Cold Lake (14 page)

Patterson watched Rachette squirm in his seat to get a better look in the side view mirror.

She unbuckled her seat belt and exhaled. “Here goes nothing.”

“Do you think it’s him? I hate that we have to work with him.”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

Patterson stepped out onto the dirt road and shielded the sun with her hand. She watched the Byron County Sheriff’s Department SUV blow past them, turn into Olin Heeter’s driveway, and rock to a stop.

It was MacLean, and that creepy undersheriff that was latched to him all the time.

She closed the door and looked around the flat country. Ashland and Rocky Points were as different as cross-country and alpine skiing. Ashland was bigger and more populated, but to Patterson’s taste, was infinitely less appealing with its vast expanse of flat land in between the north-south mountain ranges that ran the length to Williams Pass in the north and out of sight into a haze to the south.

A university town, Ashland had a thriving population of young people who tended to inhale as much marijuana smoke as oxygen on any given day. It was a short distance from Rocky Points ski resort over the pass to the north, so students with a hunger for mountain living flocked here from every corner of the country. Liquor stores and take-out restaurants thrived, and houses were generally drab and utilitarian, owned by out-of-towners that rented to the students. Properties that had any money dumped into them were few and far between. And looking at Olin Heeter’s place, he dumped his money into his lake house, not here.

“Nice abode.” Rachette said, hitching his duty belt up and smoothing out his shirt. His eyes were anywhere but on Olin Heeter’s place.

“Deputies,” MacLean stood by the passenger door and squinted. “I see Sheriff Wolf couldn’t make it?” He smirked and shook his head as he shut his door.

“No, sir.” Rachette stepped in front of Patterson with an outstretched hand. “Deputy Rachette, sir.”

Patterson moved in next, wondering why they were introducing themselves by name. MacLean had already called them by name at the lake, but she did it anyway. “Sir. Deputy Patterson.”

MacLean smiled and looked between the two of them. Nodding in silence for a few moments, he seemed to come to a conclusion.

Patterson gestured to the one-story ranch house, ignoring the tall man staring down at both of them outside the driver’s side door. “Thanks for meeting us here, gentlemen. We’d just like to speak to Mr. Heeter. Ask him a few questions.”

MacLean turned and appraised the house. “This isn’t our best area of Ashland.”

She scanned the area. They were a few miles north of the town-proper, and it was wild, flat, sage-covered land as far as the eye could see in all directions, save the reflections of Ashland a few miles south.

She looked the house over. The front porch was cracked concrete, sinking on one side. The siding was cream colored, warping and deteriorating. A single car garage in front of MacLean’s vehicle was closed, the bottom edge tilted, revealing a dark crack on the bottom right side. The roof sagged in the middle.

“Okay. Let’s do it. I’ll let you two do the talking.” MacLean walked quickly around his car and to the front door.

“Sounds good,” Rachette said eagerly.

“You two ever met my Undersheriff?” MacLean asked not breaking stride. “A good man to get to know. He’ll be my right-hand-man moving forward.”

Patterson suppressed any facial expression as she noticed that the Undersheriff was staring right at her.

Rachette paused at the muscular, tall man and looked up. “Hi. Undersheriff Lancaster, right?”

Lancaster looked at Rachette like he was an annoying dog and shook his hand. His gaze slid off Rachette and slathered up and down Patterson.

She narrowed her eyes and shook his hand, keeping contact with the man’s ape-like grip to a minimum.

They walked to the porch and MacLean rapped five times with his knuckles. “Sheriff’s department!”

There was no response.

Rachette eased his way next to MacLean.

“What are we doing here, deputies?” MacLean asked without eye contact.

Rachette cleared his throat. “We pulled those bodies out of the lake, sir. Mr. Heeter said he saw someone dump something in the lake. We need to clear up a few things.

MacLean eyed Rachette. “Is Olin Heeter a suspect?”

Rachette shrugged.

“No, sir,” Patterson said. “But definitely a person of interest.”

MacLean nodded and reached for the doorknob. He twisted and pushed, but it was locked. “Any suspects?”

Patterson frowned. “Sir, we don’t have probable cause to enter the premises.”

MacLean looked over his shoulder at his Undersheriff. “You smell that?” He sniffed, pushing his mustache up against his nostrils. “Smells like rotting flesh to me.”

Lancaster remained mute.

MacLean stepped off the porch and walked to the single-car garage. “Open this up.”

Patterson and Rachette looked at each other. Rachette raised his eyebrows and followed after him.

