Tahoe deep, p.1
Tahoe Deep, page 1
part #17 of An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Series
TAHOE
DEEP
by
Todd Borg
THRILLER PRESS
Published by Thriller Press at Smashwords
Copyright 2019 by Todd Borg
Thank you for purchasing this book.
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PROLOGUE
August 28, 1940
“How wrong could it be to murder a murderer?” the young man asked.
“You’re not serious,” the young woman said.
The young man spoke slowly, ignoring her comment, pondering his idea. “Jack Questman robbed and killed someone. He doesn’t deserve to live. Not only would we be doing the world a favor, we could get rich in the process. I know right where to look in his bedroom for the take from his latest crime. He showed me his secret hiding place.”
“Please tell me this is a hypothetical question,” the woman said.
“But there are two problems with killing him,” the man continued, lost in his thoughts, not hearing her.
The woman and her date walked along the narrow gravel road in Tahoe City, California, on the northwest side of Lake Tahoe. It was a brilliant morning, the high-altitude sun scouring the landscape and turning the lake’s waves into a show of sparkling gemstones. In the far distance, the summer snowfields on the mountains above the South Shore still glistened white.
The woman decided to play along. “Let me guess,” she said. “We’d have to entice him out of his mansion and lure him to a place where there’d be no witnesses.”
“Yeah, that’s the first problem,” the man said.
“What’s the second?” the woman asked.
The man stopped walking and stared out at the giant lake. His frown was severe.
The woman looked up at his face. At 26 years of age, he was older than she was by four years. He had a demeanor of wisdom. Ever since she’d first met him, when he came up to the lake the summer before, she’d been impressed with his intensity and focus. He traveled and camped alone, a real adult among the kids his age.
“The second problem is how to dispose of the body,” the man said. “When cops find a body, the higher-up detectives are very good at figuring out aspects of the victim and the crime that you would never think of. I learned about it in my criminal justice class. It’s called forensic science. We’d have to hide the body in a great place.”
The woman looked off toward the lake where the old Tahoe Steamer ship was floating. “I think I know how to dispose of the body,” she said. “Maybe how to lure him out of his house, too.”
The man raised his eyebrows. “You do?”
The woman smiled, a little mischief in her eyes. “You saw the way Questman looked at me. Up and down like I was a beauty contestant and he was a teenager. He flirted continuously. Even got a little fresh with me.”
“Where are you going with this?” the man asked.
“I ask him to join me tonight. A rowboat date. He probably knows that the Tahoe Steamer has been taken out of dry dock. They’re towing it across the lake to Glenbrook. Tomorrow or the next day.”
“I saw that the ship was floated a few days ago,” the man said. “But I didn’t know they were going to tow it to Glenbrook. Why?”
“They’re going to sink it there, where it was first launched forty-some years ago. So I’ll invite our victim to come with me out to the steamer. For a last look at the boat before it’s gone. I can tell him I have a bottle of wine. He’ll think we’re going on a little romantic adventure.”
The woman’s companion turned on his heel very slowly and began walking again. “And after you get him out there?”
“I remember some large lockers on the main level, just below the bridge. I can get him curious, let him peek inside, then you step out from around the corner and hit him on the head with something, maybe the bottle of wine. We’ll shut his body inside the locker, and he’ll go down with the ship when they scuttle it at Glenbrook. There’s no better way to hide a body than at the bottom of Lake Tahoe. Both problems solved.”
“Tell me more about the steamer,” the man said.
“You’ve probably heard of the lumber bigshot D.L. Bliss. I don’t know much, but my dad is a history buff, and he knows everything about Bliss. Anyway, Bliss had the steamer built back in the eighteen nineties, before the road was built around the lake. The steamer hauled summer tourists and workers and building things and groceries. Even the mail. I was still in my teens when they finished building the first decent road around the lake. That was about six years ago. The road made it so people no longer had to ride the steamer to get around the lake. So it went out of business. They pulled the steamer out of the water and put it in dry dock storage. Now that it’s no longer used, Bliss’s son William is going to sink it. It’s the cheapest way to dispose of it.”
“How do you know the boat’s layout?” the young man asked. “The lockers and such.”
The woman giggled. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time,” the man said.
“Ever since the steamer stopped being used, the boat’s been nothing more than a late-night hangout for kids. Both when it was at anchor on the water and later when it was in dry dock.”
The man paused. “You’re saying that kids snuck onto the steamer even when it was up on blocks?”
“Kids will be kids,” the woman said. “The boat is huge. It’s something like one hundred seventy feet long. The grandest boat to ever cruise Tahoe, or so my father says.” She pointed toward where the ship was moored. “Most of the ship is the main passenger lounge. It’s surrounded by the promenade deck. The upper deck has the pilothouse and the lifeboats. And the lower level has the boiler room and engine room. So there are lots of places to, you know, have fun.”
