by Jeff Carson
“Yates here.”
She looked down at her phone, realizing she’d accidentally pushed the call button. She put it to her ear.
“Hi. This is Deputy Cain, you just left me a voicemail.”
“Oh yes, hi Deputy Cain. Detective Yates, we met yesterday.”
“Right, I remember,” she lied, trying to put a face to the name and coming up blank. “Listen, I got your voicemail, I just wanted to make sure I heard that correctly. You want me to find Mary Ellen Dimitri and Rick Hammes?” She read off the addresses.
“That’s correct. And, like I said, you’re not to engage either of them.”
“Okay. What’s going on?”
“They’re people of interest in the Chris Oakley murder yesterday.”
“Rick Hammes is already on my list,” she said. “With his parole I mean. I’m aware of him.” She chuckled. “And I’m glad you’re telling me not to engage him. I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable writing him a speeding ticket. But I’ll give his house a drive-by, and see if I can’t find Mary Ellen Dimitri as well.”
“Great. Keep me posted on this number. This is my cell.”
She hung up, feeling invigorated. She was working with actual people, on an actual case. With people from headquarters.
Her father laughed at the television.
Shit.
She dialed Stacy’s number and it went straight to voicemail after a ring, like she’d been screening the call.
Of course, Piper couldn’t really afford the help anyway.
“Hey, Dad. How about you go on a ride with me?”
“Where?” He howled with laughter at the episode of “Leave it to Beaver.”
“I have to go to work.” She stood between him and the television. “Come on.”
He looked up at her, utter confusion on his face again.
She blinked. “It’s me. Your daughter, Piper. I’m a cop, and I have to go to work. Now get up, you’re coming with me.”
“No I’m not,” he said, leaning back in his chair. He looked past her to the TV. “I’m not going anywhere. There’s a marathon of “Gunsmoke” on after this with all the best Burt Reynolds episodes. I’m staying right here.”
Piper closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. Then she walked out the front door and onto the wraparound porch. She leaned her body over the railing, getting the right angle to see a sliver of the neighbors’ house down the road. Both vehicles were parked out front.
She went back inside, quickly changed into her uniform, put on her duty belt, and went back into the family room.
Her father had a beer sitting next to him now, but other than that, he hadn’t moved a muscle. Burt Reynolds had his shirt off.
“You going to be okay if I leave you for an hour or two?”
Her father ignored her, or didn’t hear. She stepped in between him and the TV again. “I’m going to work for a bit. I’ll be back, okay? I’m going to get Ethel and Jerry to check in on you.”
Her father raised his beer. “Okay, Honey Bear.”
He used to call her mother that.
“Okay.”
Before guilt froze her completely, she walked outside, down the porch steps and got in the Jeep Cherokee. She drove down the pine-forested drive and hung a right onto the county road toward Ethel and Jerry Clark’s house.
With the engine running, Piper ran to the front door. After two sets of knocks Ethel moved aside a lace curtain and pressed her face to the glass.
“Hi,” Piper said, waving.
Ethel smiled and opened the door. “Hi, Piper. What are you doing here?”
“Is that Piper?” Jerry called from inside. The man loved Piper, and never missed an opportunity to talk to her. Piper hoped that boded well for her now.
“Yes, it’s Piper. Come to the door if you want to talk to her, you lazy bum.”
“Hi, Piper.” Jerry peeked around his wife, his arms out for a hug.
Piper allowed herself to be pulled into his arms, and then Ethel’s.
“Uh, listen. I have to go to work for a couple hours. My dad is pretty adamant about not coming, and to be honest, it would help if he was not there. I’m wondering if you two could check on him while I’m gone?”
Jerry put both hands on his hips. “Heck yeah. You got it. Anything for you.”
“And your father,” Ethel said. “We’d be happy to. I’m going into town in an hour. I’ll stop by on the way in. And then I can swing by again on the way back. And if you’re still not back by then, Jerry will go over and check on him after that. How about you just let us know when you’re back and we’ll stop going over.”
