Tahoe Blue Fire (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 13) (2 page)

I let go of the phone and looked at her. Except for the flowing blood and her moving arm, nothing else moved. She appeared paralyzed.

She tapped the pen again, the point making dots on the receipt paper.

I stared at it, trying to figure out the jerky writing.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell what you’ve written,” I said. “Can you try again?”

Scarlett once again raised her pen. Then her hand collapsed to the deck boards, and she was still.

TWO

I explained to the 911 dispatcher that the victim had died from a gunshot wound, and I told her who I was and where I was.

“Please keep the line open,” she said. “I’ll have officers en route immediately.”

I looked at the scene, speaking as much to help me focus as to provide information to the dispatcher and anyone who would eventually listen to the recorded call.

“While I wait for your officers, I’ll give you the details for your recording,” I said into the phone. “A woman named Scarlett Milo was shot. I heard only one shot, and the wound appears to have been made by a single round. The entrance wound is at the back of the neck. It is a clean and symmetrical hole and I see no tattooing from gunpowder, so I’m guessing the shot was fired from a distance. Looking at the territory around the house, I’m guessing the shooter was some distance up the mountain.

“The exit wound shows substantial tissue shredding and what appear to be pieces of a broken vertebrae. It appears that the wound was caused by a high-powered round, which, despite likely deformation, exited the body and fell out of sight someplace below the house.

“The position of the body doesn’t reveal which direction the shot came from. The victim may have twisted as she went down. But I see a faint spray pattern of blood on the back of the victim’s collar. There is a much larger pattern of blood and other tissue on the deck, presumably from the exit wound at the front of her throat.”

I turned and looked behind me to my right. “Behind me to the north is an opening in the trees on the mountain slope above. There is a grouping of large boulders. It’s a south-facing slope, and the snow has mostly melted. I’m guessing the shot came from up among those boulders. Your approaching officers should know that there is access to that point from both Sandy Way and Squaw Summit Road. The shooter could still be up the slope, but I doubt it.”

I thought of running up the slope with Spot to search for the shooter, but I was unarmed, and the dispatcher wanted me to stay on the line and report any critical information. And if I was up the slope when officers approached from multiple directions, I would be a distraction. They might even mistake me for the shooter.

Sirens sounded in the distance, a faint discordant warbling as some rose in pitch while others fell.

A minute later, the sirens swelled in volume as vehicles raced into the valley on Squaw Valley Road. Looking down from Scarlett Milo’s deck, I could see two Placer County Sheriff’s vehicles followed by a black-and-white CHP unit. One of the Placer County vehicles turned up the road I’d taken. The CHP vehicle turned off the main road, heading for a point east of the shooter’s possible location. The other county vehicle drove past the road I’d taken. It went out of my sight before its sound indicated that it had turned onto another road to the west. They were trying to outflank the shooter, a smart move but one I didn’t think would produce results. There were too many ways for the shooter to escape.

Two more vehicles with flashing lights came into the valley. One was another CHP vehicle, and the other looked similar to the Placer County vehicles but with different lettering. I guessed that it was a sheriff’s vehicle from Truckee, which is in Nevada County, the next county to the north. Yet more sirens sounded in the far distance, a huge response for a rural mountain community, but a normal one for a place with vacation residences owned by celebrities, high-ranking government officials, business magnates, and foreign royalty.

One siren grew loud as it came up Milo’s street and stopped at her house.

I disconnected from the 911 dispatcher and walked partway down the deck stairs so I was visible from the street. Placer County Sergeant Santiago ran over while his deputy stayed at the side of the SUV patrol unit, sidearm in his hand, crouching behind the vehicle, looking up at the mountain.

“McKenna,” Santiago said.

“Sergeant.”

Jack Santiago was the kind of man who most people would overlook. He seemed medium in every way, unremarkable in looks, height, size, demeanor, presence. Yet, when observed up close, one saw the intelligence in his eyes, the determination in the set of his jaw, and the strength in his shoulders. Santiago drew no attention to himself, but he won citations and respect. I’d rarely seen a more dedicated cop.

