“Mr. Koling,” Wolf said. “We’re ready to talk to you now.”
The man stood up, towering over Sexton. He fist-bumped his fellow miner and walked towards them.
As the big man walked past into the observation room, the tang of alcohol ingested the night before streamed in his wake. “In here?”
“Yes, sir. Rachette, if you would escort Mr. Koling in, please? Would you like some coffee, Mr. Koling?” Wolf asked.
“Yes, please.”
“Rough one last night?” Rachette asked.
Koling looked down at Rachette. “We just found my best friend lying dead on the wash plant yesterday. So yeah. You could say that.”
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Rachette said, doing the best impression of sympathy Wolf had ever seen as he walked the big man into the interrogation room.
Wolf turned to Yates. “I want you to get on the phone with Deputy Piper Cain. Have her get eyes on Mary Ellen Dimitri, and if she can, Rick Hammes. But I want to be clear,” Wolf raised his eyebrows to hammer home the point. “I don’t want her engaging either of them.”
Chapter 8
Piper Cain knelt down next to the bathtub, averting her eyes to anything below the waist on her father’s naked form. “Okay, Dad. Are you ready?”
“I’m cold.”
“I know, that’s why we have to get you out.” She stood and put her hands under his arms. “Let’s go. Up.”
Her father was tall, and even though he’d deteriorated with age, his large frame still carried some of the muscles from his hay days in the Summit County Sheriff’s Department, where he’d frequented the exercise gym six days a week.
“Geez, help me.” She grunted, her hands slipping on the soapy film under his armpits. “I’m going to drop you! Stand up!”
Her father shrugged his shoulders, making it harder. Sometimes she wondered if he was doing it on purpose.
“Stand!” She stepped her bare foot inside the tub, reassured that the grip tape on the base would give her good purchase. But there was a thin film of soap there, too, enough to shoot her and her father’s feet out from under both of them with one wrong move.
“I’m standing,” her father said with ultimate disdain. One foot got under him, then the other.
They both shook as she flexed everything and heaved her father’s weight upright.
Damn it, they needed to install one of those bathtubs with a door. Or at least a handrail. This was the last straw, she was going to order one online, no matter the cost, and install it herself. That is, if they both survived this ordeal.
He yelped. “Your nails are digging into my skin!”
Good, she thought. Maybe that would prod him to use his own muscles.
“Okay. Turn slow.” She kept both hands on him.
They clenched hands, and it was now that she felt the weakness inside her father. He used to have a bear’s bite grip, and now it was a puppy’s nibble.
“Are you ready to step out?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She braced herself. The towels on the floor were in position, it was now or never, when the momentum was going their way.
“Okay, step.”
Her father teetered, raised a foot, then dropped it down immediately. “It’s too hard.”
She had gone all her life never hearing her father say that, and now it seemed it was his mantra.
“Come on! One! Two! Three!”
He raised his foot, slowly put it over the edge of the tub, and put it on the towel.
“Good.”
Her phone rang on the bathroom counter. It vibrated and chimed the Naked Gun theme song, which she had put on there to indicate phone calls forwarded from her on-duty phone.
“It’s my day off,” she said under her breath.
“What?”
“Nothing. Okay, step the other leg over.”
“What’s that racket? Is that your phone?”
“Forget about it. Just step your other leg over.” Her legs were shaking now. Even with all the yoga and hiking up the mountains surrounding the Dredge Valley, there was only so much she could take. “Come on!”
Her father leaned forward and raised his back foot.
The phone stopped, and then the song repeated.
His back foot returned to the water. His momentum hadn’t quite made it to his forward foot.
“One more—”
Just then her father’s rear foot slipped and his body went down. She held her breath as a knocking noise echoed off the vaulted ceiling.
“Ah! My knee!”
“Shit.” She doubled her efforts, wrapping her arms around her naked father’s waist.
With a loud grunt she heaved him back upright before he went all the way down with her landing on top of him. The next few seconds were a blur as she gritted her teeth, flexing every fiber of muscle in her body to the tearing point. Like those stories of mothers lifting cars off of their trapped babies with the aid of adrenaline, she helped get her father out of the bathroom, onto the soft padding of the carpet of the hallway, into his bedroom, and onto the edge of his bed.
She collapsed against the wall and sat down, forearms on her knees.
Inside the bathroom the phone dinged, indicating a voicemail.
“Is that one of your boyfriends calling?”
She frowned, looking up at her father. Even given all the trials and tribulations due to the onset of her father’s dementia, that was a strange comment. He sat, shoulders hunched, his hair plastered to his forehead.
“Boyfriends?” she asked.
“Your mother and I don’t want you seeing that boy anymore,” he said.
“What boy?” She was genuinely curious. Where was he? When was he?
“Jonathan.”
A spark of electricity sparked through her at the thought of Jonathan. In her mind she was back at Summit County High, her afternoons spent hiking the trails in the woods, alone with him, her body intertwined with the only boy she’d ever truly loved.
“Me and Jonathan don’t date anymore, Dad. Haven’t for almost twenty years.”
The confusion on his face was heartbreaking, so she closed her eyes and raised her chin to the sky. “I need help,” she said.
“With what?” her father answered.
She stood up and went to the bathroom, plucked her phone from the counter and
