Tahoe Deep, page 17
part #17 of An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Series
I stopped at my office on Kingsbury Grade to check messages. There were none. I was about to use my office landline to dial the number in blue ballpoint pen when it rang. I picked it up.
“Owen, it’s me,” Street said.
“Street, my sweet. You sound stressed.”
“First, I’m okay. But I was sort of run over.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
”What happened?! Are you really okay?”
“Yes. I’m in the parking lot at the doctor’s office on Kingsbury Grade. I was at Heavenly Village meeting the new Forest Service supervisor/basin manager for coffee. Afterward, we were walking along the sidewalk and a guy bumped me. I fell off the curb and tumbled into the road.”
“I’m so sorry! You were obviously injured if you sought medical attention.”
“Well, it could have been much worse. I held my arms out as I went down and kind of skidded to a stop on my stomach. Like a belly flop.”
“You probably took the skin off your palms. Did you hit your chin or face?”
“Palms, yes, face, just a little bit. But the reason I went to see the doctor was that the fingers of my left hand were run over.”
“What?? A car’s tires went over your hand?!”
“A truck. It was just the tips of my ring finger and middle finger. So I worried that maybe they got badly smashed. It turns out, they were just lightly smashed.”
“Street, this is serious. Where are you now? I’ll come over.”
“The clinic on Kingsbury Grade. In the parking lot. Mason drove me here, so I don’t have my car. I’d walk over to your office or my lab, but I’m a little shaky.”
“Stay put. I’ll be there in a minute.”
When we pulled into the doctor’s office lot, I got out and ran to the clinic entry where Street stood.
Her left hand was bandaged. She held it up. She frowned and her jaw shook with shivering despite the warm weather. She had a bandage on her left cheek bone. The skin near her left ear was abraded, with red scrapes going from her ear down to her jaw. She’d clearly slid with her left hand out in front and then turned her head to the right as her left cheek hit the pavement.
I kissed her forehead and gave her a light hug. “Thank God you’re alive.” I held her gently but close.
“Can you take me to my lab? Blondie is there.”
“Yes, of course. Are you okay to walk to the Jeep?”
“I’m fine. The doctor took several x-rays. She said the worst injury was to my psyche. It’s a bit upsetting to come so close to being killed. It could have been my head under that truck tire.”
I walked Street to the Jeep. Spot was eager to explore the scents of bandages and other doctor office aromas.
I had Street inside her lab just minutes later. For the first time in memory, Blondie ignored Spot. She must have sensed the level of Street’s stress. Her tail was tucked down and she made crying noises. As Street sat in her lab chair, Blondie stood next to Street with her head in Street’s lap.
I got a cup of tea going in Street’s microwave, handed it to her, and pulled up another chair. I asked her for the details.
“Mason Krato, the new Forest Service guy, wanted to go over my proposal for a change in their bark beetle strategy. So we met at a cafe in Heavenly Village. Afterward, we were walking up Park Avenue toward the parking ramp when a man bumped into me with substantial force. Later, Mason said the man was a big guy wearing sweats and running shoes, and that the man had been out for a run. Mason thought he was weaving recklessly through the tourists on the sidewalk. Mason said the man may not have realized that a little bump from a big guy could be more like a body slam for a small woman like me.” She paused to take a deep breath.
“I might have caught myself and not fallen. But I was near the curb and, as my foot went out to stabilize me, it slid off the edge of the curb and down to the road. I stumbled and sprawled out on the roadway, skidding toward a delivery truck. I don’t think the driver ever knew what happened. My arm went out and I never had a chance to pull it back from the truck’s rear tires.”
Street shivered again as she described the incident.
“The doctor thinks your hand is going to be okay?”
“Yeah. She was quite clear about that. The x-ray showed no damage. She thinks I was really lucky in that my fingers probably meshed perfectly with the indentations of the tire tread. She also said the scrape on my cheek was just a surface abrasion and that I should heal completely in a couple of weeks.” Street chuckled, which seemed strange considering she’d just had a very serious close call.
“What?” I asked.
“Oh, just that I joked with the doctor. I said maybe the face abrasion would scrape away some of my acne scars and that I might end up pretty without the cost of plastic surgery.”
“Street, stop that kind of thinking. You’re not just beautiful to me. You’re beautiful, period. You don’t have to look like a model to be beautiful.”
Street nodded solemnly.
I bent over, put my arms around Street’s shoulders, and hugged her again, careful not to squeeze too much. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
Street rested her bandaged hand on Blondie’s head. “Even though I’m okay, the experience creeps me out.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“You’re going to think I’m paranoid.”
“No, I won’t. What is it?”
She paused. “I have no reason to think this, but…”
“Think what?”
“I have the sense that the running man hit me on purpose.”
I immediately thought about what Daniel’s attacker had said on the phone. “I was afraid of this,” I said.
“Why?”
“When Daniel Callahan’s attacker called and shot out his living room window and made his threats, he added one for me. He said, ‘I know where you and your girlfriend live and work.’ He wanted me to go away and not come back.”
