Tahoe deep, p.12
Tahoe Deep, page 12
part #17 of An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Series
“I could test it if I knew the location of your wine cellar.”
She pointed. “In the cupboard next to the fridge is a paper grocery bag.”
I opened the cupboard door and lifted out a paper bag with a wine bottle in it. “An entomologist’s wine cellar,” I said. “Why am I not surprised?”
“All of my premium spaces are used for storing bugs,” she said.
“Of course.” I got busy with her corkscrew, popped the cork, and poured the deep purple elixir into two glasses. Swirled it around and drank. It was a taste explosion.
“Here is a reason to become a wino,” I said.
I held the wine out and turned, holding the glass to the light, admiring the color. My sleeve bumped Street’s pepper shaker off onto the floor.
“Oh, so sorry,” I said. I bent down, picked it up, and the metallic top fell off. By comparing the broken edges, I saw that the glass had sheared neatly, no chips. The top rim of the glass shaker was still screwed into the inside of the metallic top. I moistened a paper towel, mopped up the small amount of spilled pepper, and then set the shaker back on Street’s counter. I balanced the metal top and its enclosed glass shaker rim on top of the jar. I slid it next to Street’s fire extinguisher, the position making it less vulnerable to being bumped off.
“There. All better,” I said. “No one would ever know that this pepper shaker is broken, lying in wait for the unsuspecting diner.”
Street looked at the shaker as she stirred onions. “It’ll be a memory test for me. The next time I want pepper, will I tip it over and dump the broken top into my food? Or will I think to set the top aside and then pour the pepper out?”
“A memory test, indeed,” I said.
She sipped her wine. “Ah, good. My palate is naive, but I rate it a ninety-nine. Anyway, you think the Brand fellow is hiding something? That he’s an actor playing you?”
“Maybe. But if so, he has tremendous follow through. He never once cracked.”
I sipped more syrah. “I was thinking about the mite you found in those fibers from Daniel Callahan’s door,” I said. “You said the mite was a kind of citrus mite that attacks lemons. Does that mean it’s found on lemon trees, or lemon fruit? Because if a person could get it from fruit, that could happen in thousands of places, like a grocery store. But if those little buggers are only on the trees, that would imply that the person who kicked in Daniel’s door was at a citrus orchard not too long before Daniel’s assault.”
Street said, “That particular mite infests both lemon trees and fruit,” Street said. She lifted the fry pan off the stovetop. She leaned forward and set the pan on a trivet in front of me, then handed me a fork.
“Maybe you shouldn’t do that,” I said.
“I just want you to test the onions and make sure they’re cooked enough for the veggie stir fry I’m making.”
“No, I mean you shouldn’t lean forward like that. Or else fasten your top two shirt buttons. That shirt is too fitted and too undone for me to think clearly.”
“You know I don’t carry around a lot of distracting feminine assets.”
“Shows what you know. It’s not about dimension. How can I judge onions when I’m preoccupied?”
There was a bark at the door. I walked over and let the dogs in.
Spot immediately lay down. Blondie went to Street, reached her nose toward the counter, and wagged. Was she interested in cooking veggies or human amore? Her tail hit the nearest kitchen cabinet. Unlike Spot’s rock ’n roll bass-drum tail, Blondie’s furry tail was like the swish of a jazz drummer’s brush.
“See, Blondie’s not distracted,” Street said. “She wants to be my onion tester, not my modesty judge.” Street looked down as if to make her own judgment. She fastened one more button, stabbed a piece of onion with a fork, and handed it to me.
I ate it. “Perfect.”
“I should put it in the sauce now?”
“A few more minutes on the fire. Then add it to the sauce.”
“I thought you said it’s perfect now.”
“A few more minutes will make it perfecter.”
Street put the fry pan back on the stove top. “You were saying...”
“Let me think. Maybe you should pull on a baggy sweatshirt. Now I remember. Lemon groves are mostly in the San Diego region, right? I could go there to search for the man who assaulted Daniel Callahan.”
“Lemons are all over California. That’s how California produces more lemons than all of Spain, France, and Italy combined. And the mites that infest lemon trees are found all over the state as well. But this particular mite may have a narrower range. Just to be sure I was on the right track, I sent a photo of the mite to an arachnologist named Marcelo Nogales at Fresno State. He’s kind of known as the mite guy. Professor Nogales says this mite species is less pernicious than others, and it’s quite localized. He says it turns up primarily in a long narrow strip of orchards just up from the Central Valley floor, on the west side of the valley.”
“Can you show me on a map?”
Street’s laptop was at the end of the counter. She opened it, tapped some keys, and brought up a map. She pointed to an area southwest of Fresno. “He said the region is on the east-facing slopes of the coastal range and stretches for a hundred miles or so.”
“Based on your sense of how mites can get distributed, would it be crazy for me to drive there and poke around, hoping it was picked up in that particular area? Or do you think that mite just blew in on the wind? Or maybe it was in a grocery store?”
“I would guess there’s a decent chance that the mite was picked up in the area where it lives and was brought to Tahoe by the person who kicked in Callahan’s door. You’re thinking of going to the orchards and asking if any Central Valley locals went to Tahoe in search of treasure on the sunken Tahoe Steamer?”