Piper nodded and smiled with a wash of gratitude as she watched these two selfless individuals heed the call of duty. “Great. Thank you.”
“No problem-o,” Jerry said with a wave of his hand.
She waved back as she climbed into the Jeep.
Chapter 9
"He burned him with a cigarette?” Wolf asked.
Kevin Koling had just finished recounting his version of events from Friday. Just like the two miners before him, he touched on the same points—the text message from Spritz, Chris being upset about Rick Hammes and his girlfriend, Mary Ellen’s visit, their argument spilling outside, Mary Dimitri leaving, and then Oakley and McBeth getting into an argument of their own. Only he’d added one detail the other two men hadn’t.
“Yeah, got him in a headlock, put his cigarette out on his chest. Well, the chest of his jacket actually. Not, like, his actual skin or anything.”
“Still a bit much though,” Rachette said.
Koling shrugged. “That was Chris for you.”
“And then what?” Wolf asked. “After the cigarette burning episode?”
“Well that was it,” Koling said. “I pulled him off, Jimmy pulled Eagle back. That’s when Chris went out to start his shift.”
Rachette wrote in his notebook. “You’re calling James, the mechanic, Jimmy?”
“Yeah. Sorry. James. Jimmy. We call him Jimmy.”
“And then what did you do?” Wolf asked.
“I went to bed.”
“Did you hear anything out of the ordinary later that night?” Wolf asked.
“Nah.” Koling wrung his baseball mitt-sized hands in his lap and shook his head. “We usually get after it on Friday nights, and I'm one to enjoy my drinks. I slept pretty hard."
“Have you heard about how Chris was killed?” Wolf asked.
“I just talked to James on the way out. He says you guys think he was shot in the head, and that somebody else did it. Wasn’t suicide.”
“That’s right,” Wolf said.
“And he mentioned you guys think it might have been he was shot with his suppressed G21.”
Wolf and Rachette eyed each other.
“Is it true?” Koling asked.
Wolf decided to leave the question unanswered. "You exchanged a lot of text messages with Chris, didn’t you.”
“He was my best friend.” The big man’s eyes welled up, but the tears didn’t flow.
“We gather he was very upset with McBeth, is that correct?”
“Yeah, sure. I mean, he was more upset about the mine.”
“But he was holding McBeth responsible, right?” Wolf asked.
“I don’t know. I guess.”
“That’s what those texts look like. He said to you, quote: ‘If we don't start getting gold in the box I'm bouncing. Fuck him’.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s right. So…what?”
“I’m just trying to establish the relationship between Mr. McBeth and Mr. Oakley,” Wolf said. “Would you say it was antagonistic?”
“Relationships with Chris Oakley were always antagonistic.” Koling smiled, looking proud of his deceased friend.
“Except for with you,” Wolf said.
“That’s right. We never fought.”
“Never?”
“Not once. Well, not since kindergarten, when I whooped his ass.” Koling smiled again, but th
is time a tear fell down his cheek. He wiped it quick, then closed his eyes and let a stream flow down his face.
Rachette ducked out of the room and returned with a box of tissues.
When Koling blew his nose, it sounded like a bear caught in a trap. They waited in silence until the wave of emotion passed.
“Ah. Sorry,” Koling said, twirling his finger for them to continue.
“It’s no problem,” Wolf said. “When your best friend was not coming out of his trailer for the next couple of days after that night shift Friday night, were you concerned?"
Koling nodded. "I was. I mean, not on Saturday, whoever has the Friday overnight always sleeps the whole next day. But when he didn’t come out Sunday, I texted him to see what was going on. When he didn’t answer I was like, what the hell? I went into his trailer to check on him, saw he wasn’t there.”
“You actually went inside the trailer?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, so he wasn’t there,” Wolf said. “And then what?”
