Boobytrap

3

Pat Dixon’s pride in his family seemed to be well founded. Marian Dixon was on the easy side of thirty-five, an attractive ash blonde with intense blue eyes and an air of both friendliness and self-containment. Like Kerry, a woman with plenty of inner resources. She seemed grateful that I’d consented to shepherd her and her son to Deep Mountain Lake, but she made it plain that she wasn’t convinced it was such a good idea.

“Pat says you’re a godsend,” she said as we loaded suitcases and boxes of supplies into my car. “He’s glad to have Chuck and me leave the city right now. I wish I could say the same.”

“Pretty capable guy under pressure, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but it isn’t his workload that worries me.”

“The two bombings?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, there’re several thousand legal professionals in the Bay Area, Mrs. Dixon. No reason to believe Pat’s in any danger, is there?”

“No, of course not. It’s just… oh, hell, I’m probably overreacting to the situation. I’ll feel better when he joins us at the lake.”

“Reasonable chance the bomber will be identified and caught by then.”

“You think so? I hope you’re right.” She worked up a smile for me. “And call me Marian, will you? I’m Mrs. Dixon to my students — the more polite ones, anyway.”

Chuck came out of the house, a two-story California Spanish on the back side of Mt. Davidson, lugging an armload of fishing equipment. He was as slender as his mother, animated, loaded with energy; wearing a Giants uniform shirt and matching cap that he kept taking off and then putting back on, as if he couldn’t decide whether or not he wanted his head covered. He had one of those sculpted buzz cuts kids favor nowadays and he’d gotten a lot of sun recently: his scalp was a bright pink under the pale blond bristle.

Marian asked him, “Do you really need all that stuff?”

“Sure. I like to be prepared.”

“Poles and tackle at the cabin, remember.”

“Dad’s stuff. I’d rather use mine.”

“He’s a fishing junkie,” she said to me. “You should see his room — angling books and paraphernalia everywhere.”

“Hemingway in training, huh?”

“Who’s Hemingway?” Chuck said, but his grin told me he was kidding.

“He’s already making plans for a trip to the Florida Straits when he turns eighteen. Marlin fishing.”

“Sailfish and tarpon, too. You ever go after the big game fish?” he asked me.

“Nope, I never have. Must be a thrill.”

“Yeah. The biggest.” He loaded his gear into the trunk. “Hey,” he said, “you’ve got some neat stuff yourself. What kind of reel is that? Daiwa?”

“Right.”

“Cool.” He ran his fingers over my fly case. “You bring any PMDs along?”

PMDs were Pale Morning Duns, a type of fly. “No.”

“I’ve got one,” he said proudly. “A number eighteen Mathews Sparkle Dun with a Zelon chuck. My dad gave it to me last Christmas.”

“Nice,” I said.

“Yeah. I’ll show it to you when we get to the lake. Say, maybe we can go out together some morning, before Dad comes up. I know a couple of good spots.”

“Streams?”

“Sure. Lake fishing’s okay, but streams are where you get the big rainbows and cutthroats.”

“A man after my own heart. You pick the morning, sport.”

“Cool.”

I glanced at Marian as we all got into the car; her expression said she thought her son was pretty special. I agreed with her. In a day and age when a high percentage of urban twelve-year-olds take and sell drugs, pack heat to school, swagger and backsass and run wild, it was a pleasure to be dealing with one who was still a politely exuberant adolescent. Kids grow up too damn fast these days, in and out of the cities; they seem to race through childhood, truncate it, so that too many of its casual pleasures are lost to them. Chuck seemed to be growing up the better way, slowly, in a nurturing environment. Pat Dixon was a lucky man, all right, but it was the kind of luck that is mostly self-made, a product of strong genes and wise choices. The Dixons, from my limited experience with them, could have served as a family values poster unit.

We left the city via the Bay Bridge and followed Highway 80 east through Sacramento and up into the Sierras. Traffic was heavy most of the way, heavy enough for a slowdown climbing to Emigrant Gap — summer vacationers like us, cross-country travelers, gamblers on their way to the pleasure palaces of Reno. For a while

Chuck kept up a running chatter that helped pass the time. He asked the inevitable questions about my profession — “What’s it like being a private eye? Do you carry a gun? Have you ever shot anybody?” — and segued from there into a solicitation of my opinion on the Unabomber and what kind of individuals made bombs to blow up other individuals. After his mother put a stop to that he rattled on about fishing, about baseball. He was a Giants fan, naturally (“I hate the Braves, they’re the Dallas Cowboys of baseball, you know?”) and played shortstop on his Little League team (“I can field okay, but I can’t hit a damn curveball to save my butt”). Once we got up into the mountains he ran out of steam, finally turned on his boom box and donned a headset and sat back to enjoy both the scenery and whatever music was ruining his eardrums. Marian and I didn’t have much to say to each other, but there was no awkwardness in the silences. She was lost in her own thoughts and I was content to be where we were, on the way to where we were going.

