In the Ground (David Wolf Book 14) Page 5

  Wolf nodded. “That’s what they said. They want to get everything into the state in the next week, before MacLean gets back. Apparently we push back less than he used to.”

  “Really.”

  Wolf nodded.

  “You know,” Patterson said, “Margaret says he’s changed. Apparently he’s all about fruit and vegetable juice now. And enemas or something? She says he’s calm.”

  Wolf had heard the rumors and the vague explanation of MacLean’s recovery from the single phone conversation he’d had with the man that spring. “I’m not sure people like MacLean change. He beat advanced-stage pancreatic cancer. He’ll be coming in with more cocksure swagger than ever.”

  “Who knows? Maybe he’ll be all for this training, too?”

  Wolf raised his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t count on it. It would be tantamount to admitting he made a mistake with his hiring two years ago.”

  She exhaled. “Yeah. You’re right. So…okay, tell the council we’ll start pushing back on other things unless they approve it. We need that in place, it’s an abomination that we’re not offering more support to our—”

  Wolf held up a hand. “I know, I know. Listen, I think I misspoke…they’re on board with the fund, but the stipulation is that we give them an itemized list of what exactly the fund means, what’s going to be included, which positions get what training. And, of course, the cost of everything itemized out ‘to the last class’ as Helms put it. He wants a spreadsheet.”

  Patterson upturned a hand. “Well, why didn’t you say that? That’s simple enough. We can get quotes from Hawkwood’s friend who does the training. We can check with another company or two. You just set up a spreadsheet, maybe type up a page report, no problem.” She snapped her fingers.

  Wolf eyed the stacks of paper. Had they grown since they’d started talking?

  She read his face. “When does the council need this itemized report by?”

  “And the spreadsheet.”

  “Right. And the spreadsheet.”

  “By the end of today.”

  “Geez.” She looked at the papers on his desk. “Okay. And when’s Wilson coming back again?”

  “Five more days.”

  “Five?” she asked, exasperated. “What’s he doing down there in Denver, anyway?”

  “His father’s not doing too well.”

  “Oh. Oh yeah, right.”

  “The Denver PD offered him a job.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Are you serious?”

  “Assistant Chief.”

  “Wow.”

  “He turned it down.” Wolf shrugged. “Maybe he’ll change his mind and won’t come back.”

  She stood with her mouth open.

  “I’m kidding.”

  She sighed and thumbed through the papers on his desk, this time looking more carefully at individual layers in the stacks. Quickly, she began reconfiguring chunks of the papers into various piles. When she was done she held up a four-inch thick pile and flapped it at him. “Okay, listen. I’ll take these to take some stress off you and to make Charlotte and her staff a lot happier. The rest of this can wait a week for Wilson.” She studied the ream of paper in her hand. “Shouldn’t take me more than an hour at the most.”

  “Thank you, Heather.” Wolf wondered how long it would have taken him. Probably the same hour of work, but spread out over a dozen hours, spread over five days. “When’s Lorber ready with his preliminary on Chris Oakley?”

  “He’s finishing it now. We’re headed down to go over it with him at seven-thirty. The three men from Jackson Mine are coming. Should be enough time to debrief Lorber and be prepared for the interviews.” She flapped the papers again. “And you know it’s not that tough. You could set aside thirty minutes every morning, where you only do paperwork. That way it never piles up.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “I’m sure you will.” She fumbled with the crutch holding the stack of paper. The other hand with the cast barely held onto the other crutch to begin with. She seemed to realize she was in a bind.

  “Here, let me at least carry those.”

  She waved him aside. “Just open the door.”

  He rushed around the other side of the desk and opened it wide.

  “You might want to get some ice for that head.”

  “I owe you one.”

  “You owe me more than one.” She teetered out of the doorway and into the bustling squad room.

  “I owe you seven.”

  “Hundred,” she said.

  Wolf grabbed his stuff and headed downstairs for the showers.

  Chapter 5

  Heather Patterson hobbled down to her office, managing to avoid speaking to anyone, which was a feat given the number of deputies in the squad room. She shut the door, savoring the silence.

