Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (40 page)

I hit him with the bat. Again. And again. He fell. My rage made my vision go dark and my ears numb to his screams. I didn’t give him any deathblows as he’d tried with me, and as he and his pals had no doubt attempted with officers Denell and Galant. But I disabled him. Permanently. Elbows, wrists, knees, ankles. When he went silent, I ran to Street and Gertie. Spot was already next to them. I kissed Street’s forehead and held the side of her head for a moment.

“This is going to hurt,” I said as I ripped the duct tape from their faces. Each in turn gasped with shock. But they both stayed relatively quiet. Spot sniffed Street, then Gertie. Gertie shut her eyes, then leaned her face over so that her cheek was against Spot’s chest.

I wanted to grab Street and hold her. Gertie, too. But there wasn’t time.

“Do you know where the handcuff key is?”

“No,” Street said, her voice shaky with stress and fear. “One of the other men had it.”

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know. I think they left. They went out that door.” She looked toward a door I hadn’t seen. “An hour ago. We haven’t heard anything.”

“Earlier,” I said, “maybe a half hour ago, I thought I heard a scream. Was that one of you?”

Street nodded. She glanced at Gertie. “After the other men left, the man you just hit groped her. He was rough and mean. She was brave. Even with the duct tape on, she screamed through her nose.”

“That’s why you think they left,” I said. “Because he wouldn’t have gone near her if the others were here.”

Street nodded. I noticed that she had on just one slipper. Her other foot was bare. A little part of me broke.

I reached over to Gertie and put my hands on her shoulders. Her eyes were red. She shivered with fear. I squeezed her shoulders.

I ran back to the unconscious man and went through his pockets. I found a wallet and some keys, but no handcuff key. I put his stuff in my pocket and ran back next to Street and Gertie.

“Have you been anywhere in the house? Do you know what’s on the other side of that door?”

“We’ve only been in this room,” Street said. “They brought us through the tunnel, then locked us to the floor.”

I nodded. “Spot,” I said. He looked at me. I pointed to Street and Gertie. “Guard them.” I grabbed Spot’s head for emphasis. “Do you understand? Guard them.”

I turned back to Street. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

The bat would make a good weapon. But it wasn’t where I thought I’d dropped it. The man was clearly unconscious if not dead. I turned around. The bat must have rolled someplace. The tunnel door was broken and partly open. Maybe the bat bounced back down the dark tunnel. There was no time. I picked up the longest portion of the broken broomstick, walked over to the other door, opened it.

There was a stairway lit by another wall sconce. I didn’t want Spot to be tempted to follow me. Street and Gertie needed his protection and presence. I shut the door behind me and walked up the stairs, out of the dungeon. There was another room. White sheetrock walls. A bed. Four doors. One of them was open.

I walked through, my little broomstick raised and ready.

The room was lit with another wall sconce.

The only furnishings in the room were a narrow mattress on the floor, a small desk, and a chair. On the desk was a computer. Sitting in the chair was a man. Attached to his ankle was a long chain that stretched to another bolt in the stone floor. The man was in his forties but hunched and wan and skinny as an emaciated 80-year-old. I recognized him from the photos that Nadia Lassitor had shown me of her husband.

The man we thought was dead.

Ian Lassitor.

FIFTY-NINE

As the man turned toward me, the terror on his face was obvious. He was severely bruised on his face and neck. A purple knot of swelling protruded an inch from his left jaw.

“I’m Owen McKenna, here to get you out,” I said. “Is there a phone in this house?”

He shook his head and spoke in a small, weary voice. “No. No landline. No wifi either. They disconnected it. This computer is isolated, too.”

“Who’s they?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Three men. Big and brutal.”

“Where are they?”

“One was down in the cellar. The other two left. At least I think they left. That’s their pattern.” He pointed to one of the doors.

“When do you expect them back?”

“If it’s like most nights, they’ll be gone another two or three hours.”

“How long have you been chained in this room?”

“Almost three weeks. I’m starving. My brain has mostly stopped working. Are you a cop?”

“Private. I was brought into this by Nadia.”

