Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (23 page)

But this was a kind of panic-inducing terror unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

I tried to kick hard. Again and again. But my muscles were weak with hypothermia. As I thrashed my arms, I felt a gentle upward tug on them. They’d attached a small float to my arms to keep me vertical in death, displayed like Amanda Horner for the tourists to see, to send a message to Nadia to pay.

But the float was not buoyant enough to give me any chance of swimming against the weight tied to my ankles. I was unable to fight the weight, and I was losing control to hypothermia.

As I sank, I bent at the waist, reached down and felt for the knot that tied my ankles to the anchor weight. The knot was an obvious, hard ball. No way would I get it untied without time and a tool of some kind.

I stopped struggling. Not because I was giving up, but because I realized that a futile fight goes nowhere. If I burned through my last few seconds of breath doing something that didn’t help, that was foolish no matter what my chance of survival.

I felt my descent quicken, the ice water flowing past my head as I sank down into the depths. As I dropped, I reached my hands to the side of my head to feel behind my neck for the knot that tied the fabric bag in place. Because my wrists and forearms were lashed together so tightly, it was awkward to even touch my fingertips to the knot. It was there at the back of my neck, a hard little tangle of cord. I pulled at it. Scraped, pinched, gripped. A portion of the cord seemed to move. I tried to get it between my fingernails. Pull again. The cord moved some more. A little loop of looseness. Hook the nails into the loop. Yank on it. Shift up on the cord. Pull again. Faster. Over and over. The loop grew.

Some part of the cord came free.

I got my fingers under the edge of the cloth bag, pulled out, stretched it to the maximum circumference, jerked the bag off my head.

The bag was off, but the world was still black. Without the bag, the ice water swirling past my head was more pronounced as the weight on my ankles pulled me farther into the deep.

With the fabric gone, I got a fingernail grip on the corner of the tape over my mouth. Tore it off. I felt a tiny bit less constrained. But to breathe was to suck in water and die.

I don’t know how long I was pulled down toward the bottom. But about the time that I realized this was my end, the weight on my ankles stopped pulling on me. My anchor had hit bottom.

Reaching down against the gentle upward tug of the float, I felt the line from my ankles. Grabbed it. Pulled myself down to the anchor.

It was a tire. The twin of the one that pulled Amanda Horner to her death.

My feet hit the sandy bottom as I lifted up on the tire. It was heavy with concrete.

But, like Amanda’s tire, the concrete was just in the part of the tire that rested on the bottom. Was it possible that, standing upright on the bottom of the lake, the top of the tire had trapped any air?

I lifted the tire up higher, put it over my face, tipped my head back, and thrust my nose up into the tire. There was a pocket of air. I inhaled, slowly in case I sucked water. Exhaled. Inhaled again. Exhaled. Repeated.

The air pocket was small. But it was enough to gather a bit of oxygen and blow off some carbon dioxide. I could prevent carbon dioxide build-up in the air pocket by exhaling into the water, but then the air pocket would shrink and I wouldn’t be able to get my nose up into it. Better to exhale into the tire and maintain the air pocket. But if I continued to breathe it for more than another breath or two, I would exhaust the oxygen, pass out, and drown.

I took a last breath, then rotated the tire. With my hands and arms still lashed together, I could only rotate it a bit at a time. Eventually, the portion with concrete came around to my hands.

I reached into the tire space, feeling for the edge of the concrete. It seemed joined to the rubber. I tried to flex the tire rubber, spreading the tire wider, moving the rubber. I got my fingertips under the edge of the concrete. Tried to curl my fingers. The concrete seemed immovable. A fingernail broke off. The ice water was numbing. My muscles were weak. Focus. Bend the fingers. Flex the rubber. Get another fingertip under the concrete. Pull. Jerk.

My lungs burned. Consciousness was fading. I was standing on the sandy bottom of a dark, freezing, mountain lake, arms taped, ankles taped. The surface was an unknowable distance above me, and the end of my life was assured by a tenacious tire anchor.

The concrete loosened.

I got my right fingers under the edge of the concrete. My knuckles abraded against the inner, ribbed rubber of the tire. I put my knee against the inner rim of the tire. Pulled. Jerked harder.