“Deputy Rachette, Lancaster, I want you two to search the property. I want to know if this man is here. Deputy Patterson, come over here and speak with me, please.”

Patterson’s face flushed. “Sir?”

Without responding, MacLean walked to his rear door and opened it. After a second of fishing inside he stood up with a manila envelope.

Patterson stood dumbfounded until MacLean craned a finger her direction. She looked over at Rachette, and he was eyeing them with trepidation as Lancaster yanked the garage door up from the bottom.

“No car,” Lancaster said, the deepness of his voice startling to Patterson, realizing she’d never heard the man speak until now.

“Go around back and check it out.”

Lancaster nodded and walked around the house.

Rachette stood unsure, looking at MacLean and the envelope in his hand and to Patterson.

“Around back.” MacLean stared at Rachette.

“Yes, sir.” Rachette walked after Lancaster.

“Okay. Now that we’re alone. I have a few things to show you.”

“Me?” Patterson stepped next to him.

MacLean went to the back of his SUV and opened the back hatch, and then he held out the envelope to her. “Open it. You can use the back here as a desk if you’d like.”

Patterson grabbed for the envelope. “What is this?”

He pulled it back and she whiffed air. “It’s bad news for you and your partner I’m afraid.”

He dropped the envelope and held out his hand. “Go ahead.”

Patterson’s skin crawled and her face went hot. Slowly she picked it.

MacLean stood watching her, a whistle coming from his nose with every exhale.

With shaky fingers she bent the metal prongs, opened the flap and looked inside. It was a thick stack of glossy photographs. She pinched the thick stock, her thumb sticking to the top photograph, and slid them out.

She frowned at the top photo.

It was Rachette with a girl. Taken with a telephoto lens from an extreme distance. The girl was bent over, digging inside the trunk of a beat up blue Subaru. Rachette was standing in plain clothes, jeans and a green t-shirt, hands on hips, looking over his right shoulder. 

She frowned and looked up at MacLean.

His eyes were glittering with amusement. “Go on.”

She flipped to the next photo and put the first one face down on the rubber mat in front of her.

The girl had stood up now, holding a red backpack by one strap. Rachette was now looking at the backpack, otherwise unmoved.

The next photo was the girl closing the trunk. Rachette staring at her ass.

The woman was turned facing the camera in the next photo, her eyes closed as she brushed long blonde hair behind her ear. Rachette was staring at her. Mesmerized by her movements.

Patterson flipped to the next photo.

“Ah, here it is.” MacLean tapped the photo in her hand.

Patterson exhaled, finally starting to comprehend what she was looking at.

The next photo was taken a moment later, and the woman was handing the backpack off to him. Rachette was taking it with a dumb-looking smile. The woman’s smile was warm, with soft and dreamy eyes.

Patterson flipped faster now, the anger rising—at Rachette, at this cologne-drenched asshole that was going to be her new boss in a month standing next to her.

Next photo: Rachette with the backpack slung on his shoulder, embracing the woman in a close hug. The woman’s back was arched a little, pressing her crotch into his.

Next photo: The woman walking to her driver’s side door. Rachette adjusting his crotch.

Next photo: Rachette at the open rear door of his own beat up Volkswagon. The backpack being tossed into the back seat. Rachette looking longingly over his shoulder at the woman leaving in her own car.

Patterson’s stomach dropped on the next photo. It was a mug shot of the woman taken at the Byron County jail, time stamped two months ago with a booking number rather than a name. Patterson stared at it for a moment. The girl was beautiful, no older than her early twenties. Her brown eyes were vacant of emotion, her face slack. Her skin was smooth and flawless, not a typical mug shot of a woman, Patterson thought. She was used to seeing pockmarks, scabs, bruises, unkempt hair, bloodshot eyes. Not this woman, though. She was clean -looking.

Behind the mug shot was a two page stapled copy of an Byron County police report dated the same as the mug shot.

There was movement around the left side of the house.

“No way in, sir,” Rachette said in a chipper voice.

Patterson looked up from the paper in her hand and instinctively leaned forward to hide it in the SUV’s rear, though Rachette wouldn’t be able to see a thing from such a great distance.

“Go ahead,” MacLean said under his breath as he walked away, “keep reading. Okay. I’ll head back with you two. Did you check the windows?”

Patterson watched the three men round the side of the house and out of sight, Rachette in the rear with an eager smile, talking gibberish about something.

She scanned  it to get the gist. Byron County Sheriff’s Department stopped the woman, Gail Olson, for speeding on 734. A search of her car produced twenty-two pounds of pot and one hundred thousand dollars in cash.