“Are you sure they’re actually going to sink it? It seems a boat like that would still be useful for something. Your plan would fall apart if it wasn’t sunk.”
“Word is that the son, William Bliss, wants to create something called an underwater museum.”
“What’s that?” the man asked. He still frowned, deep in thought.
“Bliss thinks that tourists will pay to ride glass-bottomed boats out to look down on the greatest boat to ever cruise Lake Tahoe.”
They walked in silence for a long moment.
“You think you can use a bottle of wine to entice our target out onto the steamer?” the man asked. “What if he’s not a drinker?”
The woman grinned and lightly slugged the man on the shoulder. “Don’t be dense. I don’t even like wine. That’s just, you know... an accessory. It’s my girly charms that’ll get the job done.”
“I don’t know,” the man said. “How would you and he get out to the steamer?”
“The Fullers keep a rowboat in the marina.”
“Who are the Fullers?”
“They’re the couple in the cabin just south of our family’s cabin.” The woman pointed down toward the docks. “It’s the red rowboat at the second dock. It’s locked with a chain and padlock. The Fullers let us use it, so I know where they hide the key. They keep the oars in the boat. I know they wouldn’t mind if I borrowed it. Not that they’d ever know.”
“Could you take me out to the steamer now and show me the layout?” the man asked.
The woman hesitated. She stared out toward the steamer. “I suppose I could,” she eventually said.
The woman led the man onto a walkway that went from the street down to the water. From there, it was a short walk to the docks. In the middle of the second dock was the rowboat. The couple unlocked the boat, untied the mooring lines, got into the rowboat, and headed out of the marina. The man sat on the middle seat facing to the rear. He rowed. The woman sat on the rear seat, helping him steer to the steamer, which was moored just a quarter mile offshore. They tied the rowboat’s line to the big ship’s access ladder near the stern and climbed up and over the railing to the first level and went inside.
Danny Callahan had left the family cabin to go exploring. He was out with his binoculars, a present he’d received for his 13th birthday. Danny had joked with his parents about them giving binoculars to a blind boy. But the present was what he’d wanted, what he’d requested. The reality was that, while he was legally blind and couldn’t see any detail sufficient to read or make out faces, he could see blurry shapes. Danny had compensated by developing many other skills.
Danny’s hearing was exceptional, not in terms of what frequencies he could hear or the threshold of volume he could pick up. What was exceptional was what he noticed and observed. His sense of smell was also highly focused and not just for the scents that caught other people’s attention - fresh-baked bread or cut flowers or wood smoke. Danny noticed the scents associated with every moment of his day. He could identify people and buildings and animals by their sounds and smells.
Even his foggy vision helped him make exceptional observations. He could see general shapes and movement, and he could recognize individuals by their gait, murky as their image was.
< br /> With binoculars, Danny could bring those vague shapes eight times closer.
As Danny sat in the bushes near the shore of Lake Tahoe, scanning with his binoculars to see the cloudy movements of passersby, he saw a couple who walked down the dock. He heard some murmurs, figured out some of their words.
It seemed from the blurred shapes that the couple got into a rowboat and rowed out to the big old steamship. Danny waited patiently while the couple climbed up onto the Tahoe Steamer.
They were gone for nearly a half hour.
Eventually, there was movement again, and the rowboat separated from the big ship and came back to the docks.
Quite soon, it became clear to Danny that the rowboat only held one person. And as that person tied the rowboat to the dock and walked back to the shore, coming closer to Danny than before, it was equally clear to Danny that the rowboat’s single passenger was the woman.
Danny wondered why she’d come back from the steamer without the man. For a moment he had a wild thought about what might have happened. He tried to put the thought out of his head. The very idea was monstrous. Unthinkable.
But Danny couldn’t unthink a thought once he’d had it. Just like the woman couldn’t undo whatever had happened out on the ship. And the more Danny tried to resist the idea, the more he realized it was possible.
Because he knew the young woman. Knew the way she operated, knew how her mind worked.
She was his older sister Nora.
CHAPTER ONE
Present Day
I was at my office dealing with a coffee emergency, since the machine had suddenly clogged and wouldn’t run the hot water up and over the grounds. Because I imagined myself a resourceful guy, I’d found the internal rubber tube and flushed it out, but the clip that held it in place fell to the floor where it apparently met its antimatter and was annihilated. No clip meant no repair. It reminded me it’s the parts of life you most take for granted that always seem to go wrong.
The phone started jangling while I was on my hands and knees performing a clip search-and-rescue mission. I arced my arm up above my head to grope my desktop, knocked the old 20th-century phone handset off its cradle and onto the floor, where it made a clatter that would likely damage the eardrums of the caller. My Harlequin Great Dane Spot had been lying on his splotchy black-on-white Harlequin camo rug. He opened one eye at the noise.
