TAHOE
DEATHFALL
by
Todd Borg
Copyright 2001 Todd Borg
Published by THRILLER PRESS
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PROLOGUE
The fall from the cliff was so sudden it was as if God had yanked Melissa off her feet and hurled her into the air.
She plunged through space, accelerating like a rock until the wind roared past her ears and sucked the air out of her lungs. One of her tiny red sneakers fluttered behind.
Like a cat Melissa twisted as she fell, her small six-year-old body moving with natural athletic grace, and, trying to see what happened, trying to understand, she looked back up at the top of the cliff.
But there was only rock to see.
Melissa fell one hundred forty feet, struck and broke a small gnarled pine that clung to the vertical rocks, bounced off a protruding boulder and smashed onto a ledge of granite.
The landing knocked Melissa out. Yet her brain, like a bulb that dims to orange before it goes dark, shut down with reluctance, aware in the fading consciousness of a loud crack in her right leg and another in her right arm, sharp snapping sounds like breaking pieces of sun-dried fir.
When Melissa came to it was dark. She clenched her teeth against the terrible pain from her splintered bones. She concentrated on the pain because it helped her to shut out the fear, fear so intense that it overwhelmed her shame at falling.
Melissa’s shivering became violent. The muscle spasms jerked on the shattered bones, intensifying the pain. She looked away from the indigo water down below and saw through the darkness a depression in the rock where she might be warmer.
Melissa used her unbroken limbs to push at the frost-covered granite. It was a slow, painful, crab-like motion, dragging her broken body back in from the edge of the ledge, away from the wind. And there, Melissa thought of hungry coyotes and closed her eyes one last time.
ONE
I was trying out my new second-floor office up on Kingsbury Grade, Monday morning, May 4th, when I got a client.
I normally didn’t hustle into work so early. Especially when I didn’t have any work. But my office had a view of Lake Tahoe and a framed print of my newest favorite painting, Edward Hopper’s New York Movie. The print hung opposite the window wall so that no matter which way I faced I had something wonderful to look at. Now my pretensions to gainful employment were at least visually stimulating.
Spot, my Harlequin Great Dane with more polka dots than any six Dalmatians, finished his olfactory inspection of the carpet and showed his approval by sprawling over by the door. He lowered his massive head onto outstretched paws and sighed. His jowls flapped with the outgoing rush of breath.
The woman in the Hopper painting was incandescent. She stood alone inside a movie theater on a side aisle away from the screen and the patrons. Her beauty was as radiant as her sorrow was dark. I was about to speak to her when there was a soft knock on the door. Spot’s chest rumbled for half a second. He lifted his head and craned it sideways so that he could watch the door. His pointed ears were held high, but he decided that he needed a better reason than two diffident little taps to raise up his 170 pounds.
“Door’s open,” I said, impressed that my new digs might bring a customer so fast. Clothes make the man. Office makes the business.
The knob turned, the door eased open a few inches and then stopped. Spot watched to see who might appear. He was in the path of the swinging door, but out of sight from the hall. A face leaned in through the opening. My visitor was a young, teenaged female with large dark eyes and a gawkish nose. Her brown hair was tucked up under a purple baseball cap that sported a snowboard logo. The girl saw Spot and gasped. She jerked her head out of sight.
“It’s okay,” I assured her.
Her head reappeared in the door opening. She inched the door open farther but stopped it before it hit Spot in the chest. “Can’t you make him move,” she said, a tremolo of fear in her voice.
“Just jump past him,” I said. “He won’t hurt you.”
“He’s awfully large,” the girl said. She reached a tentative blue-jeaned leg and a mustard-colored high-top basketball shoe up and out and, after a pause to gather her courage, made a little leap past Spot’s body. Spot followed her with his eyes. The door stayed open near his side. The girl stood in front of my desk. She tucked some loose hair behind her ear, which then stuck out. I saw her make a surreptitious glance back to make certain that Spot wasn’t about to include her in his lunch plans. Her eyes alighted on the New York Movie print and stayed there a moment.
“Is this McKenna Investigations?” she asked. “It doesn’t say on the door. It only says Suite Six.”
“One can’t be too careful with one’s name.” I stood up and reached out my hand. “Owen McKenna.”
She shook. Her chewed-off fingernails didn’t go with her grip which was firm and dry and not nervous at all. “Jennifer Salazar,” she said. She turned. “And your dog?”
