Tahoe Silence

by Todd Borg

  “I’m here to talk to Callif King,” I said.

  One of them glanced over his shoulder, towards Cal, then frowned, thinking up his line, trying to be brave.

  “He’s busy right now. Would you like to leave a message?”

  The other three kids laughed.

  “Funny,” I said. I walked ahead. They contracted even tighter and contrived to intimidate me. I walked through, bumping one of them. They bounced away.

  The girls turned and looked at me. Cal looked up. He was a big kid. Probably outweighed me by twenty pounds. He telegraphed confidence and cockiness. He’d never known a time in his life when he wasn’t Numero Uno.

  “I’m Detective McKenna. Got a couple questions I’d like to ask you,” I said. One of the girls snickered.

  “What if I don’t want to answer?” he said.

  “How ‘bout I ask? If you don’t want to help, you can tell me to leave. I’ll respect your decision.”

  King Cal looked at me for a moment, trying to figure out if I were bullshitting him. For him it had always been a matter of who was bigger and tougher.

  “Silence and Charlie Ramirez have disappeared.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that,” he said.

  “Of course, not. What we need is some background on Silence and Charlie. I’ve spoken to one of their friends and you were mentioned as the guy to talk to. Charlie of course looked up to you as an extraordinary athlete, and Silence, well, I guess it’s no secret she had a crush on you.”

  The group of girls burst out giggling in unison. “Oh, that’s cute,” one of them sang out. “The silent girl who spins and stares at the floor wants to get it on with Cal.”

  “I thought they were kidnapped,” Cal said.

  “Maybe they were,” I said. “But there’s no ransom note and no other indication.

  “I don’t understand what you want from me,” Cal said.

  “What do you mean about background?”

  “We’re looking for motive,” I said. “Someone with your intelligence and position as a leader in school, you can see things that others would miss. You would see if something about those kids would make them a target. We have nothing specific to go on in looking for them, so we’re looking at everything. For example, you would notice if anyone had a grudge against those kids.”

  Cal glanced over at the girls. “Some kids, I don’t know, they have this thing about Silence. Like they take offense that she’s mental. Not that I have a problem with that.”

  “No, of course not.”

  Cal lowered his voice so that he wouldn’t be overheard. “I actually thinks she’s kind of nice. She doesn’t hurt anyone, even if she’s, you know...” he stopped talking.

  “Does anything about her come to mind that would make someone do her harm?”

  “I can’t imagine anybody doing that.”

  “What about Charlie? Is he a hothead? He ever get somebody real angry at him?”

  Cal shook his head.

  “What if some bikers came by and said something rude to Silence? Would Charlie blow up at them, give them the finger, get them coming after both him and his sister?”

  “The thing is,” Cal started, scrunching up his forehead, slowly figuring out how to say it, “Charlie’s, like, two kinds of people. On one hand, he’s Silence’s bodyguard. If anyone threatened Silence, he’d be all over them. He’s physically strong, and he’s even stronger mentally. So he can go into a situation and call the other guy’s bluff and pull it off. Know what I mean? But the other thing is, Charlie’s real smart. He can size up a situation. That’s why he’s going to be a great quarterback some day. If he looked at a situation and saw that the odds were that it would end badly, he’d make a quick retreat. Same as football. If you can see that your big move is gonna get you busted up real bad, you find a way out. You let the easy tackle get you, or you run out of bounds, whatever it takes.”

  “People like Charlie, don’t they,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah. Charlie’s a good kid. No way would anyone want to hurt him. And just knowing he’s looking out for his sister, no way would anyone want to hurt her.”

  “Thanks for your help,” I said.

  I got Mallory on my cell as I drove away. “Wanted to update you,” I said when he answered. “I’ve talked to Silence’s best friend who now lives down in Southern Cal, and Charlie’s friends here in Tahoe. Two or three things seem relatively certain.

