by Jeff Carson
“Show us please.”
McBeth walked briskly toward the front-end loader, and when another flash lit the sky he broke into a run. Wolf and Patterson followed close.
The man expertly climbed up into the cab of the hulking machine and leapt down with considerable grace. An athlete hid beneath the dirt, hair, and layer of fat on McBeth’s body.
“Here’s the remote,” he said, handing it to Wolf. It looked like a simple garage door opener. “The left button opens it, the right one closes it. You do not want to touch the left one with anybody up there. You’ll launch them off. Thing is very strong, and I have to tell you, it’s not smooth at all. That’s something we’ve been meaning to fix.”
Wolf reconsidered his plan. “Can I open it only a fraction? Or one push opens it all the way?”
“A left button push starts it opening. If you’re quick enough you can push it again and it will pause the opening.”
Wolf looked up at the two forensic technicians on top of the grate with the dead body, feeling like he held a detonator and the hopper was wired with explosives. “Let’s go.”
Lorber headed towards the wash plant, his giant strides covering the ground quickly. He climbed the one-story high red-metal stairs, skipping two steps at a time, Wolf followed, skipping every other step. The large machine echoed and boomed with each footfall his boots. The railing was ice cold to the touch.
Lorber reached a catwalk and walked to the other side of the rectangular hopper chute, where a rebar ladder had been welded to the side, leading up to the grate that was a good ten feet above them.
Wolf looked over the edge of the railing, into the guts of the wash plant. Three chutes ran downward, covered in mud strips that had caught on riffles. He knew that was where the gold sat, or lack thereof. Water hoses mounted at his feet were shut off but still dripped. It smelled like wet earth and diesel fuel.
Wolf turned around and saw Lorber had already climbed the ladder to the top.
He poked his head over and waved Wolf up.
Wolf held the garage opener. He dared not put it in one of his pockets and accidently press a button on the way up. He pictured the grate opening like a mouse trap arm, sending everyone atop it flying off.
“I’ll take it.”
Wolf looked down and saw Patterson was standing next to him.
“Yeah. Please. And…please don’t touch it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hey,” Rachette said, appearing next to her. “You want these?”
Wolf took the two mesh bags containing the stowed ropes. He grabbed onto the first rung of the ladder, cold and slick with mud from the shoes of those who’d already climbed it, and realized why Patterson had decided to stay on the ground. It was tough enough climbing with two good arms.
Wolf reached the top and grabbed one of the grate’s dented slats. The good news was they’d already done a lot of work. The corpse was inside a bag, strapped down tight onto a spine board.
The bad news was the wind started howling off the mountain, hitting them in full force. Daphne Pinnifield, Lorber’s assistant, and another technician were on their hands and knees next to the body, Lorber crouched behind them. It looked like a dance party was happening on a postage stamp.
“We need everyone off here but me and Lorber.”
Wolf climbed back down to make way for the two technicians, then climbed back up to join the M.E.
Wolf’s hands gripped tightly on the steel grate, the slats digging in painfully to his knees as he climbed aboard a second time. The occasional sharp burr from where a boulder, or a thousand boulders, had landed dug into his palms. The wind doubled. Another bolt of lightning flickered, followed closely by a clap of thunder.
The dead man appeared to weigh at least two hundred fifty pounds.
“The dude's a rhino,” Lorber said. “Took us an hour to get him wrapped up.”
Thunder rumbled again. They had little time.
“Careful!” Wolf said, gripping the steel bars harder.
Lorber looked like he was almost blown off the edge as a gust hit him, but no fear shone behind his Lennons as he gripped the slats with long, sure fingers. The county Medical Examiner was an expert rock climber in his non-professional life, a legend in psychotic outdoorsman circles Wolf seldom frequented.
Oakley’s face was still poking out of the top of the body bag, which was unzipped for a reason only Lorber knew.
