Tahoe Dark (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 14)

by Todd Borg

  Jonas paused to breathe. It seemed like the memory had him shivering now.

  I asked, “When the guy spoke to you, did his voice sound familiar?”

  “No. He whispered. You can’t tell a person by a whisper. Right? At least, I can’t.”

  “What happened next?”

  “After a while, the van stopped.”

  “How long had it been driving?”

  “I don’t know. Ten minutes. Fifteen. The back door opened. They put a tarp next to me on the floor of the van and pushed me onto it. One of them whispered again, telling me that if I struggled or made a noise, they were going to drown me in the ice cold lake. So I didn’t do anything. They rolled me up in the tarp. I freaked out even though I was trying not to move or say anything. It was just like when I was little, and some bullies at the Judgment Sunday School in San Francisco rolled me up in the church’s stage rug and left me there. I would’ve died if Father Duncan hadn’t forgotten his briefcase and come back late that night to retrieve it. And this time it was you. That makes twice somebody saved my life. I guess I should say thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. What happened next?”

  “They picked me up, and one of them put me over his shoulder and started walking. It was like I weighed nothing to him. The next thing I knew, the guy carrying me started swaying, and I realized I was on a boat. After a while, they moved me to another boat, and I thought it was my boat – the boat I sold to Flynn – because I smelled kerosene. I’d broken a kerosene lamp in the cuddy cabin right after I’d agreed to sell the boat. No matter how I washed the flooring, I couldn’t get the smell out.

  “Anyway, they carried me down into the cuddy. Then they unwrapped me. They still had on the masks. They took the tape off my wrists and tied lines to me, yanking up my arms and stringing the lines to stowage lockers on either side. I felt like I was crucified like Jesus, only without the cross. By then it was getting light out. They stayed there drinking this disgusting smelling liquor. Some kind of whiskey, I think. I don’t know. I’ve barely had a beer in my life.

  “My shoulders were starting to scream with pain. Then they took the tape off my mouth. They said I might need to talk to my father to convince him I was still alive. So one of them called my stepdad. That person had a second phone. I don’t know how it worked, but it was like he had an app on the second phone that disguised his voice and made him sound like a woman. When he talked softly into the first phone, the woman’s voice came out loud and went into the second phone which was connected to my stepdad. Even though I was close, I couldn’t hear his normal voice, just the louder, fake, woman’s voice. So I leaned my head forward and shouted into the phone that was dialed to my dad. But two of the guys jerked me away and put tape back on my mouth. Meanwhile, the third person kept using the two phones, making it sound like a woman, telling my stepdad to get money from the bank and where to put the money. After a while I began to think that the third person really was a woman behind the hockey mask, and the second phone was just to disguise her voice.”

  “Where did he or she tell your stepdad to put the money?”

  “In a trash can in a parking lot. At first, I couldn’t understand what was happening. They were talking to my stepdad like they could see what he was doing, like they were there at the bank. But we were on the South Shore, and my stepdad lives in Incline on the North Shore. At least, that’s where I thought he was. Then I saw that the phone guy – that’s how I thought of him – the guy holding the phones had a third phone propped up on one of the stowage lockers. That phone had a moving picture on it of where my stepdad was.”

  “Do you think there was a fourth person taking video of your dad and feeding it into the phone guy’s phone?”

  “That’s what I thought at the time. But later, when I was alone on the boat, I started to fall asleep. My legs would collapse as I drifted off, and I’d drop down until the lines on my arms jerked tight. It felt like my arms were going to pull out of their sockets. Anyway, I had these visions. One was like I was looking out from inside the grill on my stepdad’s Mercedes. I realized they might have put a webcam or two on my stepdad’s car. Then they could watch wherever he was and see where he was going.”

  “What happened after they made the call?”

  “They left. They put another piece of tape on my mouth just to be sure I couldn’t push it off with my tongue. Then they took their whiskey bottle, climbed out of the cuddy cabin, and shut the door, leaving me tied up by my arms. I was all alone in the boat, unable to scream. My arms felt like they were being ripped off.”

  “That would be scary,” I said.

  “The thing is, I’m a classics major. I’ve read about all kinds of terrible stuff, but I don’t do stuff. Having someone torture me was so far out of my experience, I felt helpless. I cried for hours. Then things got foggy. All I can remember was struggling to keep standing so my arms wouldn’t be yanked off. But I kept falling asleep and dropping down.”

  Jonas looked stressed and worried. I wondered if he was about to cry.

  I said, “If someone knew your stepfather had money, he or she might single you out for kidnapping. But that doesn’t explain why someone would tie you up to die in a boat. Like you just said, that’s torture. It suggests a motive much different than money, almost as if the money were an afterthought. Can you think of anyone that might apply to? Someone whose primary goal was to inflict pain on you?”