Lassitor looked away as if it took him a moment to process the thought that Nadia might have been worried about his absence. His confusion looked genuine, although I didn’t trust that to be the case.

“Why do they have you here?” I asked.

“It’s a long story. I wrote a new type of facial recognition software.”

“What does that have to do with you being chained here?”

“My software uses an unusual kind of algorithm that analyzes nodal points. By changing the nature of the nodal points, I can use it to recognize not just faces but objects that we can describe in general terms, even when we don’t know their size or what they look like.”

“So?” I said.

“Objects, for example, that are underwater. Objects that we don’t have photographs of but that appear on sonar scans.”

What he said didn’t make any sense to me. “I don’t... Oh, you’re looking for the Lucky Baldwin gold. A chest of gold.”

“Yes,” Lassitor said. “Somehow, these men found out about what I’m doing. I don’t know how because I’ve told almost no one about my facial recognition software.”

Lassitor looked away, then back as if he’d thought of something new. “Except Nadia. I told Nadia about it.” He paused. Processing. “The men came into my house and took me prisoner. They took my project from me. Now I do the same thing, looking for the Lucky Gold, but I do it for them. Somehow they knew about these secret rooms. I didn’t even tell Nadia about the rooms. They put me on this chain. I’m kidnapped in my own house. They’re forcing me to perfect the software so that it will recognize the gold chest. They’re using my boats to make the scans. Each morning the leader brings me a hundred sonar scans loaded onto a flash drive. I analyze them. Every day I have to show him what I’ve done with the previous scans, and how I’ve adjusted the software. He knows just enough about coding that he can tell if I’m faking it or not. So I keep working on it. But if I succeed, I know they’ll kill me.”

“They’ve already killed you once,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“A man died piloting your Gar Wood when he was struck by another boat. Everyone thought the skipper was you. Including your wife.”

Ian stared. He made two, slow shakes of his head. “God, what is happening?! That was... I was making a movie. A fictionalized documentary. That man was my stand-in. He looks just like me. I found him by using my software on actor databases. I hired him, trained him on the boat, then sent him out on his first rehearsal. I’d mounted a tiny fish-eye lens camera on the bow of my Gar Wood. The guy was a method actor, and he wanted to rehearse with the camera on. But right after he drove my Gar Wood out of my boathouse, the three men turned up, brought me into this room and kept me chained here ever since. I assumed they scared off the actor.”

“That’s all you know?” I said.

“Yeah, but there’s something else going on that I don’t know about. A few days ago, I heard noises in the room next door. Then tonight I heard a scream in the cellar.”

I gestured at the door. “That’s what you call the room down the stairs?”

“Yeah.”

“They kidnapped your stepdaughter Gertie. She’s tied down there with my girlfriend.”

“Why?” he was pleading. “What would that have to do with the Baldwin gold?”

“It doesn’t. It has to do with ransoming the insurance payout on your death.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Lassitor said.

“You think the men will be gone until when?”

“It’s usually three or four a.m. when they come back. I think it’s because that limits the chance that anyone will see them. I only know the times because I can see the time on the computer. I pay attention because when they’re gone, I try to signal with the desk light.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can never be sure they’re gone, so I can’t make noise. They’ve made it clear they will kill me if they hear me try anything. The leader is sick. He says he’ll use his power drill with a very long bit to drill holes all the way through my head until I die. So I’m quiet. But when I think they’re gone, I shine the desk light up at the overhead windows.” He pointed. I looked up.

There were two clerestory windows high above in the small room.

“Those windows are part of a long line of windows,” I said.

Lassitor nodded. “There are eight in a row. Two are here. The other six are in the entertainment room on the other side of that wall.” He pointed at the wall behind his desk.

“So I turn the desk light up and down, hoping that someone, somewhere will see my distress signal. Three short flashes, followed by three long flashes, then three more short. SOS. The problem is that the trees outside the windows are so thick that I don’t imagine that anyone could ever see my dim light. But I kept trying in case there is a strong wind blowing the branches, making temporary openings.”

“Tell me about this house,” I said. “Do the men always come and go through the boathouse tunnel?”

