Tahoe Dark (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 14) Read online

  “Just checking.” Santiago said. He reached into the victim’s pocket and pulled out a wallet. He flipped through it. “One hundred, twenty, forty, forty-five, forty-six bucks. Guess our spear man wasn’t after money.” Santiago pulled out some cards, held up a Nevada driver’s license. “Here we are. Gavin Pellman, just like you thought, McKenna.”

  Santiago was feeling in the man’s other pockets. He got a grip on something and pulled it out. “Hello,” he said. “A roll of cash.”

  The roll had a thick rubber band around it, blue like what they put around bundles of asparagus at the supermarket.

  Santiago hefted it. “This is a fair piece of bank.” He thumbed the corners. “Mostly hundreds. This might be eight, ten thousand. Why would spear man walk away from that kind of cash?” He turned to Pam. “Evidence bag?”

  She pulled out a plastic zipper bag and held it open. Santiago dropped the money roll into it.

  “So now that we know this isn’t Flynn,” Santiago said, “maybe Flynn is our spear man.” He turned to Pam and Sergei. “I’d like you to do a thorough inventory and document all, notes and photos. I don’t have a warrant, yet, but I’m pretty sure most of this guy’s stuff is visible, and you can do a look-see search without touching.” He walked over to a small dresser and used a tissue to pull open the drawers. “And these drawers were open, so it’s easy to look inside and see the contents.”

  They both nodded. Pam pulled a small notebook out of her pocket. She handed her camera to Sergei. “I’ll write, you shoot and describe.”

  Santiago got on his radio and said some words about the Medical Examiner. A woman’s voice told him to hold on. Santiago said, “The ME is down on the West Slope, and our local coroner can’t make it. But it’s not like we don’t know what killed the victim.”

  “Who takes the body?” I said, when he clicked off the radio.

  “The county has a contract with a mortuary in Truckee. They’ll make the pickup.” He looked at the firemen. “So you guys can go back to the station and resume your card game.”

  With not even a hint of a grin, they turned and walked back to their trucks.

  Santiago saw the unusual paddle on the floor. He pulled up on the front of his trousers and squatted down to look at it. “Do you know what this is?” he asked.

  “Nope. It looks like some kind of Australian Aboriginal canoe paddle.”

  My phone rang.

  “Been spending some time researching on Google,” Diamond said in my ear. “The paddle you asked about? It’s called a woomera.”

  I saw Santiago look at me. I pointed at the paddle on the floor. “I’m putting this on speaker so Santiago can hear you,” I said as I switched the phone. For Santiago’s benefit, I said, “It’s Sergeant Martinez, Douglas County. I had called him about the paddle. Diamond, you said it’s called a woomera.”

  Diamond’s voice was clear. “Right. Like you thought, it’s an aboriginal tool that goes back thousands of years. You can dig with it, dip water with it, fight with it, display your art on it. Does that sound right based on what it looks like?”

  “Yeah,” I said, staring at the paddle and envisioning everything Diamond said.

  “But if you wanted to kill with it,” Diamond said, “a woomera is hard to beat. Because their main use is as a spear thrower. They make it so you can propel a spear four times faster than with your arm alone.”

  “You’re saying the whole point of a woomera is to throw spears?” I said as I stared at the carved wooden paddle.

  “Yeah,” Diamond said. “The wooden nub you mentioned. There’s two ways to use it. You can hook it into a leather loop at the tail end of the spear. Or you can carve a cavity in the tail end of a spear, and the nub fits into the cavity.”

  “So a ski pole spear works perfect because the rear end is hollow,” I said.

  “Right. You hook the spear onto the little nub, then hold the spear flat against the woomera so that your hand wraps around both the woomera handle and the spear at the same time. When it comes time to launch, you swing the woomera like a tennis racket. At just the right time, you open your fingers a bit so the point of the spear shaft comes free. The spear tilts out as you swing the woomera through the air. As you finish your swing with the woomera, the spear shoots away like a tennis ball off a racket. Apparently, bushmen are so skillful with a woomera that they can kill nearly any game, piercing their prey with a wooden spear at some distance.”