  Jonas was shaking his head. “I’m totally, like, no threat to anyone. There’s no reason why someone would torture me! I couldn’t be a threat if I wanted to. I have no enemies, just like I have no friends. I’m a nobody. I live alone, I go to community college. I don’t get together with anyone. I don’t even know anyone to play video games with except my internet group. So there’s no reason why someone would target me for any reason other than to get money from my stepdad. I think they just tortured me because they’re sick. They wanted to punish me for being the stepson of money.” Jonas was shaking his head. “All they had to do was look at my little rented cabin and my VW bus that doesn’t run. It’s obvious that I have no money. My stepdad never gave me anything beyond my school allowance of a thousand dollars a month. You can’t do anything on a thousand dollars a month! I’m having to take out school loans just to eat!”

  “Where is your mother? Could she help out?”

  “She died when I was little.” Jonas was breathing hard.

  I waited a minute for him to calm down. “Where do you normally keep your boat? Flynn’s boat.”

  “At the house that belonged to the band. On the South Shore.”

  I asked, “Has the doctor said how long you need to be in the hospital?”

  “She said I can go as soon as my shoulders heal enough that I can take care of myself. I don’t know when that will be. I still can’t reach my hands up to my face. I have to be able to take care of myself because there’s no one to help. You’ll probably find this hard to believe, but my stepdad has never visited me here. He hasn’t even called. That tells you what a close family he and I are.”

  “Jonas, do you have siblings?”

  “No, why?”

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, but your stepfather was found dead four days ago, the day you were kidnapped.”

  “What?!” Jonas was shocked. His eyes moistened. “I knew his cancer was… terminal. But I didn’t know he was that close to death.”

  “He didn’t die from the cancer. He was killed in his driveway. Someone threw his paddle board at him. The board struck him in the head.”

  Jonas stared, his face a mix of confusion and horror. “I don’t understand. He was murdered? Why?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Jonas’s eyes went back and forth, focused on some distant idea outside of the hospital room. Tears filled his lower lids. Jonas turned his head again, trying to wipe the tears on the pillow. He turned away from me, embarrassed at his emotion.

  “I’m sorry about the news, Jonas. It’s a hard thi
ng to absorb.”

  “Who did it?” Jonas said, angry. “He was a miserable jerk. But he didn’t deserve to die like that. Who killed him?”

  “We have no idea.”

  “Do you think that his murder was somehow connected to my kidnapping?”

  “We don’t know that, either. We learned that your kidnapper ransomed you for twenty-five thousand dollars. David Montrop withdrew that amount from his bank in Incline Village. After that, we have no idea what happened. Some time later, Montrop’s gardener found him dead in his driveway. The money was gone.”

  “I never trusted Kang,” Jonas said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I get from him.”

  I took out my card and set it on the table next to Jonas’s bed. “When you’re ready to go home, call me. Maybe I can help.”

  “What do I do next?” Jonas was pleading.

  “Rest. Heal. Then we’ll talk some more.”

  Jonas’s face changed. I couldn’t identify his look exactly. Wonderment, maybe. After I said goodbye, nodded at the cop, and walked away down the hall, I had the sense that Jonas had rarely if ever experienced someone being nice to him.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Back in the Jeep, I thought about what I’d learned. I couldn’t make a clear picture out of the case or even convincingly connect David Montrop’s murder to the robbers’ murders. Complicating the case were the multiple jurisdictions involved. Montrop was murdered in Washoe County, Sergeant Lanzen’s territory. The armored truck robbery was in the county where Street and I live, Douglas County, which is Sergeant Diamond Martinez’s turf. Jonas Montrop had been kidnapped and tied up in the city of South Lake Tahoe, SLT Commander Mallory’s grounds. I’d found the murdered robbers in Sergeant Bains’ El Dorado County. The only person I’d found with connections to all of the murder victims was Evan Rosen, and she lived in Placer County.

  I knew I’d be talking to Diamond soon, so I first called Sergeant Lanzen and told her about my conversation with Jonas Montrop. My next call was to the SLT police, and I said nearly the same words to Mallory. After that, I dialed the El Dorado Sheriff’s Office and got put through to Sergeant Bains’s voicemail. I left a message saying I had some things to go over. He called back in a minute.

  “I’ve got a meeting in five minutes at D.L. Bliss State Park,” Bains said. “It won’t take long.”

  “I’m on the South Shore. How ’bout I come out there?”

  “That works. Meet me at the trailhead to Rubicon Trail. Twenty minutes or so.”

  Twenty minutes later, I pulled into the park, drove out near the trailhead, and parked.

  Spot and I walked over to an overlook and stared down at the water. Just out from the Rubicon Trail, the water hides a cliff over 1200 feet straight down, one of the grander underwater drop-offs in the world. The result of such deep water is a mesmerizing indigo blue. Even Spot seemed entranced.

  “McKenna,” a voice called out. Sergeant Bains walked over, shook my hand, pet Spot. “You want to find a place to sit? Or we could make it a walk-and-talk and let your hound run.”

  “The park has a leash law like every other place in Tahoe.”

  Bains pointed to his sheriff’s badge. “Somebody complains, I’ll assure them that law enforcement is going to find the responsible culprit and exact an appropriate punishment.”

  So we headed out the Rubicon Trail, the beginning of which follows a cliff ledge with vertical dropoffs straight down to the water. Spot never seemed to be respectful enough of the dangers, but he’d been here before, as well as on many cliffs, so I wasn’t worried.

