In the Ground (David Wolf Book 14)

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.”
“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