I smiled. “Something like that.”
Street frowned, thinking. “You’ve gotten results from crazier ideas,” she said.
“But you’re not enthusiastic about the idea.”
Street said, “I suppose you could apply that upside/downside test of yours.”
“Good point. The upside of going is that there is a chance, however slight, that I get a lead on the killer. The downside is that I have to spend a day or two taking a pleasant drive through orchard country.”
“Sounds like you found your answer. It would be a search that, however unlikely, could eventually lead to treasure.”
“Maybe you should undo that button again. I could make a different search.”
“What would you find?”
“Treasure, of course.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When my dinner with Street was over, Spot and I headed up the mountain to my cabin.
I was thinking about Colin Callahan and the stressful way he died. It occurred to me that the pathologist must have finished with the autopsy by now. But it was too late to get a report from Mallory.
My friend Doc Lee is an ER doctor at the South Shore hospital. I didn’t know what his schedule was, but I knew he worked all hours, sometimes all night. I called his cell expecting to leave a message.
“Hello, Owen McKenna,” he answered, getting my name off his caller ID.
“Wow, I didn’t think you actually answered your phone. Are you home reading a book or something?”
“I’m on break, eating a turkey cheese bean spinach burrito in the hospital parking lot.”
“I have a medical question about the autopsy on the body found at El Dorado Beach. I figured you may have heard something.”
“I have. But my break isn’t that long. Maybe come by at midnight when my shift is over. Remember, sometimes I get delayed an hour or two, depending on business.”
“Of course. I’ll find your car and wait for you there.”
“I should tell you it’s a new one, new color. A red Panamera.”
“That’s a Porsche, right?”
“That’s right. You drive a Jeep. All you care about is utility. No awareness of style or beauty or poetry.”
“But I spend my free time with Street.”
“Good point.”
“See you tonight,” I said.
Spot and I were in the hospital parking lot at midnight. I let Spot out of the Jeep. We did a slow walk around the lot.
Spot always becomes hyper alert on nighttime missions. He instinctively understands the risks of night, a time when darkness renders humans vulnerable. His nose and ears were on overtime, nostrils flexing, ears turning, sampling the night scents and sounds. For a time, he focused on a dark group of trees behind the hospital. I looked to see what might have caught his attention. But I saw nothing. When I gave him a soft tug, he resisted, still watching, listening, sniffing.
Eventually, I coaxed him away toward a red Panamera in the far corner of the lot. No doubt Doc Lee placed it there in hopes of minimizing scrapes from other vehicles. Of course, dark corners in parking lots maximize the likelihood of theft or vandalism. But knowing Doc Lee, anyone who touched his ride would probably be photographed from all angles by hidden webcams, their DNA would be sampled by some surreptitious process, and the data would be uploaded to facial and DNA recognition websites. Do more than touch his car and there would be a serious response from a security team. Doc Lee was tech savvy, and he had friends in law enforcement and government, a combination that made him the wrong guy to cross.
I brought Spot over to Doc Lee’s Porsche. The flashy car was low enough that Spot could rest his jaw on the roof if he wanted to. “What do you think, Largeness? Even if I could afford one of these, I don’t think you’d fit inside.”
“He’s not going to drool on my ride, right?”
I turned and saw Doc Lee walk up.
“Maybe. Nice wheels.”
“This doctor business is getting less fun. Too many rules made by bureaucrats who don’t know anything about doctoring. Too many insurance requirements made by companies who care only about profits. One of the few benefits of the job is enough income for a red sports car.”
“I’m surprised you got out when your shift was over.”
He shrugged. “We just got a call on a rollover with injuries up on Echo Summit. So I can’t go home. But I can talk until the ambulance gets here.”
“Then what?”
“Then I go back under the stage lights, make some fast assessments, stabilize the wounded, then dive in.”
“What’s the dive part?” I asked.
“Slice and dice, stitch and sew, the usual steps.”
“You say that like it’s a dance performance.”
Doc Lee paused. “Actually, it kind of is like a dance performance. Except I don’t wear tights.”
“Tights on an ER doc. There’s an image to savor.”
“Actually, I look good in tights. What did you call about?”
“I had a question. Commander Mallory and his crew had a body at El Dorado Beach. I was there. The body was a male, mid-thirties, with a chest blown up like a hard beach ball. The coroner was a guy I don’t know. He thought the person died of something called tension pneumothorax. Can you explain?”
“Actually, I heard about it because the circumstances and details were interesting. The El Dorado County coroner is John Mercer. Smart guy and a knowledgeable sheriff’s detective, but not a pathologist. The autopsy was done by Benicia Train, a pathologist who recently came to El Dorado County from San Luis Obispo. She performed the post-mortem late this afternoon. The circumstances were unusual. Yes, the victim died from tension pneumothorax. Normally, that’s something that happens on one side of the body. But this was in both pleural cavities.”
“Sorry, I don’t know about pleural cavities.”
