Tahoe Dark (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 14)

by Todd Borg

  “Just down from the giant Ponderosa Pines of Valhalla,” I said.

  Blue looked up at me. “Pine pitch often falls out of trees. It could be that somebody stepped on some pitch that had a bark beetle in it, then walked down to where the Tahoe Yellow Cress grows, and got some of the mustard flower stuck in the pitch on their shoe. Of course, that scenario doesn’t get the pitch onto a truck tire.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Thanks, doctor, very much.”

  I shook her hand and left.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I drove north on 89 and headed out past the turnoff to Pope Beach Road. I continued on past Camp Rich, then parked on the shoulder of the road. Late afternoon in June meant that campers had their fires and barbecues going. There were lots of people biking and walking the various paths. I didn’t want Spot to startle anyone, so I took his collar, and we walked out the path that led to Valhalla, the public area that comprised the beautiful Heller estate with its grand hall and lawns and beaches, and the Boathouse Theater right on the water. Young couples wandered the beach by the lake. Over at the Beacon Restaurant, laughing groups of people drank beer out on the deck. Out on the lake, a ski boat and water skier took advantage of the calming water that evening brings.

  As Dr. Blue had pointed out, most of Tahoe is predominantly treed with Jeffrey Pines. But scattered throughout the Valhalla area near the beach were multiple old growth Ponderosa Pines, giant trees six and even seven feet in diameter and stretching 20 stories tall. Spot and I wandered the grounds, me looking for Tahoe Yellow Cress, Spot enjoying the rock star attention that Harlequin Great Danes draw wherever they go. If he had any regrets in life, it could only be that he wasn’t able to sign autographs.

  I looked up at the trees, wondering how often they dropped globs of pitch. Street had explained how bark beetles that tried to burrow into healthy pines often got stuck in the pitch that oozed out. But trying to find pitch with stuck beetles did not seem like a reasonable task. Better to just assume that someone stepped in some and then stepped on the rare plant, mashing the two together to be stuck on the person’s shoe until they scraped it off on the armored truck tire.

  Dr. Blue had said that Tahoe Yellow Cress lives in the beach sand, so I took Spot to the water. I wasn’t looking for anything specific, but it seemed appropriate to explore the possible convergence of pitch and pine beetles and mustard plants and armored truck robbers.

  We ambled west down the beach, moving away from the giant Ponderosas toward Taylor Creek, where Blue had said that the rare plant grew. We went past the Pope estate and the Baldwin mansion, past the old foundation from Lucky Baldwin’s Tallac House Hotel where San Francisco’s upper crust congregated during the turn of the 20th century. From there, the narrow beach turned around a point and expanded into the large sweep of Kiva Beach.

  The waves were gentle, making lapping sounds on the sand. The nearby trees had substantially shifted toward Jeffrey Pines, and the sound of the breeze through their long needles was mesmerizing. Gulls called out. Spot turned to look as two giggling teenaged girls went by on stand-up paddle boards, racing each other, going the same direction we were but faster. A bald eagle flew by just 20 feet above my head, a large trout in its claws. The bird held the fish so that its head pointed forward, the better to minimize wind resistance and to maximize the photo op for anyone with a ready camera.

  Nowhere did I see anything that looked like Tahoe Yellow Cress. But I wasn’t yet to Taylor Creek.

  Kiva Beach is one of the few where dogs are allowed, but they have to be leashed or under leash-equivalent verbal control.

  Spot had never in his life provided any indication that I could control him with nothing more than verbal commands. But my secret weapon was doggie biscuits and my determination to never leave home without them. So I let go of his collar, and he ran with great excitement to the water’s edge. Spot has never been big on voluntary swimming, but he loves to race up and down the beach in six inches of water, making great splashing leaps. Then he arcs around and comes back the other way to see how closely he can fly past me. If I can succeed in getting him to stop, he always shakes the water off directly in front of me so that I get the maximum soaking.

