“The reason I want to be a doctor is so I can save people the way you saved me,” Jonni said. “I’m just a big pile of bandages,” Jonni said. “But I’m alive, thanks to you.” She looked up at me from her wheelchair, squinting against the brilliant summer sun bouncing off the water at the Commons Beach in Tahoe City.
“You’re more alive than most people with no injuries at all,” I said. “Anyway, it was Spot who found you. He gets the credit.”
Spot stood behind her. His head came over her shoulder from behind. His jawbone rested on her chest. His eyes were closed. He looked blissfully asleep. But his tail was doing a very slow wag. Jonni had her arms up, one hand rubbing his nose, the other fingering Spot’s faux diamond ear stud.
The left leg support of the wheelchair was raised, and it had a large U-shaped bracket that kept her lower leg in position. Her knee and leg were surrounded by a thick bandage. There were several bandages on her head. Her upper right arm was encased in bandages.
“Even after I got down to you, the reality was I didn’t know how to save you,” I said. “It was only after I remembered your rules for treating a lacerated artery that I got a grip on myself and started doing something.”
“What rules?” she said, frowning, as Vince and Brie walked up. Vince had bad bruises on his forehead and jaw and looked unsteady. He sidled up next to Spot and leaned on one of the wheelchair handles for support. Spot didn’t move. He knew when he’d found prime real estate. Brie stood to Jonni’s side.
“When I first saw you from outside the fence at Stone Lodge, the guard cut his thumb,” I said.
“Oh, that’s right! I forgot about that.”
“You explained how to treat cut arteries. So I repeated what you had said to focus my brain. Apply pressure with a compress. Elevate the wounded limb. Apply pressure to the artery upstream of the wound.”
“Wow, you are a good student,” she said.
“No, you are a good teacher. How long do they think it will take for the skin grafts to heal?” I asked.
“On my arm? A few weeks. My leg is worse. I was told the bone and muscle surgery has to heal more before they fix the skin. They say it will be six months to a year before I’m all better.” She made a wry smile. “I was feeling so good having escaped the guard on his bike. I forgot how that kind of speed can tear your body apart if you hit the rails. But as one doctor told me, ‘as long as you’ve got fluid in your pipes, you can do almost anything.’”
A group appeared on the stairs leading down to the beach from the street. Lucy LaMotte and her mother Emily Taylor, William Lindholm, and Anders Henriksson. Lucy looked stressed, as anyone would after finding out their spouse had been murdered. But she seemed to be holding up okay.
I held out the cooler as they walked up. All took Sierra Nevada Pale Ales except for Lucy who took a seltzer water.
I knew that Lucy and Emily had visited Jonni in the hospital. I made introductions to William and Anders. They chatted with Jonni and her parents. Spot held his ground and didn’t move from Jonni’s embrace.
I walked over to where Street and Blondie stood with Sergeants Bains and Santiago and Martinez.
“Did your little project go okay?” Diamond asked.
I nodded. “Agent Ramos got the FBI computer pros on it.”
“Did it turn out as you suspected?”
“Yeah. The Tahoe Robotics software is safe.”
As we talked I watched Jonni. She still had her hands on Spot’s head. But she was ignoring her visitors and was staring across toward Blondie. In classic rescue-dog fashion, Blondie looked both happy but also very aware of every little detail around her. Unlike Spot who thought everything in the world was designed and created for his pleasure, Blondie was always on the lookout for unseen hazards. I worried that Jonni felt the same way.
I saw another man coming down the steps.
I waved at him. “Tapper Logan, our Tahoe Robotics guest of honor has arrived,” I said.
He scowled. “I’ve never before had a picnic invitation feel like a subpoena. Did you invite me so you could throw me into the lake?” he said.
“Not quite. But I do have a little surprise for you.”
“Well, make it fast. I have work to do.”
“Sorry, but you won’t be going back to work just yet.”
He looked at the men next to me.
“I want you to meet Sergeant Santiago of Placer County, Sergeant Martinez of Douglas County, and Sergeant Bains of El Dorado County. I have some questions for you, and they’re all interested in your answers.”
“I don’t understand. You’re plotting something against me?”
“You’ll find out shortly.”
I put my arm around his shoulders and forcibly walked him over to where Jonni sat in her wheelchair.
