Tahoe Deathfall

by Todd Borg

I looked back as we roared into the night sky and saw the squad car skidding sideways. The driver’s door opened. Gunfire flashed. I shut off all the lights on the plane. A bullet tore through the Plexiglass canopy to the left of my head. I turned the yoke to the right and the plane jerked and yawed into a steep right bank. Alicia’s gasp was audible over the roar of the engine.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’re under control.”

  I didn’t want to present the large target of the air­craft’s side to the rogue cop. So I turned back away from him. Over my left shoulder I saw more flashes of gunfire, but now that we’d changed position only a very lucky shot could hit us in the dark. In a few more seconds we were out of range.

  I left the throttle all the way forward and gently released the flap lever. The plane sped up noticeably with­out the drag of the flaps. I put the plane into the steepest climb where the engine could still keep us at 70 knots. As we rose higher, the lights of Las Vegas appeared beyond a ridge in the distance behind us. They were a reassuring landmark. I was flying over an unfamiliar, black desert. Without the lights of Las Vegas I’d be lost.

  I pulled the rental car map out of my pocket. It was soggy and hard to open. I turned on the map light and, with occasional glances out into the night, peeled the folded pages apart. Alicia, in her first act of volition, reached out and helped. Her hands were shaking. Looking at her in the dim light it appeared that she was not cold and shivering. Just shaky.

  The compass indicated we were flying north, away from Las Vegas. A quick glance at the map showed the area in front of us to be a desolate desert. I put the plane into a slow turn to the west and studied the map.

  It wasn’t going to be easy. The hazards between us and Lake Tahoe were numerous. There were mountains over 14,000 feet, higher than a small plane like a Toma­hawk can fly. Scattered across Nevada and California were multiple military facilities including test sights and firing ranges. But the biggest obstacle was that we had no naviga­tion. I was flying Visual Flight Reference, tricky at times during the day. But very difficult over a dark desert at night. Our only hope was to find and follow highways that were busy enough that they were illuminated by vehi­cle headlights. In our current location there were none. Our only reference point remained the distant lights of Las Vegas which were now out our left windows.

  According to the map we would soon cross High­way 95, a busy artery northwest out of Vegas. But I knew from driving it that farther north it became a winding, sporadically used route as it zig-zagged through uninhab­ited deserts toward Fallon, Nevada. I was certain that I’d get lost if I tried to follow it.

  A much busier highway was 395, the main route from Reno and Carson City down the eastern Sierra to Los Angeles. I was sure that I could follow it to Carson City and then I’d be just minutes from Lake Tahoe. The problem was getting to the highway. We’d have to fly over numerous mountains as well as Death Valley.

  After studying the map, it didn’t seem we had a choice. My plan was to follow 95 out of Vegas until it turned north. Then I would continue west over the desert. By dead reckoning I hoped to cross Death Valley going straight west toward Lone Pine. The hazards were obvi­ous. If north winds veered us toward the south we’d hit the tall peaks on the southern end of the Panamint Range. And if we made it through those mountains we’d end up over the U.S. Naval Ordnance Test Station at China Lake. I didn’t know what would happen if their radar picked us up flying over restricted airspace. But getting shot out of the sky was one possibility. If south winds veered us to the north, we’d crash into the Inyo Mountains or the White mountains. But if I stayed my course we’d make it through.

  “Where are we going?” Alicia suddenly said, her voice clearer than before.

  I pointed on the map. “We’ll follow this road and then fly west over Death Valley. When we get to Lone Pine, we’ll turn north and follow 395 to Lake Tahoe.

  She was silent for a minute. “How can I help?” she said. Her earnestness touched me.

  “Don’t let me fall asleep,” I said, worried that I might not be able to stay awake two nights in a row.

  The road from Las Vegas appeared below and I made a gradual turn to follow it. A light appeared in the sky. It didn’t appear to move which meant another plane coming toward us on a collision course. Our lights and strobes were off.

  I turned them on and cranked the yoke to the right. The other plane did the same and we arced away from each other.

  Alicia had her hands clasped together in front of her. Her eyes were wide in the map light.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  After a moment she spoke in a tremulous voice. “You missed it. That’s what counts.”

  I decided to leave our lights on for the moment as they would probably comfort Alicia. Then I remembered our transponder. It was broadcasting our location to any­one who cared. With half the law enforcement in south­ern Nevada being alerted to my transgressions I didn’t want to advertise our location. I reached over and shut it off.

  “What is that?” Alicia said sounding more lucid.