  She dropped the paperwork on her desk on the way to her chair, eyeing the beauty of the early summer day outside through the open blinds. It was tough to appreciate with her brain focusing on the throbbing pain in her ankle.

  She sat down, put her crutches on the ground along the back wall, rolled her chair into position, and gingerly put her ankle up on the windowsill.

  “Ah.”

  The blood flowed up her leg and some discomfort evaporated, but after a short time the pressure of her skin against the sill sharpened to a knife’s edge. Either the angle or the height was all wrong. She tried using the top of her desk, which wasn’t right either, so she moved to the loveseat, her foot resting on the cushioned surface. Ahhh.

  Damn it. The paperwork was still sitting on the desk.

  Two sharp knocks rattled the door.

  "Yeah!”

  Rachette popped his head in. "You ready to go down to Lorber?"

  She eyed her watch. “Already?”

  “He sent an email saying he was ready. Didn’t you see it?”

  She sighed and got up, grabbing her crutches. A deep ache began to bloom in her ankle, and it felt like she’d just pushed her foot into a hornet’s nest.

  "How's it feeling?" Rachette watched her, sipping his coffee.

  "Not bad."

  “You’re a terrible liar.”

  He gave her a wide berth as she hobbled through the doorway, into the hallway, and down to the elevator bank.

  "Take any painkillers?" he asked.

  "Nope."

  “Why not? That's the best part of getting hurt."

  "Getting hooked on meds?”

  “Yeah.”

  They stepped into the elevator and Patterson went to the corner and leaned against it.

  "I guess TJ hit a home run last week," Rachette said.

  "Really? Oh yeah, and you were doing the training. Sorry you didn’t get to see it.”

  Rachette smiled to himself. "Charlotte says he dribbled it off the tee about forty feet and then proceeded to run around the bases while the other kids threw the ball a hundred times."

  Patterson smiled despite the ache in her foot.

  "So, when are you going to get Tommy into baseball?" Rachette asked.

  "He's not into it."

  "It's not a matter if they're into it or not. You just put them into it."

  "Is that how it works?" Patterson asked. The truth was she and Scott had tried to play in the backyard plenty of times and the kid wasn’t interested. Sometimes she wished she could be in the stands watching her son play, other times she couldn’t care less. This was one of those times.

  "It's how it works in my house."

  "I don't doubt it," she said.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "It means let's be quiet. My leg hurts."

  "I thought you said it wasn’t bad.”

  She said nothing.

  “Why aren't you home resting?"

  "Why are you still talking?" The elevator stopped and opened, and they stepped out into the cool recesses of the basement, the domain of Lorber and his forensics department.

  The air chilled her to the bone, smelling deep
ly of embalming fluid.

  Rachette pulled out a pocket tub of Vicks VapoRub and put some under his nose. He held it out.

  “No thanks.”

  “Sicko.”

  The sight and smell of dead bodies didn't bother her too much when they were in the morgue. It was a different story out in the field, with varying degrees of decay, heat, and other factors.

  With every step, her crutches gripped the glistening terrazzo floor with a tiny squeal. Her armpits ached from the constant pressure. She probably needed to wrap a towel around the cushioned part of each crutch with the amount of time she’d be spending on her feet for this investigation.

  Turning the corner to Lorber's room, she slowed when she saw Wolf was inside already.

  Rachette moved on ahead of her inside. "How's it going, gentlemen?"

  “Hey Patty,” Lorber said. “How’s the ankle? Heard it’s a bad sprain.”

  “It’s a regular sprain. It’s okay.”

  “Good. Glad to hear it’s not another break.”

  She nodded at Wolf, who gave her a curt nod in return, giving her the impression he was avoiding her gaze. He looked freshly showered and his dispenser-soap scent mixed with the chemical aura of the room.

  She had assumed the report and spreadsheet would have been Wolf’s first priority. Apparently she was wrong.

  She blinked out of her thoughts and turned to Lorber. "So, what do you have so far?"

