Tahoe Ice Grave Read online

  “Drop the knife,” I said. “Drop the knife, or I drop you.”

  I felt him move below me and I heard clattering down in the dark fissure below us. In a second there was silence and then more clattering as metal bounced off rock and ice hundreds of feet below us.

  I lifted him up, holding his body so that he was facing out from me. I knew I couldn’t bend him backward over the edge as I pulled him up, so I turned him sideways, steering him by my grip on his shoulders.

  I got him to a sitting position on the edge, facing away from me. “I’m going to let go.” I said. “But don’t move. You even twitch, I’ll kick you in the back and you’ll fall to your death.”

  I let go and he astonished me by snapping himself down onto his back. He rolled and his arm flashed out with the knife.

  I leaped up and back, but my boots slipped on the ice and I went down. The Viking was up in a second. He jumped toward me and swung his leg out to kick me in the face. I saw the shiny spikes of the crampon arcing through the moonlight, heading for my eyes. I rolled my head back, striking a rock.

  His crampon flashed by, half an inch away from my cheek. I caught his leg on the follow-through. My hands gripped hard ankle bone. The Viking went down. We both jumped to our feet.

  I lunged and tackled him, my hand to the arm that held the knife. He maintained his grip on the knife as he went down. His body made a hard thud as he hit the ice. Something yellow flew out of a pocket, slid over the edge of the crevasse and down into the darkness.

  The yellow cell phone.

  The Viking thrashed with remarkable strength. He kicked me in the shin with the crampon. I yelled as a metal spike went through flesh into my bone. My grip loosened and he twisted free. He swung at me with the knife. I ducked and the knife stabbed into the ice. He spun around and did a high kick. This time his crampon spike scraped my chin, ripping flesh. Dazed, I tripped and fell. I rolled over twice to get away. I jerked myself to my feet, swaying with dizziness, instinctively stepping back.

  He came at me with the knife held high. I slammed my forearm up against his wrist to block the knife and drove my other fist into his solar plexus. He fell back against a huge mound of ice built up on a rock wall near the crevasse. I wrapped my fingers around his wrist where he held the knife and hit him with my shoulder to his middle.

  I swung up with my other arm and rammed my elbow into his face. He staggered against the giant mound of ice. I heard a dull rumble. I still gripped his knife hand. The noise grew into a loud, deep cracking sound that seemed to rip through the mountain. A line appeared in the bulging mound of ice above our heads. Slowly at first, and then gradually faster, the big ice buildup began to tilt away from the rock wall. I gave the Viking a sudden push and jumped back as a block of ice the size of a dump truck fell between us, just missing Phillip and Spot a few yards away.

  The Viking was knocked down on the other side of the giant ice chunk. He scrambled to his hands and knees as the ice rolled sideways, pushing him toward the crevasse.

  He stood up. There was another crack and a cut opened up just in front of his boots. The opening widened and the ice the Viking was standing on started to fall toward the crevasse. He fell back to his hands and knees.

  I dropped to my belly and reached over the widening split. “Reach your hand out!” I shouted.

  The ice block tipped farther. Its surface was too steep for him to crawl on. He tried to dig in with his hands. The spikes of his crampons clawed at the ice. He couldn’t reach me. I flung myself another foot forward. My chest was bent over the ever-widening gap. I reached out to grab him. His hands were too far away. A gust of wind blew his long hair up. I gripped onto a good bit of it and once again dug the toes of my boots into the icy surface behind me, preparing for the worst. When his hair jerked tight, I flexed my feet to get the maximum purchase.

  But the Viking didn’t weigh anything.

  His hair and beard came off in one piece. The giant ice chunk fell away and in the brilliant moonlight I saw pure terror on the face of Jerry Roth as he fell through space to his death.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Phillip was screaming.

  I scrambled over to Spot. Reaching next to Spot’s clenched teeth, I took hold of Phillip’s jacket with both hands. I tugged, but Phillip was stuck.

