Tahoe Skydrop (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 16)

by Todd Borg

  I hit the man with a couple of quick gut punches.

  “Spot, let go,” I said.

  The man collapsed to the ground and lay there sobbing with pain.

  “I said we could make this easy.” I flipped him over onto his stomach, his arms outstretched to his sides.

  “Where’s the knife?”

  He sobbed.

  “Where’s the knife?” I said again.

  More sobbing. I stepped onto the hand that Spot had crushed, slowly increasing my weight on his broken bones.

  The man screamed as if we were stretching him on a rack.

  I put more weight on his hand.

  He cried harder. “Idropit,” he mumbled, drawing out his attempted words like a sobbing child.

  “Speak more clearly,” I said. “Or I step harder.”

  “I dropped it!”

  I kept my foot on his broken hand while I looked around. “I don’t see it. Help me out, here, or you’re going to have mashed potatoes where most people have a hand.” I put more foot pressure on his hand.

  The man squirmed. “I think I fell on it.”

  I looked at Spot. With no specific command from me, he was watching and waiting for me to lead.

  I said to the man, “I’ll take my foot off your hand so you can lift up very slowly,” I said. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

  Of course, the man would know he was facing the worst possible punishment society could give him. There was little beyond pain that would constrain the behavior of a man with nothing more to lose. I was very careful. I took my foot off his broken hand and stepped back in the dim light, giving him a bit of room.

  He pushed with his elbow, got himself to a sitting position, looked around in the dark. “Maybe I’m sitting on it.” He moved his broken hand to the dirt next to where he sat, and made a little jerk as if to shift his butt over. Then he looked to the side. “I see something over there,” he said, looking off the trail.

  “Where?”

  He gestured with his head. “Under that bush. You could reach it.”

  I shifted my feet for a better stance. “Reach it for me.”

  He made a tell-tale shift of weight, started to point with his broken hand.

  I suspected it was a distraction. I was ready when he leaned out with a sudden jerk and his left hand shot out in a sweeping arc toward my leg, the karambit blade catching the light. If I’d been a quarter second late, he would have sliced through much of my leg muscle and maybe severed my femoral artery.

  I had the pipe club in my hand. When he sliced back the other direction, I swung the pipe. I felt his flesh and bone give way to the metal of the pipe. Even if he hadn’t screamed, I would have sensed the damage a small, short pipe can do.

  He screamed and let go of the knife. It skittered into the dirt. Maybe his left hand was now destroyed. Maybe he was too dumb to know it. Certainly, he understood there was still the possibility he could kill me and even kill my dog. He swiped his hand toward his knife.

  I was so angry and frustrated that I kicked him hard in his mouth, breaking his teeth. The man’s head jerked up from the blow. The impact flipped him over onto his back. He fell with a thump, his bloody face pointing skyward.

  “I said we could make this easy,” I repeated.

  Once again, I couldn’t see the knife. It didn’t seem that he’d gotten it in his hand. But he might have tucked it under him. With the knife’s location unknown, we were still at risk. Even if he appeared unconscious, he could be faking it. I slowly walked around him, looking for the knife. There was no sign of it. I even walked over to the bush where he’d claimed to see it. Nothing. I went back to him and poked him with the toe of my boot, lifting his clothes under his sides, his arms. I pushed his bloody head to one side and then the other. Through it all he cried and hollered and moaned. When I used my boot toe to move his legs, he suddenly launched his own kick, a surprisingly powerful and vicious snap up toward my groin.

  I jumped back. He missed. I jumped forward and did a heel stomp on the front of his knee. He screamed. I moved forward and did a simple knee drop on the center of his chest. It was a move that can kill. A ruptured aorta is fastest. Punctured lungs with sharp broken ribs is slower. As my knee landed on his sternum, the multiple snapping was pronounced, crisp and loud, sternum and ribs.

  Lucas was wheezing and gurgling his breath through blood and saliva and broken teeth.

