by Jeff Carson
In The Ground
Jeff Carson
Cross Atlantic Publishing
Copyright © 2020 by Jeff Carson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Also by Jeff Carson
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Also by Jeff Carson
Also by Jeff Carson
Gut Decision (A David Wolf Short Story)– Sign up for the new release newsletter at http://www.jeffcarson.co/p/newsletter.html and receive a complimentary copy.
Foreign Deceit (David Wolf Book 1)
The Silversmith (David Wolf Book 2)
Alive and Killing (David Wolf Book 3)
Deadly Conditions (David Wolf Book 4)
Cold Lake (David Wolf Book 5)
Smoked Out (David Wolf Book 6)
To the Bone (David Wolf Book 7)
Dire (David Wolf Book 8)
Signature (David Wolf Book 9)
Dark Mountain (David Wolf Book 10)
Rain (David Wolf Book 11)
Drifted (David Wolf Book 12)
Divided Sky (David Wolf Book 13)
In the Ground (David Wolf Book 14)
Chapter 1
The unmarked Sluice-Byron County Sheriff’s Department SUV brushed the underside of a cloud as it drove through the saddle between two thirteen-thousand-foot peaks on County Road 621.
Air blew through the window and although it was late June, a few days into summer, to Sheriff David Wolf it felt as if he had his elbow propped inside an open freezer. He could have unzipped his jacket, rolled up the window, and set the inside temperature to seventy degrees, but then what was the point of getting out of the office?
Once beyond the road’s apex, he let his foot off the gas and coasted. He felt the cab rumbling deep in his chest as the tires skated over more washboard and potholes—a soundtrack that never got old.
The mountain on the right side of the road abruptly dropped away, revealing the majesty of the Colorado high country landscape behind it. The Dredge River sparkled in the seam of the valley below, cutting through a carpet of trees on its way east, out into the green, shadow-speckled high plain Dredge Valley. Beyond that was another wall of snow-laced peaks in a seemingly endless sea of mountains.
A rock pinging off the bottom of the SUV brought Wolf back to the task of keeping from tumbling off the roadway’s edge.
He checked his speed and leaned over toward the passenger window, catching a glimpse of the mining operation far below. Pinprick reflections glanced off of a group of county law enforcement vehicles amid a handful of civilian trucks. A cluster of tiny white-clad ants—CSI investigators—swarmed a piece of red machinery that looked to be the wash plant. Deputies in dark jackets stood in clusters or wandered the area.
After the first hairpin turn, the spectacle came into view without him having to risk death. The mine was a small operation compared to some surface mines Wolf had seen. Earth movers had cleared a few football fields’ worth of forest and gouged their way into the mountain on either side of the river. There was a retaining pond, unnaturally turquoise, a lower cut where a single excavator sat idle, and a flat upper area where four trailers were lined up.
A row of pickup trucks in front of the trailers stood out among the other official vehicles, which were all labeled with the SBSCD logo and paintjob and parked more haphazardly.
In addition to the trucks sat three four-wheel ATV vehicles, the kind with bucket seats, roll cages, and flatbeds, used for navigation within the mine space.
Wolf had visited a few gold mines growing up, as the former landlord of his family’s ranch had been a mining magnate himself, so he could now confirm the large red machine sitting at the edge of the flat area below as a wash plant. The bulky section of the gold-extracting-machine was about the size of a semi-trailer. Out of the top yawned a rectangular covered opening called a hopper, where dirt was dumped in by excavators. Then the earth tumbled through a series of chutes with the aid of running water, depositing the heavy gold contained within into riffles beneath sifting screens. The remaining dirt, now free of the sifted gold, was gathered into another chute and deposited into the turquoise pond.
As Wolf reached the bottom of the hill his eyes flicked for the dozenth time back to the hopper with its iron bars covering the opening to stop larger boulders from entering the machine and tearing it from the inside out, because that’s where the dead body lay sprawled to the sky.
He parked and got out. Stretching his arms overhead, he felt a crick in his back from sitting too long behind the wheel, or too long behind the desk before that.
Closing the door, he sucked in the thin mountain air laden with the scent of pine and running water.
He could hear the whoosh of white water flowing off the snow-veined peaks down in the crack of the valley, over that the faint sound of radios scratching and people chatting. He unzipped his rain jacket to let his neck breathe, alert to the sound of quick footsteps heading towards him.
Wolf crunched through the wet gravel, down a small embankment and met the footsteps halfway.
“How are you, sir?” Chief Detective Heather Patterson asked.
"Patterson.” Wolf’s eyes scanned the cut in the land below, the muddy road the earth movers used, the big red metal wash plant, the scrum of bodies bustling nearby.