Patterson shook her head. Twenty-two pounds was slightly over the legal possession limit of one ounce of pot.

Gail Olson did not have a distributor’s or grower’s license, or any documentation connecting her to a legitimate business in Colorado. She admitted she was delivering a package, a runner for an illegal grow op. Probably a group of shady individuals exporting illegally out of the state and/or out of the country, Patterson thought, and if she was reading the previous photos correctly, Rachette was this woman’s latest recruit.

“Oh yeah.” Rachette was laughing as he and the other two men came around the other side of the house.

MacLean looked genuinely interested in what Rachette had to say. Lancaster was following with his Lurch walk.

Patterson put the report face down on top of the other upside-down photos and scooped them into the manila envelope, all the while keeping a no-tell poker face. She tucked the envelope under her arm and stepped away from the vehicle.

Rachette’s expression  went flat when he eyed Patterson and the envelope she carried, but rebounded brighter than ever when MacLean smacked his back.

“All right. Tell your Sheriff you didn’t find a car. Did you find a car up at the lake?”

“We haven’t checked his place up there, yet,” Rachette said. “Sheriff Wolf knocked on his door last night. No answer.”

MacLean nodded. “Well. Better check back up there.”

Patterson flicked a nod to the open garage door. “As long as you’re bent on going inside, there’s a door to the house in the garage.”

MacLean looked and Rachette and Lancaster followed his gaze.

“Yeah. So there is,” MacLean said. “Rachette, go check it out.”

Rachette walked into the garage, sidestepping wood debris on the floor.

MacLean stepped over to Patterson. “Show those to Sheriff Wolf by tonight, please.” His voice was low and malicious. “Tell him I’ll be in touch.”

“Locked!” Rachette yelled from the garage.

“All right,” MacLean said with finality. “I think we’re done here. We’ll follow-up for you later, see if he comes home. Close up the garage.”

MacLean came around the back of the SUV and closed the hatch door. “By tonight.” His expression said
or else
.

Wolf’s tires scraped and he cranked the wheel hard to the right to compensate. The final descent of the dirt road to the tailing pond was steep and he’d taken it at a little too much speed.

Bouncing in his seat, he decided to let off the brake and let it ride to the bottom. With deafening thumps, the SUV rolled for a few more yards until it flattened out, and with a sigh of relief he slowed to a stop next to the red-tinted water.

He turned off the engine and got out.

Closing his door, he walked to the rear of the SUV and twisted full circle. Across the pond and still in shadow, the mine gaped a black trapezoid shape halfway up the slope in front of him. Underneath it there was a cascade of rock, every color of the rainbow that had been dumped out of the mineshaft—however many years ago, Wolf had no clue.

The engine ticked rapidly and the scent of burning brake pads wafted across him as he stared at the water.

The pond was about as big as half a football field, tinted red by what he assumed to be acid mine drainage. Almost the color of blood.

Wolf looked at the ground under his feet and back up the road he’d come in on. It was a gentle slope into the water where he stood, and it was going to take some acceleration in four-wheel-drive to get up that first rise on the way out.

He pulled out his phone and looked at it, surprised that even in the crater-like valley depression he stood in, he still had a sliver of cell reception.

With a tap of his finger he pulled up the map function again and stared at it.

One point four miles of road, most of it dirt, connected Wolf to the Pumapetrol Gas station.

He looked to one edge of the water, listening intently to the sound of a trickling stream. Then he turned the other way.

Slowly Wolf walked along the edge of the water, studying the surface carefully. A few seconds later, he saw a tiny eddy in the water. Keeping his eyes glued to the spot, he bent down and picked up a rock. Then he stood and threw it.

The water splooshed within a yard of where Wolf aimed, and a fish flopped, splashing water in a tiny fountain, and then disappeared.

Wolf walked back, grateful for the increasing warmth with every second the sun rose, and stripped off his clothes to his boxer shorts.

After a few seconds of rapid breathing he stepped into the water.

For five steps he clenched his teeth, feeling the biting cold and occasional jagged rock beneath his feet. Soon he was waste deep, and then with a gasp his crotch was below the level of the icy water. A few more yards out his teeth chattered as the water reached to his shoulders, and then he sagged down and swam in a slow breaststroke.

For three slow strokes he inched his way out toward the center of the pond, keeping his head clear of the red liquid, and then on the forth he pulled his thighs toward his body, and straight into an edge of jagged metal.