  “One is that the kids wouldn’t run away without Charlie calling their mom. Two is that you couldn’t kidnap Charlie by forcing him on the back of a motorcycle. He was tough and he would resist. You’d have to have a car at minimum, better yet a van. Three, I don’t think anyone has heard from Charlie or Silence. I don’t think these high school kids could keep it quiet. So it’s looking more and more like a kidnapping.”

  “For the girl,” Mallory said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “An hour ago an El Dorado Sheriff’s Deputy found the boy’s body near the chain-up area below Echo Summit.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Cause of death?” I finally asked.

  “Looks like blunt-force trauma to the head.”

  After a moment I said, “I’ve learned that Charlie was the girl’s guardian and protector and main connection to the world.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” Mallory said. His voice had the fatigue that you can only hear from cops middle-aged or older. “There’s more.”

  “A ransom note?”

  “No. Writing on the boy’s forehead. Ballpoint pen. Hard to make out because the body is showing major deterioration. But it looked like strange writing. So we asked LAPD about it and they gave us the number of a professor at UCLA. We faxed a photo of it to him. He just called back. He said he’s not positive he can make it out, but it looks like a Nahuatl word for an Aztec god.”

  NINE

  Within hours South Lake Tahoe erupted as only a small town can when a much-loved child meets a tragic death. The South Lake Tahoe PD and the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department put on all their available manpower. The CHP ramped up their presence on streets throughout the California side of the basin. Diamond Martinez called from the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department on the Nevada side and said they were putting most of their deputies from Carson Valley up at the lake to help patrol any areas where bikers were hanging out, which was everywhere.

  From comments made by Mallory and Diamond, it sounded like the counties on the north end of the lake were following suit, making as big a show of law enforcement as any locals had ever seen.

  The El Dorado Sheriff had decided that the Nahuatl word on the boy’s forehead would be kept quiet so that it could be used as an identifier with anyone who eventually claimed knowledge of the murder.

  Since the body had been found, there were no more doubts about the kidnapping, and it was screamed continuously from TV and radio stations from Sacramento to Reno and featured on the national evening news broadcasts of every major news organization from coast to coast. There was a young girl out there presumed kidnapped and alive and held by the same bikers who murdered her brother. Although the media did not know about the Aztec evidence, the presumption was that because Marlette and her neighbor heard the bikers in the street, the bikers were the ones who took the kids. That the girl was autistic and could not talk captured the attention of listeners nationwide, but the fact that she was Silence, sister of beloved Charlie, threatened to rip the heart out of Tahoe.

  After I’d left the high school I inched through exceptionally heavy traffic near the “Y” intersection, the result of a huge influx of law enforcement vehicles. I reached for my cell to call Street.

  She answered with as somber a voice as I’d heard from her in memory. I could hear road noise in the background.

  “You heard,” I said.

  “Yes. El Dorado Sheriff’s Department called me at my lab. Because the body has been off to the side of the road for awhile, they want me to do a
time-of-death analysis and look for general insect evidence. I grabbed my kit and left immediately. I’m heading out Pioneer Trail now. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “Are you all right with that, working on a child?”

  “No. But they need me and I can do it. I’ve done a lot of forensic consults. I can remind myself that this is just one more.”

  “And you can remind yourself that Silence may benefit, too. Your work could help in some unforeseen way.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s been so cold at night. Does that make it difficult?”

  “Yes. If someone is killed during a cold night, there won’t be any flies to lay their eggs on the body until things warm up the next day. I’ll have to make allowances for that in my calculations. Cold also affects which species find the body. But it’s been three days since the kidnapping. If he was killed soon after the kidnapping there will be plenty of insect evidence despite the cold nights.”

  “You are made of stainless steel,” I said. “I’m amazed.”

  “Thanks, but you’re wrong. I stain very easily.” Her voice wavered. “Very easily. I better call you later,” she said, voice catching, and hung up.

  My cell rang almost immediately.

