10 Tahoe Trap (3 page)

Paco’s huffing got louder and quickened as he became exhausted. The pumping wind sound sped up. It sounded like he was running even faster then before.

The boy screamed. Loud enough to rip my eardrum.

I jerked with adrenaline.

“Paco, are you there?!”

I heard Paco crying. I couldn’t tell if his pain was physical or psychological.

“Paco?”

“I fell!”

“Get up, Paco! Keep running!

I heard faint, high-pitched cries. The rhythmic pumping was back. He was still alive. Still running.

“Do you see anything now? Any building?”

His grunting was extreme, each exhalation marked with a desperate cry.

I wanted him to concentrate on running. But I couldn’t get to him until I knew where he was.

“Let me know the moment you see anything,” I said. Maybe he heard me. Maybe not.

I had witnessed fear before. But a terrified child on the other end of the phone line was a much higher level of gut-wrenching emotion.

Another scream. Louder than before.

“Paco! Are you okay?” Adrenaline had my nerves burning as if from electricity.

I heard a heavy, whimpering grunt, a percussive exhalation.

“Paco, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

Maybe he was wounded and had collapsed. More sounds came. Exertion, as if Paco had climbed over something and then jumped to the ground.

 The plastic of my phone made a cracking sound. I realized I was squeezing it like a vice.

I heard him moving. Still panting. Still alive. His cries were continuous. If I kept focusing him on looking for landmarks, maybe that would help control his fear.

Or my fear.

He hadn’t spoken after the last scream. I wanted him to say something.

“Paco, do you see anything, yet?”

“I see the bubble cars.” Paco’s voice was wheezing.

“What are bubble cars?” Maybe I heard him wrong.

“Bubble cars. Gray ones.” His panting was so loud I could barely understand him. “On the sky ride,” he said.

The Heavenly Ski Resort gondola.

 I stomped on the gas. I was going south toward Round Hill. My speed climbed to 60, then 65. I let up to take a curve. Then I came to the hill going down and the long straight before the stoplight.

Puffing, sucking air, he said, “The bubble cars are in the woods.”

“Paco, run to the gondola. The bubble cars. Stay in the trees for cover, but follow the cars down the mountain, not up. Do you understand? Go down the mountain. You will come to a road. I’m going there now. I’ll look for you.”

I sped up to 70, slowed as I went past Kingsbury Grade. At the next intersection, I turned left to take the back road around Mont Bleu and Harrah’s.

As the gondola comes down the mountain, the first street that it soars over is the one that runs behind the casino hotels. Just past Harrah’s was the gondola. I skidded to a stop at Heavenly Village Way, turned left, and rushed into the new Van Sickle Bi-State Park.

I drove up to the lot, parked, and jumped out. I let Spot out of the back and sprinted toward the mountain.

We ran up the lift line, under the gondola.

The lift maintenance workers keep the lift line free of major trees, but it was not an easy run. There was a trail in places, but in other places nothing but boulders and impenetrable Manzanita bushes.

I wanted to call 911 and get patrol units to the scene, but I didn’t dare hang up on Paco.

“Paco!” I shouted into my phone. “I’m at the road below the gondola. I’m running up the mountain. Stay in the trees.” But my phone was silent. I looked at the readout. I had battery power, but no connection. Maybe Paco’s phone had gone out of range. Or he could be out of battery.

Maybe the men had caught him.

As I ran up the gondola line, I scanned the trees looking for any movement that could be Paco or his pursuers. I saw nothing except Spot trotting in front of me.

The gondola was stopped for fall maintenance, and the cabins, Paco’s bubble cars, hung motionless and silent in the air above me. I stopped, cupped my ears, and listened for any sound that could have been Paco up the mountain. There was no noise except for Spot’s panting.

A snapping sound came from up in the distant trees. Not a gunshot. More like a breaking branch.

Spot stopped and stared, eyes and ears focused.

I stared at the open line where the trees had been cleared. It was a wide, straight path a couple of miles in length and rising 3000 feet in elevation. But the rain had increased, and the dark clouds had lowered so that the gondola disappeared into the gray blanket just a third of the way up the mountain. There was nothing to see but green pine needles and the dark umber of wet tree trunks and gray boulders and gray sky.

Then a splash of blue color flashed from one tree to another, over logs, around boulders, just to the side of the lift line. The blue grew into a jacket on a small boy. He came down the mountain like a running back down the field, stiff-arming boulders and logs as he vaulted them, dodging trees, his feet churning as if to run through and over anything that would stop him.

I ran toward him.

I didn’t call out. I didn’t want him to get a false sense of security and come out into the open line where he would be an easy target. I saw no pursuers. But they might still be out there.

As I got closer, I realized that Spot might frighten him, so I called him to my side and held his collar as we ran.

When Paco was close enough that we might startle and scare the boy, I called out.

“Paco, it’s me, Owen McKenna!”

He kept running toward us, over rocks, around bushes. He reached out and grabbed the trunk of a sapling as he went past it. He used it to swing himself around the tree and off in a new direction.

As his face came into focus, I saw the unmistakable fear, the stretched grimace of terror.

“Paco, it’s me,” I said again as he approached. “It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

But he blew on past us, feet churning, unthinking panic driving his flight.

“Paco!” I lunged, grabbed his arm. Pulled him to a stop. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

The boy’s eyes were wide, the terror obvious. Blood from a scrape ran down his brown cheek. He struggled to pull away from me, straining to look back up the mountain, panicked whimpers coming from his throat.

I pulled him to me. He was a tiny kid, hard and wiry and soaked wet with rain. His head barely came up to my navel. I knelt and held him, forcibly quieting him.

