Tahoe Ice Grave Page 25

  I looked away and started out onto the ledge.

  The ledge was two feet wide and went up at an angle. I stabbed my ski poles down to stabilize myself on the icy surface. The ground dropped away below the cliff ledge so that after moving out only fifty feet, I was high enough that a fall would mean certain death. I inched along, aware that my ski boots were not designed for hiking on ice. My impulse was to rush, but I’d do Phillip no good if I slipped off.

  As I stepped my ski pole banged against the cell phone in my pocket. The clink of hard surfaces seemed to jar something in my brain, but I couldn’t quite retrieve it. As I worked my way along the icy ledge, I suddenly had a new sense of how Calder and Rodin worked.

  There was probably a Mark Twain manuscript hidden in a location only Phillip knew. If you balanced the killer’s passion for it against what the killer would do to get it, you’d construct a Calder-like mobile. One little item so weighty with value that it sat way out there, balancing all the deeds committed to obtain it.

  My foot slipped and I jammed my pole into the ice to catch myself, the pole shaft clicking again on my cell phone.

  That was it. The cell phone was the object down in the mental cellar. It meant nothing by itself, but what it pointed to meant everything.

  My heart sped as the Viking’s passion came clear to me in the cold night air. I’d missed the obvious. He was much more devious than I’d thought. I could have caught him long ago. And my inability to understand him had put Phillip at much greater risk.

  The ledge narrowed to 15 inches. I turned my shoulders and proceeded forward. My ski poles were the only thing I had that gripped the ice. I made certain they were firmly planted as I moved my feet. Both Phillip and the Viking must have had the type of snowshoes with metal cleats in them. I was glad I was overdue for trimming Spot’s nails. He’d have needed them to make it this far.

  A sudden, terrible thought intruded. Had Spot made it this far? Where had I last seen his tracks? Could he have slipped and fallen off, out of my sight down below? I didn’t dare look down for fear of breaking my concentration and slipping. I continued forward to the opening.

  It wasn’t a hole so much as a fissure. The huge face of rock had a vertical split in it. The opening was three feet wide at the bottom, narrowing to one foot near my head. I took a step into it. From above came light. I looked up and saw that the fissure became a narrow crack that stretched up a hundred feet or more. As my eyes adjusted I saw that the the faint blue light from the moon filtered down.

  I stepped forward, feeling my way, wondering if I was about to plunge into a chasm. How did Phillip know the way? He must have been here before during the day. Perhaps many times, so that he knew his way in the dim glow of night.

  I took another step. And another. Water dripped on my head. I hit a wall of rock, slippery with ice. Water was running down inside the fissure and freezing on the walls. Something caught my peripheral vision on the right. I turned and saw more light.

  The narrow passage went off at an angle, making a shallow S-curve through the rock. But if you moved your head just so, you could see through.

  I was seeing a room of some kind, a hidden cavern. From where I stood, the cavity was about 20 feet down the passage. It looked sizable, and it had a remarkable feature.

  The cave glowed.

  I stepped forward, hit my head and stifled a grunt. I ducked and moved again, trying to be silent. Now I could see a portion of the room better. The walls gave off a shimmering blue light. They were coated with ice and the moonlight coming in from somewhere above seemed to flow through the ice. I was moving my foot softly forward when a cry filled the passage.

  “NO! NO!” It was Phillip’s voice, shaking with terror. I heard him clearly, but he sounded some distance away.

  “TELL ME, YOU LITTLE SKUNK. TELL ME OR I’M GONNA CUT YOU LIKE I CUT YOUR OLD LADY.” It was a man’s voice with a southern accent.

  “NO! I WON’T TELL YOU!” Phillip was crying, his voice a shriek between sobs.

  Spot growled, the rumble echoing through the cave.

  “TELL ME, DAMMIT! YOU’VE GOT THE COUNT OF THREE BEFORE I COME UP THERE AND SKIN YOU ALIVE!”

  “NOOOO!” Phillip’s cry hurt my ears, ripping through the air as if to tear it like fabric.

  I concentrated on my foot placement as I hurried down the dark passage toward the glowing room. My left elbow rang against the rock, sending electric shocks up my arm.