  Lorber put on his glasses, magnifying tired-looking eyes. His hair, usually worn down to the middle of his back, was wrapped on top of his head, making his medical skull cap look like a pregnant turban.

  The ME approached the illuminated body on the metal table at the center of the room, wasting no time lowering the sheet to breast level.

  Sasquatch had nothing on body hair compared to the man known as Chris Oakley. His chest was a black bathmat, his shoulders wearing toupees. His scalp was a matted mess, but Lorber had cleaned him of dirt and mud.

  Lorber picked a pen out of his lab coat pocket and pointed under Oakley’s chin. "We have an entrance wound right here, and an exit wound at the top of the head. No other injuries, other than one here on his arm, made post-mortem by one of the teeth of the front-end loader, presumably made when he was scooped up by Casey Lizotte."

  Patterson leaned forward, hopping nearer to get a good look. A deep slice had opened up the man’s triceps, revealing striated muscle beneath a thin layer of fat. Lorber had shaved around the clean hole piercing the top of Oakley’s head.

  "You can tell the entrance wound is here at the chin because of the spidering due to the gas outburst from the barrel," he said.

  "Was there any GSR found on his hands?” Wolf asked.

  “None.”

  “So no suicide,” Rachette said.

  “No suicide,” Lorber said.

  "Can you tell what caliber it was?" Patterson asked.

  "Powerful enough to be a through and through, tunneling the tongue, sinus cavities, up into the brain tissue and out the top of the skull.”

  “They all had forty-fives, didn’t they?” Patterson asked.

  “That’s right,” Rachette said. “All Glock 21s. Must have been a special at Kmart the day they got ‘em.”

  Lorber took off his glasses and rubbed his nose as he walked toward four plastic bags sitting on the counter. Each held one of the guns in question.

  "I’ve swabbed the gunshot residue from his chin and we’ll do a test, trying to match the signature coming out of each of these weapons. But these were all loaded with the same ammo, full to the brim—full magazines and one in the chamber, and all of them looked like they’re meticulously cleaned. No carbon residue, suggesting they haven’t been fired recently.”

  “Or somebody fired the shot through his head, then cleaned his gun and put another bullet into the magazine,” Rachette said. “To make it look like it wasn’t fired.”

  Lorber shrugged, conceding the point.

  "What kind of ammo did we find on the property?” Patterson asked Rachette.

  Rachette shook his head. He pulled the small notebook out of his back pocket and started flipping pages, again with that air of looking at a book he'd never seen before and someone else was responsible for the illegible chicken scratch within. He found something and pointed a stubby finger. "Here. We found boxes of forty-five 230 grain full metal jackets. Same brand—Federal Bear Silvers. Like Lorber said, looks like they all used the same ammo.”

  Patterson's foot throbbed, feeling like it was a water balloon about to burst. “How long is it going to be for the GSR tests?” she asked.

  “That'll take some time.” Lorber said, his eyelids looking even heavier now. “At least a couple days.”

  "What else?" Wolf asked.

  "Daphne has Oakley’s phone, which we found in his pants pocket," Lorber said, gesturing to a room on the other side of the hallway. He walked over and knocked on the open door.

  "Yep?" Daphne answered.

  "Sheriff is here with his detectives, wanting to know about the phone," Lorber said.

  “How are you, Daphne?” Wolf asked, leading the group as they crowded into the office.

  Daphne turned around in her chair. Her shoulder-length hair was dyed a deep bruise-purple this week and pulled back into such a tight ponytail the shine of her hair was reflected in the computer screen in front of her. "I’m great. Hey, Patty, heard about your ankle.”

  She turned around and clicked her mouse, apparently done with the sympathies. “We have a lot of text messages between Chris Oakley and the other miners—Scott Sexton, Eagle McBeth, and Kevin Koling. Mostly bathroom humor.”

  “That’s important stuff,” Rachette said.

  Daphne cocked her head a few degrees, her hand coming off the computer mouse.

  “Sorry,” Rachette said. “Continue.”

