Tahoe Hijack

by Todd Borg

  I pulled Street toward me, and leaned just enough forward to see over the edge of the bow.

  The hostage taker was in the water, thrashing in panic. He gasped, sucked in water, made a horrible gargled choke as his head went below the water. Then silence.

  I gripped Street and turned away as Bukowski rushed past me and dove over the rail after the hostage taker.

  I held Street with one arm around her body, got out my pocketknife with the other hand, and cut the cords that tied her.

  She trembled as I lifted her over the rail and set her down, and we hugged as if we were grabbing onto life itself.

  FOUR

  Sergeant Bains appeared next to me. I put my windbreaker over Street’s shoulders and walked her into the Dreamscape’s salon, accompanied by Bains. We found a corner table with a wrap-around bench seat. When Bains saw that we’d be okay, he left us and went back out on deck. I kept my arm around Street. She exuded terror and shock. She hadn’t uttered a word since her first exclamation when she heard my voice. I held her in silence, rubbed her back, pressed my lips to her temple.

  A few minutes later, Bains came back into the lounge. With him was Agent Bukowski, dripping wet and shivering. A deckhand rushed up with two towels, draped one around his shoulders and handed him the other one.

  “He went down like a rock,” Bukowski said. “His backpack must have been really heavy. I watched him struggle. He ripped at the straps, trying to get the pack off, but it was stuck.”

  Bukowski rubbed his head with the towel, then used it on his clothes. He shook, it seemed, not just from the cold, but like he was shaken from the emotion of the situation.

  “At first,” Bukowski said, “just after I dived in, I thought I might catch him. He was sinking with his back down, the heavy pack pulling him. I tried to reach for him, and he reached up toward me. His sunglasses had come off and the horror on his face was something I’ll never forget. I’m a good swimmer, and I pulled hard after him, but he was sinking even faster. Then he made a burst of bubbles and his face changed from horror to slack. His mouth and eyes went wide open in death.” Bukowski made a single, involuntary shiver.

  He continued, “I was maybe thirty feet below the surface, and he was probably another thirty feet below me when I gave up. Then he disappeared from my sight. Blue pack and clothes fading into the dark blue deep. The way he was sinking, he’s probably already at the bottom, dead as dead gets.”

  He sat down near Street, leaned toward her, and spoke in a low, earnest voice. “I’m very sorry for your trouble. That was a terrible thing out there. Are you okay? Can we get you anything?”

  Street shook her head. “No thanks,” she said in a tiny voice.

  Bukowski turned away from Street as if to block her vision as he took his Glock 23 out of his concealed-carry holster, released the magazine and racked the slide to eject the cartridge in the chamber. He took the bullets out of the magazine and wrapped all the pieces in the towel. He bent down, pulled an S & W Airweight out of his ankle holster. He took out the five bullets, and wrapped them in the towel as well.

  The lounge door pushed inward and Ramos walked in. He glanced at me, nodded at Bains.

  “I saw it from out on the water,” Ramos said, “but I couldn’t hear all the words. You find out who this hostage taker was?”

  “No. But he was my midnight phone caller,” I said. “He repeated the same demand as on the phone. He wants Thomas Watson brought in for the murder of Grace Sun. He took this dramatic action to get my attention.”

  “Anything notable about him?”

  “Other than what you could see from a distance, he had a tattoo on his wrist. It looked like two infinity symbols.”

  Ramos shook his head. “We’d have to have a full time researcher on militia tats and gang tats just to keep up with current trends.” Ramos reached for a chair and pulled it up to the table. He picked a scrap of plastic packaging off the chair seat, flipped it onto the table. It was one of those little containers that disposable contacts come in.

  “Any other clue to his identity?” Ramos asked.

  “No. My guess is the same as yours. Someone who’s come up against Thomas Watson in the past and got burned bad. Someone who maybe knows the truth of Grace Sun’s death.”