  “Owen, Glennie. You were my first call. As always.” Glenda Gorman was a reporter for the Tahoe Herald, and she wrote incisive articles with the assurance of a big-city reporter. She’d had several offers from the Chronicle and Mercury News in the Bay Area, but she was a skier and hiker and sailor and she always opted to stay at the lake.

  I was lost in my thoughts about what Street had to do in the next hour or two. I didn’t say anything.

  “This is a terribly sad one,” Glennie said. “I’m hoping to frame the story in a way that will provide the greatest chance that my words will help someone find the killer. But I will not sensationalize this.”

  “I know that, Glennie.”

  “You’re working on it, right? A woman I know from Soroptimists goes to the same church as the mother, Mrs. Ramirez.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Only, she went back to her maiden name after she got divorced. Marlette Remmick.”

  “Good to know. Anything happening at this point? Can you do a summation?”

  “Not much to tell. We had no direct evidence of the kidnapping until the boy’s body was found this afternoon. At the time of the kidnapping, both mother and a neighbor heard motorcycles in the street. So there is a possibility the kids were taken by motorcyclists. At this point, everything is supposition. There are few facts, but I will let you know if I learn anything useful.”

  I didn’t tell Glennie about the Nahuatl word written on Charlie’s forehead, because that was being withheld from the public.

  Glennie thanked me and hung up.

  I was coming up on Al Tahoe Blvd, so I turned right and drove over to the police department to see if Mallory was in. He was.

  “Come in, sit down, drink coffee, enjoy the view from the executive suite,” he said, his voice as dark as I’d ever heard it. He gestured at the windowless walls of his small office.

  I sat on a hard metal chair, wedged between two four-drawer file cabinets. My knees brushed Mallory’s metal desk. Mallory picked up a Coke can and tried to sip something from it, but it was empty. He set it down hard enough to dent it.

  “Has Marlette Remmick been informed yet?” I asked.

  “Did it myself. Just got back. The El Dorado boys wondered if they should do it. But I felt a little guilty after doubting her story before. I knew she would fall apart big time – not that I blame her – so I called Doc Lee and asked him to come along. He had to finish something at the hospital, so I waited. Doc brought his bag. After I told her he gave her a sedative and smoothed out the shock waves.” Mallory paused, revisiting what must have been an excruciating moment.

  “Did you know Doc Lee once wanted to be a cop?” Mallory said, obviously trying to find a different subject. “It wouldn’t’ve been an easy career for him, what with being a small and gentle type. Better he became a doctor. But that surprised me, Doc Lee ever wanting to be a cop.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That is a surprise.”

  “Anyway, he gave her some pills. He’d followed me over there in his own car. So I left him there. She’ll probably get through okay until she has to ID the body. But that can wait a bit.”

  “How’d she take it when you told her?”

  “The way you’d expect a mom like her would. Pretty much an explosion. If her grief was fireworks, the streamers would still be filling the sky. It was loud. There was a lot of movement. I think she loved that kid pretty good.” Mallory looked at the wall to his left.

  I don’t imagine it’s possible for Mallory’s eyes to get moist without eye drops. But I’d seen him do some squinting in the past when he was having trouble. He was squinting now.

  TEN

  Mallory told me that I should call Doc Lee before I stopped by to see Marlette. I got him on my cell.

  “She’s sleeping,” Doc Lee said. “She’ll come around later this evening. Her neighbor Rachael Clarkson was there and will be checking in on her. I told Rachael to give Marlette some soup and another pill and send her back to bed for the night. Hold on,” I heard muffled voices in the background, a soft voice over a loudspeaker, hospital sounds. “Sorry,” Doc Lee said. “What was I saying?”

  “When can I talk to Marlette?” I said.

  “Tomorrow. She’ll be sedated, so you will want to adjust your expectations accordingly.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  The next morning was Sunday, the beginning of the ten-day biker festival. Mallory called to tell me that Marlette’s neighbor Rachael took her to ID the body.