  As Diamond said it, I thought of Evan’s tennis racket. It had excessive wear on the top of the rim. I thought the wear was from striking the court. But the flared end of the spear would hook onto the top rim of a tennis racket just as well as it would hook onto the nub of the woomera. With repeated use, the flared end of the ski pole spears would abrade the tennis racket rim.

  I was looking at the dark, pointed nub of wood. “Any idea why the nub would be wet? Oh, wait, never mind. I just realized that it’s not water on the nub. It’s olive oil from off the ski pole.”

  “Santiago there?” Diamond asked.

  Santiago spoke up. “I’m listening in.”

  “My regards,” Diamond said.

  “Thanks for the research,” I said, but he’d already hung up.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Santiago sent Sergei and Pam out to canvas the neighborhood, which consisted of just a few houses. He asked his other deputy to fetch his recorder. The man ran out, came back, and handed the recorder to Santiago.

  “No ME means I do the honors for the time being,” Santiago said. He turned on the recorder and began talking. He began by stating the time and date, the house address, his own name and rank, and the names of us present, and the victim’s name and driver’s license number.

  “The victim is in full rigor mortis. This garage is heated and thus has provided conditions for an accelerated pace of rigor mortis. The onset of rigor mortis usually occurs within three or four hours of death. Because of the warm ambient temperature, my estimation is that rigor for this victim began earlier than normal. It also appears that the victim and his assailant struggled. Exercise also accelerates onset of rigor mortis, sometimes creating a cadaveric spasm, or immediate rigor mortis. Because of the combination of temperature and exertion, I estimate that the onset of rigor mortis began within three hours from time of death, probably much sooner, and possibly almost immediately after death.

  “Temperature and exercise also accelerate the pace of rigor mortis, which usually lasts twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Because of the temperature and exertion aspects, I estimate that rigor mortis will pass within twenty-four hours from onset, or twenty-four to twenty-seven hours from time of death. Thus the victim likely died...” Santiago looked at his watch, “after two p.m. yesterday, and perhaps much more recently.”

  He turned off the recorder.

  The two deputies came back from canvassing the neighborhood.

  “Learn anything?” Santiago said.

  “Not much,” one said. “Only one house had anyone inside. An older woman. She says she’s home all day long and doesn’t miss much. But she never saw anyone come down the road that leads to this garage.”

  I left the scene shortly after that. I sat in the car and called Sergeant Bains. He wasn’t answering. I was impatient, so instead of leaving a message, I called the South Lake Tahoe Jail, identified myself and spoke to the jail commander.

  “I’m hoping you can do a favor for me. Could you please look at your log and tell me what time Evan Rosen was signed into your jail?”

  “This isn’t a good time,” he said. “We’re pretty jammed up. Maybe call back later, okay?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you. This is very critical. Can you please check now. It won’t take you long. I’ll make it up to you.”

  He seemed to huff with displeasure, but he didn’t speak.

  I waited.

  “Three o’clock yesterday afternoon, Evan Rosen was released from Placer County custody and signed into our custody.”

  “Than
ks very much.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  As I drove away, I went counter clockwise around the lake, heading south to South Lake Tahoe. I wanted to talk to Assistant DA Steve Ditmars, the man who’d charged Evan Rosen with murder. After our last bit of tension, I was confident he would not agree to see me. I thought it best just to surprise him, which, of course, would only work if he was in.

  Ditmars’s secretary was visible in the reception area outside his office, but his office door was shut. If I went in and spoke to the secretary, she might use her secret decoder ring to let him know who it was, and then he’d escape out the back.

  So I went down the hall, found a small waiting area with two chairs and a table covered with magazines. I immersed myself in a Sports Illustrated. When I heard people talking down the hall, I made a surreptitious sideways glance and saw Assistant DA Steve Ditmars ushering a woman out of the office. As he turned and walked back into the office, I was behind him.