  Ramos turned to Bains, gave him a questioning look.

  “No idea,” Bains said.

  “Ma’am?” Ramos said, finally acknowledging Street.

  She didn’t look up. She just stared ahead, her face largely obscured by the large hood. She shook her head.

  “What about the other guy he dumped overboard?” Ramos asked. “He say anything that would hint about who he was?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  Ramos looked out at the bright sun on the water, his eyes narrowed. “That guy had some kind of monster motivation to take Street hostage all just to get you on Tommy Watts’s case. And how did he expect it to end? If you gave him the exact response he wanted, was he going to let Street go?”

  I hugged Street harder, chin to the top of her head. I didn’t have an answer, so I didn’t speak.

  “You’re the only one who’s really spoken to this guy, Owen,” Ramos said. “On the phone and in person. What do you make of his beef with Watson? He give you any idea what it was about?”

  “No. He just wanted me to pursue Watson for Grace Sun’s murder. But he didn’t say why he believed that Watson did it or why he cared about it. When I tried to talk to him, he nearly lost it. He made me promise that I’d bring Watson in.”

  “You think he knew Grace Sun? Like maybe he had a thing for her, and that was what motivated him?”

  “I doubt it. When he mentioned her on the phone, it was impersonal. His emotion was directed toward Watson.”

  “What about you? Why did this guy pick you?”

  “Again, no specific indication. Just the obvious assumption that he learned that I had worked the Grace Sun murder, and he figured that I would have a vested interest. I think he also thought that, as an ex-cop, I would have some authority that I could use in pursuit of Watson.”

  Ramos sighed and said, “Unbelievable. A very elaborate scheme just to get you to go after Watson. Then he trips and his gig collapses.”

  “Best laid plans,” I said.

  Bains came over, tugged up on the seams of his pants and squatted down next to Street. In a low voice he said, “Okay if I get a statement from you tomorrow?”

  She nodded.

  “Thank you very much,” he said, his politeness touching.

  FIVE

  Ramos and Bukowski took Street and me back across the lake in the speedboat. We loaded into their vehicle, and they dropped us off at my cabin. Ramos didn’t ask questions of Street. He knew that Bains would get her statement tomorrow. Any further questions could be answered later, when she was more comfortable.

  Street was still in a kind of shock. Talking didn’t seem appropriate. Instead, I steered her out onto the deck and put her on the chaise that faced the mountains across the lake and the lowering western sun. Spot ignored me and went immediately to Street, sensing, as most dogs do, the wounded person in any group. He was attentive to her, if subdued, and after a hello-sniff he lay on the deck boards to her side, lifted his head and rested his chin on her thighs. She pet him absently.

  Despite the sun’s heat, Street shivered. I got my Navajo lap blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders, then brought her a small glass of foothill zin.

  I pulled the other chaise near, and we sat and watched the sunset. Spot’s eyelids wavered, then closed.

  We were silent. Street drank her entire glass of wine in fifteen minutes, possibly a new record. It appeared that she stared toward the summit of Rubicon Peak above the West Shore, one of the high mountains that looked down on Rubicon Point where she’d been strapped to an anchor chain a short time ago.

  Eventually, she spoke.

  “I don’t think he was crazy like he seemed,” she said.

  “No?”<
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  “He acted crazy. He stomped around and shouted. He was extremely agitated. But I don’t think that was really him.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Something he whispered,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “After he had me tied to the rail. After he called the boat captain. Probably when you were on your way out to the boat. He came over next to me, leaned out and looked at me. He raised his sunglasses so I could see his eyes. His eyes were piercing blue, and they radiated intelligence. He seemed rational. Then he whispered, ‘I don’t want to kill you, I’ll try not to kill you, but I will if I have to. I’m sorry if it comes to that.’ He said it in a calm, collected way. Not like the frantic way he’d been shouting.”

  “What do you make of that?” I asked.

