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

  I turned the wheel to get well off onto the right shoulder, then stomped on the brakes and slammed the shifter into park. I was out the driver’s door in a moment. Spot was ready as I jerked open the rear door.

  “C’mon, Spot!” I shouted as I sprinted around the rear of the Jeep. He followed and then passed me.

  Because the right front tire had gone out, I figured the shooter was probably up on the mountains on the right side, the mountain ridge to the west that rose between Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows Valley. I figured if Spot and I made it to a grouping of trees up against the slope, I’d be out of sight from whomever was above.

  I pulled Spot into the trees.

  But then I realized that the shooter could have gotten the front tire from down the highway in front of me, including the mountains on the east side of the highway.

  So I shifted our position to block that view as well, and got out my phone.

  The 911 dispatcher patched me through to Sergeant Santiago, and I explained what had happened.

  The reaction was dramatic. He pulled a large portion of the officers out of Scarlett Milo’s neighborhood, and they swarmed out onto the highway. They took up positions up and down the road, including the trees where Spot and I were hiding.

  Multiple sheriff’s vehicles raced up, sirens and lights blazing, officers jumped out, running, taking positions of cover, surrounding us. The CHP helicopter roared through the sky above. At first it seemed that such a rapid response would give them a good chance of spotting anyone up on any of the nearby ridges. But then I realized that the gathering dusk would give a shooter plenty of cover in just a few minutes. And if the shooter was on the steep ridge to the east, there were countless miles of trails one could follow and then emerge anywhere from Tahoe City to the Northstar ski area, or even as far away as Truckee to the north.

  Santiago appeared, rushing toward the trees where Spot and I and other officers now stood. We went through a similar talk as we’d done at Scarlett’s, discussing possible shooter locations and escape routes. Our conclusions were parallel to our previous conclusions. As darkness descended, we were unlikely at best to have any chance of finding the shooter.

  I called my girlfriend Street Casey and explained that I was up at Squaw Valley dealing with a shooting, but I didn’t give her details. She asked me to call when I got home.

  An hour later, it was dark enough that Santiago felt it was reasonable to change my blown tire, although he wouldn’t let me out of the tree cover.

  “You’re the target,” he said. “No point in giving the shooter an easy shot. Maybe he’s got a night scope or something.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  When my tire was replaced, Santiago let me leave, and I cruised home through the darkness.

  I went straight to my cabin. I wanted to shower off Scarlett Milo’s blood, change my clothes, and clean up Spot as well.

  Before I cleaned up, I called Street Casey again and asked if she had dinner plans.

  “Yes, I was hoping you’d be done in time to join me, so I’ve been delaying. I’m chopping peppers for vegetarian stir fry. Want to come?”

  “I’ll grab some wine and show up when you say.”

  “I say come in about a half hour.”

  “Perfect.”

  I hung up. As I was about to get in the shower, the phone rang.

  “McKenna,” I said.

  “Hola, amigo.” It was my best friend, Douglas County Sergeant Diamond Martinez. “I’m calling because the shooting of the lady at Squaw Valley and the subsequent shooting at you has produced an amazing cacophony of buzz among local law enforcement. I’m in the area. Wanted to stop by and get the story straight from the source.”

  “I’m going to Street’s for dinner in thirty minutes.”

  “Does she know about it?”

  “The dinner, yes,” I said. “The shooting, no.”

  “A report to an audience of two is more efficient than doing it twice,” he said.

  I thought about it.

  “I will leave posthaste when you’re done,” he added. “Don’t want to spoil a romantic dinner with a lady as lovely as the entomologist of local forensic fame.”

  “Meet me at her condo?”

  “Gracias.”

  I hung up and dialed Street back. I told her that Diamond was stopping by for a quick visit. “Emphasis on the quick,” I said.

  Ever gracious, Street said that Diamond was always welcome at her abode, even when I was coming for a dinner-for-two.

  I jumped in the shower, and Spot and I were back in the Jeep twenty minutes later.

  From my cabin, Street’s condo is 1000 vertical feet and two miles down a winding road. I have a key, but I never use it except for those times when Street makes a specific request for me to let myself in.

  Spot began a slow wag the moment I let him out of the Jeep. When I knocked on her brand new door, he stared at the new, reinforced steel panel and listened with the focus of a safecracker. Still wagging.

  After thirty seconds, he lifted his head a bit and his tail sped up. He turned his head slowly as if watching something moving on the other side. His gaze tracked from right to left and eventually moved to the doorknob. A moment later, the knob turned and the door opened.

  Street hugged him first and then raised up on tiptoes to kiss me. Spot pushed on past her, eager to consider any potential cooking smells and imagine what portion might be for him, vegetarian or not. The place was in fact filled with delicious food scents that I couldn’t place. Accompanying the aromas was some classic Brubeck and Desmond.

  “Just so you know, heavy front doors provide no privacy from dogs,” I said.

  “How is that?” Street said, turning around to glance at Spot, who was already in the kitchen, nose held high, nostrils flexing. “They can’t see through a solid panel. Can they smell through closed doors?”

  “Probably. But in this case, Spot could hear you. He knew exactly when you were about to open the door.”