“Sorry,” I answered when I finally got the phone to my ear.
“Thank you for answering,” the woman on the phone said, her voice so loud it was almost a shout. “I’m calling about something dangerous that has happened to my neighbor. Can you help me? Please tell me you’re free and can come help me!”
Her vocal tones had a round, warm musical quality like those of a woodwind instrument. But she was shaky, tentative, afraid.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“My neighbor’s in trouble. The South Lake Tahoe cops came first thing this morning. But they said they couldn’t do anything. I can’t accept that. So I asked the lead cop what I could do. I think he’s called a commander.”
“Commander Mallory of the South Lake Tahoe Police Department?”
“Yes, that’s him,” the woman said. “He said maybe if I called a private investigator, I could learn something more.”
“What do you want to learn more about?” I asked.
“What happened to my neighbor.”
“What happened?”
“He was beat up.” The woman’s voice broke as if she were starting to cry. “The cops said it looked like a home invasion. But nothing obvious was stolen. Someone broke into his house and hit him repeatedly.”
“Did they take him to the hospital?”
“No. He refused to go.”
“How badly is your neighbor hurt?”
“Really bad. His face is banged up. Terrible bruises, all swollen. And there’s a gash on one of his cheekbones. Who knows what kind of injuries could be hidden by his clothes.”
“Is your neighbor conscious?”
“Yes. His brain seems okay. At least now, anyway. But he could have internal bleeding. Even his brain could be hemorrhaging!”
“Was he able to say anything about what happened?”
“He could. But he won’t! He won’t say a thing.”
“But he told you he was beat up?” I said.
“No. He said he fell. Give me a break. His door was broken. It’s hanging off one of its hinges. And his face looks like it was a punching bag.”
“The cops called the paramedics, right?” I asked.
“Yes. They all came after my nine-one-one call. Two police cars, an ambulance, and a fire truck. They wanted to take my neighbor to the hospital. But he said no way. I told the cops they should take him against his wishes because he could have deadly injuries. But my neighbor said that if they took him by force against his will, that would be kidnapping, and that he knew the father of the district attorney and he’d use that influence to press charges. So the cops told me there was nothing they could do.”
“Maybe your neighbor isn’t hurt as bad as he looks?”
“No, I can tell, he’s seriously hurt. Black and blue and brown. The bones in his face could be broken.”
“I wonder why he won’t go to the hospital,” I said.
“I don’t know! I tried to reason with him. But he’s as stubborn as they come.”
“How do you think I can help?” I asked.
“Find out what happened! Find out why someone would break into his house and beat him up!”
“If that’s what happened,” I said.
“It IS what happened. I know it. The police know it, too!” The woman was gasping. It seemed she couldn’t breathe.
“Okay, let’s slow down. Let me ask some questions while you take a breath.” I waited but didn’t hear any breathing.
“What do you want to know?!” The tension in her voice was so dramatic, it seemed that she might pop a blood vessel worrying about her neighbor.
“Please take a deep breath.”
I heard her make an audible breath, heavy with frustration. “Okay! I took a breath. Now help me!”
“Let’s start with your name.”
“Mae. With an E. M-A-E. Mae O’Sullivan.”
“Where do you live, and what do you do?” Getting people to answer such prosaic questions often calms them.
“I live in the Bijou neighborhood, just a few blocks from the South Lake Tahoe Library. I’m a librarian there.”
“And what is your neighbor’s name?” I asked.
“Daniel Callahan.”
“Do you have any idea why someone would break into Mr. Callahan’s home and beat him up? Does he have enemies?” I was thinking about the usual reasons why men get beat up. Crime, sex, aggression.
“No! It makes no sense. He’s just a sweet old guy. Keeps to himself. Never hurt anybody.”
I asked, “How old is Mr. Callahan?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere in his nineties.”
Just to be sure I heard correctly, I said, “You’re saying someone beat up a guy in his nineties?”
“Yes. It’s an incredible crime. Unconscionable.”
“How far from Mr. Callahan do you live?”
“Right next door. I check on him every day. He was fine last night. But when I went over today, his front door was broken and hanging crooked. So I called out and went in, and found him on the floor bleeding. I think he was lying on the floor all night. It’s terrible! You have to do something!” The woman was shouting again. “I told the police commander that Mr. Callahan could have internal bleeding. The policeman agreed. But he said that if a victim is lucid and sober and won’t allow a doctor to look at him, then there is nothing they can do.”
“Is Mr. Callahan able to move?”
“Yes. He’s sitting up. But I don’t think he adequately knows the state of his injuries.”
“But he’s gauged his injuries and his bruises, right? He’s looked in the mirror.”
“He can feel them, but he can’t see them,” Mae said. “Daniel is blind.”