“I was confused. His truck was there. At that point I assumed he must have been with Mary Ellen. I figured she came in and got him while we were in town earlier. You know. They were making up.”
“When did you go into town?” Wolf asked.
“Sunday, lunch time. McBeth wanted to hire on Lizotte so we went to The Picker to have lunch. When I came back that’s when I went to Chris’s trailer. I wanted to talk to him about what McBeth was doing, you know. That he was serious. And he was pushing Oakley out.”
“And then Monday comes around,” Wolf said.
“Yeah, Monday morning I was wondering what the hell was going on. I was very concerned at that point. So, I called Mary Ellen and she told me she hadn’t seen him at all over the weekend, not since Friday. As soon as I hung up with her I called you guys right away.”
“Did you have any inkling of what might have happened to him?” Wolf asked.
“That he’d been shot in the head?”
“Yes.”
“No. Not at all.”
“Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to hurt him?”
Koling crossed a leg, his bass boat of a foot bouncing on his knee. “I don’t know, I mean, maybe Rick Hammes? The guy was screwing his girl. The guy shot up a truckload of teenagers a couple years ago. Seems like an Rick Hammes type of thing to me, doesn’t it?”
“Did you hear anything out of the ordinary Friday night? Like a gunshot?”
“No.”
“Tell us about this silenced weapon of Chris’s,” Wolf said.
“It’s a G21 with a solvent trap converted into a suppressor. Tough to buy a silencer, so Chris made his own.”
“Where does Chris keep this silenced Glock 21?” Rachette asked.
“In his drawer with his other one. Top drawer of his dresser.” Koling answered without hesitation. After a few seconds he narrowed his eyes. “We all knew that. We all know where we keep each other’s guns.”
“We didn’t find the silenced gun there,” Rachette said. “We found another Glock 21 without a silencer.”
“Yeah. He has another one.”
“Are you sure that’s where he keeps the silenced weapon, too?”
“Yeah. I’m sure. Like I said, we all know.”
“You guys talk about that, huh?” Rachette asked.
Koling’s foot dropped off his knee. “What the hell is this? Are you saying I have something to …” He moved his mouth around, sucking in a hissing breath through his nose, like rage was a thrashing monster trying to escape through his lips. “Are you saying I did this?”
“No, we’re not,” Wolf said. “We’re just saying it stands to reason that somebody got hold of that silenced gun and shot him.”
“And we can’t find that gun,” Rachette said.
Koling stared through the room.
“Would Rick Hammes have known where to get that gun?” Wolf asked. “He doesn’t live there with you guys. Isn’t as familiar with your weapons or where they’re kept. Or is he?”
Koling’s eyes remained fixed for a few seconds more, then he stood up. “I’m not answering anymore of your questions without a lawyer.”
He walked to the door and jiggled the handle.
Yates was ready this time and twisted the knob from the other side. Before the door was open Koling pushed his way out, then left through the observation room out into the hall.
Rachette swiveled in his chair. “Well? What’s next?”
“Now we need to talk to Rick Hammes and Mary Ellen Dimitri,” Wolf said.
“So, up to Dredge?” Rachette asked.
“Yeah.”
“I spoke to Deputy Cain.” Yates eyed his watch. “She should be calling me any time now with their status.”
“How about Oakley’s family?” Wolf asked Rachette.
Rachette shrugged. “I called the number for Pa we found in his phone. It’s definitely his father, according to my records search. But I can’t get hold of him. The voicemail said his mailbox is full. I’ve got the Teton County SD helping out. They’re supposed to call me with news.”
Wolf nodded. “I need to make a call to the sheriff up there also.”
“And then what?” Rachette asked.
“And then we have a long drive ahead of us,” Wolf said, walking out the door and down the hall. “It’s time to head up to Dredge.”