We stopped for lunch in Truckee, then swung off onto two-lane Highway 89 and climbed some more across high-mountain plateaus ringed by peaks perennially crowned with snowfields. Beautiful country, this, sparsely populated, unsullied by the grimy handprints of man. Hard country, too, especially in winter, but there was no deceit or treachery in it, as there was in the cities; what you saw was what you had to deal with, no more and no less. With each passing mile I could feel myself unwinding a little more, losing fragments of the hard core of stress like shavings off a block of ice. A week or better up here, I told myself, and the block would have been shaved away to nothing.

It was not yet two o’clock when we rolled into Quincy, the Plumas county seat. Old-fashioned little town surrounded by high-mountain meadows and pine forests, by cathedral peaks and the long slopes and sharply cut valleys that formed the region’s watersheds. Big sky up here, like in Montana — a vast, deep blue broken only by clusters of cumulus cloud above the windward ridges. The town itself might have been worth a closer look, except that I was too busy to make the effort: its one-way main arteries were clogged with pickups, campers, cumbersome RVs. Jammed traffic and honking horns and gasoline fumes: little reminders of home and the problematical legacy of Henry Ford.

We stopped at a supermarket so Marian could buy a few things and I could stock up for myself. Then we drove on to the west end of town and picked up much less crowded Bucks Lake Road. Another ten miles or so on that two-laner, and we came to a side road that branched off to the north. A sign at the intersection read: Deep Mountain Lake — 6 Miles.

The first four of the six were a steady, winding climb on a rough-paved surface: the last two, the road still twisty but the terrain more or less leveling off, were on hard-packed gravel that showed signs of winter-snow erosion. You would not get many motor homes or campers coming in here. I thought, and said as much to Marian. She confirmed it. There were no camping or RV facilities at Deep Mountain Lake; during the six or seven months of the year that it wasn’t snow-locked and deserted, it was strictly the domain of summer residents and backcountry fishermen and hikers who lodged by the day or week at Judson’s Resort.

Thick lodgepole pine forest hid the lake from us until we were almost on top of it. Then, from Chuck: “There it is!” He’d shut off his boom box and rolled down the rear window; he was animated again, excited now that we were almost there. Off where he was looking I saw flashes of bright blue among the trees. As we came around a sharp bend, the pines thinned abruptly and most of the lake was visible ahead and below, cradled like an asymmetrical bowl in a green-and-brown nest.

There isn’t a High Sierra lake large or small that won’t dazzle the eye of even the most nature-challenged individual. But this one was something special even by Sierra standards, the way Fallen Leaf Lake near Tahoe is something special. It reminded me a little of Fallen Leaf, in fact, in its size and shape: a mile or so long, a third of a mile wide, tightly hemmed by trees along its northern and eastern shoreline. Its color was a midnight blue so rich and deep it seemed velvety black in patches of shade at the far edges. Sunlight glinted off the water, fashioning silver streaks so bright they made me squint even though I was wearing sunglasses. The entire surface was like polished crystal, marred only by a skiff anchored near the north shore and a small powerboat moving at the western end, its wake like a stroke from a glass cutter.

The road dropped down and followed the shoreline. The first buildings appeared ahead, set on a wide peninsula: a long, low structure with a green metal roof, a good-sized A-frame that was probably the Judsons’ living quarters behind that, and eight small, plain cabins strung out on either side of a boat launch and a dock with a gas pump at its outer end. A driveway led to a parking area in front; judging from the number of cars there and fronting the cabins, the resort was both full and a popular social gathering place. A sign jutting above the roof of the main building read:

“Food’s great in the cafe,” Chuck said as we passed. “Super burgers.”

Beyond Judson’s the road began a series of sharp loops around trees and outcrops. The first summer home was situated a few hundred yards from the resort; the rest — a couple of dozen or so — extended around the curve of the western end. All were set below the road at the lake’s edge, on lots that were narrow but very wide, separated from one another by vegetation and humped ground so that each had a certain amount of privacy. The architectural styles were as different as the people who’d built them: single-story log cabins, shingle-walled and redwood-shake cottages, A-frames, and a two-story job with an alpine roof which loosely resembled a Swiss chalet.

The Dixons’ cabin was a little more than halfway around: old redwood boards and shakes, dark green shutters, its roof one long forty-five-degree slant; a railed deck built on pilings, with steps leading down to a stubby dock and a shedlike boathouse. A steep drive connected the road to a slender strip of ground along the cabin’s near side, hard-packed and wide enough for maybe three cars to park.

As I neared the drive Marian said, “Tom Zaleski’s property is next along — you can just see the roof of his cabin through the trees. We can stop there first, if you like.”

“No, let’s get you and Chuck settled in first.” I made the turn and eased down the gravel incline. “Nice place. You and Pat build it?”

“No. His dad built it thirty years ago and Pat inherited it. Some day it’ll pass on to Chuck and then to his children — I hope.”

“I’d never sell it,” he said. “No way.”

