by Todd Borg
The caretaker had the boathouse unlocked and the boat ready to go. When I let Spot into the boathouse, he immediately ran past the little runabout and jumped into the powerboat. I turned on the bilge pump, then hit the button to raise the door. There were life jackets hanging on the wall. I tossed a few into the boat. After a minute, I started the engine and slowly backed out into the lake.
The water had a medium chop and sparkled deep blue. When I’d turned the boat around and gotten 500 feet from shore, I throttled up. The engine roared and the boat jumped up onto plane. I brought her around in a big sweeping turn to the north and came to the east shore community of Glenbrook a few minutes later. I turned the wheel, made another fast turn to the west and headed straight out into the lake. I slowed after half a minute and the boat settled down into the water, rocking fore and aft as the wake smoothed out.
There were no boats nearby. I looked at my watch. It was five minutes before noon. I wasn’t a mile out yet, so I kept the boat headed west at low throttle. I’d forgotten my cell phone in the Jeep, but I couldn’t have called Faith anyway because she’d refused to give me her number.
I’d gone several hundred yards farther when I spotted a boat a mile or more to the north. It started as a white speck and soon grew into a cruiser coming toward me. I got the binoculars out of the locker. Through the glasses I saw a woman up on the flying bridge, standing behind the wheel, leaning into the wind. She had long black hair, streaming back in the wind, snapping like a flag.
As she drew closer, I spotted the custom red paint job she’d described. I raised a hand towel I’d brought and waved it above my head. She saw me waving. She slowed until her boat dropped out of plane and plowed forward, nose high and trailing a large wake. When she was fifty yards away I looked again through the binoculars. She was wearing white shorts and a white sleeveless blouse. She had striking looks, a thin, willowy body and a face that was beautiful in spite of an intense frown. Even at that distance I could see the blue of her eyes, a cobalt color that glowed under her black hair.
“Mr. McKenna!” she called out, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Just stay there. I’ll pull alongside of your boat.”
She put her boat into a big curve that was designed to bring her parallel to my boat. I popped the lens covers onto the binoculars and stowed them back in the locker. She slowed to idle as she coasted closer.
Her boat was twenty yards away when it blew up.
THREE
The boat lifted in the water. Flames shot out from the boat’s sides. The entire boat blew into splinters. A huge fireball ballooned into the sky.
I turned to throw myself over Spot, but the shock wave swatted us off our feet and into the water.
The water was like ice. I jerked around toward our boat. The explosion had blown it up on edge. It loomed above us, dark and massive, balancing for a moment. I thrashed around and saw Spot behind me. I kicked and pulled with my arms. Grabbed his head. Pushed him under as our boat crashed down on us.
I held onto the skin of Spot’s neck and pulled him with me as I swam sideways to get out from under the boat. He got the idea and swam hard. We aimed for the bright, wavy surface to the side of the boat. We cleared the boat and surfaced, gasping.
Pieces of flaming wreckage fell from the sky. They hissed when they hit the water. Little bits of green paper flickered in the air like confetti. An angry cloud of smoke and ash blocked the sun. I spun around and saw our boat upside down. The stern was low in the water, the bow higher.
Even in August, Lake Tahoe is so cold that it sometimes gives swimmers heart attacks. I didn’t know what the temperature was or how long it would be before Spot and I would succumb to hypothermia. For a moment I regretted that I hadn’t worn a life vest and strapped one around Spot as well. But as I had tossed them into the boat, I’d remembered the joke that Tahoe is so cold that hypothermia will kill you anyway. All a life vest does is help people find the body.
I swam over to the stern of the overturned boat. One of the life vests was floating in the water. I grabbed it, stuck my arms through the shoulder holes and pulled it on. The strap of another vest was protruding from under the edge of the boat. I pulled it out.
“Spot! Over here!” I shouted the words, but heard nothing over the ringing in my ears. Spot shook his head. I realized that he was deafened as well. I yelled again. He paddled over.
