Tahoe Dark (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 14)

by Todd Borg

  “No one but Mia has ever believed in me,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears.

  “Now I’ve joined the club. You can do this. You can save Mia. I’ll be waiting for your signal.”

  I saw her jaw muscles clench tight.

  I turned back to the canoe, leaned down with my hands on the gunnels, and pushed the canoe off into the lake as I stepped in and sat on the rear seat. I picked up my paddle. Diamond was turned sideways, watching. When he saw that I was ready to paddle on my right side, he raised his paddle on the left. As he lowered the blade and pulled back with a strong stroke, I matched his timing, and we quickly accelerated across the black water.

  I looked back toward the boathouse. I saw Evan’s tiny, lithe figure take two fast steps into the water. She made a silent, splashless dive, and disappeared beneath the icy, black waves.

  SIXTY-ONE

  To my knowledge, Diamond had never spent time in a canoe. But he was a learning machine, quickly realizing that, because I could see him and not the other way around, I would match his pace. So he set a brisk tempo. He always watched the blade of his paddle, making certain that it never bumped the canoe.

  We headed south a bit to get some distance away from the boats that Evan was approaching from beneath. Then I steered us straight out into the lake. I knew we were visible, but the critical thing was silence. I assumed that the man on the boat wouldn’t watch the shore full time. But if he heard us, it would alert him to look for us in the moonlight.

  Soon, we turned north and raced up toward the boats. We were now broadside to the west wind, which meant the canoe teetered from wave top to wave trough, rocking dangerously. But by counter-leaning, we were able to keep from capsizing.

  “You got a plan?” Diamond whispered, his head bent so that he was talking over his left shoulder on the windward side of the canoe.

  “When Evan flashes the light, we race toward the boat’s stern. You jump out first and take control of the man. My first priority is to get Evan onboard.”

  “Light flash near the boats,” Diamond interrupted. He never paused in his paddling. “There it is again.”

  This time I saw it. I’d been expecting it to come from the bigger boat with the flying bridge. But the light flashed three times at the bow of one of the smaller boats.

  “Let’s make this tub get up and plane.”

  Diamond increased his stroke speed half again. He reached farther forward when he plunged his paddle into the water. Then he rocked his body back as he pulled, increasing both the power and the length of his stroke before he pulled the paddle out of the water to begin the cycle again. He wasn’t smooth, he wasn’t polished, but he was a machine, driving our canoe forward as if we were in an Olympic race.

  I steered us to come alongside the target boat. When we were two boat lengths out, I whispered, “Stop paddling.” We still rocketed forward across black water that showed no sign of Evan. I jammed my paddle down, doing a push stroke to slow us.

  In one smooth motion, Diamond stood up, wrapped our bow line around a cleat on the cruiser as he leaped up to the cruiser’s gunwale. He hit the rail with his hands and swung his legs up and over like a gymnast on the vault.

  Diamond rushed into the pilothouse and disappeared from sight, as I focused on turning so that we came crosswise at the stern.

  There was a swim platform. I got one foot on it and reached out. “C’mon Spot!”

  He stood and jumped onto the swim platform. I reached down, grabbed his front legs and lifted his paws up onto the transom. “Up and over,” I said.

  He jumped over onto the aft deck. I followed and then took two fast steps to the pilothouse door, which was swinging open. Spot was at my side. Looking in, I could see that the companionway hatch was open to the main cabin below.

  “Go help Diamond,” I said as I smacked Spot on his rear. He wouldn’t know exactly what I meant, but he would understand that I wanted him to move and be engaged. If he came to two men in a fight, he’d know he was on Diamond’s side.

  I stepped to the side of the boat and looked over. “Evan!” I shouted. “Evan, where are you?!”

  There was no response.

  From inside the boat, I heard Diamond’s command, “Drop your weapon! Put it down, let go of the woman, and I won’t shoot! Do it now!”

  Holding the side rail, I trotted up the narrow deck along the side of the pilothouse and the main cabin, looking over the rail into the black water. Maybe Evan was hiding under the bow overhang. I leaned out and looked down. Nothing.

