Free Tahoe Chase (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) by Todd Borg Page A

cavorting in the darkness as Treasure traced circles around him, the little dog would be safer than at any other time in her life.
    I left Spot and Treasure to cope with Mrs. Duchamp while I went inside, opened a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and called Sergeant Bains of the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office.
    “McKenna calling,” I said when he answered.
    “Wow, calling during the wine hour,” Bains said. “I didn’t know you private cops worked so late. I’m guessing you’re calling about Joe Rorvik.”
    “You’re practically a psychic,” I said.
    “I use the same technique. Deduce something logical about my mark, then reveal it as if it came from psychic powers.”
    “I’m your mark?” I said.
    “Sure. Except I forgot to get your credit card number.”
    “How did you deduce that I was calling about Rorvik?”
    “Partly because I’m the one who recommended you to him. But more so because he called me an hour or so ago to ask if I had any news about our investigation of the assault on his wife. In the process he told me he’d hired you and that you just left his house.”
    “Did you have any news for Rorvik?” I asked.
    “Unfortunately, no evidence means that we still think it was an accident. What do you think about Mrs. Rorvik’s fall?”
    “No idea, yet,” I said. “Joe told me that his wife had a young waitress friend who’s been over to their house.”
    “The abuse victim,” Bains said.
    “You know about it,” I said.
    “It probably came up the same way it did with you.”
    “Any idea what the abuser’s name is?” I asked.
    “He was a logical look-up, beating on his girl the way he does. Never know what other craziness he’s into. His name is Nedham Theodore Cavett. Goes by Ned. Works at an auto parts store. I found out that he’s taking up more than his share of space in the computers at the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office. Of course, juvenile records are sealed. But I spoke to a Sergeant Gramercy. He’s known Ned since he and his brother were little boys. Ned was the sick and twisted one, the other was normal. Said they grew up in a single-wide out on a patch of desert scrub at the southern end of the Sierra Nevada. The mother beat on them, especially Ned, and she started calling the cops on him when he was about eight. So all the deputies got to know Neddy Teddy.”
    “Neddy Teddy,” I repeated.
     “That’s what mama called him. Can you imagine her calling him Nedham Theodore Cavett? So she’d call nine-one-one and say things like, ‘Neddy Teddy came home with a new F-One-Fifty pickup last night.’ Sergeant Gramercy and his buds’d go out and collect the truck and return it to its owner. Young Ned spent a good part of his youth in Inyo County Juvie. Then his mom died, and he went to foster care, then to L.A., then eventually ran away to Nebraska.”
    “The dream of young men everywhere,” I said.
    “He met an Omaha gang leader who was recruiting in L.A. where Neddy had tried pimping. Ned didn’t have pimping skills, so he followed the gang leader to Omaha. He used a knife to jack a Mercedes from a little old lady, then hustled it to a chop shop. For that he enjoyed ten years getting three square a day on the Bureau Of Prisons expense account.”
    “And then he came to Tahoe,” I said. “Lucky us. What happened to the brother?”
    “Once a cop, always a cop, eh? I wondered the same thing. A good sibling can be a good handle on a degenerate. So I asked Gramercy if Ned was close to his brother. Gramercy said that Peter William Cavett was in fact close to Neddy Teddy when they were very young. They were good athletes, played ball together. He said that Peter also went into foster care after the mom died. A couple of years later, he disappeared. They never knew where he went. Gramercy’s read on it was that Peter wanted to get as far away from Ned as possible.”
    “By their names, it sounds like mom dreamed of aristocracy.”
    “Yeah,” Bains said. “Didn’t quite