“The pleural cavities are the compartments in the chest that contain the lungs. When a person breathes, they expand their chests. Air gets sucked in through the throat and rushes into the lungs. But if the pleural cavity gets air from another source - like air that leaks in through a hole in the chest that was caused by a bullet or a knife wound - that can keep the lung from inflating. The person is trying to breathe, but air gets pulled in through the sucking wound and ends up outside of the lung instead of inside. When that happens, it collapses the lung on that side. Both pleural cavities? Both lungs. No working lungs means no oxygen, and you die. The air also presses against the heart and veins leading to it, preventing the heart from expanding and filling with blood to pump out to the rest of the body.”
“If you get to the victim in time, what’s the treatment?”
“You do a needle thoracostomy and aspirate the gas.”
“Meaning you stick him with a needle and let the air out.”
Doc Lee nodded.
“And when the victim is dead?” I asked.
“Same thing. In this case, Dr. Train probably collected the air in a gas sampling bag. Once the lab identifies what the gas components are, they’ll have a better chance of understanding how he died.”
“So the corpse I saw, rock hard with air pressure, would be like a normal corpse after Dr. Train let the air pressure out?”
“Yeah.”
“Is tension pneumothorax a quick death?” I asked.
“Depends. But fast or slow, it’s painful.”
“Did the pathologist find anything indicating the cause of the tension pneumothorax?”
“Maybe. The victim had thick chest hair. Train found two tiny punctures on the man’s chest. They were effectively hidden by the chest hair.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, not sure I was understanding.
“Merely that the puncture wounds could be the source of the air in the man’s pleural cavities. In fact, Dr. Train does believe that’s how the air got into the man’s chest.”
“But tiny wounds wouldn’t be a sufficient source for more than a tiny amount of air, right?”
“True, unless the air was introduced under pressure.”
I thought about what he said. “How does Dr. Train think that could happen?”
Doc Lee held his hand out in the dark, his thumb and forefinger spaced about an inch and a half apart. “You know those air inflation needles that are used to put air into basketballs and such?”
“Sure.”
“If you had a pressurized source of air attached to a basketball inflation needle…”
Now I understood. “Dr. Train thinks the man died from having an air inflation needle stuck into his chest.”
“Two needles,” Doc Lee said. “A needle into each pleural cavity. If you stuck an inflation needle into both sides of the victim’s chest and blew a large quantity of compressed air into both pleural cavities, the lungs would collapse, the heart would be unable to fill with blood, and death would come very fast.”
“Train thinks this was murder.”
Doc Lee nodded.
“Did Dr. Train speculate on the source of pressurized air?”
I saw Doc Lee nod in the dark. “Train thought that those air inflation needles had such small passages that any volume of compressed air would require high pressure to be effective in a short amount of time. And if someone were stuck with needles, they would immediately push them away, pulling them out of their chests, right?”
My turn to nod.
“So Dr. Train thought the air source would have to be both voluminous and under high pressure. She said a scuba tank might do the job.”
I thought about it. “I’m thinking of a rigid metal pipe with two air inflation needles spaced about six or eight inches apart. The pipe would be attached by a pressure hose to a scuba tank at a pressure of about three thousand pounds per square inch. I open the tank pressure valve and swing the tube at the victim, stabbing him with both needles. The air rushes out of the little needles, collapsing both lungs. When I pull the needles back out of the body, the chest tissue presses back together, sealing the puncture wounds and trapping the pressurized air inside the chest. Does that sound about right?”
“Yes, exactly!” Doc Lee seemed a little too enthusiastic about the whole macabre enterprise. But his business was medicine, and a twisted way to kill was probably an interesting break from routine.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next day, I had breakfast with Street, and we purposely chatted about fun subjects, dream beach vacations, San Francisco restaurants, New York theater, sailboat cruises in the Mediterranean. Two hours later, Spot and I said goodbye to Street and Blondie. “May the devil drown,” Street said as she shut the door.
Because we were headed to the southern half of the Central Valley, we went around the South Shore, out to Hope Valley, over Carson Pass, and down to the Central Valley.
The transition from high altitude to low isn’t as dramatic in the summer as it is in the winter. But still it surprises. Tahoe’s sunshine is relentlessly searing in July, despite comfortably cool air in the shade. By the time I’d dropped 8600 feet from Carson Pass to the valley floor, which is very close to sea level, the sun’s rays, filtered through much more air and farm dust, were softer and didn’t feel like they’d broil one’s skin quite so fast. But the air temps had climbed from the high 70s to the low 100s. The green of manzanita and conifer-covered mountain slopes gave way to the gold of dried grasses in the foothills and on the valley floor.
Spot decided to stop baking his brains and pulled his head in from the open window. I rolled it up and turned the A/C on high.
I angled my way southwest across the Central Valley and turned south on I-5 near the two huge aqueducts that carry water from NorCal to SoCal. Eventually, I exited onto a back-country road that wound through citrus orchards, lemons, oranges, and grapefruit. Seeing the trees stretch off for miles made me realize the flaw in my plan. It could take all day just to track down a single farm manager, and that person might not be willing to talk to me or might not have answers to my questions.