He looked around at the forest, taking in the lay of the land, the access points, the view corridors. Then he trotted up the stairs to the deck.

Santiago looked at Scarlett Milo’s body for a long moment. He would be struck by the violence of the scene, but I knew he was also noticing everything about position and blood spray that I noticed and more. I was never good at taking an instant inventory of a crime scene. But Santiago would remember the victim’s clothes and makeup and condition of her fingernails and skin and teeth, and from that he would already be building a picture of Scarlett’s lifestyle and socioeconomic status on top of the obvious descriptors of height, weight, hair, and eye color.

I pointed to the slope above. “I think the shooter may have been up in those boulders.”

Santiago looked up the mountain, then trotted down the deck stairs as he spoke into his radio. I couldn’t make out the words, but the anger and frustration came through. Santiago stayed in the shadows next to the house as he continued to talk into his radio.

Down the street to the west, I saw a sheriff’s vehicle come to a fast stop. Two deputies jumped out, looking up the mountain. Both had their guns out. One ran up the slope, then stopped as the other one played leapfrog. Each covered the other as they made their way up the slope.

“Any chance the shooter could have come down the mountain right here?” Santiago asked me. “Be near this house? In this house?”

“A chance, I suppose,” I said. “But I doubt it. The front door is locked, and I’ve been up on the deck or down at the base of the deck stairs the entire time. No one could get to the deck door. Maybe there is an unlocked door around the other side of the house, but probably not. The woman was very concerned about her safety. I’d guess the shooter had an escape route planned. A mountain bike or skis or something. He could have run down to a vehicle on a nearby street and driven out of the valley as you came in. By now he could be on Interstate Eighty heading up over Donner Summit or driving down the canyon toward Reno. Or, he could have headed toward Tahoe City and melted into that community.”

I glanced through the trees down to the pedestrian village at the base of the Squaw Valley ski area. “Otherwise, he’s probably in the crowds down in the village, having changed clothes, maybe taken off a wig and wiped the perspiration from his brow. He could be sipping a beer at a cafe and listening to the sirens.”

Santiago lifted his radio to his mouth.

“Forman, you and Johnson head up to that group of boulders and see what you can find. Rodriguez, you and Kylie take the streets. Start at the upper edge of the neighborhood and work your way down. Most of these houses are vacation homes, so there might not be anyone at home, but be persistent. Don’t assume the houses are empty. Anyone answers, use the standard questions. Have they seen or heard anything unusual in the last two hours? Have any strange vehicles been cruising the neighborhood or parked on nearby streets in the previous week or two? Make them comfortable. Get them talking. Get their names and numbers. Leave them your phone number. If they want to know what happened, you can tell them that there was a shooting but no details are being released at the moment.”

Santiago looked across at the deputy who’d ridden in his vehicle. “Fairbanks, stay put behind that boulder. Keep your eye on the slope and this street. Holler if you see anyone who isn’t an officer.”

Santiago walked back up onto the deck. I followed with Spot. Santiago looked again at Milo’s body.

“Are you here as a friend?” he asked.

“No. Scarlett Milo called me at my office and hired me over the phone. She was afraid for her life. So I came up to Squaw Valley to meet her. She’d asked me to call her from that curve down below to get directions.” I pointed to the place where I’d temporarily parked. “I heard the shot over the phone first. The crack came through the air about a half second later.”

Santiago looked down toward where I’d parked to call Scarlett. “Sound travels a thousand feet per second. That intersection is about five hundred feet down. So your idea that the shooter was up in those rocks makes sense. The rifle crack would get to the woman’s phone first, which you would immediately hear in your phone. Then the crack would get to you through the air a second later. Maybe less.”

Santiago looked down at the body. “Looks like death was instantaneous.”

“Not quite.”

Santiago turned and looked at me.

“When I heard the shot, I raced up here. She was still alive when I got here. She couldn’t speak because her neck was blown apart. But she wrote me a message.” I handed him the receipt with her scrawled marks.

Santiago looked at it. “It kind of looks like ‘Medic’s BFF.’ What’s that mean?”

“I have no idea.”