  “What you got?” Bains said as we walked.

  “You recall the murder of the man in Incline Village.”

  “Right,” Bains said.

  “I have evidence linking the man’s house cleaner to the robbery suspects. The evidence is circumstantial. And my gut instinct tells me that it is misleading. But I told you I’d report whatever I learned about the case.”

  “Ready to be misled,” Bains said.

  “The house cleaner, Evan Rosen, lives in Tahoe Vista. Nine years ago, she went to Wilson High School in Reno, the same high school as the two dead armored truck robbers. I cannot directly connect her to the robbery, however I recently saw her pay her neighbor for rides. She peeled the bills off what looked like a large wad of cash. And I saw her picture in a Wilson High School yearbook. In the photo, she’s wearing a shirt with buttons on it very much like the one we found in the robber’s hand. She still has the shirt, and she showed it to me. It has a button missing.”

  “That’s certainly compelling.”

  “Unfortunately, there’s more. When I showed Evan the pictures of the dead robbers, she got upset just seeing them. She said she was glad they were dead.”

  “Whoa,” Bains said.

  “I asked her why. She wouldn’t explain, but she said they didn’t deserve to live. She wouldn’t say why. It seems obvious that these guys did something to make her hate them.”

  “Like…” Bains broke off.

  “No idea. Maybe they hurt her sister Mia or something.”

  “Yet, despite this circumstantial evidence, you think it’s misleading,” Bains said. “All because of your gut instinct. Perhaps you can elaborate?”

  “I don’t think she committed those murders.”

  “Why?”

  “She doesn’t seem like the type. I will say that she admitted that she is a bit of a hothead. That can lead to impulsiveness, and some people who murder exhibit impulsiveness. But you know that it takes more than that for a person to murder. Murderers are amoral or stupid or devious or mean, or all of the above. Evan doesn’t seem like any of those things. Also, the paddle board murder as well as the ski pole murders would require a lot of strength, and she is a diminutive person.”

  “But the evidence points to her,” Bains said.

  “‘Points to her’ is too strong a phrase for this situation. Nevertheless, this information is what I wanted to tell you. Doing my duty against my desire. I believe that after you investigate, you will agree with me.”

  “Do you have an address?”

  I gave it to him. “End unit on a converted motel. I should let you know that she takes care of her sister Mia, who has some kind of disability. So if you question her, maybe be gentle, okay?”

  “Gentle? Wow, you must have been a tough cop back in the day.”

  “Yeah. That’s me. Tough.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  After Bains and I finished talking, I was thinking about Montrop’s gardener Kang, the man who supposedly didn’t speak English but whom I’d seen talking to the Reno Armored receptionist Rita.

  I drove north around the lake and parked on a side street a half mile down from Montrop’s house. I left Spot in the Jeep and walked up toward Montrop’s neighborhood. I didn’t turn up the street that led to his driveway. Instead, I walked along the next street down. When I thought I was nearest to Montrop’s house, I turned into the forest and made my way up toward his street. When Montrop’s house came into partial view through the trees, I shifted to the side until I could get a glimpse of the steep driveway.

  As I got close, I realized that I couldn’t remember if this was one of the days when Kang was scheduled at Montrop’s house. Might as well wait and find out.

  Evan had said that she thought he knew more English than he revealed. If that were true, and I tried to talk to him, he would play the same role as before. But if I waited until he left and followed him, maybe I’d witness him going someplace where he might speak to someone else. If I caught him in that contradiction, I might be able to pressure him into telling me what he knew about Montrop or Rita and the Reno Armored company.

  I knew that if I went up to the house, he might see me before I saw him. So I waited in the trees down below, hoping that I would see him when he left.

  Kang came walking down the drive 45 minutes later. At the street, he turned left. I waited until he w
as 30 yards away, then stepped out of the trees and followed him. If Kang turned, he’d see me. But at this distance, I thought he probably wouldn’t recognize me.

  Kang went up over a rise, then down out of my sight. I jogged up the same rise. When I got to the top, Kang was nowhere in sight. I strode down fast, looking into the woods. Nothing.

  There was an intersection ahead, where a road came from below and made a T with the street I was on. I heard the whine of a starter motor. The engine fired, the small, soft sound of a 4 cylinder. The sound appeared to come from the side street. The engine made just the slightest revving sound, then went silent, consistent with a driver giving a car enough gas to get it off the shoulder but then taking his foot off the gas as he turned downslope and let the car accelerate on its own under the force of gravity.

  I turned back the way I’d come, sprinting back over the small rise, turning into the woods, and running as fast as I could for the Jeep.

  I had my key out as I got close. In a practiced motion, I was inside the Jeep, got it running, and drove away fast.

  The road I was on went vaguely toward the road Kang was on, but how or if it connected was not clear. There was an intersection ahead. I guessed that turning down the mountain would be the likeliest direction Kang was going. I cranked the wheel and skidded around the corner, barely slowing. The road made an S-turn through the forest and went by scattered homes. I came to another intersection and again turned down, figuring that it was unlikely that Kang, a gardener, lived in such a luxurious neighborhood. All of the roads out of the neighborhood went down.