His panting breaths caught, and he began to cry. In a half-minute he was sobbing and clutching at the front of my shirt. I held him until he calmed a bit. Then I stood and took his hand. His hand was small and sweaty, his skin as rough and callused and scratchy as that of any adult laborer.

We trotted into the trees and hurried the rest of the way down the mountain, staying in cover. I held Paco’s hand. Spot walked behind Paco, sniffing him.

Periodically, I glanced behind us, checking the woods for movement or sound, but saw nothing.

A minute later we were at the Jeep. I thought about the men back in the trees, maybe watching with binoculars. I thought it was best to not indicate that the Jeep was mine.

So we walked on past, moving fast, staying in the trees. When we got down to the road, we darted behind buildings and followed a weaving path toward the shops and the gondola’s base station in Heavenly Village.

FIVE

I watched Paco as we walked. He frowned, deep and intense. He kept jerking and twisting to look back behind us, his fear so great that he didn’t seem to notice the giant dog sniffing him.

While we walked, I called Diamond, told him I’d found the boy, asked him to inform other law enforcement. I told him I’d call back when I knew more, and I hung up.

I worried about Paco having some kind of emotional meltdown. He’d witnessed the shooting of his foster mother. He’d been trapped in a pickup and chased by men with guns. How much trauma could a kid take? I expected some serious fallout as he coped with the enormity of what had happened. But he just did a fast walking trot, his body stiff with tension, his teeth clenched, his eyes twitching.

 I tried to gauge when the big reaction would come, thinking about how to keep him distracted for a while longer. Spot was the most obvious vehicle for occupying a child with other thoughts. Spot had walked behind and next to Paco. After a hundred yards, Paco still hadn’t acknowledged him. As we got farther from the men who chased him, Paco glanced less behind him and more often at the dog who was the same height as he was and three times as heavy.

At the gondola base station, we stopped.

“Paco, you should meet my dog.” I turned the boy to face Spot.

Spot wagged, curious about the boy. Spot had rarely seen me hold a young child’s hand.

“Paco, meet Spot. Spot, meet Paco.”

Spot stuck his nose in Paco’s face. Paco jerked back and used his arm to wipe off his face.

I grabbed Spot’s collar and held him in position. “Spot is friendly. You can pet him. You can even ride him.”

Paco gave me a quick glance, then looked over toward the shops that were between us and the mountain. His eyes flicked around, taking in the milling people, looking at the corners of buildings as if he expected men to jump out.

I wanted to get Paco to change his focus.

“Go ahead and pet him,” I said, gesturing toward Spot.

Paco put his hand behind his back as if for safety. He telegraphed discomfort, did a little rocking motion.

I knew that a connection with a dog could help, so I pressed. “He’s waiting for you to pet him,” I said.

Paco looked at me. “I’m afraid...” he paused.

“You don’t need to be afraid,” I said. “Spot is very friendly.”

“No. I’m afraid I’m going to wet my pants.”

This was new territory for me. I took a moment to think. Ten-year-old kids usually have pretty good control, but this boy may have been holding it since they left Stockton nine hours before.

“Okay, Paco. Just hold it a bit longer and we’ll go into a store.”

I told Spot to stay, and we went inside a sports clothing shop.

“Can I help you,” the purple-haired clerk said, her tone wooden.

“We need to use your restroom, please.”

“We don’t have public restrooms.”

I grinned at her. “Perhaps you’d like to make an exception to your rule, so we don’t damage your carpet.”

She looked at Paco who was doing the rocking motion again, his hand at his crotch.

“Left rear corner of the store,” she said, a touch of alarm in her voice.

“Thank you.”

We found the door behind a rack of ski jackets. Paco looked at me. I wasn’t sure what it meant.

“You, ah, don’t need my help, right?” I said to Paco.

He frowned. “I’m ten years old,” he said.

“Just checking,” I said.

When Paco came out, he looked relieved but still scared. He rotated, looking around the store. I thanked the clerk, and we went outside.

Spot was waiting. “He’s still waiting for your pet,” I said.

Paco looked up toward the mountain and over at the other buildings, then reached out his hand, holding it high. Spot lifted his head to sniff it. Paco raised it higher. Spot lowered his head to sniff Paco’s chin. Paco stepped back. I reached for Spot’s collar.

Paco slowly lowered his hand to Spot’s head.

The moment his hand touched, Spot launched into a pant. It looked like Spot was smiling.

“Ready to go?” I said, thinking that I had to get Paco to a place where I could ask him questions.

“Where?” Paco said. He looked worried.

I remembered that Cassie had told Paco that they couldn’t go to the police. “My cabin. I can make some calls, get you back home.”

“I don’t want to go to a cabin.”

“A cabin is the same as a small house. It’s where I live.”

He took a step back from me. “Cassie said not to go with a strange man.”

“Okay, good rule. Tell you what. We’ll go to my girlfriend’s lab.” I pulled out my cell phone to call Street.

“What’s a lab?” He sounded suspicious. His frown deepened. I was going to have to think before I spoke.

“Lab is short for laboratory. My girlfriend is an entomologist. That means she studies bugs. The lab is where she works.”

“I don’t want to go there. I don’t like bugs.”

“I don’t like them, either. Don’t worry, they’re all in containers. You don’t even have to come inside if you don’t want to. You can stay outside with Spot.”

I dialed. Street answered.

“Hi sweetheart,” I said. “I found the boy.”

“That’s fantastic. Is he okay?”

“Seems like it. Back in town, yet?”

“Just got up a little bit ago.”

“I need your help if you can spare a few minutes,” I said.