  I got zip ties around Lucas’s ankles and, with his arms behind his back, his wrists. Following Diamond’s example, I pulled his legs up behind his butt and attached his ankles to his wrists.

  I unclipped his belt light and shined it on the ground. The karambit knife reflected the blue light. Holding it in place with my boot, I removed the man’s knife holster, snapped the knife into the protective leather sleeve, and slipped it into my pocket.

  The man howled as I dragged him off the trail so no one would accidentally run over him.

  I turned toward where Jonni had disappeared down the path.

  I called out, “Jonni, you can come out of hiding. The man is tied up. He can’t hurt you.”

  There was no response. I waited a bit, then called out again.

  But Jonni didn’t answer back.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  I recalled a vague memory of a thudding sound that came from down the path.

  “C’mon, Largeness, let’s go find Jonni.”

  I trotted down the dark asphalt ribbon. Despite the coming dawn, it was still very dark under the tree canopy. Spot ranged out in front of me, his night perception far better than mine. “Jonni!” I called out in a loud voice. “Jonni, can you hear me? The man chasing you is tied up. You’re safe, now. Where are you, Jonni?”

  Then I remembered that Jonni had given me a hug. She had nestled her face and head in the crook of my right elbow, her skin and hair touching the fabric of my jacket. A person’s head is the best source of their scent.

  “Spot! Come here. Spot, come now!”

  Spot stopped on the trail, probably wondering what I could possibly want. I ran forward until I came to him.

  “Spot, smell this scent.” I used my left hand to push his snout to the inside of my right elbow. “Take a whiff, Spot! Do you have the scent? Smell the scent! Okay, find the victim! Find her!”

  I did the hand-drop point command next to Spot’s head and gave him a smack on his rear. “Go on, run! Find the victim!”

  When I push a scent on Spot, he picks up on my eagerness for a scent trail. I also knew the main scent on my clothing was my own. But for dogs, understanding the difference is basic. It’s obvious to them they should ignore all the other sources of scent and just look for the scent source that stands out because it is unusual.

  Spot trotted down the dark trail. I couldn’t see his motions in the darkness. But I knew he’d be air scenting, head held high, nostrils flexing. Dogs find scents where they can. A kid racing by on rollerblades is not going to leave any scent trail on the ground. But a kid who is hiding in the bushes or walking down the highway will leave a scent plume, wafting on the wind, as clear to a dog’s nose as a visible, daytime smoke plume is to a human’s eyes.

  I ran after Spot, trying to keep up with his trot.

  We’d gone about 50 yards when I sensed Spot slow and stop in the dark. Before I could get to him, he turned off the trail and trotted into the woods. I tried to follow.

  Unfortunately, this area wasn’t an open forest that was easy to navigate. Spot went down into a steep ravine. I couldn’t see anything more than a vague sense of a mottled light shape. Spot was stepping down through bushes and around boulders. The woods were thick enough that no light from the coming dawn filtered in beneath the trees.

  I pulled out my light. It shot a bright cone of white into the woods, lighting up leaves and branches and rocks and tree trunks, but no person.

  Spot had disappeared.

  “Spot, where are you? Spot, make a noise.”

  I paused and listened. I he
ard panting. No movement. But I knew Spot was near.

  I pushed through branches, stepping down a steep slope. I scooted over a boulder that perched precariously on the slope. Below the boulder was a tree. Something white moved below the tree.

  Spot.

  I grabbed a bush below me, holding it as I went around it.

  Spot was farther down, sniffing something. When my light shined directly at him, he turned his head and looked up at me. His brow was furrowed. Not the look of curiosity, but one of worry. Just past his head was flash of orange, a jolting color in my harsh light. A round shape that repeated.

  I realized I was looking at rollerblades a foot or two off the ground.

  I stepped down the slope, pushing past more bushes, and moved my light.

  The roller blade wheels were bright orange. And near them was a bright red color. I had to move another branch to see better, but there were still more leaves in the way.

  Below the knee came more red. Blood. And next to the red was white. I inhaled as I realized what it was.

