Tahoe Chase (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) Read online

  “How does Rell know Jillian?”

  “She met her at one of those book clubs that Rell gave up on. I believe they still speak on the phone now and then.”

  “About?”

  Joe frowned. “I have no idea. I think Jillian is an event planner. Perhaps Rell was interested in one of her events. Or maybe Jillian needed some editing on her promotional materials.”

  “Where do Manuel and Jillian live?” I asked.

  “I haven’t been to Jillian’s house, but I think Rell said that she lives on the North Shore. Manuel lives in the Keys here on the South Shore. I remember how he said that it’s part of his job to confront the worst environmental mistake ever made at the lake.”

  “Interesting choice,” I said.

  “It gives him credibility to live in and be invested in the area where they dredged out water-purifying wetlands. He can take people on a tour and point to all the nasty details and the ongoing detrimental effects on the lake. People think that if this Tahoe Keys homeowner feels this way, it must be a serious problem.”

  “Do Manuel and Jillian have families?”

  “I have no idea about Jillian. Manuel is married and has two daughters in college. The younger one is here at the community college. The older one was here, too, but she transferred to UC San Diego this fall. Manuel is very proud of his kids.”

  I thanked Joe, let Spot into the back of the Jeep and left.

  Because I was once again close to Michael Paul’s house, I stopped by and pressed his doorbell. Once again, he was either out or he was not answering the door.

  I looked at my phone and saw that, despite the high elevation of Angora Highlands, I had poor reception. So I drove down Tahoe Mountain Road and headed toward town, glancing at my phone now and then. When I had good reception, I pulled over and dialed Manuel’s number.

  The phone rang many times. Five or six rings after a typical answering machine or voicemail service would have picked up, someone finally answered.

  “Hello?” the voice was female and very soft.

  “Hi, this is Owen McKenna calling for Manuel. May I speak to him, please?”

  There was a short pause. “Tell me who you are again?”

  “Owen McKenna. I’m a friend of Joe Rorvik. Joe gave me this number and said I could reach Manuel. We had a question about Joe’s wife Rell, and Joe said he thought that Manuel could help. If this is a bad time, I can call back. Or perhaps you could have Manuel call me?”

  This time, the pause was much longer. I heard breathing, short pants.

  “Hello?” I said. “Are you still there?”

  “I’m sorry, but Manuel is dead.”

  TWELVE

  Sometimes you get presented with a big, negative surprise, and you roll with it. Other times, it renders you speechless and confused.

  After a long moment, I said. “I’m so sorry. Maybe I called the wrong Manuel. Is this Manuel Romero’s number?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was under the impression that Joe had been in recent communication with Manuel.”

  “It just happened. Last night. A car accident. We only just found out this morning.”

  “Are you Manuel’s wife?”

  “Yes. I’m Lucy.”

  “I’m very sorry, Lucy. You have my deepest condolences. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  I waited a bit, heard no other words, and hung up.

  I called Sergeant Bains.

  “I just spoke to Lucy Romero, wife of Manuel Romero, who lives in the Keys, and she told me that Manuel died in a car accident last night. Any chance it happened in El Dorado County and that you’ve heard of it?”

  “We’re at the scene as we speak. The guy cruised off one of the switchbacks at Emerald Bay with enough speed to launch off the mountain and pancake his Toyota Prius a few hundred feet down. We got the body out and removed a couple of hours ago. Now a wrecker is pulling up the vehicle carcass. Quite the trick, because they have to chainsaw out the Manzanita that’s in the way.”

  “Okay if I come by?”

  “Yeah. I’ll tell the deputy to look for your Jeep.”

  When I came to the four-way intersection called the “Y,” I turned north on Highway 89 and headed out past Pope Beach, through Camp Richardson, past Kiva and Baldwin Beaches, through Cascade Properties, went around the first switchback, and crawled up toward a group of El Dorado County patrol units with two CHP units mixed in. The northbound traffic lane was blocked, and they were alternating both northbound and southbound traffic flow through the southbound lane. I rolled down my window when I got to the first deputy directing traffic.