  I stepped over to the other side. Nothing there, either. I started back along the other side of the boat. Then stopped.

  When I had looked over, did I lean far enough out to see the waterline all along the hull? The boat hull had a substantial bow flare, so maybe not.

  I ran back, held the railing hard and leaned way out. I could now see the entire waterline. No Evan. Just black liquid. My heart thumped.

  I went back to the first side I’d inspected, and leaned as far out as possible.

  There she was, a tiny person in the water next to the bow. She was almost hidden from my view by the flare of the bow.

  She had one arm up out of the water. Her fingertips were hooked onto the tiny edge of a porthole.

  “Evan,” I shouted. “Evan can you hear me? Swim back to the stern and I’ll lift you out.”

  She didn’t respond. As I thought of lowering a line, her fingertips came off the edge of the porthole, and she slipped beneath the black water.

  SIXTY-TWO

  I didn’t have time to take off any clothes. I leaped over the side railing, and dropped into the lake.

  The water was so ice cold, it was like an electric shock. I knew Evan was stricken with hypothermia, unable to swim. She’d drop straight down into the depths. So I swam down. My eyes were open, but it was darker than the night above. I waved my arms back and forth hoping I might feel her as she sank. The cold, filtered moonlight coming down through the water put a sickly glow on my hands. I kicked hard, driving myself down deep. I sensed something pale below me. Pulled and kicked harder. Then my fingers touched hair.

  I kicked again, felt her shoulder, got my hand on her arm. I turned around and swam toward the surface, kicking hard, pulling with my free arm, lifting her limp body.

  When we broke the surface, we were 20 feet off the boat’s port side. I turned Evan onto her back, wrapped one arm across her chest, and swam backward.

  The canoe was still floating next to the swim platform, loosely held in place by the bow line draped over the aft deck where Diamond had thrown it. I swam around it to a small folding swim ladder. I stepped up and lifted Evan out of the water. She was a dead weight, limp and cold. Then she suddenly coughed. Water sprayed from her mouth, and my sense of relief was huge. But she was unconscious, her body chilled to a dangerous point.

  The night air was very cold, and I wanted to carry Evan into the cabin to begin warming her. I was already shivering violently, and I knew that she was far past that, suffering hypothermia so significant that the shivering reflex had stopped.

  I looked over toward the open pilothouse door. The interior of the pilothouse was dark. Light came out of the companionway that went down to the cabin. Diamond was silhouetted in the opening, holding his gun up with both hands. Whatever the situation was, I didn’t want to bring Evan into that. But I could get her into the pilothouse and out of the weather.

  I carried Evan into the darkened pilothouse and lay her down on a padded bench to the starboard side. Then I hustled back out to the canoe to get her clothes.

  But before I dressed her, I needed to dry her off. I opened the various stowage lockers, putting my hand into the dark spaces to feel for any fabric I could use as a towel. There were none. Near the doorway was a tall chart table. Below the angled top were drawers. I pulled them each open in succession. The third one down had rags, neatly folded.

  I pulled them out and used them to dry Evan off as best I could. Her skin was too
cold and clammy and moist to pull on her clothes. So I draped her clothes over her body.

  I pulled open more lockers and found several raincoats, yellow slickers with hoods. I draped them over Evan, tucking them in around her like blankets.

  Whether she would survive her hypothermia or not was still in question. She needed a source of heat, another human body next to her, and a warm room. But this was the best I had at the moment.

  Still shivering and soaking wet myself, I left Evan on the bench, went through the companionway and stepped down into the main cabin, which was lit with a ghostly glow from recessed lights under the galley cupboards.