  Street thought about it. “It suggests to me that he wasn’t a natural thug. I don’t think he was unhinged the way he appeared.”

  “I thought the man was ready for an institution,” I said. “But you think that his crazed demeanor was an act.”

  “Maybe. Probably.”

  “The implication being…” I said.

  “I think he wanted everyone to think he was wacko, that he was acting out this crazy idea. But in reality, I think he had a careful plan. The plan included acting crazy because it was more likely to be effective.”

  “You mean, effective at summoning me out to the boat and getting me to promise that I’d try to get the law after Thomas Watson.”

  “Right,” she said.

  “Did it seem to you that that was the whole point of taking you hostage? Demanding that I pursue Watson? Or was there going to be something else that he demanded?”

  “Of course, I can’t know the answer, but I’m guessing that it was all about Thomas Watson. He knew that if he took me hostage, you would do whatever he asked.”

  “Have you ever seen him before?”

  Street shook her head. “Not that I know of. But cut off his hair and beard, he would look like an entirely different person.”

  “Did you get any sense of how he knew about us?” I asked.

  “No. Certainly he could have watched us over time, or talked to any number of people in the area. I’m not well known, but you have a public profile of sorts.”

  “What about the boat cruise? Was that information in the paper or something?”

  “Not that I know of,” Street said. “But he could have found out about it any of several ways. The organizer had printed a list of all of our names and contact info and emailed it to everyone who went on the cruise. If the man who grabbed me had access to any of those people, he could have found out. And at our lunch meeting in Reno they handed out printed copies of instructions on how to get to the Tahoe Dreamscape’s pier, where the parking lot was and so forth.”

  “If he had tailed you to the lunch meeting, would there be any opportunity for him to get a copy of that list?”

  “There was a table just outside of the meeting room where the buffet was held. The table had a clipboard with the lunch sign-in sheet. Next to it was a stack of the printed sheets with the charter boat information. Anybody could have helped themselves while we were having lunch.”

  “Seems innocent enough, leaving such info out at a lunch. No one would think that it could contribute to a hostage taking. But careful plan or not, it backfired in a big way,” I said.

  “Yeah. But other than falling in the lake, everything else was orchestrated. The chains. The way he tied me to the boat rail. How he set it all up without being noticed. His call to the boat captain. And then…” she stopped.

  “Dropping his partner overboard,” I said.

  Street nodded, staring toward the mountains but seeing darker images. As Spot fell into a sleep fog, his head started to slide off of Street’s legs. Then, like a school boy snoozing in class, he caught himself with a jerk. His eyes opened, drooping, and he shifted his weight on his elbows so that his head could remain on Street’s lap and under her delicious touch. Then he gradually began to drop off again, renewing the cycle.

  “You think that murdering his partner was premeditated just like taking you hostage was?”

  She thought about it. “Yeah. You can’t suddenly decide to murder someone without being extremely impulsive, and in spite of the crazy act, he didn’t seem impulsive to me. So I think that the murder was part of the plan as well.” Street turned and frowned at me. “I remember when the fire starter kidnapped me. Like this hostage taker, the arsonist radiated intelligence. The difference is that when the arsonist was cranked up, he looked demented. His plan was simple revenge. Whereas this guy was different.”

  “Rational?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Street said. “But feral, too. Why would a person go to such lengths to get you to pursue Thomas Watson? I would think a smart guy could figure out lots of ways to get what he wanted without resorting to such an extreme act.”

  “So either he was not as smart and rational as you think, or there was something else going on that we’re not aware of.”

  “Like what?“ Street asked.

  “I don’t know. Did you get a look at his partner?”

  “Yes, but nothing much about him stood out. He was smallish, maybe five and a half feet, and thin. But rugged looking. Like he’d worked construction all of his life. His skin was tan and wrinkled even though I don’t think he was more than forty or so.”

  “Hair?” I asked.

