Tahoe Blue Fire (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 13) (14 page)

“Sergeant,” I said.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” I restated what I’d told his deputies.

He looked around at the forest, then spoke to his men. “I’d like you two to go over to that ridge so that the shooter can’t sneak up without being seen. When the other guys get here, I want you all to spread out and make a secure perimeter so we can get the woman out of here without more exposure.”

The men nodded and headed into the trees.

I took Diamond back into Baumgarter’s house. He nodded at Felicite who was still sitting on the floor with Spot. She nodded back, obviously recognizing him from his investigation of her fire. She was much calmer, one hand rubbing Spot’s ears, a fingertip unconsciously touching his ear stud. 

Diamond and I went into the sun room. The floor with its cover of glass pieces was like a theater stage made to look like a fantasy world of gemstones.

Diamond looked through both broken windows. “No way to get a clear sense of the shooter’s location,” he said.

“No.”

He stepped back to the interior hall to talk to Felicite. “Do you know when Adam is supposed to be back?”

“He went to his doctor appointment. That usually takes an hour.” She looked at her watch. “He will probably be back in about twenty minutes. Let me call him.” She pulled her phone out of her purse and dialed.

I said to Diamond, “Any chance you still have access to the… What did your guys call it? The Douglas County Safe Deposit Box?”

Diamond nodded. “The house of our patron, the guy whose daughter I rescued from the carjacker methhead. He thinks I’m like a Marvel Comics superhero or something. Able to swoop in to save young damsels from the clutches of Dr. Doom.”

“That was an amazing shot,” I said.

“Hours at the range mixed with some serious luck makes for the kind of outcome we always hope for but rarely get. You’re thinking that it’s time to sit on Adam and Felicite.”

“At least put them in the box. Give them some space to breathe.”

“Makes sense,” Diamond said. “They had the fire and now a shooting, all in less than 48 hours. So yeah. The house is still ours to use, webcams and all. Let me call the office. They keep a schedule of the house. The owner comes up about four times a year, and he likes to stay in his own house when he comes.”

“Right,” I said.

Diamond got on his phone as Felicite put hers in her purse.

“Adam says he’s on his way and he’ll be here in about ten minutes,” she said.

“Good. Diamond’s checking on something. Then we’ll make a plan.”

Diamond was talking. He stopped and waited. Then he said, “Thanks. No problem. I know the keypad code.” He hung up and put his phone in his pocket.

“Adam’s almost here,” I said.

“We’ll go outside and wait for him.”

We went out, and Adam showed up a few minutes later. He let Blondie out of his truck. She was now wearing her Service Dog bib. She ran around.

We explained to him about the shooting and told him that it would be good for his sister’s sake if he stayed calm.

He was very somber as he looked over at the blown-out sun room windows.

We went inside the front door. Blondie stopped fast and stared at Spot. Her tail was on high speed.

Spot looked at me.

“It’s okay,” I said.

He pushed himself up and walked over to Blondie.

“Dog’s huge,” Adam said. “Will he be friendly to Blondie?”

“Yeah. And she can tell.”

Adam looked at Blondie who was quivering with excitement.

“I guess you’re right,” he said. “You know your dogs.”

Spot and Blondie sniffed each other, both wagging. Blondie spun in a circle.

“She’s never seen a dog that big,” Adam said.

“Dogs don’t care about size,” I said.

Adam bent over, helped Felicite stand up, and gave her a hug, his body almost completely enclosing her.

Diamond said to them, “We’re taking the two of you to a safe house. So you might want to grab a few things.”

Adam said, “What’s that mean, a safe house?”

“A place the sheriff’s office is able to use, a place where no one can easily shoot at you or burn you down.”

“Are we being detained or something?” Felicite asked.

“No. We just want you to be in a safe place so you can get a good night’s sleep without worrying.”

“How does it work?” Adam asked.

Diamond said, “Up above the top of Kingsbury Grade is a house that’s owned by a Bay Area venture capitalist. We did a favor for him once, and he’s been trying to help us out ever since. The house sits up high on a ridge, and it has a fence around it. There are other houses nearby. Two of them are owned by the same man, and he rents them real cheap to Douglas County Sheriff’s deputies. There are lights on motion detectors. There are webcams inside and outside the house, along the fence, and at both roads and hiking trails on the nearby ridges. They send continuous video feeds to computers at the owner’s company.”

