up the slope on a shallow traverse. Three more had snowshoes, and they took a steeper route up.

  Santiago remained at Scarlett Milo’s house, directing the expanding crew with his radio and cellphone.

  Two deputies came up onto the deck. One of them made a quick glance in my direction.

  “No sign of anyone up in those rocks, sergeant,” one of them said.

  “You take pictures before you tracked it up?” Santiago said.

  One of them held up a small camera. “Lots.”

  Santiago sent them down to canvas the streets below.

  As Santiago continued to coordinate search efforts, I went over to Spot who was lying on the deck as far as he could get from Scarlett’s body.