Tahoe Ice Grave

by Todd Borg

  I found several messages in my inbox. The third one was about my question. It was from someone named Zeus.

  “Mr. McKenna, I met Thos Kahale at a business retreat in Napa. (I am also in the wine business.) I did not know Thos well. In fact, we met in a hot tub, traded email addresses, and never saw each other again.

  I also do not know the identity of his friend Hermes. But I wonder if you have checked your Greek mythology. Did you know that Hermes was the god of thieves and liars? Perhaps this has nothing to do with your inquiries, but because Hermes is such an unusual name I thought it may have been chosen for a reason. I figured you would want to know just in case it has any bearing.

  Good luck,

  Zeus.”

  I spent the next half hour researching Hermes on the Internet. I learned that Hermes was the Greek equivalent of Mercury for the Romans. Hermes was the messenger god, the god of business and trade and was a great orator.

  But as Zeus said, Hermes was also the god of thieves and a grand liar. Maybe the Greeks thought that to be very successful in business, one had to be a thief. Maybe they thought that to be a great orator, one had to be a liar.

  I didn’t know what it meant regarding Thos. Being a messenger would not have any significance that I could see, unless Hermes was an agent for Thos. But that seemed too much like secret agent stuff in spy novels. However, if Hermes chose his name because he is a liar, then I had no idea what that suggested about the emails he’d written. Probably, it was something he did for fun. Something no one would understand except fellow students of Greek mythology.

  It was like art. I’d learned that many artists put certain references to other art in their works. One didn’t need to understand them or even know of their existence to enjoy the work. But for artists, scholars and other insiders, the references informed the work. Sometimes the visual comments were simple and playful, sometimes they were serious signs of respect or disrespect, and sometimes they turned the work into a full-blown homage to another artist or work of art. When done, the work took on a new meaning, far from the initial, obvious subject.

  I wondered if Hermes was an email artist, picking his pseudonym with great care for the subtle and not-so-subtle flavor it gave to his messages. Messenger god, liar and thief. A deeper meaning lurking behind the obvious.

  My Calder and Rodin were home on my shelf, but I could visualize them clearly. They both had that quality of many layers of meaning. More is revealed each time you look at them. In the beginning, the Calder was about movement and play and the Rodin was about young love. Eventually, the Calder came to be about balance and the Rodin about passion, both in a metaphorical way that went beyond the materials and the shapes. But while the artists presented the obvious, it was up to the viewer to dive beneath the surface and find the rest. I assumed that I had yet to crack open the core of what Calder and Rodin were all about.

  As I thought about the two sculptures, I remembered what Janeen’s father Francis Plummer had said. He’d been taught not to volunteer information where it hadn’t been requested. His daughter Janeen had talked at length. His son-in-law Jasper had told me everything that came to mind. But what else did Plummer know about this?

  I stood up. “What did Newton say, your largeness?” Spot turned his eyes toward me, but not a muscle in his body twitched. “An object at rest tends to stay at rest?” I walked over and nudged his prostrate form with the toe of my shoe. “Let’s see if we can turn you into an object in motion.” I nudged harder. Spot groaned, but didn’t move. I nudged again. “You were in motion playing with Phillip. C’mon, big guy, you can snooze in the Jeep.”

  I had to tug on his collar before he finally got up. We went down the stairs and out into a snow storm that was acting more serious than I’d seen in a long time.

  I powered up Kingsbury Grade through thinning traffic. Although the day was still young, many people had quit work and gone home to wait out the storm. Even the tourists had given up trying to see the ski runs through their foggy goggles and headed back to the spas in their hotels and condos. The heavy traffic of South Lake Tahoe disappeared as I climbed higher up the mountain.

  For a time I worried they would close Daggett Pass, but I got over without a problem and headed down to the Carson Valley.

  The snow was now falling across the valley, but it was light and the driving was much better than up in the mountains. I got to Francis Plummer’s camper without delay. He was inside the little box, and opened at my knock. He nodded recognition when he saw me and beckoned me to come in.