  When I came to the opening, the room was bright. The cave had a narrow opening to the sky. Moonlight flooded in, reflecting off the ice-coated walls and refracting within the ice. Somewhere above was a spring dripping water into the much colder cavern below, where it splashed and froze on every surface.

  The room’s glowing walls undulated with light and shadow, every glowing wall reflecting the blue of other glowing walls. I couldn’t find the passage to Phillip.

  I went to the right, scrambling over icy boulders. There didn’t seem to be any place where the boy and the Viking could be. I slipped as I doubled back, going down on my butt onto water-wet ice. I stabbed my ski poles into the ice and clawed my way to my feet.

  My circuit of the glowing room was nearly complete when I saw another passage. It was just wide enough for my body and went up at a sharp angle. I jammed my ski poles down, boosted myself up and got my boot hooked on a rocky projection. From there I climbed up eight feet and stuck my head into another glowing room.

  The light here was less blue and even brighter than the other cavern. The room didn’t have a floor to speak of. A narrow ledge of uneven rock led around the right side and came to a stop at a vertical wall. Spot stood at the base of the wall, facing sideways. Above Spot, crouched in a nook twelve feet up was Phillip. To the side of Spot the ground dropped away in a yawing crevasse of ice that disappeared down into darkness.

  Above the crevasse, slowly working his way across the vertical wall of ice and rock was the Viking.

  FORTY-TWO

  Spot had forced the Viking to climb up the wall from some distance away. He was coming toward Phillip at a height that kept him out of Spot’s reach.

  Janeen’s father must have told the Viking about the ice cave. He’d taken off his snowshoes and strapped crampons onto his boots, the spikes of which stabbed into the ice on the wall to hold him up. In his hand was a small ice ax. He swung the thin curved end toward the ice, sinking the tip deep while a star burst of ice chips flew through the air. When the ice ax was secure, he twisted one foot free, reached out sideways and kicked the crampon spikes back into the ice. The other foot was next, then he shifted the ice ax. If he fell, he would go into the crevasse to his death. But he moved with assurance, obviously experienced.

  Phillip’s dark nook had no ice and must have seemed like a good hiding place until the Viking found him. Next to the nook was a protruding rock large enough to stand on. When the Viking got to it he would be able to reach Phillip.

  Below Phillip, Spot faced up at the Viking. He jumped his front paws up on the wall and growled. He knew the danger to Phillip. I did, too, as I saw the flash of light from Janeen’s big chopping knife stuffed under the Viking’s belt.

  I scrambled up through the opening into the room and slid and slipped my way over toward Phillip and Spot. Spot heard me and turned his head, then quickly turned back toward the Viking. He bounced on his rear legs, his front legs scrabbling from side to side as the Viking drew near Phillip.

  I ran over next to my dog and looked up at Phillip in the dark cavity. “Phillip, jump down. I’ll catch you. Do it now!”

  Phillip shook his head. I could see the whites of his eyes.

  “Phillip! You must do as I say. The man will reach you in a couple of seconds if you don’t jump.”

  Phillip strained to look out and up. When he saw the Viking he shrunk back in terror, pushing himself as far back into the nook as possible.

  I wanted to climb up and rip the Viking from the wall and into the crevasse, but the walls were slick
with ice. There was no way for me to grip. How Phillip got up there I had no idea. I reached up my ski pole to stab at the Viking, but he was too high.

  “Phillip!” I shouted. I didn’t want to frighten him further, but I needed to get him to respond immediately. “Phillip, it is only a few feet to my hands.” I reached up with both arms. “Jump! Now!”

  “Too late, you little skunk,” the Viking said as he got to the rock projection next to Phillip’s nook. He reached into the nook, grabbed Phillip and pulled him out while I stood below, helpless. The Viking held Phillip to his body with no apparent effort.

  The Viking’s bearded face was a dark shadow, but his long blond hair glistened in the moonlight and the spikes of his crampons sparkled. He leaned sideways against the ice wall. One arm was wrapped around Phillip. With his other hand he pulled the knife free from his belt and held it to the boy’s throat.

