She said something about a form and his signature, and he nodded, pulling out a pen from his desk.
“Of course.” He opened the page, signed where Charlotte had marked with sticky notes. “Here you go. Just these three?”
“Yes, sir. Thanks.” She looked through the windows at MacLean walking through the squad room and down the hall.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Uh, no, sir. Thanks.”
“Of course.” He handed them back.
She left the room.
He stared at the door for what felt like a couple hours, but when he checked the wall clock it read 3:35 p.m.
He turned to the window again and stood up. The rain had subsided, leaving cloudy skies and a roll of white fog gliding up the center of the valley. People down below on Main Street walked with their shopping bags. Kids rode past on their mountain bikes. A woman who worked for the county swept the debris that had washed onto the sidewalk. Back to life as normal.
He sat back down, settling in for one last phone call. He dialed and sat rigidly upright.
“Mayor’s office,” the young male voice said.
“Hi, Eddie, this is Sheriff Wolf, is Margaret around?”
“Sorry, sir. She’s in a meeting. Do you want me to forward you to her voicemail?”
“Yes, please.”
Wolf cleared his throat and spoke for a good minute. He wondered what she would think about the message he left, but then again, he didn’t care.
Chapter 22
Wolf left the office and drove out of town up the eastern side of the valley. Twenty minutes and a few miles later he parked in a dirt lot overlooking Rocky Points.
Still stewing in thoughts stirred by MacLean’s visit, he got out and stood looking down on the Chautauqua Valley below. This eastern wall of the valley overlooking Rocky Points was known as Sunnyside. Down in the bottom of the valley sunset could happen just past lunchtime during the winter. Up here the wealthy built their expensive homes on pricey pieces of land, where the sun shined as long as possible, affording wide open Rocky Mountain ski resort town views.
But it wasn’t all expensive housing. There was also plenty of undeveloped forest with hiking trails snaking through the trees, often affording hikers vistas that didn’t come with a mortgage.
Wolf followed a familiar trail that coiled up steeply through the woods, welcoming the way his chest heaved and his legs ached with exertion. It had been a while since he’d taken a hike. Too long.
At the top he sat on a rock and looked down, taking a cool drink from his water bottle and letting the heat wick off his body. Only the faintest whisper of the traffic leading in and out of Rocky Points up the Chautauqua Valley to the north reached his ears. The cars were tiny replicas of the real thing. The drivers inside of them, warrants outstanding or not, were inconsequential up here among the swaying pines. He would stop denying himself these types of getaways in the middle of the day, he vowed.
Taking another sip of water, he thought about Heather Patterson and her knack for paperwork and presentations to the county council. With a clear head, he was even more sure about the voicemail he’d left for the mayor a few minutes ago. The upcoming changes within the department would be good in the long run, better than good. They would be great. A new future rose from the ashes of Wolf’s old fantasies, and he realized he felt at peace for the first time in a long while. And it wasn’t just the hike. Everything was as it should be.
The sky above skated past quickly, heavy with moisture. The scent of rain hung in the air and he knew he would probably get wet on the way down, but he remained still, breathing gently, letting his eyes hop around the countless miles of terrain ahead.
A series of worm-like piles of rock snaking next to the Chautauqua River caught his attention. The waved piles sat next to the silver water at various intervals, barely covered in vegetation since they were discarded by the large dredges that mined the river a hundred years ago.
Even from this high vantage Wolf could see a person moving atop one of the piles, like an ant crawling on a snake’s back.
A few times growing up Wolf’s father had taken him there to search for gold the old-timers had missed, using a metal detector. Wolf remembered finding an old metal teacup, decayed with rust. It hadn’t been a nugget, and even though he’d never found gold the old-timers had missed, finding the cup had still been exhilarating. One man’s trash was another man’s treasure. Especially a hundred years later.
Wolf stood up, keeping his eyes on the tailings as a thought hit him hard. He stared, thinking of the decades of time those piles of earth had sat there, undisturbed. There could have been anything under those lumps. But who would have known it? A few solitary dumpster divers with metal detectors a hundred years in the future?
Without thinking he found himself moving down the trail.
The raindrops fell sporadically at first, and then more steadily, but he felt none of them. His thoughts were back up in Dredge with those three men digging gold out of the ground. The mine was back open, life going on as normal, as if the last few days could be glossed over and moved past.
He thought of Rick Hammes lying on the road and his dog whimpering in the back of the truck.
He thought about tailings.
He picked up his pace, running down the trail. He had a long drive ahead of him.
Chapter 23
Wolf’s SUV bucked like an angry bull as he came off the sloped road leading into the Jackson Mine and coasted into the flat area.
He parked next to the four trucks, noting Oakley’s was still there.
The drive from Rocky Points had been nothing short of wet, and it was no different here up at eleven thousand feet. The air