“Hey, everybody. I asked you here because I wanted to break some news. In case some of you don’t know, of the four men who were involved in Jonni Cooper’s abduction, one died up on Job’s Sister. We caught two of the others up at Stone Lodge, which sits on a high ridge to the southwest of here. Stone Lodge is where Jonni was held prisoner. We found the fourth man at the Hellman Mansion. Jonni got away from him, and he made the mistake of trying to chase her. He was on a bicycle, and she was on her rollerblades. The man never had a chance. She blew him away, and he is now rotting in a jail cell.”
There were some chuckles and a cheer or two and a general sense of awe.
“And if any of you heard about the man’s German Shepherd, the dog has already been placed in a good home here in Tahoe City.”
I saw Street pet Blondie.
“I know you’d all like to know why Jonni was kidnapped.”
Everyone went silent.
“The kidnappers’ initial crime was to steal Yardley LaMotte’s robotics software. However, that software was protected by a password, and they couldn’t use the software.”
I looked at Tapper. “Everyone, this is Tapper Logan. He is what they call the Concertmaster at Tahoe Robotics. Tapper is more familiar with Yardley’s work than anyone else. As such, he knows Yardley put password protection on everything he created.”
Tapper shot me a frightened look. He jerked himself out of my grip but didn’t try to run away. In addition to me, there were three athletic sheriff’s sergeants in the group.
“So my question for Tapper is this: How would someone like yourself attempt to break Yardley’s password security?”
“Well the principles of cryptography are straightforward,” Tapper said. “We have encryption and authentication. We have hash functions and various keys. All of these can be complex. It’s not something average people would understand. So there’s no point in me playing professor, here. Actually, most professors are pretty stupid about this stuff, too.”
“Have you ever tried to figure out one of Yardley’s passwords?”
Tapper looked infuriated. “What is this, a court of law?”
“No. But if you don’t answer my questions, these law officers might argue over who gets to haul you in first. Answer the question.”
“No, I haven’t tried to figure out Yardley’s passwords. Of course, I probably could. But Yardley was a clever fellow. It would take a long time, and I have better things to do.”
“Then what would you do if you needed to get into Yardley’s computer files?”
“I’d go phishing. The movies always show fancy tech devices for uncovering passwords. But that’s fiction. The truth is that almost every time a password is compromised, it’s because the password owner fell for a fake website or fake email attachment and then entered the password onto a page that was controlled by a thief. If a password owner is very careful, it’s almost impossible to get their passwords.”
“Was Yardley one of those careful people?”
Tapper made a big sigh as if frustrated with how dense and slow I was. “In general, yes. But Yardley periodically went to local schools as a sort of outreach teacher. He called it giving back to the community. He always came back saying the kids were so dialed into their phones they were worthless. They knew everything about their favorite musicians and their Facebook friends and nothing about anything smart or useful.”
“He thought that about all kids?” I asked.
“Well, no. He said there was one kid in one of his classes who was different. A real standout.”
“And did he tell you the name of that kid?”
“Yes. He said her name was Jonni Cooper.”
Everybody turned and looked at Jonni. Vince and Brie were still next to her. They both beamed. Spot’s eyes were closed, appearing to sleep with his head on Jonni’s chest, but his tail was still wagging.
I asked, “Did Yardley say what it was about Jonni that made him think she was a standout?”
Tapper made an exaggerated nod as if Yardley had told him a hundred times. “He said he liked to tell the kids about password protection in conceptual terms, and he purposely made some of his comments almost transparent as to his own passwords. He always wondered if he’d ever come across a kid who paid enough attention to figure out what he was getting at.”
“And Jonni Cooper was that kid?”
“Yes.”
I turned back to the group. “When I realized the only way for the kidnappers to get the password would be to force it out of Jonni, I re-examined which people were close enough to Yardley that he would have told them about Jonni. And which people knew enough about Yardley that they could send someone to pretend to be Anders Henriksson’s brother.”
I held Lucy’s eyes. “I could only think of five people who had close access to Yardley and his ways and would have heard Yardley talking about Jonni. One was your mother, Emily Taylor. She lived with you both, and she no doubt heard Yardley brag about how he’d finally met a child who could figure out his password hints. The second person, of course, was you, Lucy.”
She looked shocked.
“You knew these things, too. You were very frustrated with Yardley. As you stated, he was a jerk. And he was impulsive about money, never consulting you, the better money manager. You also believed you were about to lose your house to foreclosure all because of foolish things Yardley had done. Your life hadn’t turned out the way you wanted it, and, more than anything else, Yardley was to blame.