  “How’d it go?” I said.

  “About like when I told her yesterday. The woman doesn’t hold back.”

  “You think she’ll be able to talk?”

  “Give it a try, I guess,” Mallory said.

  I knocked on Marlette’s door an hour later. The woman who answered was the physical opposite of Marlette. Very rotund and almost albino white, Rachael Clarkson moved ponderously, doing a side-to-side weight shift under a pale yellow tent dress as she stepped from one foot to the other.

  “You must be the detective. The doctor told me about you. Come in, come in, Marlette’s up. I’m sure she wants to talk to you.”

  Marlette was sitting on one end of the living room couch, sunk deep down into the soft cushions. Her knees were up, her red terry cloth robe wrapped over them.

  Blue pajama bottoms protruded a few inches below her robe. She had on fuzzy blue slippers below her strong brown ankles. A cup of coffee sat next to her on the broad wooden arm of the couch. It looked like it had gone cold. Marlette clutched a framed picture to her chest. I could only see the back of the gold frame, but I was certain the picture was of her children.

  “Hi, Marlette,” I said as I sat on the edge of the nearest chair. I reached out and gently touched her upraised knee. “I’m sorry about Charlie.” It is one of those statements that overwhelms with its insufficiency, but nothing is sufficient in such a situation.

  Marlette stared over her knees at the carpet. Eventually, she spoke through gritted teeth. “They’re never coming back. Silence is probably already dead like Charlie. The police will find her body. Someone will scribble on her forehead, too. They’ll both go to their graves with graffiti on their faces!” Marlette slowly turned her head and looked at me. Her eyes were on fire. “Isn’t that right, Owen? I’m not going to be deluded about this. I have to face the facts.”

  Rachael came from the kitchen. “Marlette honey, your coffee’s gone so cold it’s probably got a layer of ice on it. Let me warm that.” She reached out her hand. Marlette didn’t respond, so I picked up the cup and handed it to Rachael.

  I said to Marlette, “They didn’t find Silence. That is a good indication that she is still alive. We can still save her. And you can help.”

  Marlette continued to look at the carp
et, but she was seeing something else, a memory of Charlie perhaps, a private moment that no one else would ever know.

  “You can help,” I repeated, “by telling me more about your family. Let’s start with your ex-husband. When was the last time you saw him?”

  Marlette didn’t look at me and she didn’t answer. She just hugged the picture frame to her chest. “They’re never coming back,” she said again in the lifeless voice.

  Rachael came slowly back, panting with effort, holding out a fresh cup of steaming coffee in one hand and a little plate with a pastry in the other. “Here you go, honey. Hot coffee and coffee cake, too. That’s what you need, honey. A girl needs to eat. No dieting at a time like this.”

  Marlette ignored her.

  I took the coffee and cake and set them on the arm of the couch.

  “Maybe Marlette needs to rest,” Rachael said to both of us. “Isn’t that right, honey? You need some quiet time. Mr. Owen should come back later. Am I right, honey?”

  Marlette didn’t speak.

  I thanked her, touched her knee again and left.

  ELEVEN

  I stopped at Street’s lab and again left Spot in the Jeep. He stuck his head out the window and moaned as I walked away. It’s a moan you’d think he perfected in acting class. It starts out high, goes down very low and ends with a little hiccup like a yodeler cracking his voice.

  I turned around. “What’s your problem, large one?”

  He wagged.

  “A few private minutes with my sweetheart is not too much to ask,” I said and pulled open Street’s door.

  Street had on an apron and white latex gloves. She sat on a stool at a high counter. She held a jar with what looked like little white grains of rice in a liquid. She was making notes in a notebook. “Hi,” she said, her voice low and serious.

  I walked over and kissed the back of her neck.

  “Have you spoken with Marlette?” she asked. “How is she doing?”