  “We can make this turn out okay,” Diamond was saying in the smooth reassuring tones of a hostage negotiator. His gun was up, both hands wrapped around the grip. His gun was pointing at a man I’d expected to be Kang. But it was the man I recognized as Flynn from the photo of Flynn and Evan in the yearbook. Flynn was holding Mia in front of him, a little to his side. He had a foot-long ski pole spear pointed at Mia’s throat, the tip pushing into her soft skin near her windpipe. Mia was rigid with terror. She had duct tape across her mouth. Her eyes were shut tight, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her body looked wooden, it was so stiff.

  “I can help you,” Diamond said. “If you drop your spear, you won’t get hurt.” He sounded more like a shrink than a cop. “We can make this go easy. We can get you help. I’m willing to put in a good word for you and explain that you never intended things to go this far. You just wanted the money. Isn’t that right? The murders were crimes of passion. Manslaughter. The other robbers tried to take the money away from you. You don’t want to turn this into first degree murder. All you have to do is drop the spear on the floor and kick it toward me.”

  “If I drop it, you’ll shoot me!” Flynn’s Australian accent was pronounced. His voice shook with desperation.

  “No I won’t,” Diamond said. “If I wanted to shoot you, I would have already done it.”

  Flynn made a half glance over his shoulder as if to see exactly what his position was. Behind him, a bit to his side, was the little door that led to the forward sleeping berth. The door was made of thin wooden slats. Flynn shifted closer to the door, his body language suggesting that he was going to drag Mia back into the sleeping berth. I didn’t like that at all.

  I could see that Flynn was reluctant to take his eyes off Diamond and his gun. He made a brief glance toward me.

  “You’re the guy who ruined it all,” he said. “If you hadn’t screwed everything up, I would’ve had more cash than I could ever spend.”

  I said, “You could have taken your share of the armored truck money and the kidnapping money. You could have been rich. Instead, you got greedy and wanted it all.”

  Flynn made a snort. “There wasn’t money from any kidnapping,” he said. “The only money was from the truck robbery. But then you started asking questions about Wilson High School. It was you digging up old pictures that destroyed everything I’ve worked for.”

  “But that’s what you wanted,” I said. “That was part of framing Evan for the murder. Once I saw the yearbook pictures of the men who raped her, I discovered that those were the men who were killed. That rape gave her a perfect motive, and it was the main reason she was almost tried as a murderer. Getting her sent up for murder would have been the perfect frame, Flynn. But then you committed the third murder while she was in custody. So we knew she was innocent.” I thought that if he were convinced that Evan could no longer be framed for the murder, he might relent in some way.

  Flynn’s eyes were wild. “You’ve got it all wrong!” It was a desperate line from someone who was trapped.

  “Then Gavin Pellman came to your garage apartment and challenged you,” I said. “He knew you had the money.”

  “No!” Flynn looked confused but angry, and ready to explode. The spear he held at Mia’s throat shook, the sharp point jerking the woman’s skin back and forth. A bright red drop of blood started to run down the spear’s point. Mia still had her eyes shut hard. A moaning cry came from her throat. I knew that Diamond would take the shot the moment he got an opportunity. But Flynn kept maneuvering Mia between him and Diamond.

  I had to calm Flynn down. I had to get him thinking about something else. I suddenly thought about what Flynn had said, that there was no money from any kidnapping.

  “I saw the woomera at your garage apartment,” I said. “An ancient weapon like that can still be useful in the modern world? We were wondering how someone could get such power with a ski pole spear. But we didn’t realize that a tennis racket could make a good woomera. You notched the ski poles at the end, so the flared edges would fit around the racket’s rim.”

  Without turning away from Flynn, I said, “Diamond, what did you say that notched shape reminded you of?”

  In my peripheral vision, I sensed Diamond make a slow shake of his head as if he thought that I was losing my senses.

  “I thought it looked like the staff of Hades,” he said, “his two-pronged pitchfork.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “You said Hades was a god, the god of death, right?”

  Flynn was frowning at me. Maybe I was succeeding in distracting him.

  “Right,” Diamond said. “The god of the underworld. He was one of the three Olympian gods who were brothers. The others were Poseidon, the god of the sea, and Zeus, the god of the air.”

  “And what culture worshipped those gods?”