  “Okay, Spot, let go. I’ve got him.”

  I tried to lower Phillip, but he was holding on with both hands to a rock near his chest. I saw in the moonlight a wet darkness on the fingers of his funny hand. Blood.

  “Phillip, you need to let go. I have to lower you a few inches to un-snag your jacket.”

  “NO!” he yelled, his terror reverberating through the cave.

  “Yes, Phillip. You’re stuck. I can’t get you out of the hole unless you let go.”

  “NO!” He shook with fear.

  I thought of reaching for his hands and forcing his fingers free. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “Phillip, please listen to me.”

  “No! I won’t!” His voice dissolved into sobs. “You have to get rid of it!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What that man wanted. What they all wanted.” Phillip’s body vibrated with spasms. His bloody fingers were like claws on the rock.

  “Phillip,” I said again, trying to sound calm. “If you let go, I can pull you up.”

  “Not unless you help me get rid of it!” He screamed the words. He was hysterical and I didn’t know what to say. His body jerked and he twisted in his jacket. His hands came off the rock and he started to slip out of the arms of the jacket.

  As he was about to drop free, he caught one of the armpits of the jacket with his good hand. The sudden jerk on the fabric ripped the jacket and Phillip plunged three or four feet into the crevasse. He hung there, dangling in space, bouncing against the rock.

  I gripped the torn jacket with one hand while I reached down into the hole with the other.

  Phillip was too far below for me to reach him. But the jacket was now free of the rock it had been caught on. “Hang on, Phillip, I’m going to slowly pull the jacket up.

  But Phillip had found a place to wedge his arm into the rock and he wouldn’t come. If I pulled any harder, the jacket would rip the rest of the way and Phillip would fall into the crevasse. I felt the boy shaking through the taut fabric.

  “Phillip, this is very important. You have to let go of the rock so I can pull you up.” I tried to sound calm, although I was about to lose him.

  “Not unless you help me!” he said again.

  “Okay!” I said.

  “Promise?”

  The boy was going to die if the fabric started tearing again.

  “Yes, I promise.”

  He let go of the rock.

  I gently pulled him up, desperate not to make any sudden moves. When he was within my reach, I grabbed his arm and ulled him to safety.

  EPILOGUE

  Two days later we stopped at the hospital. Janeen was an unhealthy gray, but my friend Doc Lee said she was going to make it. She couldn’t speak, but she opened her eyes at Phillip’s voice and gave him a weak smile.

  I had called Jennifer Salazar at Harvard and asked if we could borrow her boat. She’d agreed with enthusiasm and gave the caretaker at the Salazar mansion instructions.

  He promptly answered the call button at the wrought iron gate and it swung aside to let us enter the long, stately drive. A few minutes later, he escorted us along the slate walkway that curved through the snow, around the mansion and down to the boathouse. He showed us where the life vests were and explained that the thirty-two foot powerboat was gassed up and ready to go.

  When I started up the engine its rumble in the boathouse brought back dark memories. The only other times I’d been in the boat were when I was trying to catch the murderer of Jennifer’s twin sister. I shifted into reverse and backed out of the boathouse. Street watched the port side while I watched the starboard. The boat was nimble and powerful, and it was easy to back it out with
out scraping the dock.

  Once we were away from the dock, I shifted into forward. I didn’t know if there was a no-wake zone near the shore so I kept the throttle at low RPMs.

  Phillip wore his over-sized life vest without complaint and sat in the left front seat. Spot sat next to him in the space between the seats. Phillip clutched his backpack as if it were the briefcase with the president’s nuclear codes. When he carried it aboard I could tell it contained something the size of the metal box that Street and I had envisioned.

  Phillip’s baseball cap was on backward and pulled down tight. Spot leaned over and put his head on the seat next to Phillip.

  The storm had passed. The high temperature was forecast to be 55 degrees, which, although warm for January, was not notable. Combined with a hot sun and calm conditions, it was comfortable out on the water.

