Tahoe Dark (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 14) (18 page)

“Shall we keep exploring, Largeness? Or shall we head back to the Jeep?”

Spot looked at me, then turned and looked toward the next island of trees.

“Okay, we’ll keep exploring.”

I headed on once again. My shoes squished with each footfall and made sucking sounds as I lifted them up. I felt bad disturbing the delicate meadow ecology.

The trees in the distance were definitely bigger, indicating higher ground. As we walked, we moved into an area of moist air that was fast getting very cold. I imagined sitting and drying out in front of my woodstove, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in my hand.

It seemed crazy tracking plants and trees in the growing darkness, the unlikely convergence of which had the smallest possible odds of providing any information about an armored truck robbery. My shoes were filled with muddy water. My wet pants pulled on my legs with each marching step. I was cold. Shivering wasn’t far off. I had a powerful sense that this was folly.

“What do you think, boy?   Movement is good exercise, and suffering in the cold builds character. But we gave it the old college try, right? Time to go home, dry off, warm up, and imbibe a beverage that would brighten the spirit, right?”

I turned toward where I thought Spot was but didn’t see him. I stopped and rotated, the muck grabbing at my shoes as if to pull them off. Spot had ranged off to the side of me, looking in a different direction. He was standing still, holding his head high, air scenting. His ears were focused and he looked up a bit. I walked toward him to see what caught his attention.

Spot was looking toward a different tree island. Silhouetted against the still-light sky, this bunch of trees looked similar to the others except that above them flew a group of crows, squawking and circling and making a fuss as if they were arguing over a bag lunch they’d stolen from the beach. Some of them swooped down into the trees. Others flew back out.

“The eternal entertainment of crows,” I mumbled to myself as I fought off the depressing cold weight of the misty air, “a group of which is known as a murder of crows. Did you know that, Largeness? One of the world’s smartest animal species is, when in a group, called a murder. Imagine that.”

Spot ignored me.

I walked a few more steps toward his focus point, stopped, and considered what was grabbing his attention.

“Okay, boy. We’ll head on toward those trees instead and see what those birds are about.” I walked on past Spot. “But no farther. My mood is in need of a serious application of heat, a full belly, and an awareness that the big bed is but steps away.”

After a few more gushy, sucking steps, I turned around again. Spot was hanging back, still watching the crows, still sniffing the air. But something was wrong.

His ears weren’t up, but back.

“Okay, Largeness, I’ll go ahead and see what’s up.”

I hiked on toward the trees. As I got close, I looked up to see how the biggest one looked. With the lingering light of the sky behind the tree, I could see that it was a big pine with batches of long needles. But it was easy to see the sky through the needles, so they were sparse. A tall tree with sparse branches and long needles that didn’t appear very lush was likely a Ponderosa Pine.

Looking back down toward the ground, my sky-sensitized eyes couldn’t see anything in the developing dark. I reached for my penlight. It was still in my pants pocket, soaked. I’d forgotten to take it out before I forded the creek. I turned the switch. Nothing.

So I pulled out my phone and turned it on. The screen light was dim, but it was enough to see where the trees were and step around them. I turned around.

“Spot?” I called out softly. “Are you there?” I couldn’t see him. He was somewhere behind. I thought I knew why he was hanging back, and it gave me a sick feeling in my gut.

I shined the phone light around. Moved forward with small, quiet steps.

I came to a kind of makeshift camp. There were two tents, the kind that would just fit two men each. On the ground nearby were a couple of backpacks. A cookstove. A jacket hung on a tree. Something reflected my phone light. An aluminum coffee pot on its side, the top knocked off and coffee grounds spilled out. Something sparkled on the ground. I pointed my phone down. The light reflected off the shiny blade of a knife. There was a pile of beer cans. Bud and Coors Light. The Buds were all crushed, the Coors empty but still round and smooth. Something else caught the light, two pieces of paper stuck in a bush, the kind you rarely see on the ground.

Hundred dollar bills.

I moved forward. Two unseen birds exploded in movement. By the sound of their flapping wings, they barely missed my head. I went toward where I thought they’d come from, holding my phone up to illuminate the campsite.

There was a vague shape several yards in front of me, dark as the tree trunks, but more round. A big pack leaning up against the tree. But as I got closer I thought it maybe wasn’t a pack.

I took another step, tried to angle my phone for better vision, then stepped forward again.

It was bigger than a backpack. Longer. Not something natural to the forest. But definitely leaning against a tree.

Another step. In front of the object was something shiny. Silver. Reflective. Obvious even in my dim phone light. Contrasting with the big dark shape behind it.

One more step.

The silver object became clear. It was a spear. It entered the body of the man just below the hollow of his neck and projected down at a steep angle. By leaning to the side, I could see that the pointed tip of the spear emerged from the man’s lower back, the point sticking into the bark of the tree as the man fell back in death. I moved my phone forward and up so that I could see the dead man’s face.

Now I understood what the crows had been doing.

TWENTY-THREE

My breath was short as I turned and again shined my light around the campsite, certain that no one was there, but checking anyway.

I had two bars of reception. For the second time in one day, I dialed 911.

“Nine, one, one Emergency,” a woman said. “Please state your name and address.”

I began to explain, but realized that I wasn’t getting words out.

“Nine, one, one Emergency,” the woman repeated. “Please speak louder.”

My jaw was locked, teeth clenched. A spear through a man was a sight I’d never seen. I forced my mouth open. Moved my jaw back and forth. Spoke.