“You know the victim?” Santiago asked.

“No. She called me for help and said she was afraid someone was planning to kill her. She wouldn’t tell me why over the phone. She wanted to meet, but she wouldn’t tell me where she lived because she thought someone would get the information from me. She gave me her credit card number and told me to charge her twenty thousand dollars because she believed I would have a lot of expenses dealing with her mysterious problem.”

Santiago raised his eyebrows. “That’s a lot of bank. Did you run the card?”

“Yeah. I assumed it would be rejected, but it went through. She told me to drive to that place below her house and call her. So I did. When she answered, she walked out on her deck and told me that she could see me and that it looked like no one had followed me. So she told me her address and how to come here. I thought the whole thing was the elaborate melodrama of a paranoid woman. Obviously, I was wrong.”

Santiago scanned the deck, looking at the blood spatter. He didn’t comment on my understatement.

“How’d her blood get on you?” he asked.

“I put my thumb on her carotid artery to try and slow her bleeding, and she coughed,” I said. “It sprayed out of the wound.”

Santiago winced. “She have family?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“She live here full time?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was it that made her think someone wanted to kill her?”

“I don’t know.”

Santiago looked at me. “Do you know anything about her?”

I shook my head. “Just what I’ve already told you.”

“I guess we’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said.

I nodded.

THREE

As Incident Commander, Santiago directed all the law enforcement officers in the investigation.

He had them set up a roadblock at the entrance to Squaw Valley. No vehicles were allowed out without a check.

When I heard him say that, I had a disturbing thought. A shooter could put a rifle in a ski bag, loop the bag over his shoulders, ride one of the chairlifts up to the ridge at the southern boundary of Squaw Valley, and ski the backcountry down to Alpine Meadows Ski Resort, which is in the next valley to the south. From there he could leave by car and not have to worry about being stopped by any police. I told Santiago. He nodded.

Three more officers from Nevada County arrived, along with four more from the CHP. A half-hour later, a CHP helicopter appeared in the sky and flew overlapping circles above Scarlett Milo’s neighborhood. Thirty minutes after that, an additional six Placer County deputies came up from the foothills.

The suspect search was spread out over a large territory, but the law enforcement response was huge. There were a dozen vehicles with flashing lights, multiple search parties, some officers combing through the neighborhood while others went up into higher elevations to search those areas that hadn’t seen enough spring sun to melt off. Two of them were on cross-country skis. They angled up the slope on a shallow traverse. Three more had snowshoes, and they took a steeper route up.

Santiago remained at Scarlett Milo’s house, directing the expanding crew with his radio and cellphone.

Two deputies came up onto the deck. One of them made a quick glance in my direction.

“No sign of anyone up in those rocks, sergeant,” one of them said.

“You take pictures before you tracked it up?” Santiago said.

One of them held up a small camera. “Lots.”

Santiago sent them down to canvas the streets below.

As Santiago continued to coordinate search efforts, I went over to Spot who was lying on the deck as far as he could get from Scarlett’s body.

“You can give your statement later,” Santiago said to me. “The medical examiner should be here soon. The evidence team is setting up a perimeter, and they’ll start their search and bag and photo routine.” Santiago looked up at the group of boulders I’d pointed to. “Good cover and not far, either. It wouldn’t take an expert to make that shot.”

I pointed. “If you move a bit to the left, you’ll see another group of boulders higher up, maybe five hundred yards away.”

“Hitting a target at that distance would take an expert,” Santiago said.

I nodded. “Yeah, but a good hunter could do it. Military snipers often work from three times that distance. Even more.”

Santiago looked out toward the valley below. “Let’s say the shooter was thorough and there’s no shell casing where the shot was fired. What do you think the chances are of us finding the round that hit the woman?”

“About zero. The only way for someone to hit her in that location on the deck would be from up the slope or from right on the deck. But I think she would have seen someone coming up onto her deck. She was wary. She would have said something while she was on the phone. The entrance wound doesn’t show powder burns, so the shooter wasn’t real close. Either way, the round went through her neck with explosive force. That argues for a high-powered shot, almost certainly a rifle. She was standing near the edge of the deck looking down on me.” I pointed over the deck railing. “Even if the bullet was very deformed from hitting her bone, it would have probably fallen somewhere in those woods far below where I parked to call her. It might even have traveled far past me before it dropped to earth someplace out in the valley. It would take a miracle to find it.”  