Wolf had seen plenty of dead bodies before, but it never got easier. Except for the gaping mouth packed with dirt, this one body was relatively benign. There was no visible sign of injury other than a swath of red on the top of his head. The eyes were closed. A dark beard a quarter of an inch long carpeted the lower half of his face. His hair was a matted mess on top, so caked with mud it barely moved in the wind.
“Zip it up, let’s get this guy down,” Wolf said.
Lorber zipped up the bag, and Wolf tied one of the ropes around the upper portion of the body, threading through and wrapping the handles of the spine board. Lorber did the same on the lower portion.
Wolf pointed down toward the ground, and the pile of discarded boulders below. “He slides off that way when we open the gate.” Wolf extracted some rope from the throwbag and dropped it over the opposite side where Rachette, Nelson, Yates, Hanson, and Patterson stood below on the catwalk. Lorber did the same.
“Okay, let’s get off of here!” Wolf said, shooing Lorber past him.
The skies opened up. First it was a ping here and there on the metal, then larger, louder clanks as hail started dropping. Soon the wash plant and everyone on it were getting pelted by a rain-snow-hail combination coming in at a forty-five-degree angle.
"Be careful on the way down," Wolf said, more to himself than to Lorber, as Lorber disappeared over the side with the ease of a long-legged spider.
Wolf shimmied his way over, slid over the edge, and climbed down the rebar rungs, his hands chilled to the bone now as water cascaded from the sky.
“Here you go!” Patterson handed over the remote control, and once again Wolf felt like he was holding a bomb trigger. He spotted the mine owner, McBeth, standing below. He pointed at him. “I need you to operate this!”
McBeth pointed at his own chest.
“Okay, hang onto that rope and lower him down everyone. We’re going to pop that grate, and according to the mine owner it’s abrupt. He’s big, so grip tight.”
Rachette whooped, smacking the others on the shoulder hard. “Let’s do this! Patty, move back.”
Wolf squeezed past them, went down the stairs and around the other side of the plant to where the boulders were piled below the hopper grate. McBeth joined him, more than a little trepidation in his face, but there was a glimmer of steel in his eyes as he took the remote from Wolf’s hand.
“Ready?” Wolf asked loudly up to the catwalk.
They nodded.
“Three! Two! One!” McBeth pointed the remote and pressed the button. Immediately there was a thunderous boom as the hydraulic door lifted up about a foot in less than a second. The body above it lurched and bounced hard. Rachette, Yates and the others leaned back in their stances.
The corpse bounced heavily, getting a foot or two of air before it settled back onto the now angled grate.
“All good?” Wolf yelled.
“All good!” Rachette said.
McBeth pressed the button again, and this time the gate swung all the way up at a steady, slower pace.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Everyone within radius shouted at the same time.
Oakley’s upper torso was now pointing sharply downward. The rope attached to his lower half was getting hung up on something.
“Shit,” Wolf said under his breath. He thought of the sharp burrs on the steel that were undoubtedly digging into the rope. “Okay, how good are you with that loader?”
McBeth shook his head. “Not as good as Sexton.”
While Wolf considered his options, another flash of lightning hit the side of
the nearest mountain. “Get him in that thing.”
“Sexton!”
Wolf watched a man dart from the crowd toward the front-end loader. With practiced precision he lunged up the side, popped inside the cab and fired up the engine.
It lurched, growling to life. Black smoke poured out of the exhaust pipe, smothered immediately by the downpour, as Sexton drove quickly forward, jammed the brakes, turned a quick two-point turn and sped past Wolf and McBeth.
Bouncing hard over boulders, he went at a full clip toward the plant, at such alarming speed that he looked like he might ram it with the raising boom, the angle of the scoop changing at the same time so that the shiny metal teeth would bite clean through the dirt chute, killing everyone on board the other side with the force of the impact.
Oh God. What had he done? Wolf’s heart stopped.
But so did the loader.
Expertly, Sexton careened to a stop with the scoop on the loader mere inches from the metal façade, only a foot below the dangling body.
Sexton edged the boom up, placing the scoop under the spine board like a mother cradling her baby.
“Good?”