  “The ancient Greeks,” Diamond said. “Classical Greece.”

  As Diamond said it, all of what I thought I knew was shifting, the pieces of information resorting into different categories.

  I realized that I’d missed the obvious about the killings. The misdirection. Even the motive for murder was probably not what we’d thought. Flynn was a sociopath as Dr. Morrell had described. He was the kind of person who committed crimes of passion. Not someone who was a planner.

  The real killer was a true psychopath. A careful planner. An actor with no empathy. A Machiavellian manipulator. A narcissist who would plan the ultimate revenge and never have a second thought about morality.

  I said to Flynn, “I now realize that the whole point of framing Evan was so that, when I realized that she’d been framed, I would turn my focus on you as the killer.”

  “You’re not making sense, man. I don’t know what you’re saying.” His spear gouged deeper into Mia’s throat flesh.

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Diamond tensing, his gun becoming more rigid in his hands. He was close to shooting. But I hoped he would sense that I was in the process of discovering something important, something that might be lost if he killed Flynn.

  I said, “When I first thought that Evan had been framed, it seemed obvious that you were the likely perpetrator. You knew her from way back in Reno. You could have easily discovered where she lived and worked. You could have stolen her car and gotten it stuck near Montrop’s house. One of the dead robbers had a shirt button in his hand, a button like those on Evan’s shirt in the picture of you and Evan. It would have been so easy for you to get into her apartment, get one of the buttons and put it there in the dead man’s hand. You’d be thinking that someone like me would eventually see those same buttons on Evan’s shirt in the yearbook photo. And while you were in the apartment, you could have put one of the spears in her closet.”

  I paused to breathe.

  “Believing that Evan was framed by you made you the perfect suspect. After all, you owned a woomera. You would be the one person to know how to file the ski poles so they fit a tennis racket. That made it look like she had the murder weapon. You knew all of the truck robbers from way back. You had the history with Jonas Montrop. You knew that his father had money and could be extorted by kidnapping Jonas. You’d probably met the gardener Kang. There was a decent chance that he told you about Reno Armored and their cash runs. The evidence that pointed at you blinded me to the truth that you weren’t the killer, either. I never even considered th
at you might have been framed, too.”

  Flynn was frowning and shaking his head as if he couldn’t track what I was saying.

  “You never had the money, did you Flynn?” I asked, raising my voice. “You were set up to believe you’d get it, but it isn’t going to happen! Don’t you see, Flynn? The plan all along was that you’re going to die, and you will still look like the killer. Meanwhile, the real killer will escape with the knowledge that he exacted the ultimate punishment on the people who wronged him. He gets to keep the money, too. If Diamond kills you now, you make the perfect murderer. You’re holding a spear against Mia’s throat.”

  “No! That can’t be!”

  “If Diamond doesn’t kill you now, the plan was probably for you to die in an accident. We’d find your body and more evidence of your guilt. We’d all assume that you were the killer from the beginning. And we’d assume that you stashed the money, but we’d never find it. It’s a perfect frame, Flynn. Look at you, holding a spear to Mia’s throat! How’d the real killer manipulate you into that?”

  Flynn yelled back, “The only person who...”

  Flynn jerked and he made a little choking cough accompanied by a strange noise I didn’t recognize, a noise like the snap of breaking twigs. Flynn’s face showed wide-eyed shock, and he looked down as a bloody ski pole point suddenly protruded from the base of his neck, poking out and up, the point just in front of his chin. Flynn’s face didn’t lose its shock as he dropped his little spear.

  I leaped forward and grabbed Mia, pulling her back as Flynn fell face first to the floor of the boat, the Hades-flared end of the shiny, oiled ski pole sticking up into the air.

  SIXTY-THREE

  Mia screamed through her nose and fought me, but I held her hard and close, backing the two of us up and then sitting her down on the settee. Diamond fired his gun at the little door with the angled slats, two of which had broken as the ski pole had been thrust through. He shot four times. The booming explosions were like bombs going off in the enclosed space.