  “A transponder. A kind of radio that tells people where we are. I didn’t realize it was on until now.” I had the airplane pointed northwest in line with the highway. We drifted slowly to the right of the highway. South wind. Maybe 10 knots. Now that I knew, I could make a slight adjustment.

  “Will they chase us?” Alicia asked.

  I thought of the number of lies she’d probably been told over the years. Living in a psychiatric hospital where you couldn’t even work your own light switch was practically a guarantee that you’d deal with medical per­sonnel who obfuscated everything.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But not in the air unless we fly over a military facility. What they’ll do is try to track us and then be ready to grab us when we land.”

  “What are the police after you for?”

  “Kidnapping you.” I was aware of her shaking. I turned and looked at her in the dim cockpit lights. Her face was sweaty. “How are you feeling?”

  “You did what was right,” she said, ignoring my question. “Taking me, that is. I was in there against my will.”

  I decided that being truthful included asking her the questions I was thinking. “Aren’t most of Saint Mary’s residents there against their will?” I noticed the highway below turning to the north. Time to depart for points west. I turned the yoke and we banked off toward the blackness of Death Valley.

  “Yes. But most have severe psychiatric disabilities.” She had an edge to her voice. She was coming out of her drugs. Her shakes were intensifying. Sweat was profuse on her forehead and upper lip. “I have my problems,” she said, her voice a tight monotone that nevertheless wavered. “But I’m not crazy. I’ve never been crazy.”

  She was waiting for my response. No response would be interpreted as disagreement. “You don’t seem crazy to me,” I said casually.

  “Tell me who you are again,” she said.

  “Owen McKenna.

  “How do you know Jenny?” She was more alert now and wary.

  “I’m a private detective. Your daughter hired me to look into the death of Melissa.”

  Alicia didn’t say anything for several minutes.

  I concentrated on flying. The ground below was completely black. I saw not one light outside of a million stars, something I’d never before experienced while flying. Adjusting for the deviation of Magnetic North and to help adjust for the south wind, I kept the plane crabbing at 5 degrees south of west. A guess.

  A small group of tiny lights appeared far to the south. Then they vanished behind a tall mountain. I’d been flying at 9,000 feet. I decided to bring our altitude up to 11,000 feet. It might change the winds and throw me off course. But it would keep me above most of the peaks in the Panamint Range. Any higher than 11,000 and the loss of oxygen might dull my thinking. Besides, I didn’t think the little Tomahawk could go much higher. I pulled back on the yoke and we gradually rose toward the stars.

  “They didn’
t let me go to the funeral,” Alicia said, breaking my line of thought. “My first-born twin daugh­ter and they kept me locked in the hospital.”

  “Maybe they thought it would be too hard for you.”

  “Right,” she said with derision. “I was locked in isolation when I protested. Everyone else went to the funeral and had the support of others to help with their grief. But me, Melissa’s mother, I was locked away. It was almost nine years ago, and still it hurts like yesterday. I’m glad you’re looking into her death. I never thought it was an accident. But what do I know? I’d already been locked up for years when she died.” Alicia’s fingers were digging through the shop coat into her legs.

  “Tell me what happened, Alicia. Tell me why they put you in the hospital.”

  She took several deep breaths. She relaxed her hands, spread her fingers on her thighs and closed her eyes. She talked slowly, her voice wavering. “Joseph was the first man I ever met who treated me as a whole person. He looked beyond how skinny I was and got to know me. He knew I had an eating disorder, but he worked with me.”

  “Joseph Salazar.”

  “Right. My husband. Grandpa Abe’s and Gramma’s son. We met at an amusement park. I was there with two girlfriends from UC San Francisco. He was there on a Salazar West company picnic. We ended up in the same seat on the LunarTron. Later, we said our match was made in the heavens. The lunar heavens. Anyway, the centrifugal force threw me into him and he held me up while it whirled. After that we went on more rides. He invited me to the company picnic and things went on from there. He was kind and generous.

  “We were married three months later. And I had Melissa and Jenny a year after that.”

  “You were happy then.”

  “Yes. That was the happiest year of my entire life. Except for Gramma Salazar. Joseph tried to shield me from her, but she was insufferable.”

  We’d reached 11,000 feet. I leveled the plane off. Our speed inched back up to 120 knots. “What did she do?”

  “She tormented me. Humiliated me for being thin. She said it was a miracle the twins even survived consider­ing I’d starved them during pregnancy. The truth was I ate constantly and never purged myself once the entire time I was pregnant.”

