Tahoe Blue Fire (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 13) (11 page)

I asked, “Did either of them say anything that would indicate a possible connection to Scarlett Milo, Darla Ali, or Sean Warner?”

“No.”

Diamond and I were quiet a moment.

“Is Adam employed?” I asked.

“No.”

“Did he invest well?”

Diamond pinched his lips, making a sad face. “I didn’t ask about it specifically. But from what I gather, he did like lots of sports stars. He lived the high life while the big money was coming in, and he didn’t put much away. When the paychecks stopped, his life style burned through what little savings he had, and he’s been struggling for the last decade or so. I got the feeling that without Felicite’s generosity, he would be homeless. Felicite made it sound as if he had to move out of his East Bay place. So she let him stay at her Tahoe house.”

“You get any sense that he’s got enemies?”

“My only sense was that he seems as agreeable as a teddy bear and about as easy to get along with.”

“Without a job, any idea what he does with his time?”

“He said he writes poetry.”

“A noble calling,” I said, “but hard to pay the bills.”

Diamond nodded. “Even the most famous poets - the ones who win the Nobel Prize - most of them still have to teach to earn a living.”

“It’s a sweet, romantic thing for a fearsome tackle to write poetry,” I said.

“Yeah, he’s a smart guy,” Diamond said. “But there is something off in him. He sort of goes blank now and then. Then he’ll say the same thing twice as if he didn’t remember that he’d already said it.”

“I do that myself,” I said.

The sun shifted and stabbed through the clouds. The twilight glow behind the West Shore peaks of Alpine Meadows went from a soft pink to a sudden brilliant orange.

Diamond leaned on the deck railing and held up his beer. “Here’s to the world’s greatest view.”

I tipped up my beer to drink the last swallow and then raised it farther to get the last drops of the precious brew when the neck of the beer bottle exploded.

SIXTEEN

Chunks of glass blew into my eyes and face and down into my mouth. A loud crack snapped in the air a moment later. I wasn’t sure, but it sounded like the sound came from up on the mountain above my cabin. I was too stunned with the blast of glass shards to react.

Diamond moved first. Before I even realized that I was unable to see well, he grabbed me and jerked me back from the deck railing. He put his arms around me and ran me backward over to the cabin wall like a linebacker driving me back. Diamond pulled open the slider, shoved me inside, and walked me over to the far corner of the living room where I sat on the floor on Spot’s bed, clenching my eyes against the cutting grit of glass and spitting glass shards and slivers out of my mouth.

I couldn’t see. I could feel Spot sniffing me. I listened as Diamond shut and locked the slider, trotted across my small cabin to lock the front door, then turned off the lights. I heard some other movement in the dark, the pull of a Velcro strip. It sounded like he’d pulled his weapon out of the concealed carry holster at the small of his back. He got on his phone and called in to report the shooting.

“You okay?” he said when he got off the phone. “Can you breathe?”

“I’ve got some glass issues, but yeah,” I said. My words were slurred by a thousand prickly glass spears stuck into my tissues. My tongue and lips and gums all gripped and pulled and burned each other. “Feels like I’ve got diamond-grit sandpaper on the inside of my eyelids and sea urchins in my mouth,” I mumbled.

“Don’t move. We’ll lie low in the dark until reinforcements come.”

My eyeballs stung in a way I’d never experienced. The natural impulse to blink was excruciating, my lids stuck on my eyeballs by dozens of tiny razors gouging both eyes and lids.

“Probably lucky you tipped your beer bottle up another inch just as the shooter was pulling the trigger,” Diamond said.

“No kidding,” I said, only three syllables, but garbled almost to the point they were unintelligible. “Rather have this than have the bullet go through my neck or head.”

“Probably hurts, glass in the eyes,” Diamond said. “You want anything, let me know.”

I mumbled, “I’m trying to keep my eyeballs staring straight ahead behind my clenched lids.”

“They have those anaesthetic drops. You just need to hang in there until we get you to the hospital. Help will be here in a few minutes. We’ll keep the lights off and hurry you out in the dark. That way, the shooter won’t be able to get a clear shot at you. You think the shooter is on skis?”

I nodded, then realized that Diamond couldn’t see me nod in the dark. “That would make sense,” I mumbled.

