Tahoe Chase (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (34 page)

“You’re willing to go along and help?” Street said to Joe.

“That girl who’s out there in Desolation Wilderness,” he said, “is the best friend Rell has had in years. Now it looks like Rell asked her to join her hiking group, and it’s about to get her killed. I’ll do whatever I can.”

Street gave him a hug. “You take care of yourself.” She pointed at me, “and that guy, too.”

“Me and the hound,” Joe said. “We’ll look after Owen, make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.”

Street turned to me.

“There isn’t anything I can do to help, right?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“So it’s best if I leave you to concentrate.”

“Probably.”

She made a slow, thoughtful nod, and gave me another kiss. I gave her a hug, and she gripped me hard. Then she nodded at Diamond, and left.

I was pulling on my back-country ski boots when Joe’s phone rang.

Joe picked it up. “Hello?”

He listened, frowning. “I can’t understand you.” Pause. “Talk slower.” Then, “Hold on.” He handed the phone to me. “Voice is too soft, and there’s too much static,” he said.

“This is Owen McKenna” I said.

The voice was that of a woman, breathless, crying, and very hard to understand. But the French accent was obvious.

FIFTY-FOUR

“Simone! Are you okay?”

“He’s chasing me! It’s been two hours since I saw him and started sprinting to get away! Maybe three!” She was panting. Her words were rushed. Desperate. Weak.

“Where are you?”

“Rockbound Valley. He’s... kill me! I got the charger... You didn’t... cell phone.”

She was breaking up.

“We’re coming up from Echo Lake!” I yelled.

No response.

 “Can you hear me, Simone? We’re going in at Echo Lakes. We’ll come up to Lake Aloha. Stay on the windblown areas so you can ski faster. If we don’t see you at Lake Aloha, we’ll continue on to Rockbound Valley. Can you hear me? Simone, you can do this! You have the endurance. Remember what you said, that you can keep going and going!”

I thought I heard a broken cry, a whimper. Then static. I waited.

“Can you hear me, Simone? We’re coming to get you!”

More static. Then came a distant scream of terror, muffled by wind. It sounded as if she’d dropped her phone in the snow and kept on skiing.

The line went dead.

I hung up. Joe and Diamond stared at me

“She’s alive,” Joe said. His face was white. His voice shook.

“For now,” I said.

“What can I do?” Diamond said.

Before I could answer, Joe barked out the words. “Drive us to Echo Summit.”

“Will do,” Diamond said.

“Joe, grab your gear,” I said. “We can put our stuff on in the car!”

Joe grabbed his boots. Mine were on but untied.

“Do you have gaiters?” I shouted.

“Forgot,” Joe said. He opened a closet, pulled out some items.

I held the door, we all ran out, Spot running ahead. I shuffled out in my untied boots.

I put my skis into Diamond’s patrol unit, angling them back toward the rear window. Joe got in front, holding his boots and heavy snow clothes. Spot and I got in back. Diamond backed out of the drive, and we left fast.

The winter night air was unusually cold and humid and it burned our skin. As Simone had mentioned in our last real conversation, wispy cirrus clouds danced in the sky, yet the stars were still visible in most places. The moon was in its first quarter, and it shown bright, but its light came through an ice haze that misted the stars as if they were soft candles flickering inside white paper bags.

Light snow began falling as Diamond drove down the mountain from Joe’s neighborhood to the valley floor. I’d seen it many times before, tiny flakes falling from a sky that barely had clouds. But by the time we got down to Lake Tahoe Blvd, the roads were slick. Diamond turned right, and we headed toward North Upper Truckee Road, the back way out to Highway 50.

We now knew that Joe was right about the route that Simone would choose when she recognized that she was in danger. But it didn’t bring us comfort. I’m sure I wasn’t alone as I contemplated her terror, out in a frozen wilderness, chased by a man who had killed multiple times, a man who was an expert skier and athlete, a crazed man who wouldn’t hesitate to kill her once he found the right spot.

There was little traffic as Diamond got to Highway 50 and turned up the long grade toward Echo Summit. The road twisted its way along the ledge carved into the rocky cliff. Diamond pushed his speed.

At one point, the rear end slid out on a curve. Diamond took his foot of the gas but didn’t touch the brake, letting the vehicle find its natural traction.

After that, Diamond took it a touch slower, but still drove fast.

None of us spoke. Joe and I laced up our boots and put on our gaiters to keep snow out of our boots.