He bounced out as soon as I stopped the car, began to unload his fishing gear from the trunk. Marian said, “I wish I had half his energy.”

“I’d settle for a third.”

“Oh, Lord, smell that air.” She seemed much more relaxed now that we’d arrived. “And not a breath of wind.”

“Usually windy up here?”

“This time of day, yes.”

“Hot enough for a swim,” Chuck said. “After all that riding in the car, I’m ready.”

“Water must be pretty cold,” I said.

“Man, it’s like ice. But I like it cold.”

“Your swim will have to wait,” Marian told him. “There’s plenty to do first.”

It took us three trips to carry everything inside. Then we opened windows and shutters and doors to let the fresh mountain air in to do battle with the stuffy mustiness that accumulates in houses long closed up. The cabin was good-sized: kitchen, pantry, dining room, two bedrooms with a shared bathroom between them, and a huge living room whose glass outer wall overlooked the lake. Simple furnishings designed for comfort, most of which looked old enough to also have been inherited from Pat’s father.

Marian put fuses in the switch box, then tested both the electricity and the plumbing; there seemed to be no problems with waterlines, septic tank, or generator. I offered to hook up the propane stove for her, but she said she’d take care of it later. She unlocked the sliding door to the deck, led me out there. From its outer end you had a clear view of the back side of Tom Zaleski’s cabin, a plain green-walled structure that sported a deck, dock, and boathouse similar to the Dixons’.

“It’s small,” she said, “there’s just Tom and his wife, but it has all the amenities. The keys to the boathouse and Tom’s boat are on the ring Pat gave you, in case he forgot to tell you that.”

“What kind of boat?”

“Rowboat with a small outboard.”

“Zaleski doesn’t mind if I use it?”

She smiled. “As long as you buy your own gas.”

Lean and wiry in his trunks, Chuck came hurrying out of the cabin. “First dip of the summer coming up,” he said.

“Don’t stay in,” his mother told him. “Cool off and get right out.”

“Okay.” He crossed to the steps, paused to peer lakeward before he started down. “Here comes Mr. Ostergaard, right on schedule.”

A bright red skiff with a single occupant was angling away from the last dock on the western shore, heading in our direction. The low-pitched whine of its outboard seemed overly loud in the stillness, even across a quarter-mile of water.

“Nils Ostergaard,” Marian said. “Did Pat tell you about him?”

“He did.”

“A character,” she said fondly. “You’ll like him—”

“Hey! Hey, you guys!”

The shout came from Chuck. He was at the side door to the boathouse, excitedly waving an arm.

“What’s the matter?”

“Somebody’s been in here. The lock’s gone.”

When Marian and I got down there I saw that the door had been secured by means of a padlock through a hasp-and-eyehook arrangement. The lock was missing, all right, and the door stood open a crack. Chuck had hold of the handle and was tugging on it, but the bottom edge seemed to be stuck.

“Crap,” he said disgustedly. “Who do you figure it was, Mom? Homeless people?”

“Way up here? Not likely.”

“I’m gonna be pissed if they stole our boat.”

I took the handle, gave a hard yank. The second time I did it, the bottom popped free and the door wobbled open. Chuck leaned inside, with Marian and me crowded in behind. There were chinks between warped wallboards; in-streaming sunlight let me see an aluminum skiff turned upside down on a pair of sawhorses. Its oars were on the floor nearby. Otherwise, the shed appeared to be empty.

“Still here,” Chuck said. “Man, that’s a relief.”

“I don’t see an outboard,” I said.

“We lock it up in the storage shed under the deck. Jeez, you think they got in there, too?”

“We’ll go and look.”

The storage shed was built into the foundation of the cabin, with a heavy redwood door secured in the same fashion as the boathouse. The padlock was missing from the hasp there as well. I let Marian open the door and pull on a hanging cord to light a low-wattage bulb.

“Hey,” Chuck said, “this is weird.”

Weird was the word for it. Evidently nothing was missing from the shed, either; Marian made a quick inventory to confirm it. An Evinrude outboard, additional fishing tackle, shovels, rakes, an extra oar for the skiff, miscellaneous items and cleaning supplies were all in their places on shelves and on the rough wood floor. No sign of disturbance. No evidence that anyone had even come inside after removing the padlock.

I asked Marian what kind of locks they’d been.

“Heavy duty, with thick staples,” she said. “The kind they advertise on TV as withstanding a rifle bullet.”

“Maybe that’s it,” Chuck said.

“What is?”

“What they were after. The locks. You know, a gang of padlock thieves.”

His mother didn’t smile and neither did I. Heavy-duty padlocks couldn’t be picked by anyone other than an expert locksmith. About the only way to open one without using a key was to hacksaw through one of the staples, which even with a battery-powered tool would take some time and effort. Why go through all the trouble if you weren’t planning to commit theft? There didn’t seem to be any rational explanation for it.

A gang of padlock thieves. It made as much sense as anything I could come up with.