Tahoe Avalanche

by Todd Borg

  Bill had shucked out of his snowshoes and tossed aside his crutch poles. He was down on the snow, churning up toward us at an astonishing pace. He wasn’t belly-crawling, and he wasn’t up on his hands and knees. It was a kind of crab run, employing hands and feet and elbows and knees. Like a sand crab sprinting across a beach, Bill was a snow crab on overdrive. He moved up the slide as fast as I’d run up it, and he got to us in less than a minute.

  “I heard you talking,” Bill shouted between gasping breaths. “Carmen is the killer?”

  “Yeah,” I said, as I scooped snow.

  “Which one is Carmen?” he shouted.

  I pointed. “Over there, where Bains is digging,” I said. I gestured at the hole next to us where Rosten was digging. “I think April is under here.”

  Bill looked toward Bains who was digging down toward Carmen. In flashes of Rosten’s headlight, Bill’s leathery forehead was as wrinkled as rhinoceros skin. His eyes were pinched together, anxiety concentrated at the bridge of his nose.

  Several times over the years, I’d seen people make tough decisions, triage imbued with moral ambiguity. But it wasn’t like that with Bill. He made a little nod to himself as if he’d suddenly found a clear resolve.

  Bill splayed his legs out at an angle and jammed his boots into the snow, the metal braces digging in like crampons. He began shoveling just below Spot.

  Although Rosten was younger and fitter and stronger than Bill, Bill moved more snow in the next two minutes than Rosten and I had in total.

  Spot cried out, and I knew he’d gotten to April.

  “Good Boy!” I said as I moved him aside so I could see. Spot had gone directly to the top of her head. I took off my right glove and pulled off her knit cap so that I could get my fingers down next to her temples. Bill handed me a flashlight, and I shined it into the hole. I scooped snow out from around the sides of her head, digging my fingernails into the cement-like snow. I found her face and worked to clear the snow away so that she would have air if she was still breathing. My fingers caught on something near her mouth. It was the woven Washoe Star.

  “Her body goes this way,” I said, pointing. “Bill, if you dig over to the side and down. I think you’ll be over her hips.”

  Rosten was shifting, trying to shovel at the best angle.

  “You’re sure this is April?” Bill asked, his lungs huffing like bellows.

  I had cleared more snow from around her face. “Yes. And she’s still breathing.”

  EPILOGUE

  We were at Heavenly, up above the top station of the gondola. It was the beginning of May, a day for the mountain gods, windless and 50 degrees, the cloudless sky like sapphires dissolved in the heavens, and the lake, 3000 feet below, glowing a deep, rich blue.

  Street and Bains and Rosten were trying to talk over the blast of the announcer on the loudspeaker. Diamond and Spot were smart enough not to compete with the surrounding noise. Diamond lay back on the blanket, sipping his Tecate, watching the racers. Spot lay next to him, his head on Diamond’s lap, his rhinestone ear stud glinting in the high altitude sun.

  Glennie was pummeling me with questions.

  “You promised you’d give me an exclusive.”

  “Ask away.”

  “Is it true what Rosten told me, that Bains kept digging for Carmen while you and Rosten and Bill dug for April?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So Carmen didn’t die for neglect? Bains just didn’t get to her in time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you all went back up the mountain two weeks ago to camp and dig in the snow?” Glennie asked.

  “Not Bill. He had to go to Houston and take care of some business. I went up with April and Street and George Clooney meets Pierce Brosnan.”

  Glennie turned and slugged Bains on the shoulder. “But he won’t even tell me where you were digging.”

  “No. We have an agreement.”

  “And the big snowfall the day after you came back covered your tracks,” she said. “Your secret is safe. But you found the coins under all the rubble from the avalanche? That’s incredible.”

  “Just four of them. We wouldn’t have even gotten those, but with this incredible spell of warm weather, the snowpack was reduced. Even so, we dug for hours, three days in a row. Bill also got us a very techy long-range metal detector. The four coins we found were scattered. There might be more, but they’re probably buried for good. The avalanche kicked loose a lot of rock.”