“Spot. He knows how to shake, but he doesn’t look very motivated at the moment. You can pet him if you like.” I was thinking about the name Salazar. It sounded familiar.
Jennifer bent over and, moving in slow-motion, pet Spot. Her hand looked tiny between his upright ears. “Hello, Spot. My, what big eyes and ears you have. No doubt big teeth, too.” She turned and looked at me. “Does he help with your investigations?”
“Yes, if what I’m looking for is buried under a ton of dog food. What can I help you with, Jennifer?”
Jennifer spied one of my visitor’s chairs and sat down. She perched on the edge of the seat with her back straight, knees together, her hands holding a small, red purse in her lap. “I’d like to know your qualifications, Mr. McKenna.”
I sat down in my old desk chair. “Please. Call me Owen.”
“Owen.”
“I’m ruthless with bad guys.”
“You don’t take mercy on them, turn them over to the justice system that slaps their hands and lets them back out on the street?”
I looked at her for a moment. “Isn’t the quality of mercy supposed to drop like a gentle rain from heaven?” I asked.
“No. Portia had it wrong.”
The kid was impressing me. “I don’t take mercy on them. But I live by the law, more or less. If the cops want the bad guys, I hand them over.”
She looked disappointed.
“Though sometimes I thrash them around a bit first.”
“What kind of gun do you use?” she asked.
“I don’t,” I said.
“But you used to be a cop in San Francisco.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“You don’t think I’d approach you without doing basic research, do you? Anyway, I thought ex-cops always carry guns.”
“I’m a private investigator, now”
“Oh, I get it,” she said. “Something happened, didn’t it?”
I didn’t respond. We sat and studied each other.
“Okay,” she said. “I’d like to hire you.”
“Jennifer, at the risk of sounding indelicate, you’re a kid. I don’t think the rules let a kid hire a private cop.”
“Rules?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’m sure there aren’t any laws or precepts that say you can’t do some investigating for me.”
“Just rules,” I said.
“I have my own money.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Please don’t patronize me, Mr.
McKenna. Owen. I mean it. I’m rich. I can pay whatever you charge.”
I leaned back in my chair and it squeaked. Should’ve bought one of those, too. “Jennifer, how old are you?”
“Fourteen. I’ll be fifteen in August.”
“More than three years until you are of age to enter into contracts. To be a legal adult. Until then I’d have to deal with your parents if I wanted to help you.”
“I thought you might say that, but I intend to convince you of how responsible I am.” She pulled an envelope out of her purse, opened it and removed a piece of paper. “I wrote this myself, so if you find the wording somewhat irregular I hope you’ll understand. ‘I, Jennifer Salazar, being of sound mind although only fourteen years of age, do hereby release and hold harmless McKenna Investigations from any liability for actions taken while in my employ. If any party attempts to interfere with McKenna Investigations’ work on my behalf, I will use my full resources, when I turn eighteen and get control of my money, to seek redress against them. I know my mind and I am not to be trifled with. Signed, Jennifer Salazar.’” She handed me the paper. “You’ll see that I had it notarized. This document should give you some protection.”
I glanced over the writing and noticed its perfect spelling and clean formatting. “Do your parents know you’re doing this?”
“I have no parents to speak of. My father is dead and my mother is confined to a hospital outside of Las Vegas. She’s schizophrenic.”
“Your guardian, then?”
“Gramma Salazar. No, she doesn’t know. She would have tried to talk me out of coming here if she did.”
“Why?”
“Because she doesn’t believe I’m right.”
“About?”
“About why I’m hiring you.”
“We haven’t decided you are hiring me,” I said.
Jennifer rolled her eyes, the first kid gesture she’d made since she walked into my office.
“Nevertheless, what is it you want?” I asked.
“I want you to find out who murdered my sister.”
“What would be your grandmother’s problem with finding out that?”
“She doesn’t believe she was killed. She thinks it was an accident like everyone else does.”
I paused. “Why don’t you tell me the circumstances.”
Jennifer shifted back into her chair. “My sister Melissa was my identical twin. We were hiking with Gramma Salazar when we were six years old. I should probably back up and say that Gramma is one of those sturdy German types. Hikes the mountains all the time. Used to hike in Bavaria when she was a little girl. So when her son Joseph - my father - married mama, who never used to go outside, Gramma was very disdainful. My father and Grandpa Abe died in a plane crash on a business trip in Indiana. Melissa and I were three. So we were too young to remember either of them very well. After that, mama’s sickness got worse. Her name is Alicia. I see her once a year. She’s a benign zombie. Sweet, but her brain is somewhere else. Probably the drugs they’ve got her on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her smile. Anyway, Gramma was convinced that mama was sickly because she stayed indoors. When they committed mama, Gramma became our guardian. Gramma believed we had bad blood in us from mama. So Gramma took us hiking all the time because she thought that exercise and fresh air would keep us mentally healthy.