  The light bounced off the lake and lit up Phillip’s eyes from underneath. He squinted against the sun. In his eyes was a weariness that didn’t belong in a little kid.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I said. “It obviously has tremendous value.”

  “I want to sink it,” Phillip said. “I don’t care about its value. It kills people. The world has done without it all this time. What difference would it make if the world keeps doing without it?”

  At first I thought it was just a clever line from an exhausted kid. But I didn’t have an answer.

  “You’ve thought about this?” I said. “It isn’t just a quick decision?”

  “Ever since Thos emailed me about it. I was scared when I heard about it because I knew from the way Thos talked that people would fight over it. He said people had already died because of it. Then Thos died, and his cousin and my great grandfather and the scuba diver. And Mr. Roth.”

  And your grandfather’s brother and the kid named Napoleon, I thought.

  I considered the ways I would regret it. “Phillip, if this could be sold for a lot of money, you would be glad to have the money when you are older.”

  “Uncle Thos wanted to sink it. That was his original plan when he swam into the water. Now I want to sink it.”

  “Thos told you this?”

  Phillip nodded. “He said Rubicon Point was the steepest drop-off in the lake bottom. He wanted to swim out and let it sink where the bottom is so deep that no one could get it back. Then no one would ever fight for it again.”

  We were silent as Street and I finally understood why Thos’s suicide had turned to murder. Jerry Roth wanted to kill Thos before he could get to the drop-off. Then Jerry realized that Thos didn’t have it.

  “Yet Thos didn’t sink it,” I said. “Why not?”

  “Just before he went to the lake, he sent me an email saying that he changed his mind and that he was going to fake sinking it. That way the murderer would think it was gone and I could sell it some day. He said the same thing as you. That I could get a lot of money for it.”

  “Don’t you want that?”

  “No. I want Thos back. If Thos had sunk it, the killing would have stopped.”

  I wondered what Phillip’s response would be if I said that I’d decided not to help. But that was a kind of game, seeing if he would call my bluff. In a just world adults would always keep their promises.

  “How long will it take to get to the center of the lake?” Street asked, more to change the subject, I thought, than for the information.

  “Let’s see, we’re about nine miles from the center and I seem to recall that this speedboat does about fifty-five miles an hour. So what would that make it?”

  I saw Phillip reach under the life vest and feel his way into his back pocket. He pulled out his abacus, held it with his left hand and worked the beads with his funny hand.

  I kept talking. “Fifty-five miles an hour is close to sixty which would be a mile a minute. So I guess it’ll take something like...”

  “Nine minutes and forty-nine seconds,” Phillip said. There was no smugness in his voice. He stuffed the abacus back into his pocket.

  “Okay, start your watches,” I said and punched the throttle. The boat surged up at a steep angle and then settled down on a level plane. The speedometer climbed up past fifty. A light chop rippled the surface of the water, but the deep-V hull sliced through the small waves and our ride across the lake was smooth. Street sat in one of the middle seats behind us. I glanced at Phillip. His face was stretched tight with a grimace.

  While we raced across the water, I noticed that Phillip pulled something out of his pocket and was turning it over in his hands. It was bright blue, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

  After eight or ten minutes I cut the throttle and the boat slowed and coasted silently. “We’re about there,” I said. “Halfway across the lake.”

  Phillip turned to look around. His hands opened up and I realized he had one of the three-legged totems.

  “Phillip, I’m curious about the little carved figure you’re holding. Where did you get that?”

  Phillip looked at me as if I’d just come out of hibernation. “This is uncle Thos’s Polynesian logo. He puts a picture of this on every bottle of Pacific Blue wine. And he hands these wooden dolls out wherever he goes.”

  “Oh, of course,” I said. I looked at Street.

  She grinned.

  “So...” I looked around at the lake. “Is this a good place?”