  “And the sixty-four thousand dollar question?” Glennie said.

  “Actually, that’s pretty close. The coin broker said that adding four eighteen-seventy CC Double Eagles to the tiny stock that’s out there reduces the value of all of them. They weren’t in excellent condition, but their existence still creates a worry that more will be found, which reduces demand further. If there’d been just one, it would have been worth over a hundred grand. But we were very glad that the broker found a buyer willing to pay seventy-five thousand each for the four. Three hundred, total. And the price will go down further if we find more of them.”

  “Bains said that you’re giving it away.”

  “We left that decision to April. She’s the only person left alive who was in that class. She decided to donate it, half to a sports charity for physically-challenged athletes, and half to a nonprofit that builds houses in the Dominican Republic.”

  Glennie smiled and nodded. “And if you find more coins when the snow melts this summer?”

  “Same agreement.”

  “What about the mountain man avalanche instructor?”

  “Claude Sisuug? My guess is that Paul Riceman or Carmen killed him. With both of them dead, we’ll never know. Maybe Sisuug’s body is up on a mountain someplace, killed in an avalanche. Or maybe he walks out of the wilderness a year from now.”

  “How is it that Carmen got Paul in the avalanche off his own roof?”

  “We’ll never know that for sure, either. Maybe she tossed a coin under the eave to entice him to walk under the roof. Then she pulled on the rope she’d strung from the upper deck and broke the cornice off.”

  “Either way,” Glennie said, “a multiple murderer dies, not too many complain. And with Carmen dead, as long as none of you tells, the location will be secret forever.”

  “Right.”

  “The people in the avalanche class also had an agreement not to tell the location,” Glennie said.

  “So?”

  “At least two of them told other people. Isn’t that a possibility with this new group?”

  “No.”

  “You sound so sure.”

  “A detective has to be a good judge of character.”

  Glennie pushed my shoulder, and we focused again on the event that was going on around us.

  The loudspeakers barked from up in the trees and over by the barbecue tent.

  “Okay folks, that was Olaf Olson, from Trondheim, Norway, kicking butt with twenty-four seconds at the finish gate! That’s good enough to move Olaf into second place in the Tahoe Challenge!”

  For the fourth or fifth time, a vigorous cheer went up from three women sitting on a blanket near us.

  “Go Olaf,

  Go Olaf,

  Go, go Olaf!”

  The women were all blonde, blue-eyed, and in their twenties. Their accent was clear, even with their limited cheer vocabulary.

  “Must be the Norwegian contingent,” Street said.

  “Are they eating lutefisk?” Diamond asked.

  “No, they’re eating Big Macs,” I said.

  “But if they are from Trondheim,” Diamond said, “I can see some young men around here who are going to sign up to take Norwegian classes and then book travel to Norway.”

  The man they’d been cheering came around the curve at the bottom of the run. He used his powerful arms to pull at the snow and keep his ski sled coasting toward the crowd that was spread out across the snow, sitting on blankets and fold-up chairs, eating hotdogs and drinking beer
from big plastic cups. Olaf worked it so that he slowed to a stop when he got to the girls on the blanket. He tipped the ski sled over on its side, timing the move so that he literally fell out of the sled and into their laps. They shrieked with excitement. As the women hugged him, I couldn’t help thinking that a picture of his huge grin would change the heart and mind of any handicapped person who had similarly withered legs and thought that they were an insurmountable obstacle to a joyful life.

  The announcer continued, “Hey, all you beach babes, next up in the starting gate, hailing from all the way over in the Tahoe Keys, is a new contestant on the Tahoe Challenge circuit, William Esteban!”

  The announcer kept talking over the giant speakers, but he was drowned out by a new cheer that rose up from a group of dozens of people, mostly young, including Packer and Will and Ada, the girl who decided not to go to France with her parents. They were all led by April who was standing in front of them, her back to the mountain. She had her arms up, a bare hotdog for a baton, and she directed with the energy of Leonard Bernstein.