  “Mr. Ditmars, so glad to find you in,” I said.

  He turned and made a face as if he’d just bit into a rotten banana.

  “I don’t have a spare moment.” He turned, walked around his secretary’s desk, which had been shifted to better block access to his door. As he pushed on his door to shut it, I put my hand on the door edge, opened it back up, and stepped inside behind him.

  Ditmars was immediately exasperated. His jaw was set, and I could see that he was about to call security, when he had second thoughts. If I could look inside his brain, I knew I would see him forming little mental pictures of the people I was connected to, at least tangentially. He would immediately run calculations about whether those potential connections could make his life difficult. I hoped that he would decide I was a pest that he had to accommodate.

  Ditmars made a show of looking at the clock on the wall. “Five minutes,” he said. “Five minutes max.” He sounded very firm.

  “I don’t need five minutes. I just left the crime scene of a third murder victim near Homewood, killed in the same manner as the first two, stabbed by an olive oil-lubricated ski pole spear. The victim is the third man we spoke about, Gavin Pellman, one of the boys Evan Rosen said may have assaulted her in Reno nine years ago. Pellman had a substantial roll of cash in his pocket. I don’t yet know for certain, but the odds are great that he is a third member of the Reno Armored truck robbery gang. His possible murderer is an Australian man named Flynn, whose garage apartment is where the murder took place. Flynn owns a woomera, an aboriginal spear-throwing device. On it is some olive oil that no doubt matches the olive oil on the spear. It is clear that the same person who committed the murders for which you’ve charged Evan committed this murder.”

  Ditmars made a slow, disdainful shake of his head. “And why do you think this has any bearing on my case against Evan Rosen?”

  “Because this victim is in full rigor mortis. The ME was not at the scene, but Placer County Sergeant Jack Santiago is quite expert in rigor mortis science, and he estimates the victim died after two p.m. yesterday. Evan Rosen was transferred from the custody of Placer County to the custody of El Dorado County at three p.m. yesterday. Placer County had held Ms. Rosen since the prior afternoon. That means Evan Rosen has been in custody for approximately forty-eight hours. Even if Sergeant Santiago is wildly inaccurate in his time-of-death estimate, this most recent murder took place during the time Rosen has been in custody. Therefore, the only reasonable conclusion is that you have charged the wrong person.” I tossed my card onto his desk. “When you decide Evan Rosen is innocent, let me know, and I can give her a ride home.”

  “We’ll let a jury decide if she’s innocent.”

  I was thinking about how I might play into his possible worries about whether I could make trouble for him.

  As I was about to walk out his door, I turned and said, “You ever play golf?” I said. “You and I should hit the links sometime. You’d probably like it because I’m a really lousy golfer. I make every member of any foursome I’m with feel better about their own game. As a result, guys like to play with me. I bet I’ve done eighteen holes with all of the bigshots at my favorite course, which is Sierra View in the foothills near Placerville. Of course, I’d do better if I chose an easier course. But I keep playing at Sierra View because I like the greens. But those doglegs are impossible. Anyway, let me know.”

  I turned and walked out.

  I didn’t know if my gambit would work. But the only man any Assistant DA is ever afraid of is the big man himself, the District Attorney. And it was widely known that the El Dorado County DA’s favorite course was Sierra View.

  I left and went back out to the Jeep. I didn’t drive away but reached around into the back seat and pet Spot. “I’ll bet you a steak-and-fries dinner that I’m going to get some action out of the El Dorado County bureaucracy within the next hour.” Spot stuck his cold nose against my neck. I assumed that meant the bet was on. I dialed up NPR and listened to a Ted Talk that had just started. A half hour later, my phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. McKenna? This is the Jail Commander at the El Dorado County Jail in South Lake Tahoe. I have an inmate named Evan Rosen who is being released. I was told to call you to give her a ride.”

  “When will she be ready to go?” I asked.