  “Coarse, short hair. Brownish gray like a schnauzer dog.”

  “Eyes?”

  Street shook her head. “I didn’t see them.”

  “If the hostage taker’s hair was fake, maybe his partner’s hair was fake, too.”

  “I doubt it. It was cut too short to hide any of his features. And he wasn’t carefully choreographed, either. I think he was just as he appeared, a helper who was probably paid to do a job.”

  “Did the hijacker appear to focus on his helper?” I asked. “When he looked at him, was the look intense or casual?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see any look of hate. But I don’t think the hijacker would have revealed his feelings in a look. He was under more control than that. Anyway, I was mostly facing away from them, toward the water.”

  I nodded. “Maybe the plan was something completely different. A diversion of some kind. A way to draw all area law enforcement while something else went down in the Tahoe Basin with no police around to stop it.”

  “It’s outrageous to think that he may have taken me hostage for that purpose.”

  “Yeah. The crime is the same, but it trivializes what you went through and makes it even more infuriating.”

  “But if diversion was the purpose, it certainly appeared to work. While I was tied up, I saw boats from a couple of sheriff’s departments. They were probably all out there.”

  “We’ll hear in the next day or so if some other crime was committed,” I said.

  “Because the hijacker demonstrated his willingness to murder,” Street said, “if he really wanted Thomas Watson taken off the streets, it would figure that he could have just killed Watson. But he didn’t. Instead, he enlisted you to get him out of circulation another way. I wonder why?“

  “Maybe Watson would be very difficult to murder. Maybe he has a bodyguard at all times. Maybe he never comes out of his condo. Or maybe he is hyper-vigilant, and he would recognize the hostage taker if he came anywhere near.”

  Street said, “So he supposedly found out that Watson killed Grace Sun, and he learned that you were on the case, yet were unsuccessful at finding the killer. Even though you’ve been off the force for a few years, you still have a vested interest in finding the killer. That’s correct, isn’t it?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “The hostage taker could have developed his whole plan knowing that you would be motivated to get Watson before the judicial system. You would have the additional motivation of being afraid that he’d take me hostage again if you didn’t.”<
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  I nodded. “True. At least, I don’t have to worry about that.”

  Street stared down at the huge lake below us. She took a deep breath and shut her eyes. She picked up her wine glass, realized it was empty, put it back down. I went inside, came back out with the wine and refilled both of our glasses.

  Street took a sip, then spoke. “I’ve never been more afraid than I was out on that boat. I thought I was going to be sacrificed to his plan, just like the guy he came with. I stood there shivering, imagining what it would feel like to have that chain anchor pulling me down into the freezing blackness, the pressure bursting my eardrums, ice water pushing into my brain, my lungs being crushed. No human can survive more than a fraction of the depth of that lake. The thought was terrifying.”

  “You went through it because you’re connected to me,” I said. “I’m so sorry that my world puts you at risk.” I put my arm around her shoulders. The rough wool of the blanket felt warm.

  Street held her wine up so that the lowering sun shined through it and fractured into burgundy rays that danced over her face. “We don’t fall in love with someone because it is practical or safe,” she said.

  “You don’t,” I said. “But I’ve heard some women say they married for money. I’m sure men do, too. Physical and psychic safety can’t be far removed from that.”

  “As a scientist, I’m all about pragmatism and efficacy, but I could never see myself getting involved with a guy because he had a good job or a low-risk lifestyle. Maybe I’m not the romantic that you are, but I still fell in love with a guy who doesn’t make much money, who’d rather study art than pursue a practical hobby, who doesn’t even have a TV, who is unreasonably tall. You fell in love with a skinny woman who spends her life studying bugs. What kind of strange creatures are we?” Street turned to look at me.

  “You?” I said. “Passionate, brilliant, gorgeous. Me? Lucky.”

  The sun had finally warmed Street enough that her nervous shivering subsided. She pushed the blanket off of her shoulders.