  I thought of running and leaping up to stab my ski pole at his foot, but I knew it was futile. His feet were twelve feet above me and enough to the side over the drop-off that I’d probably fall into the crevasse.

  “Where is it, you little shit? Either you tell me or I drain your blood.”

  Phillip’s breath came in choking gasps. The knife glistened against his throat.

  “Count of three. One, two...”

  “If you let the boy go,” I said, “I’ll let you out of here. I’ll give you an hour to get down the mountain before we leave this cave.”

  “Not until he tells me where he hid it.”

  “I know where it is,” I lied. I moved a step closer to the rock wall and the crevasse. “Let him go and I’ll tell you.”

  “We both know that’s bullshit,” the man said.

  “Thos told his mother Janeen where he put it,” I said. “Janeen told me.”

  “Yeah, right,” the Viking scoffed. “You want me to believe a story, you should have said it was Jasper’s brother who told you. He was the one who flapped at the mouth after Jasper told him what was in the shrine.”

  “So John senior got you going on this?”

  “I’d barely met him on a hunting trip three years ago when he drank too much and started talking about buried treasure.”

  “Well I know where it is now. We can split the money,” I said. I shuffled forward another step until I was touching the wall. Next to me, Spot still stood on his hind legs, front paws on the icy rock, his eyes on Phillip and the man holding him. “After McCloud gets her cut,” I said, “we’ll split the rest, fifty-fifty.”

  “You lie like Brock Chambers. We had a deal. Next thing I know, he wasn’t the end-buyer at all. He was just reselling it to McCloud for three times as much money. I should cut you like I cut him.”

  “Like you stabbed the kid named Napoleon in Kauai?” I said.

  “All I did was hire Napoleon to learn where Thos’s hiding place was. It was Thos who killed him.”

  “How do you know that?” I said.

  The Viking laughed. “He admitted it. Thos realized Napoleon had been following him. When he challenged Napoleon, Napoleon attacked him, but ended up getting knifed himself.”

  “You killed Jasper’s father and brother John,” I said. “But why kill Thos? He was your source for what you wanted.”

  “He double-crossed me. Said he’d meet me at the lake that morning to sell me what I wanted. Then he swims out into the water, thinking he’s fooling me. But I’m prepared. Screw with me and I’ll take you down.”

  “Like Morella Meyers?” I said.

  “The bitch tried to jack up her price. I just wanted a simple phone call to confirm what she’d found, that Thos was playing with me. Next thing, she’s threatening to go to the cops. Says she won’t if I pay her some real money. Well, she got paid what she deserved. But then, you know that, don’t you?” He laughed with gusto.

  The Viking’s knife was pressing harder against Phillip’s throat. If I could keep him talking, maybe I could think of how to get up to him.

  “Why’d you go back to Kauai?” I said. “You’d already been there and tried to follow them up to the shrine.”

  “When Thos’s mother hired you, the first thing you did was head to Kauai. It made sense to follow and see if you could learn what I couldn’t.”

  The Viking was breathing heavily from the strain of holding Phillip. “So I booked the next flight to Kauai. I found out John junior was taking you out in the helicopter. I’d been across the cliff face twice before, but still couldn’t find the shrine. I wanted to be across the cliff and hidden in the jungle when you arrived. The helicopter office gave me the wrong departure time for your flight. You got there too fast and saw me. But the stick put a stop to that.” His laughter was sickening.

  “I’ve been watching you, McKenna. You never realized how thorough I am.” He laughed again. “It’s all about misdirection, and you were always looking the wrong way. Then it turns out that this little shit had it all along.” He shook Phillip and the boy screamed.

  While he’d been talking, I was looking up at the rock below the nook where Phillip had been hiding. There were some small areas of rock that were bare of ice. Although the moonlight in the cave was bright, the rock was hard to see. I couldn’t make out any knobs or holes that would make good handholds or footholds.

  But looking up at the likely way Phillip climbed up, I assumed the holds were there. If I moved fast enough, maybe I could get to the nook. From there I could grab Phillip...