  “She’s ready now.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be in soon.” I clicked off the phone and turned to Spot. “You lost the bet, but how ’bout we do the steak and fries anyway?”

  He wagged.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Evan seemed in a daze. She looked shocked, moved mechanically, didn’t speak. I knew that being released from a murder charge, while a huge positive change, was nevertheless traumatic. The human psyche gears itself up for anticipated stresses. When the stress is suddenly removed, it takes time to recover.

  She seemed to need help as I brought her out to the Jeep. I opened the passenger door and then shut it after she was inside. Once I got in and started the engine, I realized she was having trouble with her seatbelt, so I helped her with the latch.

  As we drove, I explained the basics of what had happened, how I’d found another victim who died by spear, and that I’d demonstrated to the Assistant DA that the time of death indicated that she could not have been the murderer. Thus her sudden release.

  We were halfway around the lake before she spoke.

  “Is Mia okay?”

  “She doesn’t know you are released yet.”

  Evan didn’t respond.

  When we got to the motel apartment, Evan was even more sluggish in her movements. While Mia jumped around with excitement, I took Mattie aside and explained the situation. She told me she would stay near them both for the next day.

  I drove home and called Street. She was too busy for dinner but was very glad to hear the news about Evan’s release. After a short talk, I asked if she’d heard anything about her father’s parole. She hadn’t, which I thought was a good sign. We agreed to talk the next day, then said goodbye.

  I also called Diamond, thanked him for the woomera research, and told him about Evan’s release.

  “I’m surprised the Assistant DA would release her that easy,” Diamond said.

  “I wouldn’t say it was easy.”

  “You didn’t imply a threat to his job or anything?”

  “Me? Threaten an important government official? I’m shocked you would wonder that. You know my ethics are gold-plated.”

  “What I thought,” Diamond said. It sounded like he might have been chuckling as he hung up.

  The next morning I drove down to Sparks to see what I could pry out of Bosworth about his accent, and his similarity in looks to the picture of Flynn from nine years ago, and maybe his knowledge of Montrop’s gardener Kang.

  “Hi, Rita,” I said as I walked into Reno Armored. I was halfway to her desk when I realized that the temperature was no longer frigid, and Rita was no longer dressed for the Arctic. She wore pants and shirt with no overcoat or scarf. Her fing
ers weren’t blue, her fingernails weren’t purple, and she wasn’t shivering. “Maybe you remember me,” I said.

  She made an exaggerated nod. “I’m sorry if you came here to see Mr. Bosworth.”

  “He’s out, and by the looks of you, the excessive air conditioning mandate is out as well.”

  “I’m… I can set the thermostat higher now. At least, I can for the time being.”

  “Is Bosworth on vacation?”

  “He no longer works here.”

  “Did he quit, or was he fired?”

  She said, “That’s, you know, private information.” She seemed to think about it for a bit. “But since you were sort of involved, I guess I can say it. It’s interesting that you think he might have been let go. Yes, he was fired.”

  “It seemed,” I said, “that the well-being of the business and the other employees was not at the top of his priority list.”

  She frowned an unspoken question.

  I explained, “From the freezing temperature in here, to Bosworth’s lack of desire to do what Mr. Timmens wanted in hiring me, he wasn’t very considerate.”

  “Um, no, maybe not. And I should probably tell you that your well-being wasn’t at the top of his list, either.”

  “What did he say?”

  Rita squirmed in her chair. “I don’t believe I am allowed to reveal things that get said here. You know, private, company things. But I would be careful.”

  I gave her a polite smile. “As you know, Mr. Timmens asked me to investigate the robbery. He was upset that Bosworth withheld pertinent information from me. He might also be upset if you withheld information.”

  She made a little nod. Reassessing. “It’s just that when Mr. Timmens came and fired Mr. Bosworth, Mr. Bosworth started yelling. He said he knew it was the detective who got him fired. And he said that the detective would pay. Only those weren’t all his exact words.”

  “Bosworth made threats about me,” I said.