  “I’m Owen McKenna. Sergeant Bains said he’d notify you.”

  He nodded and pointed. “Pull over there. Stay outside of the cone perimeter.”

  I nodded and did as he said.

  They’d set up some orange roadwork cones to mark an area of vague skid marks mostly buried in fresh snow. I walked around them and found Bains with some other officers near the wrecker truck, which was backed up to the edge of the shoulder where the mountain pitched away. The cable stretched down the mountain. Two men with chainsaws were working above the wreckage, tromping on snowshoes through deep snow, cutting away the obstructions. Their saws made the gurgle-cough of small engines backfiring on idle. When they revved them for another cut, the whine smoothed out as it went up in pitch. One of the men on the saws had a radio, and he and the truck operator coordinated how much cable the machine could reel in before more saw work was necessary.

  I found Bains.

  “What’s your interest in the car crash victim?” Bains said.

  “I asked Joe Rorvik who had spoken with Rell recently. He could think of just a few people. One was Simone Bonnaire, partner of the abusive Ned Cavett. Another was Jillian Oleska. The third was Manuel Romero, perhaps Joe’s best friend.”

  “Now I really feel sorry for the old man,” Bains said.

  “I see that you’re protecting some skid marks. You think he woke up and hit the brakes at the last minute?”

  “Maybe. The marks could just be someone else who came after the accident. They could have seen something, or they could have just pulled over to check their email. It’s hard to do road-and-tire forensics anymore, now that most cars have anti-lock brakes. Romero could have stood on that pedal, and all we’d have as indication are some vague marks in the snow at the edge of the road. Never did like that whole trend of letting computers override what the driver is trying to do. Like those fly-by-wire passenger jets. Something about it just isn’t right. If I wanna stomp on my brakes, that’s what I want, brake-stomping, not some micro-chip intervening and deciding that what I really want is super fast brake-pumping.”

  I nodded. Hard to argue with Bains’s logic even if the statistics sing the benefits of anti-lock brakes. I also realized that Bains was trying to put his mind on thoughts other than his current task.

  “Who found the accident?” I asked.

  “A bakery truck driver was down below, heading north to Tahoe City, coming around the curve from the Cascade Properties area. He said he saw a sudden bright light arcing through the sky and forest on the mountain above him. Then the light turned into two lights before it disappeared. He said that he would have thought it was a UFO because it looked just like a UFO, except that he doesn’t believe in UFOs. So then he thought it was some kind of meteorite that split into two. It wasn’t until he climbed up to the second switchback that he had the idea that it might have been a runaway vehicle shooting off the mountain. So he stopped and looked over the edge. He couldn’t see anything, but he could smell stress in the air. So he dialed nine-one-one. He was still here when we arrived. He left an hour ago.”

  “What’s that mean, ‘stress in the air?’”

  “That’s what I asked him. He said that the air had a crinkly, disturbed feel to it. Those were his words. He couldn’t explain it more than that. If I had to guess, I’d say his sense came from the mixing of smells that you don’t no
rmally find together.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Forest air at night with snow and sand and dirt and exhaust thrown into it.”

  “And ripped foliage and broken trees,” Bains said. “One time a windstorm blew down a pine near our house. I went out right after I heard the crack and boom. The piney turpentine scent coming from that broken pine was powerful, like it was calling out its distress. Right up there with the scent you get out of a wood chipper eating pine branches.” Bains gestured at the trees below. “Now that I think of it, it may be that these smaller broken trees are actually firs – I’m not much of a tree guy – but the scent is pretty much the same.”

  Bains pointed down at the wreckage, a bit of blue mixed into the green and brown and snow-white forest. “You mentioned exhaust smells. Not that it matters, but a Prius like that maybe wasn’t making exhaust. Those things can go pretty fast on just their electric motors without ever turning on their gas engines, especially when they’re coming down a steep road like the one above this switchback.”

  “Good point. Any chance the bakery trucker noticed the time?”