Wolf looked into the cabin of the loader and saw the single word had come from inside. Sexton was staring at Wolf for approval.
Wolf gestured up with his thumb, then showed a few inches with his other hand.
Instantly Sexton adjusted, and the boom raised. Sexton seemed to not need more coaxing at that point, because he turned his attention forward again and raised the boom in a slow continuous motion, capturing the entirety of the body into the upraised scoop.
“Let go of the ropes!” Wolf said.
Rachette and the other deputies dropped their ropes at their feet.
Sexton backed up, then came to a stop when one side remained stuck on the grate above.
“We have to cut that!” Sexton said, looking at Wolf again.
Wolf held up a finger and sprinted back toward the plant, this time skipping two steps at a time as he shot up the stairway.
“Wait!” McBeth called.
Wolf looked over his shoulder.
“I’ll drop the gate! Everyone get ready!”
“He’s dropping the gate again,” Wolf said as he reached the catwalk.
Lightning flashed, thunder clapping unnervingly close, and an even bigger explosion of sound came crashing down, rattling the machine and his brain inside his skull. Particles of rock and dirt joined the rain landing on them as the hydraulic gate slammed down with zero grace.
“Shit! What’s happening over there?” Patterson asked as Wolf squeezed past again.
“Everyone down! Now!” Wolf shouted as he climbed up the ladder.
He reached the top and scrambled onto the grate. He went to the edge and looked over into the scoop of the loader. Oakley’s body lay face up in the center of the scoop. One of the ropes lashed to the board was caught on a burr in one of the metal slats. He unsheathed his Leatherman multi-tool, flipped out the serrated blade and cut both ropes, dropping the line down onto the body.
The loader revved angrily, sounding like a semi-truck as it backed away. The boom came down, the scoop maintaining its angle relative to ground with practiced precision.
“What happened!” he heard from down below.
Wolf climbed to the other side. “Okay, we’re finished! I said get down! Get off this plant and into your vehicles now!”
Another lightning strike flashed somewhere in his peripheral vision, and Wolf decided to take his own advice. Keeping his four limbs attached to the rebar ladder at all times, he slowly climbed down to Rachette who waited for him on the catwalk, pointedly ignoring his earlier order as the others had already scrambled away.
“Let’s go!” Wolf said.
Wolf followed him to the steps, running into Rachette’s back as he came to a sudden halt.
A crowd had gathered in a tight circle below. In the middle lay Patterson. She gritted her teeth while her good hand clutched at her ankle.
Chapter 2
Wolf jumped down the last couple of steps. "Everybody back! Give her some air. What happened?"
"Somebody pushed me from behind," Patterson said. “Ah, shit. Right there. Right there. Yeah."
"I'm so sorry,” Deputy Nelson knelt next to her. “I was just trying...I slipped, and I slipped into her. Sorry, Patterson."
Rachette pulled Nelson back toward the group. "Back up, man, give her some space."
"Don't worry about it," Patterson said. “You didn’t mean it.” She let loose a stream of curse words through clenched teeth, her eyes screwed shut.
"Everybody back up,” Wolf said. “I want everyone to take shelter from this storm. Get in your cars, now."
Reluctantly, the crowd dissipated, all except Rachette. Another woman who had been kneeling next to Patterson and cradling her leg also remained. The hood on her SBCSD jacket covered her head and shielded her face, making it impossible to see who it was.
Wolf tapped her shoulder. "Deputy, thanks for your help, but I need you to get into your car."
"I'm a trained medic," she said.
"Join the club," Rachette said. “Let’s move!”
“What about here?” the woman said, prodding Patterson’s shin.
“Ahhhh, yeah. That hurts.”
“More than here?”
“No. Just as much. It all hurts.”
Rachette put his hands on his hips and gestured to the hooded figure in theatrical fashion.
"What’s your name?" Wolf asked, kneeling down on Patterson’s other side. He finally caught a glimpse of her face beneath the hood.
"Deputy Cain, sir. Dredge Satellite Unit."