Street looked horrified. “So it’s not just me having creepy thoughts because I’m traumatized. It could be this bad guy wants me dead to get at you.”
“That’s my worst fear,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Then what do we do?” Something about Street’s tone made Blondie lift her head and cry some more.
“When the caller threatened Mae, Callahan’s neighbor, I told her that the safest thing would be for her to go away.”
“I couldn’t do that,” Street said, immediately shaking her head. “I have too many commitments. And even if I could go away, what would it solve? The killer could just wait until I come back.”
“If you can’t go away, we need to think through every possible situation where you’re vulnerable. Then we have to address each one.”
“You mean, we do like when my father wanted to kill me… I don’t go anywhere without Blondie at my side.”
Blondie looked up at Street’s face at the mention of her name.
Street continued, “I never get out of my car without letting Blondie out first. I never go into my condo without Blondie at my side, so we can’t get separated on opposite sides of the door.”
I nodded. I stepped behind Street’s chair and rubbed her neck and shoulders.
“You said yourself that a Yellow Lab is no great protector,” Street said.
“Not like a Dane, no. But any dog is hugely better than no dog. Blondie would bark and alert others. A bad guy would know that if he attacked you, even a Yellow Lab would bite. The best thing would be to stay away from places where you might be vulnerable. Any situation where you think Blondie might not be enough deterrent is a situation where you should have Spot with you. Or me.”
Street reached her uninjured right hand up behind her head and gripped my arm.
“I’m sure I’ll be okay,” she said. “I’ll do like you say and stay away from any risky situations. So I’m sure you can leave me alone.”
“You know I’m happy to stay with you, be with you, never let you out of my sight,” I said.
“Thanks, but I wouldn’t be happy with that.”
So at Street’s insistence, Spot and I left her and Blondie alone. It was hard to leave. But I remembered what Sergeant Diamond Martinez had recently reminded me about the rights of individuals and the ethics of intervening in their lives. Diamond explained it was like an ethical law, and that great philosophers had written about it. We have the right to cross a person’s desire if we are preventing them from harming others. But we have no right to intervene in a person’s life against their wishes if we are merely trying to prevent harm from coming to them.
This didn’t prevent society from doing just that. But ethicists found fault with it. More importantly, Street was fiercely independent. To not respect her wishes would be to dismiss the value of her judgments. If I did that, she would stay away from me permanently.
Street had given me Mason Krato’s phone number. I went back to my office and dialed, not expecting an answer because the Forest Service would be closed.
But Krato must have been working late.
“Forest Service.”
“Owen McKenna calling for Mason Krato, please.”
“Hi Owen, Mason here. Street mentioned you. No doubt she told you about the accident. How is she? I’m worried.”
“She seems physically fine. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong beyond scrapes and such. But Street is quite distressed.”
“I should think she’d be very upset. If that had happened to me, I’d be sitting at home in the dark with my back to a corner, on my third martini, trying to talk myself down from the frights.”
“Yeah. I’d like to ask you some questions.”
“Of course.”
“Did you get a look at the runner?”
“Just a glance. We were walking up Park Avenue. The road was to our right. The oncoming traffic was close to us. I was next to the curb, Street was to my left, and the runner came up from behind, on her left side. When he hit her, she was a half step in front of me. So the blow shoved her in front of me toward the road. If I’d been more alert, I might have caught her. I feel terrible about that. Anyway, because she stumbled in front of me and fell while she was moving to my right, I didn’t really notice the runner, who was off to my left. My sense of him was just from my peripheral vision.”
“So you didn’t see his face.”
“No. It may be he never looked back. But if he did, I never saw it.”
“What was your sense of his size and shape?”
“Only that he was a big guy, probably an athlete. Broad through the shoulders. I didn’t sense a skinny waist like on a body builder. But he seemed fit.”
“If you had to guess at his height and weight?”
“Hmmm, let me think. Maybe six-four and two fifty. But that’s just a guess.”
“Understood,” I said. “Was he running fast or just jogging?”
“I think pretty fast. Not a sprint but fast. He was either in a real hurry or he was very serious about staying in shape. Although that wouldn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Why?” I said.
“Anyone running hard for physical fitness would be a regular runner and have one or two regular routes, right? But no runner would choose to run on the sidewalk of that busy road during tourist season.”
“Good point. What about his clothes?”
Mason paused. He began talking slowly. “I think he was wearing gray. Like gray sweats. But it’s just a sense. I don’t have an image of him in my mind.”
“Sweat shorts?”
“No. I think I’d remember shorts. So I think he had on long pants. And a sweatshirt. Probably long-sleeved. Although maybe the sleeves were pulled up a bit.”
“Hair color?”
Another pause. “You know, Owen, these questions point out just how poorly we observe things. I’m sorry, but I can’t recall anything about his hair.”
“That’s common. Did you get any sense of where he went?”
“No. I was focused on Street. I bent down next to her. I’m embarrassed to say that I had no idea what to do. Like, what if she’d had a spinal injury or something else serious. I didn’t even think to call nine-one-one for a pretty long time. And when I finally did have the thought, Street told me not to, that she thought she was okay. So she walked with me to my car and had me drive her to the doctor’s office on Kingsbury Grade. I didn’t get the name, but maybe you know where it is.”
