Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (22 page)

“Na, uh.”

“Do you think Gertie may have willingly gone with the man in the photo?”

“Well, it would be unlikely. Gertie likes to make others think she’s kind of reckless. But she’s pretty much a quiet kid who lives low.”

“What’s that mean, lives low?”

“She stays out of the light. Away from attention. Partly, she’s kind of embarrassed about her cleft lip scar. Maybe you noticed. Other kids sometimes make fun of it. They call her ‘Lip.’ She acts like it doesn’t bother her. But inside, she’s real sensitive about what people think. Anyway, that man would need a real good story to convince her to go someplace with him.”

“Is it possible she knew him?”

“I don’t think so. She would have mentioned it. She would have already posted his picture before. She tweets about all of her postings. I’ve seen every picture. So I don’t think she knows him. Do you think he’s the one who kidnapped her?” Emily’s voice was shaky-worried.

“I’m not thinking anything, yet,” I said. “I’m just wondering the same things you are. Did you tell the police about this photo?”

“I thought you were a detective. I just told you.”

“I mean the Sacramento police.”

“No. I... I wouldn’t know how. What would I do? Would I dial nine-one-one? Would they investigate me? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’ll call them. And no, they wouldn’t investigate you. But they will ask you questions just like I did.”

“That sounds kinda scary.”

“It isn’t. If they contact you, just tell them what you told me. You know Gertie pretty well?”

“I’m her best friend. But it’s not like we’re real close. I should probably say I’m her only friend. We stay pretty – I don’t know what word to use – casual. It’s not like she confides her secrets.”

“Who would she tell them to?”

“Nobody. That’s the thing about Gertie. She’s self-contained. Even if she has something burning her up inside, she’s the only one who’s ever going to know.”

“Is there anyone else I could call who knows Gertie well?”

“Nobody knows Gertie well. All she cares about is movies. It’s her escape from the real world. That’s why she’s going to be a director. So she can live in that made-up world.”

“Right,” I said. “Can I call you back if I have any more questions?”

“Yeah. But it’s better if you text. I don’t always take calls.”

“Thanks for contacting me,” I said. “I hope we talk again.”

“Okay. Bye.”

I was about to hang up when she said, “Oh, Mr. McKenna?”

“Yeah?”

“Something else you should know? Gertie’s not a slut.”

The statement made me pause. “Why do you say that?”

“You saw how Gertie wrote that the other man was hunky, and I just wanted you to know that she wouldn’t hook up with him or anything like that. Gertie’s got good dreams.”

“What’s that mean?” I said.

“It’s what Gertie and I say when someone isn’t, like, after bad stuff. I don’t know how old people would say it. What Gertie wants is all about good stuff. Some kids want to drink and do drugs and get in trouble and back-stab their friends with gossip. Gertie just wants to make movies. She says a movie is telling a story with a camera. She has this video app on her phone, and she showed me a little movie she made. It was good. She’s got good dreams.”

“Thanks, Emily. I appreciate that.”

I hung up.

I called Agent Ramos and told him about Gertie’s friend Emily and the photo she’d seen.

“I’ll forward the link to you,” I said. “The photo that Gertie posted on the website shows a man who vaguely looks like the kid pic you showed us of Mikhailo, although that’s a reach.”

“Does it look like the Dock Artist man you told me about?”

“Yeah. Kinda.”

“Is that a precise legal term?” Ramos said.

“Kinda. Also, the background of the photo shows a white cargo van on the street behind the man who may or may not be Mikhailo or Dan the Dock Artist.”

“I’ll check it out,” Ramos said.

“Because this case is Tahoe-centric, whoever grabbed Gertie may have brought her to Tahoe. I’d also like to disseminate this information to local businesses with a request for no public posting or Amber Alert. I’m worried that the perpetrator would see such a posting and flee. But if we keep it private, he has no reason to think we know about his van behind his picture on the website. Because Tahoe is small, I think the advantages to not posting an alert out-weigh the disadvantages. I’d like your permission on that.”

“I don’t believe you need my permission.”

“Agreement, then,” I said.

I heard Ramos breathing. I don’t think it was frustration, just thinking. “It is true that Amber Alerts can send a kidnapper into hiding and impede an investigation. It’s a hard call. I think your idea of a partial notice, just to Tahoe businesses with a request for privacy, is a good compromise in this situation.”

“Thanks. I’ll get this over to you as soon as possible.”

We hung up.

I got Sergeants Diamond and Santiago and Commander Mallory on the phone in a conference call and gave the same information to them.

Then I emailed Emily’s link to all three of them.