The falling snow got heavier. It looked cold and bleak outside.

I’d often looked up from South Lake Tahoe at the vast expanse of snow on the Crystal Range, but I hadn’t ever made a winter expedition into the wilderness. I thought about Simone, desperate and alone in the Desolation Wilderness Area. If she wasn’t already dead, she was skiing for her life.

Diamond crested the top of Echo Summit, drove a short distance, and turned right on Echo Summit Road. It was plowed to the Sno-Park lot, which was about a mile from Lower Echo Lake. The lot had a couple of pickups and a Subaru, but was otherwise empty. Diamond slid to a stop and we all jumped out.

Spot trotted around investigating scents while I strapped my skis into the side tunnels of my pack and put a ski tie at the tips so that they made a stable triangle. I pulled on the pack. The ski tips came forward above my head. Joe reached into his pocket and pulled out a headlamp with an elastic strap. He put it on his head, tested the light, then turned it off.

Joe and I said goodbye to Diamond, then trotted with Spot on compressed snowmobile tracks. Joe did his earthquake version, his gloved hands held out a bit for balance. He moved at a good pace, and was quickly breathing hard. His exhalations became grunts. I couldn’t tell if the sounds were his natural exertions, or if they were grunts of worry for Simone.

A hundred yards or so down the unplowed road, we came to an old cabin with a lean-to shed built against its side.

“That’s it,” Joe said. “Harry’s sled is inside the lean-to. Hurry.”

I used my boot to sweep away the most recent snow. The double doors to the shed were warped, and they creaked as I tried to pull them open. One caught on the snow. I kicked away the snow and pulled the doors open wide.

Inside was a bright green snowmobile with graphics that accentuated its lines. It was a big, fast-looking machine.

“Looks heavy,” I said. “It’ll be hard to pull out.”

“It’s got power reverse,” Joe said, panting. He reached inside the upper part of the door frame and felt along the edge. “Here’s the key.”

Joe turned on his headlamp and moved into the shed, straddling and crawling over the machine’s seat. He sat down, put the key in the ignition, and started the engine.

The Arctic Cat seemed to growl. I stepped out of the way as Joe backed it out of the shed.

“You sit here,” Joe said. He pointed to the metal cargo rack that projected out behind the seat. “Spot sits here.” He patted the second seat. “I drive.”

Joe grabbed an old jacket off a nail inside the shed. “Wrap this jacket around the luggage rack to make it easier to sit on.”

I took the jacket and did as he suggested.

Spot had ridden a snowmobile before, so it wasn’t too difficult to get him onto it. But he was too long to fit on the rear seat facing forward. So I turned him backward. He sat up high, his rear legs straddling the seat and his chest against the seat back, his head turned sideways. I sat on the luggage rack and leaned forward, my arms around the seat back, and held him in place.

It wasn’t comfortable, but it was all we had.

“We’re going to be very rear-heavy,” I said.

Joe nodded as if that were obvious. “It won’t be a problem except when we climb. Worst case, you and Spot get off and walk.”

I nodded. “How fast does this sled go?” I asked as Joe started off.

He turned his head to talk over his shoulder. “Real fast,” he shouted over the engine roar. “But this is night. You can’t over-drive your headlights on a snow machine, or you’re asking for trouble.”

“What’s that mean?” I called out.

“On high beams, the headlights shine about two hundred feet ahead. At forty miles per hour, it takes about two hundred feet to stop. So that’s our speed limit. Even so, there is always the possibility of hitting an obstruction under the snow.”

“A submerged boulder or tree trunk,” I said.

“Right. If that happens, we might come to a real quick stop. But it’s unlikely on a well-used trail. More likely when we head off into untracked snow.” Joe sped up. We were bouncing on the undulating trail.

Echo Summit Road was covered in several feet of compressed snow, packed down by snowmobiles. There was a six-inch layer of fresh powder on top. Joe made good time.

The road twisted through a forest of large trees, some of them old-growth giants. We went past several old cabins and then by Berkeley Camp, the rustic summer hangout for professors and other Berkeley groups.

“What’s your plan?” I called out.

“My job is just to get us out there,” he shouted. “Because Simone is many miles from Echo Lake, we’ll head down the ice in the middle for the fastest travel. When we get to Lake Aloha – or Rockbound Valley if we have to go that far to find her – then I’ll pick a route up the southwest-facing slopes to our right of the lake and the valley. Those slopes will be sun-stabilized. And being up above will give us a better chance of seeing her. That’s where you come in,” Joe said. “I know snow, but I don’t know how to apprehend a killer.”