  When we came to Taylor Creek, the outflow from Fallen Leaf Lake, the icy runoff of spring was flowing at a robust pace. Because the recent weather had been cold with no rain, the snowpack at high elevations was melting slowly, so it wasn’t flooding. I guessed the creek’s depth at 4 feet and its width at 25 feet. Such a flow should be considered dangerous. Like a riptide in the ocean, it could carry an unaccomplished swimmer well out into the lake.

  The only alternative to fording the creek was to go back to the Jeep, drive down the highway over the Taylor Creek Bridge, and take the Baldwin Beach turnoff. But Baldwin Beach didn’t allow dogs. I would have to park on the highway and then hike in through the area outside of the beach jurisdiction, a long hike through wet meadows. The day would be over before I ever saw any Tahoe Yellow Cress.

  I turned to Spot. “Care for a cold swim?”

  He looked at me with concern.

  “Okay, truth be told, a shocking, icy, frigid, freezing swim?”

  Spot made a single slow wag.

  “I would hold your collar so that if you lost your footing, I could possibly keep you on course. Or you might simply pull me out into the deep lake where we would flounder as we succumbed to hypothermia while waiting for young women on their paddle boards to rescue us.”

  Another, single, slow wag. Spot knew I was up to something suspicious. He looked at the clear, voluminous, flowing water. Then looked back at me.

  A person can walk until wet pants dry and only be mildly uncomfortable. But wet shoes and socks chafe and take forever to dry. I took off my shoes, stuffed my socks inside them, tied the shoes together with their laces, and hung the loop of laces around my neck. I transferred my phone, keys, wallet, dog treats, and other pocket stuff to the two pockets in my flannel shirt and buttoned the flaps.

  “Okay, Spot, brace yourself.”

  I untucked my shirt, lifted up the shirt tails, pulled the rear shirt tail up and over my shoulder, put the shirt tail ends in my mouth, and bit down on them to hold my shirt out of the water.

  I took hold of Spot’s collar, and we trotted toward the water at a good pace. I didn’t want Spot to be tentative. I pulled him into the water. Spot jerked back a bit from the ice shock, but when he realized I wasn’t giving him a choice, he charged forward.

  As the water rose to my waist, Spot began swimming and I leaned into the current so as not to be pushed over. Spot’s legs scraped my legs here and there, but my jeans saved me from the real damage that could have come from the claws on his churning paws.

  The cold was spectacular, and I’m pretty sure I made a single, gasping inhalation and then never exhaled until the creek bottom started once again rising. In a few moments, we were to the other side. I let go of Spot’s collar, and he once again charged up and down the beach. This time it wasn’t so much a frolic of joy as a panicked, clenched-jaw celebration that we’d run the frozen, arctic gauntlet and survived.

  I sat down on a log that had floated in on a previous flood and waited several minutes for my pants to drain. When it seemed that anyone close enough to see and get distressed about public nudity had wandered away, I took off my jeans and underpants, wrung them out, and pulled them and my shoes back on.

  “C’mon Spot. Are you in the mood to sniff some mustard? I think I see some Tahoe Yellow Cress from here.”

  I wandered off toward some green plants that hugged the sand. They had little yellow flowers, just forming in the spring sunshine. They looked like the pictures Dr. Blue showed me on the website. In real life, they looked very fragile.

  I’ve never felt much empathy for plants other than beautiful trees being cut down in their prime of life. But I felt a kind of connection to these delicate little green and yellow bits of life. As I glanced around the giant lake, visualizing the relativ
ely tiny scope of where this nearly extinct plant now lived, it was an emotional experience. I stepped away from the plant, not wanting to disturb it, wishing it the best.

  Turning back toward Valhalla, I wondered if pine pitch could have been tracked that far down the beach without being caked with sand. The pine pitch sample I’d gotten off the truck tire was free of sand. Maybe there was another source of pine pitch and Western Pine Beetles that was closer to the Tahoe Yellow Cress plants. I looked around for any sign of Ponderosa Pine. There were many Jeffrey Pines, which would produce similar pine pitch. But Street had said that only Ponderosa would have the Western Pine Beetle.