The concrete came out of the tire and fell away.

Without the weight of the concrete, the tire became a mild anchor. Still heavier than water, still a bulky weight and difficult to drag through water, but no longer a guarantee of death.

I pulled down with my arms, kicked with my feet. With wrists and ankles taped, and with my boots on, it was the crudest of swimming motions, a shackled dog paddle. The float tied to my wrists, a plastic bottle filled with air, was not enough to overcome the weight of the tire, but it didn’t hurt.

Then I thought about the plastic bottle.

It would have a tiny bit of air, but it might make a difference.

I pulled it down to me as I continued to kick. By turning it upside down, I was able to unscrew the top without its air escaping. I exhaled a tiny bit of the air in my lungs, then put the end of the bottle in my mouth. Squeezing the bottle very gently as I inhaled, I got most of the air into my lungs, good, I hoped, for another few seconds under water.

My kicks and strokes were feeble. On each kick, my legs pulled up on the tire, ensuring that I would rise almost not at all in the water. My ascent was torturously slow. My consciousness was almost gone. My lungs felt as if they were going to explode. Or collapse.

Through my fading thoughts, I had the vague awareness that I was moving up through the water. Toward the surface. Toward air. The thought motivated me a tiny bit more and pushed off my resignation and acceptance of death for another few seconds.

If I could make a few more strokes and kicks...

If I could hold my breath a bit longer...

There was no more point. I was at my end.

I gave a last, final, death kick.

My head broke the surface.

I gasped. Over and over. Sucked air as if it were the essence of existence.

While consciousness returned, I had to keep making the ineffective kicks and arm strokes. I had to keep breathing.

After many seconds of rushed breathing while I tread water, I realized that my arms and legs were losing their function to hypothermia. I thought to look around.

There. To my left. Lights. The shore.

I tried to swim. Kick. Arm stroke. Kick. My movements were weak from hypothermia. The tape on my wrist and ankles made my movements ineffectual. It was an enormous effort to get my head far enough out of the water to breathe. I was hobbled by the tire dragging my feet down and the empty plastic float interfering with my arm movement.

The shore seemed to stay distant. The cold became more numbing. My fatigue was overwhelming. I tried counting my kicks and arm strokes to help me focus, to help me keep going. One, two, three...

At the bottom of each arm stroke, my head lifted up enough to get a small breath.

Ninety-nine, one hundred, one hundred one...

The black water went on forever. The lights never got closer.

Four hundred twenty-two, four hundred twenty-three, four...

The cold took the last of my strength. Once again, it was over. I was sinking for the last time.

My feet hit bottom. My head was still above water. I hopped forward, sluggish, awkward leaps, dragging the tire with tied ankles. I tried to leap like a tied dog would. It moved me a foot forward. Again. And again.

An area of white appeared, dimly lit by distant lights. It was a stark contrast to the blackness of water.

The snow-covered beach.

I kicked and thrashed. My hands hit ice. I pushed down, pulled forward. My hands broke through the ice. Dug into sand. I pushed. Writhed. Thrashed.

Eventually, I was half out of the water.

I tried to shout, “Help!” It was a tiny, meek chirp. I tried again. No sound at all.

The cold continued to suck my strength until I could no longer move, until I no longer cared.

THIRTY-THREE

I never heard any voices or felt anybody move me. My first awareness was of shivering violently while being burned with fire. Gradually, I realized I wasn’t breathing fire, but was inhaling very hot, humid air. That same air seared the exposed skin on my face and neck. I was in a tiny room, lying curled up on a wood bench. There was a dim light in a corner by the ceiling.

I heard a noise. A door opened. Ice fog swirled in. A man materialized in the fog. He wore a jacket and under it a beige shirt and slacks. He had a gun and radio on his belt.

“You alive?”

I tried to say, “Maybe.” It came out as a staccato grunt. My shivering was so violent that my teeth banged hard enough to chip each other.

“I’m Cory Denell, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. We met.”

“I ’member.”

“We got a call, and the caller said a person was lying on Nevada Beach, maybe freezing to death. Hey, it’s some kind of hot in here. Gimme a sec to cool off.” He stepped outside and shut the door. Came back a minute later. The jacket was gone.