  Exposed bone.

  I scrambled down next to Jonni.

  She was moaning. Very soft. It was clear that she was largely unconscious. Her injury was vaguely similar to the man’s thumb injury up at Stone Lodge. Except it was much worse.

  Where the man had cut his thumb artery, Jonni had struck a broken tree trunk and ripped open her pants and, under it, her knee and lower leg, exposing bone, maybe breaking it. Unlike the cut in a small artery in the man’s thumb, Jonni had severed the artery on the inside rear of her knee. The spurting of bright red blood was like a small fountain. It shot a pulsing arc of blood the thickness of a red pencil eight inches into the air.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  I made an involuntary gasp. It was difficult to comprehend her blood loss. The bleeding was severe, the ground below her leg soaked with blood.

  I’d had just enough training back on the SFPD to know that this level of blood loss was deadly. And since I heard the thudding sound that must have been her crash down the long, steep embankment, it had been several minutes.

  Jonni’s blood was thick on the forest floor. As I tried to force myself to focus and think of the appropriate action, it seemed that the pulses of spurting blood were happening at a faster rate, even as the distance it shot was already diminishing.

  I knew what it meant. She’d already lost such a significant volume of blood, maybe measured in pints. As a result, her heart was pumping faster and faster in order to try to keep her blood pressure up.

  As I struggled to find disciplined thought, words of instruction came to me.

  I realized they were Jonni’s own words from when she helped her guard with his cut thumb. I repeated her words to focus my concentration.

  First, apply a compress.

  Second, elevate the wound to diminish blood pressure.

  Third, if the bleeding is bad, apply pressure to the artery upstream from the wound.

  I needed something to use as a compress.

  I unzipped my jacket, reached under it and grabbed my shirt. Without bothering to remove it, I tore it open, buttons popping, and ripped the fabric up from the bottom. Got an uneven strip. Did it again. Another strip. I wadded up one strip to use as a compress and pushed it against the spurting blood. I took the other strip and wrapped it around her leg, holding the compress in place. I needed more material. Using my knee against her wound, I held the compress in place while I tore more shirt fabric and wrapped her leg further.

  Jonni cried out. Probably, she felt a terrific pain as my fabric abraded exposed bone.

  The spurting blood was no longer obvious. But it might still be oozing out at a high rate from under the fabric.

  The second rule was to elevate the wound.

  I tried to turn her body so her injured leg was above her heart. It wouldn’t solve the problem. But it might slow the speed at which her remaining blood escaped her body.

  Third rule: Apply pressure to the artery upstream from the wound.

  I wasn’t especially knowledgeable about anatomy. But I knew the femoral artery came down the thigh on the inside and then moved toward the back of the thigh as it approached the knee. If I could apply enough pressure in the right area, I might help slow the bleeding.

  But I didn’t have any time. I had to get her to the hospital immediately. I didn’t even have time to check my phone for cell reception. And if I had reception, I probably didn’t have time to wait for an ambulance. I could try calling as I drove.

  I lifted Jonni up in a fireman’s carry, her body across my back with her injured leg over my left shoulder and her left arm over my right. I tried to shift her so her left leg was highest and her body hung down a bit to my right. That would minimize the blood pressure to the wound. Perhaps it would also increase the blood pressure to her head. Maybe that was good. Or maybe there were negative aspects to that position I didn’t know about.

  A fireman’s carry has the advantage of allowing the person doing the carry to use just one arm to hold the injured person in place. I took my free hand and put my light in my mouth, lighting my way as I clawed and scrambled and fought my way up the slope to the path.

  My right hand was holding her leg and arm over my shoulders, keeping her in place. My left hand was gripping the back of her left leg, squeezing hard to apply pressure to her femoral artery.

  I’d only climbed a few yards and her rollerblades had already caught on the bushes. But I didn’t think I could dare take the time to set her down and try to get the laces untied and the blades off. Instead, I shifted sideways a bit, leading more with her head and upper body so that the brush was deflected away from her rollerblades and less likely to catch in the mechanism.