Wolf had parked slightly upslope and above the flattened upper area of the mine, and as they walked down toward the action Patterson gave him time to take it in.
The dead body lay atop a flat grate on the red machine. Face up, on his back with arms sprawled to the sides, the corpse looked placed for the gods atop a red iron altar.
"What have we got?" Wolf asked.
Patterson drew closer. "Deceased is a thirty-two-year-old male named Chris Oakley. He was a worker at the mine who has been missing since Friday night. Shit.”
She stopped and picked up the notebook she’d just dropped.
“Sorry. Damn thing.” She stood straight, flexing her left hand, displaying her below-elbow cast poking out the bottom of her jacket sleeve. The Chief Detective was a fifth-degree black belt in Kempo karate, and two weeks ago she had learned that five boards were the maximum she could karate chop through with her left hand without breaking her ulna.
"Where he’s lying is a hydraulic grate covering the … uh, hopper, they were calling it, which, that front-end loader right there drops the dirt into," Patterson gestured towards a yellow excavator with a large scoop parked silent
ly. "The dirt enters the wash plant for processing, and the grate catches the bigger rocks that would otherwise damage the plant. When there’s a sufficient buildup of rocks on top of the grate, the operator of the front-end loader uses a remote control switch he keeps in the cab with him to hydraulically lift the grate.”
Patterson continued to read through her loopy handwritten notes.
“Earlier this morning, at approximately 10:30 a.m., a worker named Casey Lizotte put a load from those piles there,” she gestured to a series of heaping piles next to the wash plant, “onto the hydraulic grate and noticed that a body rolled out of his scoop. He backed away. Stopped the front-end loader right there, he says, and that's when they called the Sheriff's department."
"It’s Monday,” Wolf said.
“That’s right, sir.”
“He’s been missing since Friday and we’re just hearing about it when they uncovered his body?”
"He’s been missing since Friday, but they’re saying they didn't know it until this morning."
Patterson nodded toward the line of trailers. At the end of the row of buildings stood a small canvas tent where four men sat in camp chairs talking with Rachette, who looked up from his note taking and nodded to Wolf.
“That’s them.”
“Only four of them in the operation?”
“Correct, sir.”
“So how does that explanation work?” Wolf asked. “Why are we only hearing about this now? Why not earlier?”
She sighed and folded her arms. "I asked the same thing. Mind you we’re still waiting to interview them separately, but from what I’m gathering apparently Chris Oakley, our deceased up there, worked the night shift Friday night. It’s normal for them to sleep through the next day if they’re on the night shift the night before. So they suspected nothing out of the ordinary Saturday when he didn’t come out of his trailer. Come Sunday they weren’t worried either, because apparently there had been some kind of argument. The owner, his name’s Eagle McBeth, told us he thought he was sulking in his trailer the whole time.”
Patterson shook her head. “It’s pretty convoluted after that. I guess the owner, Mr. McBeth, was angry at the deceased and went down into town, hired a new guy to replace him.”
“And then?” Wolf asked.
“McBeth says come this morning they started getting worried. Knocked on the deceased’s trailer door, no answer. Went inside, he wasn’t there. They called deceased’s girlfriend, and she hadn’t seen him all weekend, not since she left Friday night, again, something to do with the fight. According to their story they were about to call the sheriff’s department to file a mis-per this morning when the new guy dug up the body from those piles there and…” Patterson clucked her tongue. “Here we are now.”
Thunder rumbled in the sky toward the saddle between the peaks. Dark clouds had been building in Wolf’s rearview mirror the entire drive from Rocky Points to Dredge. Judging by the forecast and the five previous afternoons, they were going to get a good soaking shower.
Wolf walked toward the wash plant, Patterson at his side.
“How was the Council meeting this morning?” she asked.
Wolf had consumed the morning with the County Council going over a budget proposal he and Patterson had spent many hours creating. It was the reason he had arrived at the scene here and now. “It didn’t go very good,” he said.
“What didn’t they like?”
“Just a few of the line items.”
“The Leadership Fund?”
Wolf shrugged. “They just wanted to know more about it.”
“So that’s no problem. We’ll put something to—”
“What else?” Wolf nodded toward the wash plant.
“Right. Um…the miners are from Jackson Hole, Wyoming,” she said. “Hence the name".
The words Jackson Mine were stenciled in white on the wash plant.
"Sir,” Rachette jogged up.
“Where’s Yates?” Wolf asked.
“Over with the miners.”
They stopped and looked up at the body splayed on the big machine.
“You see the stiff yet?” Rachette asked.
“Not yet,” Wolf said.
“Got a hole in the chin and at the top of his head. Looks like the head is the exit wound if my memory of forensics and ballistics class are not failing me.”