  “But I’m wearing my slippers. They make no noise. And the music covers any other noise.”

  I shrugged as I came in and closed and locked the door behind me.

  “Canine enigmas,” Street said. “So many things work in ways that are unknowable. Like all the great arts. Poetry. Music. Painting. Dance. Dog perception.”

  I followed Street in and set the Wild Horse Pinot I’d brought on the counter. “Did you hear that, Spot? Street just called your detecting abilities a great art.”

  He wagged, then turned and looked back at Street’s front door.

  A moment later came a brief, two-tap knock.

  I walked over. Even though I was armed with a 170-pound Great Dane, I bent down to look out the peephole. I didn’t have a peephole at my cabin, but being at Street’s, especially after the forced entry the month before, brought the responsibility of minimizing any potential threat to her.

  I saw a fish-eye picture of a handsome man with skin the color of hand-oiled teak beneath black hair. Spot was next to me as I opened the door. Diamond gave him a knuckle rub on his scalp. Spot wagged.

  “Sorry if I’m interrupting amore with business,” he said.

  Street came over and kissed Diamond on his cheek. “Vegetarian dinner isn’t quite the same as amore,” she said.

  “If somebody like you cooked it for me, it would be.”

  Street smiled. “What’s the business?”

  Diamond gestured at me. “The tall gringo has the story.”

  Street frowned. “If we’re going to be treated to a story, maybe you should get some wine out of this bottle, first.” She handed me a corkscrew.

  I pulled the cork as she got out three glasses. I poured an inch for Street and three inches for me. I raised the bottle to pour Diamond’s and then paused and looked at him in his dress browns.

  “Off duty twenty minutes ago,” he said. “I’ll change to my jean jacket in my patrol unit.”

  I poured three inches for him.

&nb
sp; That would give Street an hour’s worth of sipping and fifteen minutes each for Diamond and me.

  So I told them about Scarlett Milo calling me and what had transpired. I finished with the shots at me, but explained, truthfully, that I wasn’t in much danger because it is nearly impossible to hit an unseen driver behind a dark windshield on a moving vehicle. I kept it like upscale journalism, just the facts about person, place, and time, and I finished by telling them what Scarlett had written on the note. I did not include any editorializing or gratuitous details about the shooting. Street was very alarmed, but she had been involved in enough of my cases to know that things can get messy and disturbing, and she probably filled in the blanks with a realistic idea of what actually happened. Diamond had a better idea of the reality, aided by the reports he’d already heard.

  “Gut sense?” Diamond said.

  I shook my head. “It’s obviously not a random event. Someone had targeted her, and she knew it in advance of the shooting. They probably targeted me simply because I’d been a witness of sorts to her shooting. Unfortunately, nothing she said and nothing we found other than the note she wrote gave us any indication of what caused someone to kill her. And the note is puzzling enough that it seems of no help.”

  Diamond said, “I heard that the note said, ‘Medic’s BFF.’”

  “Right. Like a medic’s Best Friend Forever. I made a copy.” I pulled the folded copy out of my pocket. “Who knows what that means? But it gives us something to look into.”

  Diamond took the piece of paper and looked at it. Then he handed it to Street.

  Street was frowning. “She wrote this before you got there? It doesn’t make sense. Why would someone write an inscrutable note? Unless it was just a reminder to herself?”

  “I guess I need to explain some uncomfortable details.” I told them the sequence of events from when I called Scarlett from the street down below her house and how the shot came while we were talking over the phone. I explained how I’d found her on the deck, still alive but just barely.

  Street looked sick. “She was shot in the neck, and she was bleeding to death, but she was able to write you a note? My God, that is both terrible and heroic. That gives those words great meaning. Medic’s BFF.”

  “Yeah. Sorry to burden you with the image. It’s not the stuff that makes for happy dreams.” I put my arm around her shoulders and felt her shudder.

  She said, “Imagine if people didn’t mean harm to others. It seems like a fantasy to think of a world where no one would die at the hands of another person. What a different, wonderful world that would be.”

  We were silent for a moment.

  Diamond’s left foot made a barely perceptible tap on the floor, like a poker player’s tell.

  “What say you?” I said.

  “People meaning well instead of harm would still cause other people to die,” Diamond said. “It the unfortunate nature of life.”

  “Sure,” Street said. “Accidents and such. But that’s not the same, right?”

  “Sometimes the difference between an accidental death and murder is a very fine line,” he said. “The problem is trying to tell if a person meant well or not.”

  I drank wine. “Example?”

  “Sure” Diamond said. “Thomas Aquinas addressed this in his Doctrine of Double Effect. You can intend one thing, but that can lead to another. It always gets down to intent. Exact same action, exact same result. But one way, he’s a hero. The other way, he’s a murderer. As an example, there’s a standard philosophical conundrum that illustrates what Aquinas said. It’s called the trolley problem,” he said.

  “I’ve heard of that,” Street said.

  Diamond nodded. “A runaway trolley is going to hit a group of five people and kill them. A person up the tracks sees an opportunity to pull a lever and send the trolley onto another track where there is only one person who will get killed. He pulls the lever. Instead of five people dying, only one person dies. The man saves a lot of lives.”