  Phillip looked across at the distant shorelines. “How deep is it here?”

  I took out the map of the bottom that I’d brought for just this purpose. “We’re about here,” I pointed. “The bottom is one thousand six hundred feet below us.”

  Phillip looked at the map. Then, clutching his backpack tightly to his chest, he leaned over the side of the boat and looked down into the deep, indigo water. He seemed satisfied. “I guess that’s deep enough,” he said. He swung his legs into the space between the two front seats and scooted forward a bit so that he was touching Spot. “I suppose you would like to see it before I dump it overboard.”

  Street said, “Yes, we’d like that.”

  Phillip unzipped the backpack. He reached in and pulled out a tarnished, dented, metal box about the size of a cigar box. Tooled designs decorated its edges like the fancy stitching on cowboy boots. There was a little catch on the front. Phillip flipped it up and raised the lid.

  When I saw what was inside I felt a pain grow in the hollow beneath my sternum.

  The inside of the box was lined with burgundy velvet, worn raw in places. Floating on a depression in the velvet was a dagger with a golden handle. The handle pattern was ornate and glistened so brightly that it could only be real gold.

  I remembered the toy dagger that Morella Meyer had found on the bottom of the lake. I now realized it was a decoy that Thos had clenched in his teeth to convince Jerry Roth that he was going to sink the real dagger.

  Phillip lifted the dagger out with his funny hand and handed it to me.

  It was heavier than it looked. The dagger had a good balance with a seven-inch blade sharpened on both edges. The handle had two rubies set in the swirls of gold, one in the middle of each side. There was engraving at the top of the blade. I turned it in the sunlight to try to see the words, some in larger letters, more that were smaller. The words ‘Captain Cook’ were easy to read. The engraving below wasn’t completely clear, partly because of the wear and tear of two hundred-plus years and partly because of the unusual spelling and syntax. But I could make out words of appreciation and something about the company that made the sails for Cook’s ships, the Resolution and the Discovery.

  I handed the dagger to Street. She carefully turned it over in both hands and then studied the writing. “It looks like a gift for Captain Cook from the company that made the sails.”

  “My thought, too,” I said.

  “It’s gorgeous.”

  I nodded. “This is where the rumor about Cook’s tableware came from.”

  “And it has been in the family shrine ever since,” Street said.

 
Phillip suddenly spoke. “Then Mr. Roth found out about it and people started dying.”

  I tried to think of a way out of what we were about to do. The dagger was not only priceless, it would be of immeasurable value to scholars and students and museum curators, perhaps even more than a Twain short story.

  Phillip watched as Street inspected the dagger. She took her time, perhaps to give me a chance to consider the enormity of what we’d gotten ourselves into. The boat gently rocked. The sun sparkled on the golden handle. Red flashes like lasers shot out of the rubies as she turned it in her hands. She handed it back to me, a questioning look in her eyes.

  I turned it over in my hands. It looked like there was dried blood on the blade near the handle. I remembered that the Hawaiian kid named Napoleon had been killed by a long, narrow knife. The dagger was not just a historical treasure, but a murder weapon as well.

  I considered taking the dagger from Phillip. Street and I could hold it for him until he was older or sell it on his behalf and give him the money. I was certain he would appreciate it some day. The choice was clear. It was worth breaking Phillip’s wishes and my promise. A much larger principle was at stake. The rights of millions to see and learn from Captain Cook’s dagger trumped the wishes of a young boy, stressed and saddened by so many deaths in his family.

  I could still try to convince him to see it from this larger perspective. If I could change his mind, I wouldn’t have to break my promise.

  “Phillip,” I said. “Now that I’ve seen this, I’d like to talk about this a minute. There is a larger perspective to consider.”

  Phillip started shaking his head. “No, I won’t reconsider. You’re going to tell me all about how this should be studied at a university or something. But I don’t care. Think how many people died over it.” He looked at me hard. There were no tears in his eyes.