“Of course, the whole idea of losing the house was an illusion,” I said, “created by the mastermind of the theft and the kidnapping, a ploy put over on Yardley by a good actor who convinced him Anders Henriksson was dead, an actor who was good enough with his story that Yardley invited him into the helicopter with the notion that he could change his mind about the supposed foreclosure. That man was Lucas, who is now in jail.”
Lucy was shaking her head and looking horrified.
“The third person who knew Yardley well was Tapper Logan.”
He jerked and stared at me.
“As Tapper just explained, he knew Yardley’s password techniques. And Tapper, more than anyone, knew the value of Yardley’s software.
“The fourth person was William Lindholm, Yardley’s first investor and, as Lucy said, the one person who had a better big-picture view of Yardley’s business than anyone else.”
Lindholm snorted like a bull. “You’re on thin ice, McKenna. I have a team of lawyers. You say one more thing, and I’ll take everything you care about.”
I ignored him. “And of course, who better than Anders Henriksson to provide the kind of information so an actor could know the perfect things to say to Yardley?”
Anders turned bright red.
I said, “How did the actor know the details of Yardley’s loan from Anders? It all came from someone that actor had never actually met. Someone he corresponded with over an anonymous criminal network.”
I paused and watched the group. Accusing looks competed with guilty looks.
“A few days ago, I arranged a meeting at Lucy’s house. William Lindholm was there along with Anders Henriksson. Emily Taylor lives there with Lucy, so she was there, too. Tapper wasn’t there, but all of the assembled people knew him. I’d learned how the men who took Jonni associated with the Brotherhood gang network, and the gang used bitcoin for their payments. But I didn’t have a clue about who could be involved until Emily asked the simple question, ‘What is bitcoin?’ Both Bill Lindholm and Anders Henriksson gave good explanations, using Paypal as an example, not realizing Emily wasn’t familiar with Paypal, either. However, Emily sort of gave up trying to get the nuances of bitcoin, saying she’d just accept it was a digital currency.”
I took a sip of my beer.
“And that’s when I knew who had ordered Yardley’s death by having him tossed from the helicopter. But things often go wrong. And Yardley went to his death along with his computer and flash drive with the software.
“Then the killer ordered Jonni Cooper kidnapped for two reasons. One, to force her father Vince to take men up to find Yardley’s body and get the flash drive, and two, to force Jonni to reveal Yardley’s password.
“Of course, we now know Jonni isn’t easily manipulated. Not only did she refuse to unlock Yardley’s software, she used one guard’s phone to get into the security alarm they’d installed at Stone Lodge and crashed it, so it couldn’t be used. Because of that, we were able to make our entrance without being immediately noticed. One man, Lucas, got away, taking Jonni down a zip line. But we caught the other two.”
The people still looked unsettled.
“We found Jonni at the Hellman Mansion, which had the same backup entry as the Stone Lodge. And when the last man chased Jonni, her rollerblade skill exhausted him, and we caught him as well.”
“So you’re saying someone helped these men?” Lucy asked.
“Not helped. Ordered. There was a general who planned and orchestrated the crime. That general was your mother.”
Emily made a little scream and raised her hand to her mouth. “What are you saying? You’re crazy.”
“I wish it were so. But I knew it when you described bitcoin as a digital currency, words that neither Bill Lindholm nor Anders Henriksson had used. It showed that you did, in fact, know about bitcoin. We’ve got you several different ways. The FBI has searched the Brotherhood computer server that runs its website. They found an archive with the original ad you placed for an enforcement team that included a helicopter pilot. They’ve traced your bitcoin payments back to the man who responded to that ad. You’ve committed many crimes in multiple counties. But I think the murder pulls rank, and the murder took place on the cliffs of Job’s Sister, in El Dorado County. So Sergeant Bains gets first dibs on you.”
Sergeant Bains unhooked the handcuffs from his belt and walked over.
“Emily Taylor, you’re under arrest for ordering the murder of Yardley LaMotte and for ordering the kidnapping of Jonni Cooper. There are a host of racketeering laws you’ve broken, but we’ve got enough for now.” Bains proceeded to give her the Miranda warning.
As Bains pulled Emily’s hands behind her back and started putting the cuffs on her, she began screaming. “He was a bastard, Lucy! He was everything bad you thought and worse! He made you sign a prenup. Your support made it so he could be a success. But he was unfaithful to you. He might have made billions and then divorced you, and you wouldn’t have gotten a penny. I was looking out for you. I was going to make sure you got what was owed to you!”