“So it’s totally safe,” Adam said.

Diamond shook his head. “No. No place is totally safe. But no one can come or go without being recorded. That is a powerful deterrent to anyone who might try to come close. The drive has a gate powered by a garage door transmitter, and there is a four-car garage. You can come and go relatively unseen. The house has reinforced windows and doors and is made of fireproof materials. There is also a sprinkler system. If you keep the blinds shut, no one will be able to easily target you.”

“Are you saying we can take our cars there?” Felicite said.

“Yes. And you can come and go as you desire. Although your cars are the place where you are the most vulnerable.”

“We both have window tint,” Adam said.

“Good. That helps.”

“What if I want to go back home?” Felicite said. “I’ve got work to do. And, frankly, I want out of here.”

“Whatever you want is fine with us,” Diamond said. “I just need to get your statement about the shooting.”

Felicite frowned. “Could you take my statement at the house? Then I could go there with Adam, make sure everything’s, you know, okay. Maybe I’ll stay one night.”

“Certainly,” Diamond said.

“When would we go?” Adam said.

“As soon as you get your things.”

“We have no things. Everything burned up. We have the clothes we’re wearing. I have my poetry book. Ron Baumgarter gave us toothbrushes. Which makes me wonder, does this place have a washing machine?”

“Yeah,” Diamond said.

Adam and Felicite went to get their few items.

“Where do you think the shooter was?” Diamond asked me.

I pointed out the window toward the mountain behind the neighborhood. “If you stand at the windows that were shot out, you can see a range of areas on the mountain from which someone could fire a single shot that would go through both windows. The shooter had lots of choices. Finding the place he used would be very difficult.”

“How far away do you figure he was?”

“From the moment that the window broke, I’d guess it took about a second or a second and a half before I heard the crack of the rifle. So that’s one thousand to fifteen hundred feet. If you cross-reference that distance with those areas from which one could shoot out both windows in the sun room with a single rifle shot, that narrows it down but still allows for a lot of territory.”

“Lot of stuff a sniper has to think about to make that kind of shot,” Diamond said.

“Yeah. And it gets exponentially more complicated as the distance increases. Military snipers take into account dozens of concerns. Gravity, wind, temperature gradients, the Coriolis effect of the spinning earth. But this shot doesn’t involve that kind of distance.”

“Sorry that I never think of you as Sherlock,” Diamond said. “But you obviously deserve the moniker now and then.”

“What do you think of me as?”

“A lucky gringo who has a brilliant girlfriend who isn’t fixated on shopping and doesn’t talk incessantly about children and future grandchildren.”

“You’re saying that your perception of me is basically about your perception of the woman I’m connected to and that I’m lucky for that connection.”

Diamond shrugged. “Well, I perceive you as tall. That’s not about Street.”

“Not about anything I’ve earned, either. No credit to me.”

“Still sound like Sherlock.”

He turned and walked into the sun room, stepping gingerly on the diamonds of broken glass, then sighted through the windows, gauging where the shooter might have been.

Adam and Felicite appeared at the door. Adam held a paper bag with their few belongings in it.

Diamond got on his radio, said a few words, then clipped it back on his belt. We all hustled outside. Adam seemed worried. His grip on Blondie’s leash was tight.

Diamond gave crime scene instructions to four deputies and left them behind.

Adam and Blondie got into his pickup, and Felicite got into her Audi. Felicite followed Diamond on one route, and Adam followed me on another. It wouldn’t fool a team working with the shooter, but it would make it more difficult for a single individual to track us. 

Diamond and I took circuitous routes that eventually led to the top of Kingsbury Grade, where we turned off on North Benjamin and snaked our way up into the high country.

Most of Tahoe’s neighborhoods are down by the lake. This was one of Tahoe’s highest neighborhoods, up above 7500 feet. Although the east part of Tahoe gets less snow than Tahoe’s West Shore, the elevation of Kingsbury Grade makes up for it. The snow walls were six feet high.

I found the turnoff and made a series of turns to the house, which sat up on a ridge at about 8000 feet. Considering its spectacular location with views of Tahoe to the west and Carson Valley to the east, the house was modest, large but not ostentatious.