THIRTY

The time was 4 p.m., still some time left before businesses closed.

I’m the opposite of tech-fluent, but I brought up the image program on my computer and struggled for a long time. Eventually, I created a graphics file and managed to paste the picture of the man and the white van. Underneath I typed my flyer message.

KIDNAPPING ALERT

PLEASE DO NOT POST THIS

ONLINE OR ON ANY PUBLIC FORUM

LAW ENFORCEMENT – PLEASE NO AMBER ALERT

15-year-old Sacramento resident Gertie O’Leary has been abducted. Indications are that she may be held in the Tahoe area. Suspect pictured above is believed to be driving a white cargo van. Suspect may be watching the news and Amber Alert notifications. If he sees this information, he will flee. If you see a suspicious, white cargo van, please call or email Detective Owen McKenna, Douglas County Sergeant Martinez, Placer County Sergeant Santiago, SLT Commander Mallory, or FBI Special Agent Ramos ASAP. Thank you very much for your help.

I put contact info at the bottom of the flyer.

I dialed the Stateline Chamber of Commerce.

“This is Detective Owen McKenna,” I said when a young man answered. “FBI Special Agent Ramos and I are sending you a notice about a kidnapped child. As the notice explains, it is important that this doesn’t result in an Amber Alert because we believe the kidnapper will see it and go into hiding. I would like to email this to you and have you send it to your membership immediately. Can you do that?”

“I’ll have to check it with our director, but I imagine we can do that.”

“What email address should I send this to?”

He gave it to me. I thanked him and hung up.

I repeated the call to the South Lake Tahoe Chamber, the North Lake Tahoe Chamber, and the Truckee Chamber of Commerce.

They all cooperated, and I had the flyer emailed to them before 5 p.m. With luck, most of the businesses in the Tahoe-Truckee area would be on the lookout for white cargo vans within the next day.

On my way home, I stopped by Street’s lab once again and told her of the developments.

While the news that we now had a photo of the suspect gave her hope, the seriousness of the situation seemed to make her even more upset.

“Would you like to come up to my cabin for dinner? Make the evening a little better? It’s already getting dark. Time to call it a day?”

“I’d love to,” she said. “But I’m sorry. The lobbyist the beekeeping trade group hired needs my results tomorrow. I’ve still got a lot to do on my toxicology report.”

So I kissed her goodnight, left her with her honeybees, and headed home with Spot.

After I parked in front of my cabin, I got out, shut my door, and turned to open the back door and let Spot out. He barked and growled. It took me a long half-second to realize it was a warning, a half-second too long. I never got the door open.

A guy with the size and speed and strength of an NFL tackle came out of the dark at a run and hit me, his shoulder to my middle, one arm wrapped around my waist. He drove me back toward my log cabin as if I weighed ten pounds. A dump truck would’ve had more trouble moving me.

My ribs hit the outside corner of the cabin a fraction of a second before my right temple bounced off the end of one of the protruding logs. I went down, my mental world immediately darker than the Tahoe night.

THIRTY-ONE

I became vaguely aware of someone holding my wrists inside-to-inside in front of me and then taping them. The tearing tape sounded like duct tape. It could be torn edge-to-edge, but it couldn’t be broken by pulling. With multiple loops, the tensile strength was probably thousands of pounds. My lower arms were next. My shirt sleeves were pulled up, my elbows squeezed together, and tape was pulled around my lower arms in a spiral from wrists to elbows. Even though my fingers were free, my forearms and palms were held so tightly together that I was unable to do anything.

Next came my ankles. Then a piece of tape over my mouth. Despite the darkness, he put a cloth bag over my head and tied it tight at the back of my head. The fabric was so heavy that I wouldn’t be able to grip the edge of the tape through it, even though my fingers were free. There was movement at my wrists, the hot burn of a rope being yanked over wrist bones and then knotted.

With fabric over my head and tape over my mouth, there was no way I could bite at the rope knotted around my wrists.

Someone lifted me up off the ground and over his shoulder the way a strong dad might with a child. I got a strong whiff of cologne. He took several steps, and pitched me off with substantial forward motion.

My foot banged against something solid as I fell to a hard, cold, metal surface. Big hands gripped my upper arm, spun me around on a corrugated floor.

The bed of a cargo van.

There were noises at the side of the van. The rope at my wrists jerked. I was tied to something inside the van.

Hands went through my pockets, pulled out the contents.

A door opened and shut. Engine roared. Another door shut. Two men.

The van lurched off and went down my mountain road fast enough that I slid around in the back as we raced around corners. The rope tied to my wrists came up short. My arms were jerked one way, then another, and my body spun around.

