In the Ground (David Wolf Book 14)

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