  I ducked my head and squeezed through a doorway made for miniature people, then sat across from him at a little fold-out table that made me feel like I was a giant in Barbie-Doll land. Our knees touched and my head brushed the built-in cupboard above me.

  We made no small talk.

  “I had a few more questions,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Did Thos ever talk to you about his friends?” I asked.

  The man shook his head.

  “But Thos visited you from time to time?”

  “He’d stop by every year or so.”

  “What did he talk about?”

  “Nothing much,” Plummer said. “Asked how I was doing. Things like that.”

  “There is a person I’m looking for,” I said. “But I don’t know who the person is. I only have an email name. He or she goes by Hermes. It’s the name of one of Thos’s email friends. Is there any chance Thos ever mentioned someone named Hermes?”

  “Of course,” Plummer said. “But I don’t know that we ever used the name Hermes when we talked about him.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “I get email from Hermes, too. But Thos and I always use his real name. In fact, I think Thos was the one to give him the name Hermes. I don’t know what it means.”

  I glanced at the little trailer with no sign of electricity. I’d never guess he had a computer. But he carried a cell phone in his pocket. Maybe he had a laptop as well. “Mr. Plummer, who is Hermes?”

  “Phillip, of course.”

  I stopped. Mental gears shifted, reversed direction, shifted again. Hermes was the little kid who used an abacus and didn’t own a computer. He was almost certainly going to be the target of the Viking if the Viking learned he was Hermes. I thanked Francis Plummer, turned and squeezed out through the little door. I was heading for the Jeep when I heard Plummer calling out. I stopped and ran back to where Francis Plummer stood.

  “I’m sorry, what were you saying?” I was breathing fast.

  “Just that it is strange that two different people ask about Phillip in the same day.”

  “Somebody else asked?”

  “Yes. Phillip’s teacher was here an hour ago. He was in the area and stopped by. He said Phillip often talks about me in class. I guess the boy is proud of his Washoe heritage. His teacher told me I’m a good role model, so he wanted to meet me.”

  “What did you and the teacher talk about?”

  “Phillip, mostly. How he does in class. How good he is in math and how he can do almost anything with his abacus and on the school computer as well.”

  “What is his teacher’s name?”

  Plummer shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Mr. Plummer, did you and the teacher talk about email?”

  “Actually, we did. He wanted my email address so he could stay in touch with me.”

  “Did he want Phillip’s, too?”

  “Oh, I think he already had Phillip’s.”

  “Are you certain? Did he say he had it?”

  “Well, I suppose I’m not certain. But we talked about Phillip and his nickname Hermes, so I assume he must have Phillip’s email address.”

  “Mr. Plummer, this is very important. Who used Phillip’s email name first? Did his teacher say the name Hermes first, or did you?”

  Francis Plummer thought a bit. “I don’t know for sure, but it may have been that I said it first. Why does it matter?”


  “What kind of car did he drive?”

  “I don’t know. One of those big four-wheel-drives.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Phillip’s teacher? Not the way teachers used to, I can tell you that. Long blond hair, big beard...”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  I didn’t hear the rest of Francis Plummer’s words as I sprinted for the Jeep.

  I jumped in, key in hand, started it as I shifted into reverse and floored the accelerator. Snow and gravel shot out from under my tires as I flew down the trail.

  The country lane had a thicker layer of snow than before and I fishtailed back and forth when I turned onto the road. Spot was thrown about in back.

  I got on the cell phone as I raced across the valley floor, dialing Mallory first. The moment his voice mail answered, I hung up and dialed the dispatch number.

  “Shirley? This is Owen McKenna. Can you patch me through to Mallory, please,” I shouted.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. McKenna, he’s not available.”

  “Can you tell me where he is? He will want this call.”