I grabbed his front legs and put them through the shoulder straps of the vest. Spot floated at an awkward angle, more vertical than is comfortable for a dog. But if he got too cold to swim, it would help keep his head above water.
I turned back to the upside-down boat and tried to figure out a way up onto the smooth boat hull. My swim strokes were weakened by the cold. I swam around to the stern where the prop poked out of the water. It was stationary. The engine had stopped. I grabbed onto the prop with my right hand, put my left on the boat hull and boosted myself up.
The stern sunk another foot down into the water. I got my foot on the front edge of the prop and pushed up onto the hull. Air burped out from under the boat. The stern sunk farther.
I straddled the deep-V of the hull, my knees bent like a jockey on a very wide horse. One of the tourist sternwheelers was far to the south, making its way across to Emerald Bay. I knew they could never get to us in time. But I hoped that one of the tourists had binoculars trained this way when Faith’s boat blew up. The sheriff’s patrol boat or the Coast Guard could already be on their way. I scanned the rest of the lake. There was the usual assortment of boats scattered here and there, but none were closer than a couple of miles. And none were coming our way.
Spot swam to the stern of the boat. He got one of his front paws up on the slippery boat bottom. He had a strange look in his eyes. If swimming is supposed to be fun, how come we are freezing? Why couldn’t we hear anything but a shrill ringing? His jaw vibrated and his teeth chattered. I had to get him out fast.
I inched my way up the hull toward the bow. The V of the hull got more pronounced as I moved forward. Spot could never get up at the front of the boat. The slope was too steep, too high and too slippery. But pulling him up on the stern would release the remaining air that kept the boat afloat. I turned back toward Spot. He’d taken his paw off the stern. Dogs don’t tread water. He was swimming in circles. I dove in.
I’d only been out of the water a minute, yet the cold was as shocking as before. I submerged and propelled myself under the boat.
My head was in the air pocket of the boat’s cockpit. It was too dark to see. I swept my arms across the water’s surface. My hand hit a life jacket. I clenched its straps. Then I hit a seat cushion. Boat cushions are designed to float. Most of the seat cushions were still attached to the seats. I found the Velcro patches and tugged them free.
There were cleats on the corners of the stern where the rear of the boat was under water. I submerged with a cushion, dragging it underwater, and wrapped the Velcro loop around the cleat. It took a couple minutes to get all the cushions and the other life vests attached. When I was done I’d added several hundred pounds of buoyancy to the stern of the boat.
Spot was still swimming in circles when I emerged from under the boat back into the blinding daylight. He was moving slowly, a dull confusion on his face.
“C’mon, your largeness,” I said. My enunciation was slurred with cold.
He didn’t hear me. I gestured. He swam toward the stern which was floating higher than before.
“Up on the boat, boy,” I said as he drew close. He put a paw up on the slippery hull. I grabbed onto the prop. “You gotta push off, Spot. Use my legs.”
Spot didn’t respond. I reached down and caught one of his rear legs. I pulled it up across my thighs. I got an arm under his abdomen and heaved up. Spot slapped his other front paw up onto the hull. He dug his claws into the slippery surface. He kept his chest to the hull as he clawed and slipped his way forward a foot, just to the left of the prop. He was wracked with shivers. I knew he could slip at any
moment and slide back into the lake. He had all four legs spread out, claws trying to grip the algae-slick hull.
“Okay, boy, up a little and shift to the right.” He was about to slide off to the left. I was unable to push him farther up the hull. I lowered back down into the water and went around to the right side of the prop. If I got my weight to the right side of the hull, maybe I’d cancel out Spot being on the left.
I kicked and raised myself up a bit. But I was too weak with cold and could do nothing more than hang there. Most of me was still in the water. We clung to the boat, shivering violently. The sun was hot, but it wasn’t slowing our descent into hypothermic shock.