“You think a search dog could find it?”

I looked over at Spot, whose prostrate form suggested depression. “My dog could maybe find a spent round if it was in a small area. But out there in the valley? No way. A professional dog would have a better chance, but it would still take a miracle.” I waved my hand at the expanse of valley below us. “That round could be anyplace in two square miles.”

Santiago glanced at Scarlett Milo’s body, looked like he was about to say something, then hesitated. “Truth is, McKenna, I’ve never seen a gunshot wound like this. When you did that long stint in San Francisco, you probably saw some major stuff. It looks like her vertebrae shattered. You got an idea what caliber would do that to a person?”

“I’m no expert, but I don’t think it would need to be anything really big. A thirty caliber could blow apart a woman’s neck vertebra and barely slow down.”

Santiago looked at Spot. “He looks weary.”

“Human death does that to many dogs,” I said. “Even if they don’t know the victim.”

“Why is that?” Santiago asked.

“It’s a dog thing,” I said, not eager to talk about it. I’d witnessed Spot’s and other dogs’ stress many times.

“Tell me about it,” Santiago said.

“It’s not a three-word answer.”

“I’m just waiting for my men to report back after their searches.”

So I told him. “Ever since we first began domesticating the gray wolf thirty thousand years ago, our efforts created what became the new species of Canis lupus familiaris. All of its sub-species, what we call dog breeds, evolved to be hard-wired to care more about people than even their own dog brothers and sisters. In exchange for guarding our camps from other tribes and large predators like bears and tigers and wolves, and helping us hunt, and keeping us warm on cold winter nights, we gave them what they needed. Food, protection, a place to sleep. To dogs, humans are gods. When the gods die, it’s an emotional blow.”

Santiago stared at me. “You sound like someone on public TV. One of those nature shows.”

I walked over, bent down, and gave Spot a pet. “He’s seen a fair amount of death. Always has the same reaction. His experience is not on the same level as what some of those military dogs or earthquake dogs go through, but it’s hard for him nonetheless.” Spot lay on the deck, his jaw propped between his front paws.

“Any chance you’ve got a shell cartridge?” I said. “Something from a round that was discharged recently?”

Santiago frowned. Then he made a small nod. “You want to send your hound on a search? You just made it sound futile.”

“Trying to find the round is probably futile. But I was thinking of a spent shell casing up near those boulders.”

“Ah.” Santiago nodded. “Like you said, maybe he’d be good at searching a small area.”

“Right. He’s not a professional, but he’s got the same sniffer as other dogs. It’s more a question of…” I paused.

“Whether he wants to,” Santiago said.

“Yeah. Great Danes are lovers and loungers. They aren’t as eager to work as the other working breeds.”

“I could fire my sidearm to get you a fresh shell casing,” Santiago said. Then he turned and looked down from the deck at his sheriff’s patrol vehicle parked off to the side of Scarlett Milo’s house. “Wait. I picked up some large shell casings at the range the other day and put them in the change compartment of my patrol unit. I forgot about them until now. You think that would work?”

“Depends on how recently they were fired. Let’s try it.”

We trotted down the stairs to his vehicle. He reached in and pulled out three long shell casings.

“I was thinking they were two-seventy Winchester,” he said, a questioning tone in his voice.

“Looks like it,” I said. “Or maybe two-sixty-four magnums.”

Santiago smelled them. “I still smell the gunpowder, so maybe these will work to scent your dog.” He handed them to me. “The way the dispatcher phrased it, it sounded like you heard just one shot,” Santiago said.

“Yeah.”

“So there might not be a shell casing.”

“Right,” I said. “It may be that the shooter was using a bolt-action rifle. Or if he used a semi-auto and the casing was ejected, he could have picked it up.”

“Worth having your dog look,” Santiago said.