There was a particular pain on my right eye, a red hot needle stabbing into my eyeball. I gripped the eyelashes of my right lid and tried to readjust the position. My eyes were streaming tears, but that didn’t flush out the glass that was stuck in the flesh. “He no doubt had planned his escape,” I said, torturing the words. “A sloping traverse across the mountain would take him down to the highway a long distance from here, and it could be done at considerable speed. As your men come up the highway from Stateline, one of the vehicles they drive by will likely be the shooter.”

Diamond got on his phone and explained as much to someone.

When he hung up, he said, “Or the suspect could be driving north and heading over Spooner Summit,” Diamond said. “Or he could also climb up and go over the east side of the mountains and drop down to Genoa or Jack’s Valley.”

I knew that Diamond was probably standing to the side of the living room window, peeking through the blinds out into the forest, trying to see anything in the darkening twilight, hyper aware of any potential sounds. He was talking just to help keep me focused on something other than the trauma of broken glass in my face.

“But going over the mountain would be very difficult,” I said, words slurred, the glass in my tongue catching on the inside of my mouth. “This cabin sits at seventy-two hundred feet of elevation. Any decent shooting location with a view of my deck wouldn’t be more than two or three hundred feet up behind the cabin. The ridgeline north and south of Genoa Peak mostly runs around nine thousand feet. To climb up and over would be a fifteen hundred-foot ascent followed by a four thousand-foot descent. That’s a serious climb in what will quickly be total darkness, especially...” I gagged on something very sharp in my throat.

“Hey, you okay? Do I need to do anything? Maybe you shouldn’t talk.”

I tried to make an “Uh huh” noise without moving my tongue and throat.

“I’m guessing the shooter went down on this side,” Diamond said. “There are many places off the highway where he could have left his car. The Logan Creek or Cave Rock neighborhoods, for example.”

“You’re probably right,” I mumbled, concentrating on keeping my burning eyes still.

We continued to sit in the dark. Eventually, we heard a siren, then another, and then a third.

“Hang in there,” Diamond said. “Ambulance will be here soon.”

“I don’t need an ambulance,” I said. “Anyone can give me a ride to the hospital.”

“I can’t waste a deputy on that,” Diamond said. “Besides, what if you need oxygen or something to keep you alive?”

“What I need is beer to numb the pain.”

“Pretty sure the ambulance doesn’t carry beer,” Diamond said.

Five minutes later, Diamond led me out of the cabin. He held my arm as he guided me to the ambulance.

“Can you take Spot down to Street’s?” I said.

“Sure. She at her condo or at her lab?”

“Condo. And go easy when you tell her what happened?”

“Will do.”

They put me on the gurney and strapped me down, and we were at the hospital in South Lake Tahoe twenty-five minutes later.

Although I couldn’t see, I could tell by his voice that Doc Lee was working the ER.

“Every time I’m here, you’re working,” I slurred, my eyes still shut. “You ever take time off?”

“No. I live at the hospital twenty-four-seven just to be sure that I’m here when you come in, which you do far too often. You need to give other people a chance to use our services. What I’m going to do is get some drops into your eyes. I’ll lift your lids to do it. It will hurt, but not for long. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“But when the pain goes away, try to hold your eyes still. Otherwise, the glass chips will chew up your eyes and eyelids.”

He put in the drops, and the fire was intense. But then the pain went away fast. Doc Lee wore a very bright LED headlamp and magnifying glasses. He made a little murmur as he looked at my eyeballs.

“What’s that mean?” I mumbled.

“What?”

“You made a murmur sound,” I said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“I didn’t.”

“Okay,” I said, “just tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking that you had a really close call. Your eyes have so much glass in them, they look like those sparkly Christmas bulb ornaments for hanging on trees. What’s good is that most of the sparkle is on the sclera. Very little is on your cornea. How’d you manage that?”

“I saw the bullet coming, and I looked away just as it hit my beer bottle.”

“Wow. Fast reflexes. Let’s take a look at your mouth.”

I opened my mouth and the doctor looked around.

“Stay put. We need to get you an ophthalmologist and an ENT.”

He went away. Fifteen minutes later, Doc Lee was back. “Specialized help is on the way. In the meantime, let’s see about getting some of the bigger chunks out. I’ll just use my channel-lock pliers and wire cutters until the specialists get here.”

I’d never heard Doc Lee make dry jokes. Maybe that meant I wasn’t in serious danger. Or maybe it meant I only had moments before I expired.

He put the magnifying glasses back on and went over my face. I’d been so focused on the glass in my eyes and mouth, that I didn’t realize I also had glass sticking into the rest of my face. Doc Lee found lots of little pieces in my cheeks and plucked them out with some kind of tweezer.