  At that moment both chainsaws revved up loud and Bains had to nearly shout in my ear.

  “The nine-one-one call was logged in at four-forty-three this morning. Our first deputies on the scene could find nothing but the marks in the snow at the edge of the drop-off. They even shined a searchlight, but all they saw in the dark was a mess of broken trees and shrubs. It wasn’t until morning light that they were able to hike down and find the wreckage. It took two more trips up and down to lower a rescue toboggan and the pry bars they used to bust out what was left of the windshield and remove the body. The slope is so steep and the snow so deep that they hooked the wrecker cable to the toboggan and one guy on each side guided it up the slope while the wrecker pulled. Afterward, they hauled the wrecker line back down to repeat the process with the vehicle.”

  The chainsaws dropped back to idle, and the wrecker reeled in more cable.

  “You get a coroner’s report yet?”

  Bains shook his head. “No, but I saw the body, so I know it will say blunt-force trauma as cause of death.”

  “Under the influence?” I said.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “You ever seen a druggie drive a Prius? Priuses are the granola crowd. People who get their buzz from green tea. I’d be surprised if we find out he was on anything more powerful.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said.

  The wreckage was now just one hundred feet below us. From the condition of the car, I could already tell that Manuel’s death was probably an instantaneous one.

  Behind us, two deputies were taking pictures of the vague skid marks. One had the camera. The other held a big floodlight despite the cloudy daylight. They moved to different positions for each of several sets of photos.

  I’m not an expert in skid marks, but even I could see that what visual evidence there was would reveal very little under any analysis. Manuel was going much too fast, skidded, and went off the mountain. Not much more information could be squeezed out of the snow.

  Fifteen minutes later, the wreckage was up to the edge of the drop-off. It looked like someone had ground up the Prius in a giant eggbeater, then stomped on it until it was mostly flat.

  The wrecker driver got in the cab and pulled forward enough to drag the Prius carcass onto the flat ground behind the truck, just to the side of the cone perimeter around the skid marks. Then the driver tilted the cargo bed of the truck back until the trailing edge touched the ground.

  Bains waved at the driver, who stuck his head out the window.

  “Hold up a bit until we can look at the wreckage?”

  “Sure, man, but I’m on a clock. Longer it takes me to get back to the garage, the more likely I’ll miss other calls.”

  “We’ll be quick,” Bains said.

  Bains came back, and we both studied the wreck. I walked around and looked at it from all angles. The only way it could have been more smashed would have been to put it into one of those giant auto compactors. There was no part of the vehicle with any smooth metal. Every window was broken. The passenger compartment, designed to hold four, was squeezed nearly flat.

  I looked inside. Take away the splattered blood and broken glass, the interior looked to have been clean when the car went off the mountain. There was a jacket crammed under the crushed dashboard. Loose in the vehicle, but crushed flat, was a metal thermos, the kind that was considered indestructible. The driver’s door panel was stained dark as if with coffee. If Manuel had traveled with a briefcase or any other items, they had been ejected from the car.

  Other than the crash debris, the only items that seemed out of place were a mangled cigarette pack and a crumpled piece of colored glossy paper on the rear floor, just visible under the edge of a pancaked seat. I could see them, but I couldn’t reach them.

  I pointed them out to Bains.

  He leaned to the side to see into the narrow space. “Funny,” he said. “Seems like this guy is fastidious. The rest of the car is clean. Stuff would fly around in this kind of crash. But that looks like the paper was crumpled up in someone’s hand and tossed on the floor. And the cigs don’t make sense.”

  “Because people who drive Priuses don’t smoke,” I said.

  “Right.”

  I stuck my hand partway into the wreckage, assessing whether or not I could reach the paper and cigarettes.

  “You’ll cut yourself if you try to reach past all that ripped metal. I checked and found that there are no warrants on Manuel. Not even a speeding ticket. He’s clean as they come. So all I want is the registration.”

  Bains reached through the broken passenger window to the glove box. It was obviously jammed, but he tried wiggling it anyway.