Her eyes were large and dark brown, almost black, as if God had skipped the iris and gave her all pupil. She looked familiar, like he'd met her before, but…no. He would have definitely remembered meeting her, he decided.
“… to be careful.”
Wolf blinked, realizing she’d just said something and he’d missed it. “What?”
"I said she'll definitely need X-rays," she said.
"Right."
"Ah!” Patterson leaned her head back to the pouring rain. "What the hell? What’s happening to me!"
“You think it’s a fracture?” Rachette said. “What was your name?”
"Deputy Piper Cain. I'm not sure if it’s broken. It seems to me like a hard sprain, but of course, it's better to be safe than sorry. There’re a lot of bones in the foot.”
"It's not the foot, it's the ankle." Patterson groaned.
"Sir, I'd be happy to drive her into the ER,” Cain said. “Or…obviously…you could take her."
"You're driving me in," Patterson said. "I'm not listening to Rachette’s bullshit all the way to the ER."
“Hey.” Rachette frowned.
“I could take her,” Wolf said. “I drove, too.”
“I'll go with her." Patterson’s tone conveyed the matter was settled and they’d get a foot up their asses if they said anything further.
"Help me up.” Patterson shot out her good arm and clutched onto Rachette’s pant leg.
Rachette wobbled, almost falling over, but then steadied himself and pulled her up. “Now she wants my help.”
Wolf watched as Cain helped on Patterson’s other side.
“You got her?” Wolf stepped in close.
“I got her.” Cain swiveled around, pointing them toward the line of vehicles. “I’m the Jeep Cherokee.”
Yates jogged up, appearing out of the rain. “What happened?”
Patterson, only five foot four and less than a hundred pounds, even with her clothes soaking wet like they were right now, floated between Rachette and Cain. Cain supported Patterson’s injured leg at the knee.
“She hurt her ankle,” Wolf said.
Yates shuffled alongside the procession. “Patty, you okay? What happened?”
Wolf studied Cain as they walked. Where did he know her from? He knew he’d seen her before. The hood drawn over
her head added to the mystery. He was the sheriff and she was one of his deputies. That was a good enough reason she looked familiar, he supposed. But, then again, he was only interim sheriff, and he hadn’t set foot in Dredge in the year since he’d taken office. On top of that she had to have been new, he decided.
He found himself studying her up and down on the way to the vehicles. Wet strands of dark hair were lashed across her face and stuck to her skin. She had perfect teeth, he noted, as he watched her speak to Patterson.
"Get the door?”
“What?”
Rachette looked over his shoulder. “Sir, can you get the door?”
“Right.”
But Yates beat Wolf to it, popping open the passenger side of Deputy Cain’s Jeep.
"No, we should put her in back," Cain said, "so she can elevate her leg."
Wolf opened the rear while Yates closed the front.
A feminine scent spilled out, wafting past his nose, and he decided it was the opposite of opening his own car door.
They got Patterson inside, and she groaned her thanks. "Ah." She appeared to be in agony as she tried to settle on the seat.
“Should have gone in the other way,” Yates said.
“Let’s pull her back out,” Rachette said, putting his hands under her armpits.
“Get off!” Patterson swatted him away and propelled herself forward.
Cain sprinted around and got into the driver's side. She nudged the hood back, sending raindrops flying, revealing long thick hair pulled back in a ponytail.
For an instant Wolf looked in and locked eyes with Cain in the mirror, before she turned around to face Patterson. “We’re ready to go.”
"Shut the door," Patterson said.
Rachette pushed the door closed. Wolf backed his head out of the way just in time, the door grazing his nose on the way past.
Wolf knocked, "We'll see you there!”
Without looking, Patterson gave a thumbs up. The Jeep sped away, past a line of parked department cruisers, out onto the exit road and up the valley until it disappeared into the foggy veil.
Wolf, Yates, and Rachette walked to the open-sided tent where the miners stood huddled out of the rain. They spoke excitedly, duffel bags and backpacks slung over their shoulders.