Joe was driving faster still.

“If we only see Simone, we come in easy,” I said. “We don’t want to scare her by roaring up toward her. But if we see them both, then we head toward him. Once he sees us, he’ll know we’re after him because snowmobiles aren’t allowed in Desolation. So the best approach is to aim straight for him. The faster we can get to him, the better. Our approach might intimidate him. And if he tries to make a sprint for her, maybe we can get to her first.”

“What do I do when we get to him?”

“Stop when you get close, and Spot and I will jump off.”

Joe nodded, squeezed the throttle farther.

“Why did you bring your skis?” Joe yelled over the engine.

“Insurance. Never know when we come to a place where a snowmobile can’t get through.”

A mile in, we rounded the curve with the spectacular overlook across Tahoe Valley and the south end of the Tahoe Basin twelve hundred feet below. It looked idyllic, the sparkling lights from hundreds of homes dimmed by the icy, filtering haze of snow-filled sky. But all I could see was a vision of Simone trying to outrun a killer.

We went around another curve, then pitched down the sloped parking lot, which is always crowded in the summer but empty now in the winter. At the end of the lot, the road pitched down at a steeper angle. Joe drove us around the switchback at the end and continued down through the powder to the lower parking lot and the old rustic lodge that serves up ice cream cones to summer boaters.

From there, it was a short distance to the lake’s edge. Despite the recent snowfall, the snowmobile trail was an obvious cushioned stripe down the moonlit lake.

When Joe got onto the smooth, compressed trail, he throttled up, and the snowmobile growled with power. In a moment, we were racing along. I worried that Spot would bounce off on the many bumps, so I held him tight.

Joe seemed to lean a bit to port. I hoped it was just back pain or a cramp in his arms or his neck and not a heart attack. The machine was too loud to call out and expect him to hear, so I stayed quiet.

Joe’s lean didn’t get worse, and we made good time.

At the end of Lower Echo Lake, we came to the channel that flows from Upper Echo Lake. Joe took the curves like a pro, slowing only a little. In a minute we came to the upper lake.

The upper lake ended where the mountains rise up, with Echo Peak on the right and Ralston Peak on the left. Straight ahead was the trail that climbs up to a chain of lakes ending in Lake Aloha.

Joe slowed to a stop. “Here’s where it gets tricky,” he said. “Because we’re back heavy, I’m going to have to keep up a good speed to crest the rises without gunning it on each rise. Otherwise, we might pull a wheely and tip over backward. So just hang on, lean forward, and trust me, okay?”

“Got it,” I said. “Where do you think Simone will have gotten to by this time?”

Joe pulled up his sleeve, clicked on his headlight for a moment, and looked at his watch.

“I’d guess she will have come to Mosquito Pass at the most. If that’s the case, she’ll be coming down the north end of Lake Aloha by the time we get there. It’s also possible that she’s still in Rockbound Valley. We’ll know when we see her.”

“Right,” I said. Joe’s comments were optimistic. We both knew the odds against her.

Joe squeezed the throttle a touch, then backed off. “If we do tip over backward,” Joe called over his shoulder, “throw your hound one direction and dive to the other. Your push off him will help propel you both to safety.”

“What about you?”

“I crashed in a lot of races,” he said. “Hopefully, the technique will come back to me. If not, I’m ninety-two. Not like I haven’t lived a long life.” He gunned the engine, and we shot up a trail that climbed through the forest, our headlight making a bouncing beam in the trees. Again, Joe leaned sideways.

The trail went up in cycles, sometimes steep, sometimes level. It wound around trees and boulders. From where I sat behind Spot, I couldn’t tell if Joe was following the hiking trail or whether he was just choosing the most open path through the forest. The boundary of Desolation Wilderness was a short distance ahead, so if we were benefiting from previous snowmobile tracks, that would end soon.

In less than a mile of climbing, we came to a small open area that was flat. “Tamarack Lake,” Joe called out.

He sped up and raced across it. At the far end, the trail rose at a much steeper angle. I held Spot tight as Joe drove the sled at high speed onto the trail. The machine hit the steep incline of slope with a shock. Spot wavered and my foot slipped. But we held on. Joe drove like a fighter pilot. He still listed to port, but he leaned forward and drove hard and fast.