“The summer we turned six Gramma decided we should celebrate our birthday by climbing a mountain. Do you know Maggie’s Peaks over on the California side of the lake?”
“Yes. Up above Emerald Bay.”
“Do you know the rock slide?”
I nodded. “Nineteen fifty-five, I think. A big chunk of mountain slid down toward the bay.”
“Gramma took us up South Maggie’s the morning of our birthday. She brought a little cake and surprised us with it when we got to the top of the mountain. She lit twelve candles, six for each of us.” Jennifer was looking past me out my window. I realized she could probably see Maggie’s Peaks over my shoulder.
“On the way back down the mountain, Melissa and I started playing hide and seek among the giant fir trees. Somehow we got separated and when Gramma and I got back together, Melissa was lost. We searched all day but couldn’t find her. So we ran down the mountain. Gramma drove into town and we got the police.
“By the next day they had search parties all over the mountain. One of the rescue dogs found Melissa’s body about half way down the rock slide.” Jennifer appeared pensive.
“The authorities decided it was an accidental death?”
“Correct,” she said.
“And you don’t believe them.”
“I don’t now and I didn’t then.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It was a visceral sense. By the time we were six we had hiked all over the Tahoe Basin. We were agile and coordinated. We’d run through boulder fields jumping from rock to rock. We’d stood on the edge of cliffs. Speaking for myself, I was too sure-footed and sensible, even at the age of six, to accidentally fall off a cliff. It’s like a geometry proof. Genetically, we were two copies of the same person. If I couldn’t fall accidentally, then neither could Melissa. Therefore she was pushed.”
“What about a sudden gust of wind? I’ve stood on that spot above Emerald Bay and felt the fear that the wind could blow me over.”
“It was a calm day. They checked the weather reporting stations around the Tahoe Basin. There was no wind. They decided Melissa must have stepped on a loose rock and tumbled off.” Jennifer’s large eyes were direct and unyielding. “They all thought she was just another unfocused six-year-old kid. But I know that she wouldn’t have done that. That would be like a cat falling off a couch or a mountain goat tripping over its own feet. She had to have been pushed.”
“Who would push a six-year-old off a cliff?”
“That’s what I’m hiring you to find out.”
“I don’t mean to be tedious,” I said. “But I haven’t agreed to take on the job.”
“Why not?”
“Look, Jennifer, it’s been almost nine years, a long time to carry the torch. You’re fourteen. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Why concentrate on something terrible that happened so long ago?”
“Because,” she said, “if Melissa was pushed, and I’m sure she was, then that means there is a killer who’s gone unpunished. I waited nine years to do something because I was a little kid and no one believed me. Now I’m old enough and mature enough to have some control over my life. I have the financial wherewithal, and I intend to use it to bring the killer to justice.”
I gestured with the paper she’d handed me earlier. “This money you get when you turn eighteen, is it a lot?”
“As of my last monthly statement from my broker, three hundred and ninety-four million dollars.”
I wasn’t sure, but I thought I saw Spot perk up his ears.
“Grandpa Abe started a textile firm when he was twenty-one. It is now the fourth largest clothing company in the world. He left me some stock. The dividends alone amounted to seven million last year. Naturally, I only get an allowance until I turn eighteen. But it is a large allowance. I have my own checking account and I’ve written you a retainer check to get you started.” She handed me a check. It was for twenty thousand dollars.
I looked at the clock on my desk. 11:00 a.m. “I don’t mean to pry, but wouldn’t a kid like you normally be in school on a Monday morning?”
“Yes. But tracking down my sister’s murderer is more important than school.”
“Public or private school?”
“Private. The Tahoe Academy in Zephyr Cove. Grandpa Abe started it just so we would have a place to go that he approved of.”
“Do your teachers get upset when you play hooky?”
“Look, Mr. McKenna. Owen. You can stop worrying. I already took my S-A-Ts, three years early because I’m graduating this spring. I got seven twenty-five on the verbal and seven ten on the math. I’ve already been accepte
d at Stanford, Caltech, Harvard and M.I.T. I think my teachers will understand.”
TWO