Chapter 10
Deputy Piper Cain drove the Jeep Grand Cherokee away from her father’s house, out of the forest and into the wide-open valley floor towards Dredge, which sat a few miles away. From here the view of the landscape was even more spectacular than up at her father's house. The three walls of mountains enclosing the fortress-like valley were in full view, filling the windshield and mirrors. Up at Dad’s the view was much the same but surrounded by the occasional lodgepole pine obstructing the majesty beyond.
Ahead, the town of Dredge sparkled in the afternoon sunlight. The history of the place was a variation of a well-worn tale in the Rocky Mountains. Back in the late eighteen hundreds a handful of men had found gold in the river running through the center of the valley. They’d struck it rich, and word had gotten out. Even these thirteen-thousand-foot fortress walls couldn’t hold that piece of information secret for long.
One man from Denver with deep pockets named Victor Hanfield decided to come up and get in on the action. He had built himself a Dredge to extract the gold from the river, but at industrial levels. According to Piper’s father’s account, Hanfield succeeded mightily, buying up more claims, pushing other small-timers, which was everyone else, out before they could compete.
He built a hotel. He built a casino. He built a theater. Over the next few decades he took his hoard of gold and built the town. More people came. And the town flourished for a short time. They named the town Dredge, after Hanfield’s machine that made it all possible.
But then Hanfield died, and after that the town went into a steep decline. Nobody could seem to find the gold like the famed man from Denver with a Dredge.
Now the town was a step or two above a ghost town, with only a population of 1,300 people in peak summer season. Hanfield’s Dredge was a battered, weathered, shell, lying on the shores of the river just off Main Street. The casino in town had been converted to a warehouse sometime in the mid-1950s. The hotel was still a hotel, but nothing anybody wanted to stay at. The theater had shut down at the turn of the century.
Now a new resurgence was trying to take hold. A mega-corporation had moved in, building a monstrous casino on the southern edge of town, trying to pull people into the valley like Hanfield had all those years ago. As far as Piper could see, the corporation had made a poor investment. But, then again, she was no businesswoman.
She was a cop. And with that thought, she looked toward the other side of the valley, where a lone vehicle kicked up dirt on the road that she knew led up to the mine.
Wind came in through her open window, buffeting the side of her face, pushing against
the car so hard she had to hold the wheel tight. The scent of grass and crystal-clear air filled the cab. She tapped the wheel with both thumbs, even though no music came out of her radio. The combination of her assignment and brisk air had her humming.
She flicked her eyes back to that dirt road that led to the mine. Rick Hammes lived on that road, too, just outside of town. Hammes was one bad cookie and she didn't relish the thought of getting eyes on him. It would definitely be a drive-by, she decided. And she would be driving fast. The guy had already proven he had a penchant for shooting up cars, and she’d hate to be next.
Once she reached Dredge, she decided to hang a right on Main Street and stop at Mary Ellen Dimitri’s first.
The noise lessened as she drove off the dirt and up onto the freshly laid pavement of the state highway. She passed The Motherlode Casino on the left, the colossal rectangular building covered in an earth-toned stucco erected ten years ago that was trying to rekindle Mr. Hanfield’s magic. She was glad her father wasn’t with her now. He would have said, “It’s a damn shame they littered this valley with that monstrosity.” He would have thought he was being clever saying it, and not just repeating the same thing he’d been saying for the last ten years.
Piper came out of her thoughts and made a right on Poppy Lane, easing off of Main onto potholed dirt. A plume of dust kicked up behind her, billowing past the front of her car and into the windows. She coughed and rolled up the windows as she slowed at the corner of Third and Poppy.
Mary Ellen Dimitri's house stood on the corner. It was identical to the others on the street, boxy and small, one of many two-bedroom houses built sometime in the early 1900s. She parked along the side of the house and got out.
In between wind gusts the sun warmed her skin. The faint scent of bar food from somewhere in town rode on the breeze, making her mouth water. She had eaten only a snack for lunch before she left. She could eat later.
She walked around the side of the house to the front porch, swishing her feet through long, unkempt grass that she suspected had yet to see a lawnmower this year.