  “You mean you never vomited on purpose.”

  “Right. I gained almost the normal amount for twins. I wanted to give everything to those girls.”

  “What went wrong after that year?”

  “Everything. Gramma picked at everything I did. Said I was a bad mother. And then when I had trouble breast feeding two girls at once, she told me I didn’t have what it takes to be a real mother. My self-esteem got so bad that I started purging again. Then my breast milk really did dry up. And Gramma told everyone. Joseph tried to intervene and protect me from her, but we would have had to move away from the West Coast. And that was just when he was being readied to take over as CEO. Everyday when he went to work, she started in on me, how I was unfit to be a mother.”

  “She wanted Joseph to marry a plump German girl?” I said, immediately regretting the weak effort to make a joke.

  “Exactly. Instead, he fell for me, a skinny, Irish-Navaho half breed. Gramma never forgave me for stealing her son’s heart.”

  “You and Joseph lived with Abraham and Gramma. Why?”

  “Any Salazar would live in their house with them. It simply wasn’t questioned. The Victorian in San Fran­cisco has eight bedrooms and nine bathrooms. The man­sion at Lake Tahoe is a forty room palace. You’d think it could work.”

  “How did you end up in the hospital?”

  “With Joseph around I could tolerate Gramma. It was hard, but I managed. But after he and Grandpa Abe died in the plane crash, I lost control. I admit, I was an unfit mother during that time. I neglected the girls and I became dangerously thin. On that basis, Gramma and Dr. Hauptmann committed me.”

  “To a psychiatric hospital?”

  “Anorexia nervosa. They said it was a life-threaten­ing mental illness that required a psychiatric hospital. What I didn’t know then and only gradually figured out in my drugged state was that that was only the excuse. The proof of that is they’ve kept me locked up and drugged for more than ten years and have given me no therapy. Just drugs to keep me docile and to keep me from purging. They won’t let me out. It’s like prison.”

  “You say they won’t let you out. Dr. Hauptmann won’t?”

  “Him and Gramma.”

  “What does she have to do with it?” I asked.

  “She controls him. He works for her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s worked for her from the day she brought him over from Germany. She sends him money, he does what she says.”

  “Including incarcerating the hated daughter-in-law?”

  “Yes,” Alicia said matter-of-factly.

  A crescent moon had risen behind us. In its dim light I saw black mountains directly in front of us. I checked the altimeter. We’d dropped 500 feet. I brought the little plane back up and we cruised between two jagged peaks draped with snow. The dark rocky saddle between them was uncomfortably close to the belly skin of the air­craft. Alicia put her hand out in front of her and shut her eyes for a minute. In a moment the mountain dropped away and we were 11,000 feet above the desert.

  “Do you think Gramma wanted you kept in the hospital so that she could raise her granddaughters with­out you around?”

  “Partly.” We were past the tall mountains and Ali­cia gazed down toward the blackness of Death Valley. “Mostly it was punishment. I had stumbled on her secret and she wanted me put away where I couldn’t tell anyone and where my credibility would be weakened if I did tell.”

  “What secret?”

  Alicia continued to stare out the plane’s window. I could see her shake in my peripheral vision. “One day,” she said, “when the girls were about a year old and we were staying up at Lake Tahoe, I took them out for a day of shopping in Reno. It was my first big excursion alone with them. I had Antonio, our driver at the time, put the double baby stroller and a pile of other supplies in the trunk of the limousine. We left and got as far as Spooner Summit when I realized I hadn’t brought extra diapers.

  “I didn’t want to have to shop for diapers, so I had Antonio turn around and go back to the house. I ran inside and up the stairs and looked in the closet where we kept items like diapers. But they weren’t there. I was wor­ried at leaving the babies in the car, so I ran down the hall to ask Helga where she’d put them.”

  Alicia went silent. The plane droned on above the blackness of Death Valley.

  “What happened?” I said.

  Alicia answered slowly. “I opened Helga’s door without knocking. And there they were.”

  “Who?”

  “Helga and Gramma. Together.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Alicia paused. “They were on Helga’s bed. With their clothes off.”

  “They saw you open the door?”

  “Yes. Gramma was even colder to me after that. But not one word was ever spoken about it.”

  I was considering the implications of what Alicia had said when I saw in the moonlight something very dis­concerting. In the distance to the west was a thick bank of clouds.

  We could not risk flying into them unable to see the ground. For somewhere in those clouds was the east face of the Sierra Nevada, a wall of granite that included Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the 48 states.

  THIRTY-ONE