  “A big rig jackknifed trying to turn onto Ski Run Boulevard from Highway Fifty. A dozen cars are involved, several injuries. Half the force is over there. The chief tried Captain Mallory a few minutes ago and couldn’t raise him, either.”

  “Is the traffic moving through?”

  “No, they’re directing all traffic over to Pioneer.”

  I thanked her and hung up.

  I thought about how to get roadblocks in place. For Kingsbury Grade I could call Diamond, but the Viking was an hour ahead of me. Even with the heavy snow, he’d probably be down off the grade and heading around the lake before Diamond could coordinate a roadblock on the Nevada side.

  I dialed Mallory’s voicemail again and left a message. “Mallory, I’m in the Carson Valley, headed up to Tahoe and Janeen Kahale’s house. Ole Knudson, the Viking, is on his way there to find Phillip. He thinks Phillip knows where the Mark Twain manuscript is. You’ll want to send a couple patrols out there immediately. Knudson has about an hour lead on me, so he is probably coming down into town as I speak. If you can alert your men directing traffic, tell them to look for any man with long blond hair and a big beard. I don’t know the vehicle make, but it is probably a sport utility vehicle. Tell them to use any pretense to stop him.” Then I tried Diamond. When he answered I gave him the same information. He said he’d get on it.

  Next, I dialed Janeen’s number. It rang and rang, but there was no answer.

  I hung up, trying to calculate the driving time as I hit the bottom of Kingsbury Grade and started the 3000-foot climb into the storm clouds. I estimated the drive to Janeen’s to be about two hours at the rate the snow was coming down. If I pushed it to the limit, I could make up some of the hour lead he had.

  I pressed the accelerator to the floor. All four wheels dug into the snow and we shot up the mountain.

  I pushed it to an extreme degree, engine roaring, four-wheel-drive churning. The snow got thicker and heavier as I gained altitude. I came upon a Lexus going my way. The car had chains on and was driving twenty-five miles per hour. I flicked on my high beams, moved into the oncoming lane and flew by at seventy. Snow and slush arced up from my wheels, covering the fancy car like a wet blanket.

  An oncoming truck approached as I pulled back into my lane. The moment it went by I veered back out into his lane to pass more cars. Spot was hunkered down in the back seat, trying to resist being thrown back and forth.

  A thousand feet up the grade, the snow grew denser on the highway. My steering became vague and I knew my tires were hydroplaning. I slowed to fifty to keep contact between tire and road.

  Heavy snow blew sideways under a darkening sky. My wipers were on high and my defroster was on the warmest setting. But the snow was building up on the windshield too fast. The accumulation of frozen crud on the glass had me straining to see through the six-inch patch of glass where the wipers still made minimal contact.

  I slowed down a bit, grabbed the scraper and hit the button to lower my window. It took concentration to scrape in time with the wiper blade, chasing it toward the center, then retreating quickly as it came back. I got most the left side of the windshield cleared and rolled my window back up.

  I sped up as much as I dared, passing cars and trucks with abandon. Eventually I crested the pass and slowed as the road plunged down at a steep angle. I went easy on the brake, letting my speed build up. The wind whistled at the side window and the snow was moving horizontally.

  It was an agonizing descent to the lake, slowed by the darkness of evening and the occasional car with chains. I pushed it hard enough that I spun out on one corner, hitting the snow bank at the shoulder before gunning it back onto the road.

  Highway 50 was emptier than before. Every sensible person had long since gotten off the road. I weaved in and out of the few vehicles near the casinos and flashed across the state line under a yellow light that turned to red as I entered the intersection.

  I took the turnoff to Pioneer Trail so I could avoid the accident at Ski Run. From Pioneer I followed back roads and shot back out onto Highway 50 a half mile after the accident.

  At the far end of town, I turned right on Emerald Bay Road and raced out toward the Spring Creek neighborhood. When I got to Camp Richardson, I dialed her number again and listened to the ring over the roar of the wind outside the Jeep. Again, no one answered. I redialed just to be certain. Either Janeen had left home or she was dealing with the Viking. I hung up. I would be there in a few minutes.