“You will have glass coming out of your cheeks and eyes and mouth for a long time,” he said. “A good doctor knows his or her limits, I’m going to leave you for a bit. The other doctors will be here soon.”

I lay there for an hour. Street showed up, raised her hand to her mouth in shock, but tried to be brave as she looked at me. I could see that she was shaken by my appearance. Her eyes teared up, and she bent down to hug me.

“Sorry, hon,” I said in my garbled voice. “I know I look bad, but Doc Lee makes like it isn’t that bad. Diamond stopped by?” I said. “Brought Spot?”

Street nodded. “He’s in my VW. Diamond said you found a warning note suck in your door.”

“Yeah. A strange figure in a star symbol of some kind.” I pulled it out of my pocket and showed it to her. “Make any sense to you?”

“No. But it’s very scary. Something about the drawing being upside down relative to the writing is creepy. Someone is serious about killing you.”

“Kind of looks like it,” I said.

“Unless you drop the case,” she said.

I didn’t respond.

“Which you won’t do,” she added.

“I don’t think...” A woman wearing a white coat walked into the room, looked at me, and frowned. Street stepped back, giving her room.

“I’m Doctor Perez, ophthalmologist,” the woman said. “I understand you had a little accident involving broken glass in your eyes. I’ll take a quick look.” She wore mad scientist glasses with the various lens that could be swiveled back and forth. She also wore a headlamp. She flipped it on and looked at my eyes. Just like Doc Lee, she made a little hmm murmur.

“Bad?” I said.

“Not good. But I think your vision will be okay. This is going to take some time. We’ll get the major pieces now and then you can come to my office for a more thorough appointment. Maybe tomorrow morning.”

Street said, “I’ll leave and get out of the way. Call for a ride when you’re ready?”

“Will do. Thanks. Don’t worry about me. I’ve survived worse.”

Street made a little nod, wiped the back of her hand across wet cheeks, and left.

Dr. Perez went to work with a bunch of different tools. She used a substantial range of her mad scientist lenses. And she made a surprising number of grunts as she dug tiny glass shards out of my eyeballs and the inside of my eyelids.

Twenty minutes later, she said, “I’ve gotten the major pieces, but there is plenty of small detritus to remove another day.”

“Boulders out by night, gravel out by day?” I said.

“Well, yes, I suppose you could put it that way.”

My eyes still felt like sandpaper.

The doctor glanced at the clock on the wall, which said 10 p.m. “I have another appointment to get to,” she said as she took off the mad scientist glasses. Maybe she wondered what I’d think of her schedule, but she was smart enough to know that she needn’t answer my unasked questions.

“I would like you to come to my office tomorrow morning,”   she said, “and we’ll have another look. In the meantime, you will be uncomfortable.”

She left me with some pain meds and some eye drops and some kind of medicinal goo and specific instructions on what to do and what not to do. When she was done, I waited another half hour, and then the Ear, Nose, and Throat guy came, a doctor with an unpronounceable last name that began with the letter T. “You can just call me Doctor T,” he said.

He wore yet another version of Hollywood torture glasses as he examined my mouth and swabbed with an anesthetic and used long tweezers to mine for glass, finding it in my tongue and gums and at the back of my throat. He wrapped a cloth around my tongue so he could pull my tongue far out of my mouth while he dug around. It was not a joyful experience.

After another half hour, he said I’d live. “More glass will come out of your tissues here and there. You’ll swallow some of them. But they are all very small. The likelihood is that they’ll all travel through your system without a problem. Drink a lot of water and eat a lot of vegetables and beans, and you’ll be fine.”

“Great,” I said.

“But call me immediately if you feel pain anywhere in your digestive system. If you can’t reach me, go to the ER.”

“Got it.”

I called Street on her cell, and it turned out she was waiting in her car in the hospital parking lot. She came in and took me home. Spot was in the back seat. He stuck his head forward and sniffed with vigor, no doubt wondering about all the anesthetic smells.

I called Diamond en route.

“Any news?” I said when he answered.

“No. Too dark on the mountainside behind your cabin to see anything. We’ll send two teams up there in the morning. Maybe they can do some ski track forensics. Meantime, even though the shooter is unlikely to try again from the same vantage point, you should try not to present yourself as an easy target.”

“I was kinda thinking the same thing,” I said.