For a moment, I’d had the brief thought that despite being hobbled with taped wrists and ankles, I could maybe roll up onto my knees, feel my way to the inside door latch, open it and push myself out to fall at high speed onto the road. But now that I was tied to the inside of the van, jumping out would leave me dragging and bouncing behind the truck. A quicker end, perhaps, than what they planned for me, but death by road rash was right up near the top of the list of bad ways to die. I stayed curled in a fetal position on the hard metal and tried to think away the fog in my brain.

If I could get one of the knots in the rope untied...

I pulled on the rope, dragging my sore body across the floor of the van, trying to move slowly so they wouldn’t notice if they looked back. My fingers followed the rope to a knot that went around a horizontal support board that was bolted to each of the van’s ribs. I could feel the heavy knot, but I couldn’t understand how to untie it. It was tight, the rope hard with tension. If the men planned to untie it, there would be a slip tie of some kind. But without vision, I couldn’t tell what it was.

I sagged back down, my head pounding.

I could tell when he slowed for the stop sign at the bottom of the mountain. Then came a pull of acceleration as he turned south onto the highway and floored the gas pedal. I noticed the change in sound when he went through the Cave Rock tunnel. A few miles later, I became aware of the van slowing and stopping.

I heard the side door of the van open. Someone untied the rope that had attached me to the inside of the van. Once again, a man tossed me over his shoulder as if I were a bag of dog food. My gut was squeezed hard as I bounced on his hard deltoid muscle. I could have tried using my elbows or knees against his chest or back, but my brain was still swimming.

The man carried me a long way. His cologne permeated my brain. I never heard him huff and puff. He dumped me onto soft ground. Snow. But not normal snow. There was sand under the snow. Somewhere nearby was the rumble of a big engine at idle.

There was a chunking sound as if something had been dropped on the ground by my feet. I felt rope-tying motions at my ankles.

For a moment there was silence. Then I felt movement on the skin of my left arm, a scratching. Someone was writing on my skin, between the spiraling strips of duct tape.

“Ready?” said a rough voice. His, I thought. One word wasn’t enough to perceive any accent.

“Yeah,” came a more distant voice.

I heard the swish of air, then the smack of something hitting a solid surface. The rope on my wrists went taut. Running footsteps. A big engine revving. Muffled. Gargling with water. A boat with a big inboard engine.

The rope jerked hard enough to break my arms if I hadn’t been tensing my muscles. I was dragged across the ground. Something heavy pulled on my ankles. The snow turned to thin, hard ice. Then I hit ice water.

I gagged and choked as water was forced into the cloth bag around my head. But as the boat pulled me out into the lake, it sped up. My body rose, surfing just enough on the water for my head to be in the air even as a heavy weight pulled on my ankles with enough drag that I thought of the torturous dismemberment used as punishment in the Middle Ages. The boat was going fast enough that the water’s surface was firm. The rope dragging on my ankles was a severe strain. It felt like I was being torn in two.

Some of the water drained from the bag around my head. I concentrated on breathing through my nose. Too fast and I sucked water into my nose. Too slow and my lungs started to pound with desperation.

Then the boat slowed. I tried to kick with my taped ankles, tried to rise to the surface. But the ankle weight was too heavy, and I was powerless to stop myself from sinking. The ice water was sucking the heat out of my body. Hypothermia was slowing my muscles, robbing me of control. My kicks with taped ankles and my arm strokes with taped wrists weren’t enough to overcome the weight on my ankles. The bag over my head filled with water. I held my breath, but it wasn’t enough air to last thirty seconds. And my futile efforts to swim against the weight pulling me down exhausted my air supply that much faster.

 Just as my consciousness was fading, the rope at my wrists tightened. I felt myself pulled up through the water. My head broke the surface. I was lifted so that I was out of the water from my armpits up. I shook my head, trying to get the water to drain from the bag. As air came in, I sucked through my nose over and over, trying to replenish my air.

“Is it tied?” a voice said.

“Yeah.”

“Listen up McKenna!”

I kept focusing on breathing.

“Time for you to die, McKenna.” The man’s voice was intense and creepy. A slight accent, maybe. Maybe not.

The rope holding me up by my wrists went slack. I tried to suck one last breath through my nose as I dropped back into the water. Water rushed back into the bag over my head as I tried to kick with my taped feet, fighting the weight that pulled me down into the depths.

THIRTY-TWO

I’m not the type to panic. Every time that I’ve faced extreme danger, I’ve done it with a certain calm. I’ve always been able to accept that I’ll die someday. Not knowing when or how has never stressed me.