When I got to the gate, I pulled over. Diamond came up from the rear. He got out and punched the code into the keypad, and the gate opened. We all drove in through the entrance, and the gate closed behind us. There was a plowed parking area. Diamond got out and once again used the keypad at one of the garage doors. In a few moments, he brought two garage door openers out to Adam and Felicite and had them both pull into the garage.

Because Spot was a calming influence on Felicite and, probably, a stabilizing presence for Adam and Blondie, I let him out of the Jeep. We walked into the garage with Diamond.

Diamond hit the buttons to lower the garage doors, then we all walked through the door that led to an area off the kitchen.

Diamond took Adam and Felicite through the house, showed them which bedrooms they could use, pointed out the food pantry and the fridge and freezer, which were well stocked. He explained the controls for the lights and heat and showed them how to set the alarm.

Then we gathered in the kitchen.

“Any other questions?” Diamond said.

“Yes,” Felicite said. She was obviously tense and worried, and her voice wavered.

“Ask anything you want.”

“Do you think we’re going to die?”

TWENTY

“No,” Diamond said. “I think you’ll be okay. But be cautious. No more open drapes.”

Adam sat at the kitchen table. Spot was making a careful inspection of the cracks where the cupboards opened, searching out food smells. Blondie was exploring the adjacent living room.

Felicite leaned against the granite-topped center island. Her arms were crossed, her knuckles white as each hand gripped the opposite elbow.

“But do you think the rifleman will make an attempt on us up here at this house?”

Diamond looked at me as if he were handing off the ball.

I said, “It appears that his assaults have been well-planned. It takes time to scout locations and escape routes and set up for such a shot. He’s obviously very motivated. I would consider your situation dangerous. But I agree with Diamond. He’s not the kind of shooter who is going to attempt a home invasion. So I think you’ll be okay.”

Felicite said, “I ask because since the fire, I’ve come and gone in my car. I’ve been on display going into Ronald Baumgarter’s house. Yet he hasn’t taken a shot at me. But when he finally took his shot, he did it when Adam was gone. How do you explain that?”

“I can’t for certain,” I said. “But my best guess is that he was aiming for me, and I’m very sorry about that. He’s already shot at me twice. However, because of the fire, we have to consider that you or Adam are also targets.”

“You think this house is safe enough?” she asked.

Diamond answered. “The locks are strong, but the greatest security comes from the fact that anyone approaching knows that their vehicle and license plate and their face have all been broadcast to internet storage before they can even get close to the house.”

“But someone could still break in.”

“It would be difficult, but yes. The question is, who would want to. With a comprehensive alarm and two deputies living nearby, law enforcement is very close. Much easier to catch up with your victim elsewhere.”

Felicite seemed skeptical. “What about a shooter from a distance like what just happened to us? There are places around here where a shooter could hide in the forest.”

I said, “There are no great sightlines to the house from any close location. There are lots of distant locations from which someone could see the house. But shooting from long distance isn’t as simple as aiming a gun.”

“How do you mean? Hunters have those scopes.”

“Yes. But they are still relatively close to their prey.” I pointed toward the view out the window. “These distances are much greater. To be that good, snipers have to have highly specialized gear and training.”

Blondie came trotting through the kitchen on her exploration. She stopped as if she’d hit a wall, then turned, ran over to Adam and jumped up against his leg. She moaned and cried, then jumped on him again. Then she spun around, frantic, and leaped up and hit his chest with her paws.

“Hurry,” Felicite said to Adam. “Let’s get you to a bedroom. Hurry!”

Diamond looked at me. I looked at Adam. He’d started to move, started to turn around as if looking for something, but in the unfamiliar surroundings, he was confused. His eyes began to looked glazed and unseeing. “I should get on the floor,” he said.

“No,” Felicite said. “We have time to get you to a bedroom.” She turned to me. “Help me.” She took one of Adam’s arms. I took the other and, following her lead, walked him into the bedroom.

“Help me get him down onto the bed.”

I had no idea what was happening, but clearly this was something she had experience with. We turned Adam around and backed him up to the bed. The backs of his knees hit, and he sat back. As we got him to lie down, he tensed up, his flesh becoming strong and rigid. I realized that he was having some kind of seizure.