  “Thanks. There’re some more intimate texts between him and his girlfriend, a woman he refers to as M.E., ME. A lot of scheduling sex, what I’m going to do to you next time we have sex, here’s my freshly shaved sex organ.”

  Lorber cleared his throat. “Daphne, let’s…”

  “Move on? Okay. Thursday, the day before he was killed, he had an exchange with Kevin Koling.” She clicked the mouse, revealing the speech bubbles of a text conversation on her screen.

  Oakley: If we don't start getting gold in the box I'm bouncing. Fuck him.

  Koling: I don't blame you.

  Oakley: You're not bouncing too?

  Koling: And go back to what?‘

  Oakley: Who cares? Working at Burger King up in Jackson will pay more. Screw this.

  She clicked and another conversation popped up on screen.

  “Here’s another very interesting exchange. Of course, I’m not the investigator here. But take a look at this.”

  Spritz: Hey bro, I saw Hammy and ME making out last night at the bar.

  Oakley What???

  Spritz: Yep. Just thought I’d give you a heads up.

  Oakley: You sure?

  Spritz: 100% I wouldn’t make that shit up.

  Oakley Okay. Thanks.

  Spritz: Yep.

  “Who’s M-E?” Patterson asked.

  “The phone number is registered to a woman named Mary Ellen Dimitri. It’s a three-oh-three area code. Her current address is in Dredge.”

  “And what about Spritz?” Rachette asked.

  “Not sure. It’s a prepaid phone. No name associated.”

  Patterson looked at Rachette. “You writing this down?”

  He upturned his hands. “You’re usually on top of this.”

  She flicked her eyes to her cast, and then the other hand holding the crutch.

  “Oh, yeah.” Rachette pulled out his notebook again and scribbled furiously.

  Daphne pulled up another set of texts. “Here’s another one. Oakley’s final, between him and Mary Ellen Dimitri, or ME.”

  Oakley: Hey, come up and visit tonight? I’m lonely.

  ME: I’m so tire
d. Long shift today.

  Oakley: I’ll pamper you. Give you a massage. The way you like it.

  ME: Okay. Fine. I’ll see you after I’m cut.

  “And that’s it,” Daphne said.

  “Wait, so Spritz told Oakley his woman was cheating on him, and then Oakley lures her up there to come visit?”

  “Looks like it to me,” Daphne said.

  “Anything else?” Wolf asked.

  “No more messages after that. Really, nothing of any importance I can see before Thursday, but I’ll put a couple weeks-worth in the full report.”

  “When exactly did Oakley’s phone die?” Wolf asked. “Did you figure that out?”

  Daphne clicked the keyboard. “The phone stopped transmitting to the towers Saturday morning at 3:38 a.m."

  Patterson cleared her throat. "Are you sure that's when it stopped transmitting, or when it was turned off?"

  Daphne cocked her head toward Patterson this time, her hands dropping to her lap. "I'm sure. Power drained at 7:42 a.m. Stopped transmitting four hours earlier."

  "Aha. I see. Thanks."

  "So, are we saying that's when he was buried?" Rachette asked. “At 3:38?”

  Daphne nodded. "That's what I'm saying. If he was buried at 3:38 a.m., he would have stopped transmitting to the towers, even though his phone was still on, until 7:42 the next morning when the battery ran down and it stopped supplying power to the antenna."

  "So, that's when our killer buried him," Rachette said. "Could have been killed any time before that point, though."

  Daphne shrugged. “That’s your department.”

  Patterson’s ankle started getting that pinprick feeling again. She was going to have to elevate this thing soon. Maybe she did need some painkillers.

  Everyone was looking at her. She realized they had said something.

  "What?"

  "I asked you if any of them heard anything," Wolf said.

  "About what?"

  "Heard any gunshots," Rachette said. “Friday night. Saturday morning.”

  "No, sir. Well, honestly I don’t think we’ve gotten around to asking them that yet. Unless Rachette has?”

  Rachette shook his head. “No, ma’am.”