  In the large meadow and wetlands area that stretched back toward the unseen highway a half mile away, there were several sparse groupings of trees. They were tree islands in the meadow, growing on ground that was just high enough above the meadow and regular flood zone to support trees. I couldn’t tell from a distance if any of them were Ponderosa Pines, which looked like less lush versions of Jeffrey Pines. But they were the closest trees to my first batch of Tahoe Yellow Cress. There was nothing to lose in checking them out.

  I walked through tall grasses, around shrubs. With no advance warning, my feet sunk into mushy marsh, and both of my shoes filled with water. So much for trying to keep one’s shoes dry.

  As we got close to the trees, I could see that there were a few Aspen, and a few fir, and some bush-like trees I didn’t recognize. No Ponderosa. I went through the tree island and looked out the other side. In the distance across the meadow, there was another tree island and then, beyond it, another.

  In ten minutes of slogging through wet grass, I got to the next group of trees. It seemed the same as the first, although I had to walk around in the gathering twilight to look at each of the bigger trees to identify their species.

  “Shall we keep exploring, Largeness? Or shall we head back to the Jeep?”

  Spot looked at me, then turned and looked toward the next island of trees.

  “Okay, we’ll keep exploring.”

  I headed on once again. My shoes squished with each footfall and made sucking sounds as I lifted them up. I felt bad disturbing the delicate meadow ecology.

  The trees in the distance were definitely bigger, indicating higher ground. As we walked, we moved into an area of moist air that was fast getting very cold. I imagined sitting and drying out in front of my woodstove, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in my hand.

  It seemed crazy tracking plants and trees in the growing darkness, the unlikely convergence of which had the smallest possible odds of providing any information about an armored truck robbery. My shoes were filled with muddy water. My wet pants pulled on my legs with each marching step. I was cold. Shivering wasn’t far off. I had a powerful sense that this was folly.

  “What do you think, boy? Movement is good exercise, and suffering in the cold builds character. But we gave it the old college try, right? Time to go home, dry off, warm up, and imbibe a beverage that would brighten the spirit, right?”

  I turned toward where I thought Spot was but didn’t see him. I stopped and rotated, the muck grabbing at my shoes as if to pull them off. Spot had ranged off to the side of me, looking in a different direction. He was standing still, holding his head high, air scenting. His ears were focused and he looked up a bit. I walked toward him to see what caught his attention.

  Spot was looking toward a different tree island. Silhouetted against the still-light sky, this bunch of trees looked similar to the others except that above them flew a group of crows, squawking and circling and making a fuss as if they were arguing over a bag lunch they’d stolen from the beach. Some of them swooped down into the trees. Others flew back out.

  “The eternal entertainment of crows,” I mumbled to myself as I fought off the depressing cold weight of the misty air, “a group of which is known as a murder of crows. Did you know that, Largeness? One of the world’s smartest animal species is, when in a group, called a murder. Imagine that.”

  Spot ignored me.

  I walked a few more steps toward his focus point, stopped, and considered what was grabbing his attention.

  “Okay, boy. We’ll head on toward those trees instead and see what those birds are about.” I walked on past Spot. “But no farther. My mood is in need of a serious application of heat, a full belly, and an awareness that the big bed is but steps away.”

  After a few more gushy, sucking steps, I turned around again. Spot was hanging back, still watching the crows, still sniffing the air. But something was wrong.

  His ears weren’t up, but back.

  “Okay, Largeness, I’ll go ahead and see what’s up.”

  I hiked on toward the trees. As I got close, I looked up to see how the biggest one looked. With the lingering light of the sky behind the tree, I could see that it was a big pine with batches of long needles. But it was easy to see the sky through the needles, so they were sparse. A tall tree with sparse branches and long needles that didn’t appear very lush was likely a Ponderosa Pine.

  Looking back down toward the ground, my sky-sensitized eyes couldn’t see anything in the developing dark. I reached for my penlight. It was still in my pants pocket, soaked. I’d forgotten to take it out before I forded the creek. I turned the switch. Nothing.

  So I pulled out my phone and turned it on. The screen light was dim, but it was enough to see where the trees were and step around them. I turned around.