“This is Owen McKenna calling from the marsh just south of Baldwin Beach. I’m north of Highway Eighty-nine approximately a quarter mile and east of Baldwin Beach Road about the same distance. I have found a murder victim, killed by a spear. I suspect there will be others nearby.”

“Please stay on the line,” the dispatcher said, “and I’ll have officers en route immediately.”

“I need to conserve my battery as my phone is my light,” I said. “So I’m going to disconnect in a moment. If you get a chance, contact Sergeant Bains of the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office. He will want to be here. Tell him that the victim is possibly connected to the armored truck robbery two mornings ago. Also, please contact Sergeant Martinez at Douglas County SO. And one more thing. Tell the men to bring lights.”

I hung up.

TWENTY-FOUR

I turned toward the dark meadow where I believed Spot was waiting, hanging back because he’d already seen too much human death, and, as with all dogs, he didn’t want to be near it or smell it.

“It’s okay, boy,” I called out to the darkness. “You were right. Bad stuff, here. But it’ll be okay, so just hang in there.”

The tree island was the size of a baseball diamond. Using the phone screen as a light, it was relatively easy to navigate the marsh grass at the perimeter. I knew I was leaving footprints and perhaps I’d obscured other footprints. I’d already been leaving prints through part of the camp before I knew it was a crime scene. I decided to step softly on uncompressed grass and those areas where it looked like others hadn’t already tread. Even if I could see no evidence of previous tracks, I would walk at the edges of spaces and next to brush and on top of brush so that I didn’t mar any more previous tracks. After they’d made casts of the various prints, they could identify which were mine.

When I’d completed the circumference of the tree island and not found anything out of place, I moved back toward the tents.

The door flaps to both tents were hanging down, but they weren’t zippered. I approached the first tent from the side, stepping through bushes, and bent down near the corner of its door. I reached my phone through the opening and pushed the door flap aside without leaving prints or disturbing anything.

There was nothing there but two rumpled sleeping bags and a small open pack from which spilled clothes.

Moving over to the second tent, I did the same thing, opening it in such a way that I didn’t disturb the dirt in front of it, in case there were identifiable footprints. Shining my phone light, I looked in, realizing at the last minute that there was a buzzing sound coming from within.

I saw a second body. This one, like the others, was speared from his upper front, down and out the middle of his back. He lay facing the tent door, curled on his side. It looked like he’d been lying in the tent, his head toward the wall opposite the door. He likely sat up and was crawling toward the tent door, got himself skewered, then fell over to the side.

It appeared that he hadn’t been sleeping in his bag because he was still wearing all of his clothes except his boots. There was money spilling from his right front pocket, like stuffing coming out of a torn mattress.

Unlike the other body, this one still had eyeballs. The tent flaps didn’t keep out the flies, but they kept out the crows. My past experience with bodies suggested that a crime victim’s eyes relaxed after death and did not reveal the terror of their experience. But this body’s eyes still appeared to show shock.

Sirens sounded in the distance.

I left the tent, stepped through brush out of the tree island and back to the marshy grass. I walked toward where I’d last seen Spot.

“Hey, boy,” I said softly. “Where are you? C’mere, Spot.” I shined my phone, the light from which seemed almost non-existent out on the open meadow. Something moved off to the side. I turned the light.

Spot stood some distance away, his head hung low, ears back.

“It’s okay, boy,” I said, walking over.

He didn’t move as I pet him. “It’s okay,” I said again. “Let’s walk around the tree island to the other side where the cops will come with their lights. You and me’ll answer some questions and then go home and sit by the fire. Okay?”

I pulled on his collar, and Spot came along, slowly, with lethargy that I knew was depression.

When we got to the other side of the tree island, I stopped because I didn’t know if the El Dorado men would come from the highway to the south or the beach road to the west. I guessed that the beach road access would be closer and faster. But that would require that they had keys to the gate. The gatekeeper locked everything up at night.

I turned off my phone to conserve battery power, and we waited in the dark. Lights came through the distant trees and then started across the meadow. I heard some men swear as they stepped into the wet, soggy marsh grass. There were several lights in the group, and they bounced and danced toward us but a bit to our side. Flashlight beams shot out across the meadow toward us.

“McKenna?”came a shouted voice.

“Out here,” I shouted. “Look for my phone light.” I turned it on and held it up.

“He’s over there,” one of the men shouted. “More to the left.”

I saw the lights change direction toward us. Eventually, the group become distinct men in the darkness. They got to us a minute later.

“Hey, McKenna. Sergeant Bains, here. Sounds like you stumbled onto a nightmare. I assume you were looking for it.”

“Long story. I found some pine pitch on the tire of the Reno Armored truck that was robbed two days ago. I came out here looking for a connection between a Western Pine Beetle and a piece of Tahoe Yellow Cress that was in the pine pitch. I didn’t expect to find the camp of the robbers. And I certainly didn’t think I’d find two dead men with spears through their chests.”

“Two dead? Whoa. You think two of the robbers killed their companions?”

“Logical guess.”

“Hey, Sergeant,” one of the men said. “Should we set up a standard perimeter, even way out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“Yeah. McKenna, have you met Dr. Sender? He’s our new Medical Examiner.” Bains gestured toward a skinny young guy who wasn’t wearing an El Dorado sheriff’s uniform.

I reached out and shook his hand. “Owen McKenna,” I said. “Sorry to meet under such circumstances.”

His hand was cold and shook. Maybe he was cold. More likely, he was shaken by the situation. He didn’t speak.

Bains said, “You want to say what we’re about to find, McKenna?”