  “Looks like we’ll need a pry bar.” He walked over to one of the patrol units and came back with a pry bar. He worked it into the glove box seam, levered it up and down. Plastic broke with loud snapping sounds. Bains repositioned the bar and jerked it back and forth.

  Bains lifted up his foot, got it in through the opening, and started kicking, over and over. He pulled his foot out and began working once again with the pry bar. This time he made a stabbing motion. Eventually, he pulled out the vehicle manual and registration and held it up, victorious.

  “You’re sweating like a gladiator,” I said.

  “Working like one,” he said. Bains walked around to where the rear hatchback had been and absently lifted up on the crushed metal, knowing that it wouldn’t budge.

  “If we want to get into any of the other crushed spaces, we’ll have to borrow the Jaws-of-Life cutters from the fire department. I’ll check with Manuel’s wife and see if there’s anything she’s missing that might be under that hatch. Otherwise, I’m done with this.”

  As he spoke, I walked around to where he had attacked the glove box. I reached into the cup holders and other compartments. All were clean. If there was an ashtray, I couldn’t find it among the broken metal and plastic.

  There was a stiff stick about three feet long that had gotten stuck into a crack in the wreckage as it was pulled up the mountainside. I jerked the stick out and used it to reach through a torn opening in the crushed metal car body and fish out the crumpled paper. It didn’t want to come. Eventually, I got the paper ball lined up just so, and I stabbed the stick through the paper. I slowly pulled the stick out from the wreckage, careful not to bump the paper off. Next, I reached the stick back in, got it into the open end of the cigarette pack, and pulled it out. The pack was empty.

  Bains watched as I opened the crumpled paper and smoothed it out on my thigh. The paper showed a picture of a skier with a very blue Lake Tahoe in the background below. The skier was catching some air off a lip of snow, flakes spraying into the sky, sparkling in the sunlight. The paper was heavy-weight stock, like a magazine cover. The right edge was torn leaving three letters showing. STE. I turned the paper over. It showed another picture,
two young couples at a restaurant table. They were well dressed. The table was elegant, with candles and large wine glasses. If this side had any writing, it had been on the left and was torn off.

  I looked at Bains. “So Manuel had a picture from a brochure or something,” he said.

  “Why would a fastidious guy crumple it up and toss it on the floor of his car?”

  Bains shrugged. “No crime here that I can see. You can have it if you want.” He turned and signaled the tow truck driver. “Okay, Grady, all yours,” he said.

  The driver winched the wreckage up onto the cargo bed. There was nothing left that resembled four normal tires on wheels, so the scraping and screeching of metal on metal was severe. Once in place, the driver leveled the cargo bed and secured the wreckage with cargo straps that were tightened by ratchets.

  One of the deputies came up. “Sarge, we’ve got pics from pretty much every angle.”

  “Did you check to see if the snow tracks had enough shadows to be easy to see?”

  “Matt held the big light down low just to make shadows. See what you think.” The man held up the camera so that Bains could look at the screen. He pushed a button to scroll the photos.

  “Looks good,” Bains said. “Okay, let’s gather up the cones and turn this land back over to the public.”

  THIRTEEN

  I stuck the ski photo and cigarette pack into my pocket and got back in the Jeep. Spot was subdued. As always, the lingering scent of deceased human was hard for him.

  I often think of how hard it must be for Ellie Ibsen, the search-and-rescue trainer, and her dogs. To have a job finding missing persons would be great when the people turn up alive. But many times the dogs are brought in too late. In that situation, the dogs still perform the miracle of finding the victim, but the victim is dead. It’s the worst reward for a job well done.

  The body had been removed before we arrived. Yet, even Spot’s limited experience with the smell of death made him sad. He leaned forward from the back seat, sticking his nose onto my clothes and the back of my neck, reaching down toward the pocket with the cigarette pack, perhaps looking for a scent that would suggest a happier ending. But he didn’t find it. As I drove back toward town, he lay down on the back seat and sighed, deep and long.