  “Spot?” I called out softly. “Are you there?” I couldn’t see him. He was somewhere behind. I thought I knew why he was hanging back, and it gave me a sick feeling in my gut.

  I shined the phone light around. Moved forward with small, quiet steps.

  I came to a kind of makeshift camp. There were two tents, the kind that would just fit two men each. On the ground nearby were a couple of backpacks. A cookstove. A jacket hung on a tree. Something reflected my phone light. An aluminum coffee pot on its side, the top knocked off and coffee grounds spilled out. Something sparkled on the ground. I pointed my phone down. The light reflected off the shiny blade of a knife. There was a pile of beer cans. Bud and Coors Light. The Buds were all crushed, the Coors empty but still round and smooth. Something else caught the light, two pieces of paper stuck in a bush, the kind you rarely see on the ground.

  Hundred dollar bills.

  I moved forward. Two unseen birds exploded in movement. By the sound of their flapping wings, they barely missed my head. I went toward where I thought they’d come from, holding my phone up to illuminate the campsite.

  There was a vague shape several yards in front of me, dark as the tree trunks, but more round. A big pack leaning up against the tree. But as I got closer I thought it maybe wasn’t a pack.

  I took another step, tried to angle my phone for better vision, then stepped forward again.

  It was bigger than a backpack. Longer. Not something natural to the forest. But definitely leaning against a tree.

  Another step. In front of the object was something shiny. Silver. Reflective. Obvious even in my dim phone light. Contrasting with the big dark shape behind it.

  One more step.

  The silver object became clear. It was a spear. It entered the body of the man just below the hollow of his neck and projected down at a steep angle. By leaning to the side, I could see that the pointed tip of the spear emerged from the man’s lower back, the point sticking into the bark of the tree as the man fell back in death. I moved my phone forward and up so that I could see the dead man’s face.

  Now I understood what the crows had been doing.

  TWENTY-THREE

  My breath was short as I turned and again shined my light around the campsite, certain that no one was there, but checking anyway.

  I had two bars of reception. For the second time in one day, I dialed 911.

  “Nine, one, one Emergency,” a woman said. “Please state your name and address.”

  I began to explain, but realized that I wasn’t getting words out.


  “Nine, one, one Emergency,” the woman repeated. “Please speak louder.”

  My jaw was locked, teeth clenched. A spear through a man was a sight I’d never seen. I forced my mouth open. Moved my jaw back and forth. Spoke.

  “This is Owen McKenna calling from the marsh just south of Baldwin Beach. I’m north of Highway Eighty-nine approximately a quarter mile and east of Baldwin Beach Road about the same distance. I have found a murder victim, killed by a spear. I suspect there will be others nearby.”

  “Please stay on the line,” the dispatcher said, “and I’ll have officers en route immediately.”

  “I need to conserve my battery as my phone is my light,” I said. “So I’m going to disconnect in a moment. If you get a chance, contact Sergeant Bains of the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office. He will want to be here. Tell him that the victim is possibly connected to the armored truck robbery two mornings ago. Also, please contact Sergeant Martinez at Douglas County SO. And one more thing. Tell the men to bring lights.”

  I hung up.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I turned toward the dark meadow where I believed Spot was waiting, hanging back because he’d already seen too much human death, and, as with all dogs, he didn’t want to be near it or smell it.

  “It’s okay, boy,” I called out to the darkness. “You were right. Bad stuff, here. But it’ll be okay, so just hang in there.”

  The tree island was the size of a baseball diamond. Using the phone screen as a light, it was relatively easy to navigate the marsh grass at the perimeter. I knew I was leaving footprints and perhaps I’d obscured other footprints. I’d already been leaving prints through part of the camp before I knew it was a crime scene. I decided to step softly on uncompressed grass and those areas where it looked like others hadn’t already tread. Even if I could see no evidence of previous tracks, I would walk at the edges of spaces and next to brush and on top of brush so that I didn’t mar any more previous tracks. After they’d made casts of the various prints, they could identify which were mine.