  “Hey, Bill!

  Show us, Bill!

  How fast do you go, Bill?

  Who’s the best,

  On his sled?

  It’s obviously Bill!”

  The announcer’s voice was once again audible as the cheer paused. “...on the upper course, and he’s really pushing that custom blue sled into the turns. Annnnnd Esteban is unscathed through the double gates seven and eight! Now he’s carrying that speed into the royal flush. This is the trickiest part of the course, folks! He’s got to graze those gates... Watch himmmmmm... and he made it! Esteban is running like a true veteran! He’s coming up to the big turns beginning at gate fifteen. He’s pushing it hard, folks, with more speed on board than any other contestant, and he’sssssss, he’s down!”

  We watched as Bill’s sled went down on its side, spinning in circles, taking out several gates. He tried to pop it back up on the ski like a kayaker righting his vessel. The sled wavered and went down on the other side. Bill dragged his outrigger crutches to slow down. When he finally came to a stop, he levered his crutches into the snow and got the sled back up on its ski. He worked his outriggers on each side of the sled, maintaining a precarious balance until he picked up a little momentum.

  Bill angled back across the course, going very slowly, then coasted, wobbling, directly toward us. He made an awkward stop, pulled himself out of the sled and crab-walked over to us. He sat on the snow, his nerves making his metal knee braces clatter like castanets. April waved at him and he made a little self-conscious nod.

  I watched her as she shifted, and it was obvious that she was about to stand up, about to come over and begin anew with Bill. But she stopped, hesitant, and I thought about the frozen mass of snow we dug through to pull her out, alive, but just barely. Even though she was unconscious, Bill was slow to reach out and touch her. But he eventually did, and she would eventually connect with him as well. Their relations would thaw and some day generate warmth, but it would be like watching mountain snow melt in the summer. It would happen, but it would take a long time.

  Bill pulled off his Washoe Star and handed it to me. His hands shook. “Maybe I don’t need this anymore. I want you to have it.”

  I took the Washoe Star and put it around my neck. I handed him an iced tea, and he thrust it, shaking, to the sky. April beamed more brightly than all three Norwegian girls put together, and Bill’s sudden grin in that rusted-fender face was like the sun itself.

  About The Author

  Todd Borg lives with his wife in Lake Tahoe where they write and paint.

  To contact Todd or learn about the other Owen McKenna novels, please visit toddborg.com.

  Titles by Todd Borg:

  TAHOE DEATHFALL

  TAHOE BLOWUP

  TAHOE ICE GRAVE

  TAHOE KILLSHOT

  TAHOE SILENCE

  TAHOE AVALANCHE

  TAHOE NIGHT

  TAHOE HEAT

  TAHOE HIJACK (August 2011)

  This book is for Kit

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to ski patroller extraordinaire Bob Hoffman for teaching me about avalanches and avalanche control. If I’ve achieved any verisimilitude about the way snow slides off mountains, either naturally or intentionally, credit goes to him. Bob also gave me many pointers in how avalanche search dogs are trained, and how they are able to perform the miracle of saving people who are buried in avalanches.

  Further thanks to Sandy Bryson and her book Search Dog Training. On each subsequent read, it reveals more secrets about how dogs think and act.

  Thanks to Liz Johnston, who found and fixed countless mistakes, Eric Berglund, who helped make my sentences work and pointed the way to a better story, and Jenny Ross, whose sharp eye and knowledge of the legal system saved Owen from himself. They are all editing angels sent from the gods of English, and they cleaned up my scratchings into something readable. I can’t thank them enough.

  Thanks to Keith Carlson for another great cover.

  More thanks to Kit. She figured out how to reshape my initial pile of words into something that made sense and helped fine tune the result. Without her help, encouragement, and story judgment, Owen, Spot, Street and the rest of the gang would never have made it to the page and become real to so many readers.