Blondie jumped up onto the bed, crying, whimpering. Felicite shooed her off to the floor.

Diamond appeared in the doorway. He pulled out his phone.

“No, don’t call nine-one-one,” Felicite said, nearly shouting. “This is a routine seizure. Sort of. We follow the doctor’s instructions.”

I realized that Adam was completely motionless. “He’s not breathing,” I said. “His face is going gray.”

“It’s okay,” Felicite said. “It’s stressful to watch, but it only takes a minute or less for him to start breathing again.”

Spot came into the room but stopped a respectful distance as if he understood that something serious was happening.

After a minute, Adam started breathing, then began having dramatic convulsions. His eyes rolled up, his hands made fists, his knees pulled up toward his chest, and he bucked and jerked. Froth formed at his mouth, and he made a kind of repetitive, growling cry.

Felicite kept her hand lightly on Adam’s arm, and she jerked as he jerked.

Blondie jumped her front paws up onto the bed, whined, dropped back down to the floor, turned a circle, jumped her paws up again, whined more. She jumped up on the bed a second time. As she reached her nose toward Adam, his convulsing legs jerked and hit her in the nose with his knees. She cried, jumped off onto the floor, then ran back and forth making little yips and worried squeals. She turned more circles. The poor dog was desperate. She crouched down on the floor and cried. She moved her head back and forth on the floor, despondent. I’d never seen any animal so sad, so distraught.

“Can I do anything to help?” I asked.

“No,” Felicite said. “We ride it out. He’s unconscious. The seizure will stop in three minutes. It’ll take him ten minutes to regain consciousness, then he’ll be foggy-brained for a couple of hours after that. It’s important that everything stay calm when he comes to. If medical personnel are around, that will freak him out. Much better for him to gradually come to the recognition that he’s had another seizure.”

Blondie was still crying. I tried to reach and give her a reassuring pet, but she pulled away. She resumed jumping against the bed, bouncing off, lying on the floor and thrashing. Spot came forward, but I held out my hand. “Spot, no,” I said in a loud voice.

After a couple of stressful minutes, Adam’s convulsions slowed and gradually eased to a stop. Felicite wiped the foam from his mouth. He seemed to go into a deep sleep.

“Help me roll him onto his side,” Felicite said.

Diamond and I both stepped forward and mimicked her as she put her hands under the side of Adam’s back. We lifted until he was on his side in the fetal position.

“This is his recovery position,” she said. “It helps him breathe.” She patted the bed. “Okay, Blondie.”

Blondie jumped up on the bed and lay next to him, her brow wrinkled with worry. She cried and pawed at him and gradually calmed herself. Felicite lifted Adam’s arm and draped it over Blondie. That helped calm her, although his arm was so heavy, I didn’t know how long she could take the weight.

It is at times like these that I have a powerful perceptual shift about luck and fate and the chaotic randomness of life. Those of us who have so-called normal lives without undue stress and fear and worry and pain rarely know how fortunate we are. Then we see a man like Adam who’s famous even if unemployed and who lives at his sister’s house and struggles to manage, and we’re tempted to think he should snap out of it. He’s obviously intelligent, and he has no apparent disabilities. So we think, you’re smart, go out and get a job, and make yourself a normal life.

Then we learn that the man has Traumatic Brain Injury and medical issues that can rip normalcy in two, and we realize that one of the main problems is in ourselves for failing to consider that not all other people have our good fortune of functioning bodies and brains, with emotional and psychological landscapes that are level and fertile and stable and predictable.

I stood there watching Adam helpless in the fury of some kind of neural-electrical thunderstorm in his brain, and a bit of my expansive personality contracted hard, overwhelmed with sympathy, empathy, and the callousness of living each day of my life never considering that I had been given a thousand gifts that I had not earned. I hoped I had the sense to remember him the next time I judged someone whose shoes I hadn’t hiked in and whose life I hadn’t witnessed up close.

When the room was calm and Adam was asleep and Blondie was calmer, I said, “Blondie knew he was going to have a seizure, didn’t she?”