Wolf eyed Patterson for confirmation.
She shrugged. “I haven’t been up there, sir.” She flexed her cast hand.
“What else?” Wolf asked Rachette, deciding the vagueness of the question was warranted at this early stage.
“The names of the four miners are,” Rachette looked at his notebook, “McBeth, Koling, Sexton, and Lizotte. McBeth and Sexton are thirty years old. Koling is thirty-two. Eagle McBeth is the owner. They all seem to be pretty tight. Grew up together up in Jackson Hole with Chris Oakley, our deceased. Lizotte’s the odd man out. He’s the new guy from this morning hired to replace the deceased. He’s twenty-seven years old.
“I’m not sure what Patty’s told you yet, but they say Oakley had the night shift Friday night. Before that, they had all gotten into some sort of argument. McBeth says it was about the lack of gold in the box. I take that to mean they’re not finding much gold? McBeth, and the other two, also mentioned Chris Oakley’s girlfriend being present earlier in the night.
“McBeth says the argument started when they all came out to see why Oakley was yelling at her. I guess it was a big blowout, she stormed off, drove away, and the argument turned between the miners about the gold.” Rachette turned a page. “I guess they all thought this guy Oakley was in his trailer this whole weekend, pissed off and keeping his nose out of the work they’d been doing out here. They thought he’d up and quit.”
Rachette flipped another page and squinted. “What the hell? What does this say? Trails? Tails?” He checked the blank side of the page, then flipped it back.
Patterson ripped it from his hand. “My God, who wrote this? TJ?”
TJ, Tom Junior, was Rachette’s oldest son, who had graduated kindergarten that spring.
“I wish.” Rachette took the notebook back. “Anyway, we need to get them to the station and talk to them separately. They’re just feeding off one another down there. I can’t get a sense of if they know anything more they’re not telling us or not. But it’s definitely foul play. Gotta be, right? If it was suicide, how was he buried? Guy’s covered in dirt. He came tumbling out of the loader.”
“Do we have a weapon?” Wolf asked.
“No, sir.” Rachette gestured. “Could be anywhere in that wash plant, or in one of those piles of dirt.”
Wolf saw there was a group of forensic technicians near a particular mound. “Is that where Oakley’s body was taken from?”
“That’s what the new guy, Lizotte, thinks. He’s not one hundred percent sure, though.”
A forensic technician was scanning one of the piles with a metal detector.
There was a loud ping on the metal side of the wash plant. They turned and watched a lanky figure clad in a white forensic suit climbing off the flat-topped hopper and down a set of ladder rungs welded to the side.
Dr. Lorber, the county Medical Examiner, took the flight of metal stairs and headed toward them.
“How’s it going up there?” Wolf asked.
Lorber lifted up a pair of goggles, revealing steamy John Lennon style glasses underneath. He plucked them off his beak nose, pulled a microfiber cloth from inside his suit and wiped them clean.
“Body is still plenty dirty, being he was deposited with a load of paydirt from that tractor, so I haven’t had a chance to thoroughly check him, but it’s looking like a gunshot to the chin, exit out the top of his head.”
Thunder rumbled again, this time louder, and all eyes turned toward the top of the valley. Another flash lit the closing darkness behind the peaks Wolf had just driven down.
“But we've got a bigger problem right now,” Lorber said. “That
storm is going to be a soaker. We have him wrapped up, but I’d rather get him down and into the meat wagon before it hits.”
Wolf eyed the wash plant, the body on top, and the sky behind it all. “Grab a couple throw-bags,” he said to Rachette. It was standard issue for each vehicle among the SBCSD to be stocked with a seventy-five-foot, quarter-inch rope throw-bag for emergency rescue.
“Yep.” Rachette turned and ran away.
“I need to speak to the owner,” Wolf said to Patterson. “Which one is he again?”
“Eagle McBeth,” she said, leading him to the open-sided tent where the four men from the mine were still milling about.
“Which of you is Eagle McBeth?” Wolf asked, reaching them.
The shortest of the three, a man with black hair and dark skin, stepped forward. “I am.”
“We need to get your employee down before that lightning hits. We’ll use ropes, but I want to know how to angle that hydraulic gate upward. How do I activate it?”
McBeth blinked rapidly, thinking for a minute. “You want us to fire up the front-end loader?”
Wolf considered sending the body for another ride in a metal dirt scoop versus a gentle lowering by rope. Then he considered how McBeth had suggested the idea in the first place. It seemed rather insensitive. Or maybe the man was ruthlessly practical.
“No thanks. We’ll lower him down.”
McBeth nodded. “The remote control is inside the loader. And there’s a manual button on the side of the wash plant as well.”