  Jonni couldn’t have weighed more than 80 or 90 pounds, yet I was immediately winded hauling her up the slope. I knew it wasn’t just the physical effort, but the psychological strain of knowing she was dying from blood loss.

  Because my mouth was holding the light, I could only breathe through my nose.

  I shifted the light into my right hand, holding her limbs and the light at the same time. With the light out of my mouth, I could breathe better. I gasped for air as I nearly ran up the slope.

  I hit bushes. My feet hit loose rocks, making me stumble. I fell to my knees. Got up, pressed on.

  And then I came through into open space. Hard surface.

  I was on the path.

  I turned and ran. Jonni’s body was bouncing hard on my shoulders. If she had any shred of consciousness, she’d be under severe stress not just from the open wound and exposed bone, but from the bouncing motion.

  I tried to lower my body, tried to run in a smoother motion.

  My lungs burned. I couldn’t get enough air. I worried I might collapse to the ground. I couldn’t afford to let that happen. If Jonni struck her head on the asphalt, that could kill her even faster than bleeding to death.

  I focused on breathing. It became a mantra. One deep, fast breath for each running step. I was no longer going up a steep embankment, yet it felt like I was working harder than before. The path was a dark tunnel. My little light seemed to waver everywhere but down the path.

  Breathe, run.

  Breathe, run.

  After 100 yards, something seemed to leap out in front of me.

  It was my Jeep.

  I jerked open the back door and carefully shifted Jonni from my shoulders onto the seat. I positioned her on her back so her head was on the right side of the seat. I draped her wounded left leg up and over the seat back to keep it elevated. The weight of her rollerblade helped hold her foot in place. Through my pushing and pulling to get her into position, she didn’t even moan. While I was glad she wasn’t conscious to experience agonizing pain, I knew it was a bad sign. She’d bled too much, her life ebbing away with her loss of blood.

  I shut the door and opened the front passenger door.

  “Spot! Into the seat.”

  He’d done it before and knew the onl
y positions where he could fit. He sat sideways, his butt down on the floor, elbows and upper body on the seat. His back was pushed against the door as I squeezed it shut to latch it.

  I ran around and got in the driver’s side. Started the engine. Threw the shifter into Reverse and stomped on the accelerator.

  I shot backward out onto the highway, thinking about hospitals. There was one in South Lake Tahoe and one in Truckee.

  I knew that Sugar Pine Point was midway between the two. Both directions had many areas that forced slower driving. But going south entailed the switchbacks of Emerald Bay. I thought going north might be faster.

  I shifted into Drive and raced up the highway. The road surface was still dark, but the surrounding area was visible in the dawn. I flipped on my high beams and emergency flashers and ran the Jeep up to 70.

  I got out my phone and dialed 911, unaware of whether or not I had cell reception.

  “Nine, one, one emergency,” the dispatcher said, her voice exuding a professional calm.

  “This is Owen McKenna, heading north from Sugar Pine Point, approaching Tahoma. I have a passenger who is severely wounded from a fall. She cut an artery on the inside of her knee. I’ve got a compress on the wound, but she’s unconscious from major blood loss. I’m heading toward the hospital in Truckee. If paramedics with blood could meet me part way, it might save her life. If you can also contact Placer County Sergeant Santiago, he can possibly arrange for an escort. I’m in a dark-green Jeep, my flashers on.”

  “Hold the line, sir. Let me contact the hospital, first. Stay on the line.”

  The line went quiet. The silence seemed like death. I realized I’d been shouting into the phone. My throat felt raw. Maybe it was from gasping for air as I hauled Jonni up the embankment. Maybe it was from yelling at the dispatcher.

  The road had several curves. I took them at the highest speed I dared. I went past the turnoff to Chambers Landing at 65 miles per hour. After another curve, I popped out into the gathering light next to the lakeshore. To the east, the lake reflected the dawn. The water was placid, as if everything was just right in the world.