  “And some people will think he’s a hero,” I said. Then I realized where he was going with the scenario. “But it’s possible that the person pulling the lever wants to kill the single person on the side track. Then he’s a murderer.”

  “Right.”

  “Aquinas was a saint, right?” Street said.

  I got the sense that she was eager to help direct the conversation away from Scarlett and her macabre murder.

  “Yeah,” Diamond said. “They knew Aquinas was a big deal back in the thirteenth century, and they made him a saint. He was an important theologian. But where he really kicked butt was as a philosopher.”

  Diamond picked up his wine glass and drained it. He set the glass down on the counter and turned to Street. “I’m sorry. In an effort to change the subject away from Scarlett Milo’s murder, I went off a different direction that was no better. Please accept my apology.”

  Street started to protest, but Diamond smiled and said, “I should be going. Thanks for your time.” He gave Spot a pet and then left.

  Street and I looked at each other for a long, quiet moment.

  Street spoke first. “I thought I’d grill the veggies on the perforated barbecue pan. Gives them great flavor. How about you light the charcoal while I pour more wine?”

  I looked at her glass. It was down a half an inch. Either the wine was really good, or I’d stressed her talking about Scarlett Milo.

  I picked up the box of wooden matches and headed out onto the deck. Spot pushed out before me. Like all dogs, he was always eager to figure out where the humans were going and then get in front of them and lead them.

  I squirted lighter fluid on a pile of briquettes and lit them afire.

  Street came out carrying our glasses. We stood at the railing, looking out toward the forest where here and there were filtered bits of lake view during the day, dense intimate forest at night. Spot stood to Street’s side. He looked at her, then looked where she was looking.

  When the coals were ready, Street brought out two bowls of vegetables, one onions and garlic cloves and the other peppers and carrots and broccoli and celery and bok choy. She sprayed olive oil into a pan that had hundreds of holes in it, then poured the onions into the pan and set it on the grill. The heat and smoke seeped through as she stirred, and within a minute, the aroma was grand.

  After the onions began to cook, she added the other veggies, and stirred the mix continuously. Within a few minutes, she removed the pan, and I followed her inside.

  I learned what the previous cooking smells were as she dished up a mixture of wild, black, and brown rice into broad-brimmed, cherry-red bowls and put the veggies on top. Maybe I could live without steak after all.

  We sat across from each other at her small dining table, the lights down low, a single candle in the middle of the table, and her gas fireplace flickering off to the side. Tommy Flanagan had taken over the piano.

  Street was wearing a dark red, silk shirt with three-quarter sleeves. It was open to the third button so that her simple silver necklace would show. She had on a matching silver bracelet, and she’d coated her nails with a clear coat that was glossy enough to reflect the candle light. I sensed the slightest touch of smoky gray eye shadow, which set off her hair that was no longer auburn but back to black and styled in a kind of wind-blown look. The combination might have been harsh in some lights, but with the low light of fire and candle, she looked beautiful, her cheekbones dramatic beneath soft skin.

  Spot sat to the side of the table, opposite the fireplace, his ears and eyes like laser beams focused on Street’s bowl, then my bowl, then back to Street’s. Sitting on his haunches, his chin was significantly higher than the table, and his head gradually glided forward, closer, centimeter by centimeter.

  “Spot,” I said, snapping my fingers and making a downward pointed gesture that meant he should lie on the floor.

  Spot looked at me. Instead of lying on the floor, he lowered his chin to the table and rested his head. Wi
th his head in one place, his eyes resumed their focus on our bowls of food. I thought of insisting that he lie down, then decided that his current position was okay as long as he wasn’t drooling, something that would come instantaneously if we gave him any indication that he was about to get food.

  When we were done eating, Street rewarded Spot for his gentlemanly behavior. His wagging tail nearly broke her sliding glass door as she brought a bowl of food out to the deck.

  Later, we lingered with wine on the couch in front of her fireplace. Oscar Peterson was now doing his keyboard magic.

  Street talked about Diamond’s constant hunger for knowledge, from Thomas Aquinas’s writings to how we judge the way people die.

  I was noticing the way the firelight danced along the delicate lines of her neck and shoulders.

  Street segued into Enlightenment philosophy and how important it was to loosening the Catholic Church’s constraining hold on society and teaching us tolerance for other religions.

  I was studying Street’s eyes and the little yellow flecks that made her nearly-black irises look mysterious.

  Street talked about how philosophers taught us the importance of science and the value of democracy over monarchy.

  I was thinking that the dramatic curve of her lips shortened my breath.

  Street recounted how the most important points in our Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and our Bill of Rights all had their origin in the writings of philosophers and how most of the great principles we hold dear today came from a few great thinkers.

  I was looking at Street’s face, all cheekbones and hollows in the flickering firelight, a non-standard beauty that was the equal of any.

  As Street continued to talk, I thought it was nothing more than good luck that I knew people who looked outward more than inward, people who expanded my world instead of shrinking it, people who were primarily interested in the big questions rather than the minutia of their own lives.