Bains walked Emily toward the stairs up to the street. His path took Emily past Lucy.
“No, mother,” Lucy said in a low voice filled with sadness. “Now you’re getting what is coming to you.”
After Bains had taken Emily Taylor away, we redirected our attention to the sunshine and the lake and the beer.
I turned to Jonni whose wheelchair was in the shade of a tree. “Jonni, are you going to tell us what you figured out about Yardley’s password?”
“If I told you, that would counter the whole point of a password, right? I told Lucy, and she reset the password.”
Street and Diamond and Santiago and the two money men joined us.
I raised my beer. “A toast to Jonni’s recovery,” I said.
“To Jonni,” Street said.
Everyone clicked bottles.
“How are you going to celebrate?”
“Because Lucy now owns Stone Lodge, I asked her if I could go back there and fix my bad memories. It’s an amazing place. So Lucy’s letting me and dad and Brie go up there to have a little vacation. I’m going to sit out in the yard and read a good book.”
“Speaking of which,” I said, “I almost forgot. I found an antiquarian bookseller who had a book I liked. It was produced in eighteen ninety-four as a one-hundredth anniversary special edition.” I handed her a package. I hadn’t been able to find wrapping paper, so I put it in a paper sandwich bag and tied a string around it in the loose shape of a bow.
Jonni opened it up. Her motions made Spot wake up enough to lift his head. He started panting.
“The Mysteries of Udolpho!” Jonni said. “Ann Radcliffe’s masterpiece. And this one is bound in leather!” She turned to Brie. “Do you know why I always liked this book so much? Because your last name is Du Pont. And the character Monsieur Du Pont in the book helps Emily escape from the castle.”
Brie nodded but didn’t speak.
Spot sniffed the leather-bound book and reached for it.
Jonni snatched it back from his jaws. “This isn’t a leather slipper, Largeness! This is literature! You don’t eat it. You - I don’t know - I guess you live it.”
About The Author
Todd Borg and his wife live in Lake Tahoe, where they write and paint. To contact Todd or learn more about the Owen McKenna mysteries, please visit toddborg.com.
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Dear Reader,
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Todd
Titles by Todd Borg
TAHOE DEATHFALL
TAHOE BLOWUP
TAHOE ICE GRAVE
TAHOE KILLSHOT
TAHOE SILENCE
TAHOE AVALANCHE
TAHOE NIGHT
TAHOE HEAT
TAHOE HIJACK
TAHOE TRAP
TAHOE CHASE
TAHOE GHOST BOAT
TAHOE BLUE FIRE
TAHOE DARK
TAHOE PAYBACK
TAHOE SKYDROP
Copyright © 2018 by Todd Borg
Thriller Press First Edition, August 2018
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Thriller Press, a division of WRST, Inc.
This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real locales, establishments, organizations, or events are intended only to give the fiction a sense of verisimilitude. All other names, places, characters and incidents portrayed in this book are the product of the author’s imagination.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from Thriller Press, P.O. Box 551110, South Lake Tahoe, CA 96155.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018936162
Paper book ISBN: 978-1-931296-26-7
Cover design and map by Keith Carlson
Manufactured in the United States of America
This book is for Kit
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Twice in the past, I’ve participated in character-name auctions. As part of a charity fundraiser, people bid for the right to have their name used for a character in my novel. This year, two separate fundraisers auctioned off names in the book that follows.
The first took place at the Carson City Library year-end gala fundraiser. Lucy LaMotte won that auction. The money goes to the Friends of the Library.
The second fundraiser was at the Left Coast Crime convention, for which I served as Toastmaster, and which took place in Reno. Nina Mazzo won that auction, and the money went to the Women and Children’s Center of the Sierra.
My thanks to both Lucy LaMotte and Nina Mazzo. I hope you enjoy the characters that resulted.
Once again, my editing experts are Liz Johnston, Eric Berglund, Christel Hall, and my wife Kit. While I get all the credit for mistakes - and trust me, there were lots! - these fantastic editors get all the credit for the fixes. I am indebted to them more than I can say.
Artist Keith Carlson produced another spectacular cover. In addition to encouraging people to read the book, it will no doubt entice some to go out and try paragliding!
As for all the other stuff that helps an absent-minded writer ignore the real world long enough to write a novel, Kit provides double what I need.
Thanks to all.