“They immediately started yelling at each other. She’s feisty though, I’ll tell you that. She was screaming harder than he was. Didn’t take any of his shit. And then she came storming out. Got in her truck and drove out of there.”
“And then what?” Wolf asked. “After she left.”
“Well, he had kind of gotten shown up by Mary Ellen, you know? He had been talking smack the whole afternoon, and we got the sense he had something special in store for her or something. Not like, to hurt her or anything, at least I don’t think. But, like, you know, maybe make her feel bad, I guess? Doesn’t matter. Cause it backfired on him.
“So, he probably felt more than a little awkward about that. He needed somebody to blame, you know? So he came at me. The guy likes to…liked to do that. He got pissed, said he was done with Jackson Mine if we didn’t start putting gold in the box. Ripped into me a bit more, and then…well, he just walked down to the cut and started his night shift.”
“After drinking?” Rachette asked with a chuckle. “I mean, after a few beers I’m ready for bed. Not a few hours behind the wheel of some heavy machinery.”
“It’s seven hours,” McBeth said. “And he didn’t have that many.”
Rachette nodded. “Sorry. Continue.”
“You said that Oakley ripped into me a bit more?” Wolf asked.
“Yeah.” McBeth shrugged. “He was just pissed off.”
Wolf nodded. “And is that the last you saw of him? When he walked off and started his night shift?”
“That’s right.”
Wolf sat back, taking it all in. After a beat he frowned. “So why all the time in between? Weren’t you concerned the next day, Saturday, when he wasn’t around? Or how about the next day? Sunday?” Wolf ticked two fingers in the air, then a third. “Heck, you guys found him Monday morning when Casey Lizotte put him on top of the wash plant. That’s almost three days later. Didn’t you consider filing a missing-persons report with the Dredge deputy any time before that?”
“No.” McBeth unfolded his arms and held them out. “I didn't know he was missing before that."
“How’s that work?” Rachette asked.
McBeth ticked his own fingers. "First of all, he usually sleeps Saturday if he's got the night shift that Friday night. Everybody does that the next day, especially if we were drinking the night before, which we’re always doing Friday night. So I figured he was just sleeping it off on Saturday. When Sunday came around and he never came out of his trailer, I figured, well, then he must be just mad at me. I figured he was sulking. And then when Monday came around, I started getting a little bit concerned, I'll give you that. But before I could do anything about it, that's when Lizotte had dumped him onto the top of the wash plant."
Wolf narrowed his eyes to slits. "I think I’m missing some steps here. Casey Lizotte works with you guys, too?"
“No,” McBeth said. “I mean, he did. But not anymore. I hired him over the weekend.”
“Can you please explain that?”
"Well, the argument between Oakley and me was pretty heated. One of the things I had said was he can go back to Jackson Hole if he didn’t like what was going on here.” McBeth shrugged. “But he still started his night shift. The next day, though, it looked to me like he hadn’t done very much down at the cut. I figured he might have had some time to think and decided he was done with the mine after all. Like he’d quit in the middle of the night.”
Or been shot in the head, Wolf thought.
“When Saturday and Sunday went by and he still hadn’t come out of his trailer I figured he was packing up in there or something. Making a statement. Me, Sexton, and Koling were out there working our butts off all weekend, getting the wash plant tweaked to catch the gold better, and he never set foot out of the trailer.
“I was pissed. I moved on because I thought he had, so Sunday afternoon I went down to Dredge and talked to Casey Lizotte. He works down at the bar in town.”
“The same bar Spritz works at?” Rachette asked.
“That’s right. Anyway, Casey and I are friends, and we all knew he’s had some experience working at mines in Fairplay. So I told him, hey, if you need some extra money, you could work a few day shifts for us. He agreed right on the spot. Said when do I start? I said tomorrow morning would do just fine. I figured I’d send a message to Chris, you know? Get the new guy in there working the tractors, so when Chris decided to roll out of his trailer he’d see that I moved on. That I’m not the slow-moving weakass he said I was."
McBeth’s face blushed. He sipped his coffee.
"So you were going to pay this man to come in as a temporary worker?" Rachette said. "But you're not paying the current workers that you're with.”
"They get paid. It's different. They're co-owners of the mine. They might not get paid that much when times are tough, but anytime we’re shopping for food or beer, it’s my credit card that’s getting zapped. They don’t pay for shit. Not lodging, or eating, or nothin’.”
“Then Monday morning,” Wolf said, “when Chris didn’t come out of his trailer, weren’t you the least bit concerned?”
“Yeah. Like I said, Monday I was worried. I did start getting concerned. I asked Koling if he’d talked to him. Koling was always way closer than I was with Oakley. That’s when we went and knocked on his