“Yes.” Felicite took her hand off Adam’s arm and gently pet Blondie. “Adam needed something to help him track and give him purpose. So we went to find him a rescue dog. Blondie was a skinny puppy with a mess of fleas and mange, and she was scared of everyone in the world. She cowered at the back of the kennel and wouldn’t come near me or the woman who was working in the shelter. But when Adam bent down and put his fingers through the cage, Blondie walked right up to him and she licked them. The shelter lady opened up the kennel and Blondie climbed right into Adam’s arms. The lady was amazed. Astonished. But clearly, Blondie and Adam had finally found some kind of emotional safety in each other’s presence. So we took Blondie to the vet and had her treated, and, in Adam’s constant presence, Blondie came alive. And it was in Blondie’s presence that Adam found better ways to cope with his problems.”

“The seizures look very difficult,” I said. “Do they have any idea what causes them?”

“The seizures are the result of his CTE. He probably mentioned that to you.”

“He mentioned it, but he couldn’t remember what CTE stands for.”

“Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. It refers to the brain disease that comes from banging your head. He gets a full tonic-clonic seizure at irregular intervals, usually every two weeks or so. He’s tried the various medications available, but none of them works with him. Yet, in the big picture, the seizures are the small part. The big part is he’s losing his mind. Tons of football players are dealing with this. It’s the dirty little secret about pro football, and it’s the subject of that huge lawsuit. Right about the time that former football players start to be forgotten - twenty years after they retire - their brains go to hell. It doesn’t happen to all players, or even most players, but the number is still large. First, they lose their short-term memory. Some of them start having seizures. After awhile, the disease progresses faster. They lose their long-term memory. After that, they lose it all, their sense of self awareness, their physical control of their body, their bladder and bowel function, their awareness of anyone they ever knew in their lives, everything that it means to be human.”

Diamond said, “All because they hit their head too many times.”

“Yes. It’s a tragedy. And what happens to these older guys mostly goes unnoticed because it’s all overshadowed by the fame and excitement focused on the current crop of younger  players.”

“These guys are our Roman Gladiators,” Diamond said. “All through human history, people have thrilled to see the biggest, strongest men go to battle.”

“Right,” Felicite said. “And twenty or thirty years after they retire, they disappear into dark corners as their brains rot.”

Adam moaned.

Blondie lifted her head off the bed and looked at him, her brow furrowed with worry.

“He’ll start to wake up in another few minutes,” Felicite said.

I looked at Blondie. “How does she sense a coming seizure?”

“We don’t know. The characteristic is reported in something like ten percent of all cases where people who have seizures have a dog in the house. Dog people are working on concepts of how to formulate a standard procedure for training epilepsy therapy dogs. Obviously, the dogs smell a change in a person before they have a seizure. But we don’t know what that smell is. If we could figure it out, then we could train any dog to be an epilepsy therapy dog.”

Felicite ran her fingers over Blondie’s face, caressing her ears and nose and cheeks.

“After the first couple of experiences, Blondie understood that Adam’s smell change, or whatever it was, predicted the coming seizure. So now she freaks out. In some ways it’s stressful, but I wouldn’t have it any other way because a little advance notice allows Adam to get down onto a bed or the floor so he won’t fall and hurt himself. We got Blondie a Service Dog bib, so she’s allowed to go wherever he goes. She even saved him once at the grocery store. He was in an area with shelving units that had sharp corners. When Blondie started her panic attack, Adam got down onto the floor before he passed out. For all we know, Blondie might have saved his life.”

“What’s his prognosis?” Diamond asked.

“You want it straight? He’s dying. The epilepsy is a symptom of the CTE. It’s a steady downward course. When it gets to his present state, the progression is inexorable and fast. It won’t be long before he needs in-home care. Another few weeks, maybe. Shortly after that, he’ll have to be put in an institution. And not long after that, we can expect that he won’t even know who he is.”

Like all adults of a certain age, I’d known several people who’d fought health battles and lost. I thought I was used to it. But this time seemed different. I didn’t know if it was something about Adam’s innocence, or Blondie’s devotion, or maybe just a change in my own view of the world.

For a brief moment, I thought of Street and how I assumed she would always be present in my life, thus took her for granted in some measure. I realized that I shouldn’t take her for granted, but I pushed the thought away. There are some kinds of darkness that are too hard to face.