“We were carrying you from the water’s edge up to the street when this homeowner came out and said he had his sauna all fired up. It was snowing pretty good, and it looked like it would take a long time to get you to the ER. So we called the hospital, and a doctor said to go ahead and put you in the sauna but to turn down the heat so it was gentle. Then he said to turn off the heat when you stop shivering, not to let you cook yourself even if you wanted to.”

“Yes, I want to,” I mumbled.

“I’m curious about how you ended up in the lake, arms and ankles tied. They tried to drown you like Amanda Horner.”

“Yeah.”

“But you got away.”

“Yeah.”

“We got all the duct tape off.”

“Thanks. Maybe you should call Diamond. He’ll want to know.”

“Okay. I’ll do it outside, if you don’t mind. I can’t take this heat.”

He stepped out and shut the door.

When my shivering eased a bit, I sat up on the bench. There was a heater in the corner. I was too weak to pull my clothes off, so I stood by the heater. When I felt my pants burning my legs, I turned a quarter turn. In a few minutes, another quarter turn.

Deputy Denell came back in. “Sarge is on his way. You still okay?”

“Yeah.” I turned another quarter turn.

“Like a rotisserie,” he said, pointing at the heater. “I’m gonna wait outside while you get those threads dry.” He went out and shut the door.

Three full rotations later, I started to sweat. But my clothes still weren’t dry, and I still wanted to bake. I found the switch and turned off the heater. Cracked the door. The sauna would cool, and my clothes could continue to dry.

The door swung wide and Diamond walked in.

“You okay?” he asked, looking me up and down.

I nodded.

“There’s a group up in Minnesota,” he said. “Town called Duluth. One of the stranger gringo activities. They call themselves the Polar Bears, and their idea of a good time is to use chain saws to cut through the ice in Lake Superior and then jump into the hole to take a swim.”

“I can now say with some expertise that it is not a good time,” I said.

“Maybe why Mexico City is located where it is,” he said. “A sane climate helps keep people acting sane.” He paused. “Same guys who dropped Amanda in the drink?”

“Yeah.”

Diamond reached out and touched my wrists. “They hang you by your wrists before they dropped you in the drink?”

“From a boat. Drove the boat a little with me dragging behind. The tire weight tied to my ankles made it more exciting.”

The sauna door was open a few inches, letting cold air in. Diamond was standing next to it. He reached over and shut the door.

I pointed to a thermometer on the wall. “It’s still ninety degrees in here.”

“Perfect,” Diamond said. “In Mexico City, my mother turns on the heat when it gets down to ninety. You think those guys know that their plan for you didn’t work out?”

“If they did, they would have caved my head in and then dropped me in the lake again.”

“Your Jeep here near the beach?”

“No. Those men were gracious enough to give me a ride all the way from my cabin. Spot is probably still shut inside the Jeep at my cabin.”

“I’ll give you a ride. Maybe I should bring you to the hospital for a quick check?”

I shook my head. “Spot is waiting.”

THIRTY-FOUR

My Jeep was still in my drive and Spot was still in the Jeep. Cold and no doubt miserable, but very happy to have me let him out. He jumped all over me.

Because the men had taken all my pocket contents, I had no keys. But I found my hidden house key.

Diamond came inside with us.

“You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah, as long as I don’t walk outside and leave Spot inside, or close him inside the Jeep. He and I are going to be real tight for the foreseeable future.” I remembered my arm. “Oh, one more thing,” I said. “Denell or one of the others pulled off the duct tape that was holding my arms together.”

I lifted up my left sleeve and showed Diamond my arm.

“The American Dream,” he said. “You tell Ramos, yet?”’

“Maybe you could do the honors,” I said.

He nodded. “Those men will find out that you are alive. They could have been in the area as we pulled up. They might already be planning a more permanent repeat performance.”

“I’ll be fine. You can go.”

Diamond hesitated.

“Thank Denell and your other guys for saving my ass.”

“Will do,” Diamond said. He left.

I noticed my answering machine was blinking. It was Street saying she hoped I was okay and that she’d try again in the morning.