Air bubbled up on the sides of the boat. It rode lower in the water and listed to the left. My thinking was dulled by cold. More air came out. Each time the cockpit burped, the boat sank farther. Soon, the prop was low enough that it was under water. As was all of me from the neck down. We were going to sink, and there was nothing I could do.
FOUR
Words came from behind me. I strained to make them out through the ringing in my ears.
“Easy, now, Tam,” a voice shouted. “I’ll hold course straight into the wind. We should have just enough momentum to come up next to the boat’s stern. She’ll be on our port side. Get ready with the boat hook.”
“What do you want me to grab? The guy?”
“No, the prop. Can you see it? Under the water, next to him? Shit, we’re going too fast. Okay, ready? Grab it, Tam! Grab it!”
I turned to see a large sailboat drawing up alongside, its sails luffing in the breeze. A woman was leaning out, hanging onto the headstay with one hand. Her other hand held a boat hook. She aimed in my direction and missed. The sailboat was coasting upwind, right on past our boat.
The woman ran down the side of their boat, trying to keep even with ours. She reached the boat hook out over the water again.
I grabbed the end of the boat hook with one hand while I held the prop of our boat with the other. The sailboat’s momentum brought me around through the water until I was strung tight between the two boats.
“Hold on, Tam!” the man shouted. He jumped up from the tiller and grabbed onto the boat hook. The two of them held tight while my shoulders threatened to dislocate. I concentrated on making my hands grip. The sailboat stopped moving and the two boats drew back together.
“Tam, can you release the halyard and drop the mainsail? Then the jib? I’ll shift to the stern. We’ll let Bessie drift around, bow downwind. The overturned powerboat will act like a sea anchor. Then we can get this man and his dog aboard.”
The man tossed me a line which I fumbled around the prop. I couldn’t manage a knot, so I wrapped it around several times. The man pulled the boats stern-to-stern and lashed them together. I got my arms around Spot and helped him slide down the hull to where the two boats met.
The sailboat had a platform at water level to make it easy for swimmers to climb aboard. I helped Spot step onto it. From there he put his front feet on the transom and climbed over it into the cockpit of the sailboat. I was next. It took both the man and the woman to get me out of the water and into the boat. The woman put a jacket around my shoulders, then handed me a towel and helped me dry off.
“Michael Lemas,” the man said, putting his hand out. His voice sounded like it came through a string and tin can.
“Owen McKenna. Thank you.” I lifted my numb hand and we shook. His hand was like fire on my frozen fingers.
“I’m just glad you’re alive. Your dog, too. Tamara and I were coming out from Glenbrook when we saw a fireball. A huge boom came a few seconds later. Frankly, I’m surprised your boat is still floating, even if it is upside down. All the fire damage is top side?”
“No, it was another boat that exploded. Someone I was meeting.”
Michael’s face went pale. He turned to Tamara. She put her hand on his arm. “The other person is...”
“I don’t think she felt a thing.”
“Oh, my God.” He sat down on the cockpit chair. Tamara leaned against him, horror in her eyes.
Pointing downwind, the sailboat was much less stable than Jennifer’s powerboat had been. Spot stood with his legs spread wide, trying to balance, lethargic with cold, still shivering.
“Should I get something for your dog?” Tamara finally said. “Poor thing is freezing.”
“A couple of towels to put over him would be great. Something to lie on as well, if you have it.”
Michael opened a locker and pulled out two well-stuffed sail bags while Tamara went down into the cabin. Michael dropped the bags and stepped on them to partially flatten them out.
I pointed to the bags. “Here you go, Spot.” He stepped onto the sail bags, squatted down on his haunches and lowered until his elbows touched. His teeth began a new beat to their chattering.
Tamara came back up with two blankets. She wrapped them around Spot and held him, whispering into his ear.
I sat numb and useless while Michael and Tamara untied the two boats and then hoisted the sails. We headed back to Glenbrook. When I’d warmed enough to speak clearly, I used Michael’s cell phone to put in a call to Diamond Martinez of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department. When he answered I had to ask him to talk louder three times, unconsciously raising my own voice until I was shouting myself. Eventually, we communicated and he was at the pier looking through binoculars when we docked a half hour later.