  The Viking was talking as I took a running step to the side of Spot. In a fluid motion, I slammed my left ski pole down like a pole vault, reached my right hand up to a dark spot and found a nub of rock to grip on. I jammed my right boot toe into a notch, and pulled up. My center of gravity was off and I started to swing to the left. To the left above me was another dark spot, free of ice. I stretched, banking all on finding a handhold. It was above the crevasse. If I couldn’t find a place to grip...

  The tips of my fingers wrapped around a nub of rock at the base of the nook. I dug in, my fingernails biting hard rock. My hands were only a couple feet from the Viking’s feet.

  “You dumb asshole,” the Viking hissed. “Time to cut this boy and toss him into the center of the earth.”

  I watched in horror as the Viking shifted and reached out with the knife so he could draw it back in a single sweep. I was about to leap, thinking I could pull Phillip free and throw him to safety as I fell into the earth. But Phillip moved first.

  The boy twisted. His little fist swung up and struck the Viking in the face.

  The Viking jerked and started to lose his balance. He struck the rock wall with the knife, stabbing its point into the ice to stabilize himself. It looked like he had regained his balance when his left foot slipped.

  The crampon spikes scraped down the wall sending up little rooster tails of chipped ice. He rotated, tried to swing his foot and jam the crampon back in. Then his other foot slipped.

  The Viking reached for the ice ax, firmly planted into the ice near his head. His hand slipped off it. The motion spun him around and, still clutching Phillip, the Viking fell with the little boy toward the gaping darkness below.

  FORTY-THREE

  I let go of the rock and dropped to the ground. I landed bent over, hands and feet striking icy rock. As I collapsed onto my belly, I shot my arms out over the edge of the crevasse and groped at the falling bodies.

  The fingers of my right hand gripped fabric. I clenched my fist and dug my toes into the rock behind me, bracing for the impact.

  The fabric I’d grabbed slammed my arm down into the rock of the crevasse. I reached down into the dark, gaping hole with my other hand and grabbed onto more fabric. I held on, holding 200 pounds or more. I heard a heavy grunt of man and whimpering of boy.

  “Spot!” I yelled. “Spot, come!”

  He came next to me, half squatting, trying to understand what I meant.

  I was straining to see down into the dark, wondering whose jacket I held. I realized that I had both. My righ
t hand gripped the shoulder of the Viking’s jacket. My left fingers were wrapped around the back neckline of Phillip’s jacket. The Viking still clutched Phillip to him with the knife at the boy’s chest.

  “You want to live,” I said, “you’ll let go of the boy. I can’t pull you both up at once. Let go. Up he comes. Then you.”

  “If you let go of me,” he said, “I’ll grab the boy and we’ll go down together. Understand?” The man slowly released Phillip, but kept his hand on the boy’s arm. I pulled Phillip up with my left arm, a small muscle tearing in my shoulder, while I still held the Viking with my right hand.

  I raised Phillip a foot when the boy’s jacket caught on something. Phillip was stuck below the edge, the shoulder fabric of his jacket just rising out of the hole. I heard him crying softly.

  “Spot. Grab Phillip.” I jerked with my head as I raised Phillip as far as possible without dropping the Viking.

  Spot nosed over by my hand and Phillip’s head. “Grab on,” I yelled. “Grab his jacket!” I jerked my hand. Phillip’s head shook with my motion.

  Spot got the idea. His teeth closed around my hand. I jerked again, pulling sideways so the fabric was in his mouth.

  “Hold tight, Spot! Give a pull!” I jerked my hand again, Phillip’s body shaking.

  Spot bit down and gave a tug back.

  “Hang on, Spot!” I knew that Spot didn’t understand the words, but he got the meaning. He pulled back like he was playing tug-of-war. When I knew he wouldn’t let go, I touched his snout. “Easy, Spot. Hold on.”

  My fingers holding the Viking felt like they were ripping out of their joints. I latched onto the Viking’s jacket with my other hand to spread the tension. My teeth were on the dirty rock at the edge of the drop-off, my toes dug in behind me.

  I had a strong impulse to drop the Viking, but I didn’t doubt that he would do as he said and take Phillip down with him. We were at a stalemate. I knew that Spot wouldn’t drop Phillip, so my only choice was to pull the Viking up, then get Phillip’s jacket free.