  The wind gusted so hard that my Jeep rocked sideways. The wipers and the defroster were on high. But the snow was again building up on the windshield. The dull gray twilight had given way to darkness and I could see almost nothing but the snow in my headlights.

  I lowered the window and was working with the scraper once again when my phone rang. I hit the button to roll the window up and snatched the phone off the passenger seat. “Hello!” I shouted.

  “Owen?” The single word was a tiny, plaintive keening. It took me a second before I realized it was Janeen.

  “Janeen, what’s wrong?”

  She could barely speak. “The blond man...” Her breathing was audible over the phone. “I saw him through the window and kept the door locked. But he broke down the front door.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I think...” she stopped mid-sentence.

  I took a curve too fast and the rear end fishtailed dangerously. “I’ll be there in a few minutes. What about Phillip? Is he okay?”

  “I don’t know. He’s gone.” Her words had long spaces between them. “He went out the kitchen door. The man ran after Phillip.”

  “Any idea where Phillip went?”

  “No. Into the storm. Before...” she stopped again and breathed. “Before the man came, Phillip walked out of his room and said he’d figured out who killed Thos. Then Phillip looked out the window like he’d heard a noise. He must have seen something because he ran into the kitchen, grabbed his jacket and snowshoes and went out the kitchen door. He said, ‘don’t worry, nana, I know where to go.’” Janeen stopped again. I pushed down on the accelerator and drove even faster.

  Janeen continued, her words slower than before. “I don’t have snowshoes...” she faded off for the second time.

  “Janeen! Can you hear me?”

  “I’m bleeding. I was chopping onions.” Her words were soft and faint. “I tried to fight.” She stopped. Her breathing had a sudden gurgle in it. “He stabbed me with my knife.”

  “Janeen, I’m going to hang up and call nine-one-one.”

  She mumbled something. I couldn’t make it out.

  “I didn’t hear you, Janeen. What was it? Say it again.”

  There was no answer. I tapped the brakes, slid around a tight corner. “Janeen? Can you hear me?”

  I heard her breath catch. She gave a weak cough. Her breathing sounded like she was sucking air through liq
uid.

  THIRTY-NINE

  I pressed the buttons for 911 as I skidded around a tight bend in the road.

  Nothing happened.

  I dialed again. “We’re sorry,” a synthetic voice said. “All circuits are busy. Please try your call later.”

  I disconnected and dialed Jerry Roth.

  “Jerry here,” he called out over a loud, roaring noise. The sound was like a giant fan blowing into his phone.

  “Jerry, Owen McKenna calling,” I shouted.

  “Who? Oh, McKenna. Just a moment, let me turn the telly down.” The roar got louder and then suddenly stopped. “Sorry ‘bout that, old man. One of those disaster movies. Killer tornado and all that. What can I do for you?”

  “Janeen Kahale just called me. Ole Knudson broke into their house.”

  “What!”

  “Phillip has gone into the woods on his showshoes. Janeen said the man took off after Phillip. I was hoping the boy would double back to your place.”

  “Good God! Should I run over to Janeen’s? But what if the boy comes over here? I should be here. Poor Phillip must be scared to death. What should I do?”

  “Stay put in case Phillip shows up. I’m almost there. I’ll go to Janeen’s house and put Spot onto the tracks. Call nine-one-one. Janeen needs an ambulance in addition to the police. When they arrive, you should be outside to show them where the Kahale driveway is. Otherwise, they’ll never find it with all the snow.”

  “Got it,” Jerry said.

  I hung up and concentrated on my driving. My headlights shined on a blinding curtain of snow whipping horizontally across the road. I focused on looking through it, watching the hints of previous tire tracks to see where the highway was. When I came to Spring Creek Road, I braked hard and cranked the wheel aiming more from memory than from what I could see in the dark.