“You said a boat blew up when it was near you?” Diamond said.
“Yeah. About twenty yards away.”
“Why so close in the middle of the lake?”
“I was meeting the person in the other boat. She was about to pull alongside when it happened.”
“This a person you know?”
“Never met her before.”
“You know her name?”
“Faith Runyon.”
I gave Diamond all the details beginning with Faith’s phone call the day before. Diamond took careful notes and asked dozens of questions.
“You’re thorough,” I said when he was done.
“I’m going for Sergeant,” he said. “Don’t want to screw up.” He looked again through the glasses, then handed them to me. I trained the binoculars out at the lake. There were two Sheriff’s Patrol boats and a Coast Guard boat all near Jennifer’s overturned boat. A man leaned out holding a pole with a net on the end, scooping up pieces of debris.
Spot and I had drip-dried by the time Diamond finished taking my statement, although Spot still shivered. We got into Diamond’s Explorer for a ride to the Salazar mansion so we could switch to my Jeep.
“Some of the marinas have large boat hoists,” Diamond said. “I’ll see if Jennifer’s boat can be lifted out. Nice boat like that would be worth trying to save.”
I thanked Diamond, and he drove away. Spot and I got into the Jeep and headed home.
FIVE
It was a warm afternoon. When we got to my cabin Spot walked out onto the deck and lay down in the sun. I joined him. We were soon baking. I moved into the shade while Spot flopped over onto his side, his huge tongue protruding onto the deck as he panted.
The phone rang. It was Mallory from the South Lake Tahoe PD.
“Yes, captain,” I said.
“They call us commanders, now,” he said.
“That’s right. I keep forgetting.”
“I got a call. You and your hound okay?”
“Except for our ears.”
“What happened?”
I filled Mallory in beginning with Faith’s first call.
“It’s all on the Nevada side, which means Diamond’s jurisdiction, but call me if I can help.”
“I will,” I said. “Thanks.”
Spot was still lying in the sun.
“Spot, you should move to the shade.” I pointed.
He ignored me and panted.
I kept seeing Faith Runyon standing in her boat, giving me a wave just before her boat exploded. I couldn’t grasp the mag
nitude of what had happened.
My ears still rang. I reached up and rubbed them. A sharp pain pricked my temple. I felt the skin and pulled out a splinter. It was a white needle of fiberglass, part of Faith’s boat.
She had said almost nothing that hinted of who she was or what she knew about Glory. I thought she had the classic symptoms of paranoia, being watched, followed and having her phone line tapped.
Faith said she lived in Squaw Valley. I looked in the book, but there was no listing under Runyon. I called Information. They had nothing. I looked in the Yellow Pages. There were no Personal Consultants.
Maybe there were other things I should look up. But my brain was too foggy. I dialed Street and got her machine. Not wanting to alarm her about the explosion, I left a vague message.
My head had begun to pound, so I ate some aspirin. I sat out on the deck with Spot as the sun settled in the west. Eventually, the cold of evening drove us inside and I went to bed without fixing dinner for either of us.
Sleep came fast in the beginning. But I awoke in the middle of the night and couldn’t shake the image of Faith standing there, blue eyes radiant, as she was engulfed in the fireball. She hadn’t officially hired me. But she’d called for help. I owed her.
SIX
The phone was chirping. It wouldn’t stop. I looked at the clock. It was early in the morning.
“Owen, are you all right?” Street said when I mumbled hello. “I heard about the boat exploding on the news. I was so worried! I called several times.”
“Sorry, I had the ringer on low and didn’t hear it. Yes, I’m okay. Spot, too. We have some ringing in our ears, but no other injuries.” I told Street about the previous day, and she eventually calmed.
“I can tell you were sleeping,” she said. “I’ll let you go back to bed. Call me, okay?”