“No. Usually they come in that door.” He pointed. “There’s a room through there with a bathroom and a storeroom off the bathroom. You’ll see the secret door that leads to the entertainment room.”

“Does that door open in the bookcase unit in the entertainment room?”

Lassitor nodded. “Yes.”

“So they come and go through the front door of the house?”

“No, I don’t think so. Even though this room is pretty soundproof, there’s a very soft thud you can hear when the front door shuts. I’ve only heard it a few times since they put me in here. I’ve wondered if the thuds might be someone else, if I should yell and try to get their attention. But when I first tried that, the men were in the house. They came in here later and beat me nearly to death. So I didn’t dare call out the next time I heard it. Anyway, I think they come and go through the landscape garage tunnel.”

“Is that like the boathouse tunnel?”

“Yeah. There’s another hidden door in the bookcase next to the piano in the living room. The tunnel goes out to the landscape garage on the far side of the property. There is a small drive in from the highway. The lawn-mowing tractor and the utility Cushman are in the landscape garage. It is also close to the lake, but it doesn’t look like a boathouse, so that’s where I hid the aluminum fishing boats that I used for my sonar scans. I assume they are still keeping the boats there. The boats are automated and run off GPS signals.”

“So someone can come and go from the landscape garage tunnel, and it never looks like anyone is ever here in the house,” I said.

“Right. Unless they turn on lights in the entertainment room at night. Then the glow is detectable out the clerestory windows. Of course, someone on the lake could see in the big windows on the lake side. But if you keep all the blinds closed, then the clerestory windows are the only ones in the house that let any light out.”

I raised my hand to stop him talking and trotted back down the stairs into the cellar.

“I haven’t found a handcuff key, but I’m making some progress,” I said to Street and Gertie. Spot jumped up. “Spot, stay,” I said. I pointed again at Street and Gertie. “Guard them,” I said again.

Spot didn’t lie down, but he stopped and stood still.

I walked over to the prostrate man on the floor.

He was still unconscious, his breathing shallow and rapid.

I ran back up the stairs to Lassitor. “Where do you keep tools?” I asked Lassitor.

Lassitor shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’m all thumbs with tools, so I don’t have much. There’s a drawer in the kitchen with a small screwdriver and a pliers, but that’s about it. You could check the main garage. The door is next to the kitchen. There’s a workbench with some stuff in drawers and cabinets, stuff that was there when I bought the place. I’ve never gone through them.”

I picked up my broken broom handle and walked through the other door. As Lassitor described, there was a room and a bathroom. On the far side of the bathroom was an open door and a storeroom beyond. The small mattress that Gertie had described was on the storeroom floor.

I pulled down the handle on the secret door. The door swung in toward me.

In front of me was darkness. I realized I was looking at three shelves with an amplifier and CD player and turntable and wires attached to their back sides. On the far side was the back side of a cabinet door.

I ran my hand along the wood and found a brass handle that was recessed but swung out when I pulled on it. I lifted it up. The shelves and the cabinet door all swung out into the entertainment room.

The room was dark. Carrying the broomstick, I stepped through the now-open shelving unit and pulled the hidden door shut behind me. There was a dial where the closet rod had been on the boathouse door. I gave it a turn and felt the locking mechanism engage. Then I swung the cabinet with its enclosed shelves back. There was a little click as they snapped into position. I could have left it all open, but if the men were in the house or if they came back soon, I wanted to be able to hide and have them think that nothing had been disturbed in this part of the house.

I walked through the dark entertainment room, under the arch and into the grand space that contained both the living room and the kitchen and dining area.

There was a dim glow coming from under the kitchen cabinets, little hockey puck lights shining down on the granite counters. Next to the kitchen counter was the door to the garage. I opened it and walked out. I flipped on the light switch.

There were no windows. But the gap under a couple of the garage doors was at least a quarter inch. The light would be obvious from outside. I took a look around, memorized the layout and the location of the Mercedes and Porsche, and turned off the switch. I switched my penlight on and walked over to the corner where Lassitor had said there were cabinets and drawers.