“I do. I met her there and took her to her lab.”
“Good. I was afraid to leave her there, but she said she’d be fine.”
“Thanks for your help.”
“You’re welcome. Oh, one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I had a sense about something else. It’s so ridiculous that I’m almost embarrassed to say it. Like it’s probably just my wild imagination.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “I’d like all of your thoughts.”
“After the incident was over, I had a feeling that something about the man’s head was very strange.”
“In what way?”
“Again, you’re going to think I’m nuts. But I feel like he had strange ears. I don’t recall even looking at them. But that’s the feeling I came away with.”
“In what way were they strange?” I asked.
“My sense is that they were pointed.”
“Pointed ears?”
“Yeah. Like they were cropped.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
After I hung up, I thought about what Deputy Tanna Havlick had shown me. The mugshot of Carlos Bosstro showing that his ears had been cropped to be pointed like Mr. Spock’s. Knowing that he was in town as Mo at Reds Place had said, was disconcerting. Knowing he’d already targeted Street made me feel murderous toward him and terrified for Street.
I tried to think about something else, like what Doc Lee had explained about the compressed air weapon. I remembered the tanks and other gear I’d seen in Harly’s barn, equipment that may have been used to create a compressed air weapon.
I remembered that Mae had talked about being a freediver. That freediving didn’t involve scuba tanks and compressed air. But she said she’d met some local scuba divers, people who were very familiar with the characteristics of compressed air and compressed air equipment.
I drove to the Bijou neighborhood and knocked on Mae’s door. She didn’t answer.
“Just coming home from my library shift.”
I turned around to see her walking up.
“Any news?” she asked.
I told her that I’d been to lemon country tracking a mite that Street had found.
“Street told me! The one stuck in Daniel’s broken door.”
“Yes.”
“Was it a good lead? Did you find where it came from?”
“Maybe.”
Mae opened the door and went inside. “Neighbor Ed was able to replace the broken window in Daniel’s house. So Daniel’s back in his home.” She set her things down. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, thanks. I just have some questions.”
“Of course.” Mae sat down on the couch.
“When you mentioned that you were a freediver, you made it clear that the sport doesn’t involve the use of scuba tanks. But you mentioned meeting scuba divers when you moved up to Tahoe. I’m wondering if any of them stand out in your mind?”
“In what way?”
“Just in the sense that you noticed them. Maybe they have a high profile in the diving community. Or maybe you noticed a diver who was a bit strange or seemed to have motivations that were different from the other divers.”
“So you’re looking for the oddball diver,” Mae said.
“Yeah.”
She seemed to think about it. After a bit, she shook her head and said, “No. No one comes to mind.”
It was the typical reaction a person has in this situation. Maybe if I could keep her talking on the subject, something would occur to her.
“Can you tell me more about freediving? What the experience is like? I’ve been scuba diving, and I thought it was great. But I think it would be scary to go more than a few feet underwater without a source of air. Do freedivers go very deep?”
“Actually, there are many versions of freediving. But they all involve taking a big breath and seeing what you can do underwater. The sport evolved from people who have always dived while holding their breath, sponge divers and pearl divers. In the old days, before scuba diving was invented, freedivers also went down to retrieve items from shipwrecks that weren’t too deep.”
“You told me about the term apnea and the various disciplines that freedivers pursue,” I said.
“Right. For example, we have categories like Dynamic Apnea, where we see how far we can swim horizontally. Constant Weight Apnea is when we see how deep we can go under our own power. And both of those disciplines have categories with swim fins and without. The freediving category that often gets the most attention is No Limit Diving, where we hang onto a weight that pulls us down and we ride an inflatable vest that pulls us back up. That’s the version I’ve been doing.”
“Why did you choose it?”
Mae looked embarrassed. “I guess it’s because it’s the most exciting. There’s the speed. The weight pulls you down fast, and the vest pulls you back up fast. There’s also the sheer depth. No Limit divers go the deepest by far. The good ones get down so far that light can’t even penetrate. In just a minute or two, you go from sunlight to blackness and back. It’s a foreign world. I sometimes think it must be like going into outer space.”
“But not all divers do it,” I said. “Why?”
“Several reasons. One is that many elite divers think it isn’t pure to dive with mechanical aids. It’s like racing a motor boat instead of a sailboat. Some elite divers feel that there’s more skill required when you swim down and up. And I agree that’s true. You earn your dive more by swimming under your own power. Getting dragged down and then back up seems like cheating by comparison. They think that anyone could hold their breath and do that. But the truth is that while No Limit diving may not require the skills of super-efficient swimming technique, it still requires breathing skill and psychological skill, and the courage to try something that will kill you if you misjudge your capabilities. But the main reason for No Limit diving is the excitement. Sailing and canoeing and bicycling are great. And there is a kind of purity to them. But I admit to being thrilled by a motorboat or motorcycle.”
