In the Belly of Jonah Read online

  I glanced at Ronnie, who had become antsy about the delay. Because he was on the opposite side of the hogback downhill from me, he was the only one who couldn’t see Joe or the car that had entered our quarry. But he had seen me perched atop the ridge and was looking my way. I gave him my own comforting “okay”sign from behind the rock and he smiled, returning the gesture.

  Joe started the countdown on the radio. “Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six.”

  We all did the rest of the countdown in our own heads, leaving the radio clear for an emergency abort by anyone on the team. With Joe having set the cadence, I counted down the rest of the way, and at precisely one second past zero, the ground rumbled, dust puffed, and rock crumbled as if Mother Earth had simply made a polite cough.

  The sequential timing of the explosives was executed perfectly to minimize the ground vibration. The sky was cloudless and windless, which minimized any air blast. The dust settled quickly on top of the heap of limestone—perfectly blasted rock sized at twenty-four inches or less. The excitement I felt swelled into pride as I saw Ronnie rise to his feet with a grin.

  Joe walked back to his truck and waited the agonizing minutes for any unwanted sound resulting from an unplanned, delayed detonation of a faulty blasting cap or misplaced wiring. The employees were anxiously and obediently waiting for the well-respected operations manager’s signal that the shot had been denoted, the expended blasting material had been inspected and cleared, and everyone could safely return to work. But Joe always put his employees’ safety ahead of their strong work ethic, taking the extra precaution of waiting out a mishap.

  Within minutes, Joe was checking out the shot rock, inspecting the completeness of the blast and making sure that all holes were properly detonated. It reminded me of how my dad used to make sure all our fireworks had been expended before allowing the nine of us back outside to play the day after our Fourth of July celebrations. Safety first. With noses pressed against the big plate glass window of our living room, our mom telling us to be patient, we watched Dad as he wandered the driveway and yard back and forth, back and forth.

  To my left, Ronnie was rolling up the electric cable and collecting the controls. To my right, the quarry employees patiently milled around near the entrance, awaiting Joe’s clearance of the shot. The radio remained quiet. In my mind I quickly reviewed the rest of my schedule for the day, and although this was one of my favorite pastimes, I suddenly felt guilty about having taken the time to climb up the ridge to watch the blast. Guilt. Either you’re guilty or you’re not, and you shouldn’t waste time wallowing in it. Wise words from a friend in my adulthood that would have been nice to hear earlier in my life, considering I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic grade school. Before I could declare myself guilty, Joe pulled me from my reverie.

  “Unit three to all units. All clear.”

  The movements that followed were like a well-choreographed dance. Employees returned to their pickups, climbed ladders into their haul trucks and loaders, and wordlessly fell into a hierarchy behind the lead dancer. Manuel, at the wheel of the largest loader, drove through the road cut and into the quarry, followed by three haul trucks, the smaller loaders, and a half dozen quarry pickups. As if saluting the general as they drove by, the operators each gave Joe a nod as they passed the spot where he had parked between the road and the new shot. Manuel and the haul truck drivers went to work immediately on the humped-up shot rock.

  I took a deep breath. Although I may not have had the time, I was glad I took it because observing this team in motion inspired me to be a better boss to them all. They deserved it. Guilty! I picked my way through the rocks, native grasses, and cacti and scrambled down the natural hogback ridge toward my office. Then and there I wished I could have teleported this image to Mom and told her, “This is why I still wear jeans and steel-toed boots to work. Sorry, Mom. A dress or a suit would never cut it out here, although either choice would be more befitting a division president.”

  As I walked across the fine grind plant yard and road, Bill popped out of his truck and approached me.

  “Got a minute?”

  Who was he kidding? It never took Bill a minute. He might be a hell of a trucking company owner and truck driver himself, but he always had a complaint about my people. Unjustified in most cases, I might add. The honest answer to his question right now was “Absolutely not,” but instead I heard myself saying, “Sure.”

  “About yesterday,” Bill started.

  “It’s behind us, Bill.”

  “Liv, please,” Bill began again, struggling to keep up with my pace as I continued toward my office. “I can’t make money unless your employees load my trucks.”

  “And I can’t help you make money if your truck drivers get hurt wandering around the plant and calling my employees shitheads,” I countered.

  Bill’s face puckered. “Knuckle heads,” he corrected.

  I sighed. “Bill, follow our rules, have your drivers stay in their trucks, and we’ll get you loaded and out of here in no time, okay?”

  We were both startled when Terry drove up and stopped beside us after pulling away from the office a few yards away. He rolled down his window and thumbed back at the office. “A detective’s here to see you, Liv.”

  Bill’s eyes widened.

  “About?” I asked.

  “Jill.”

  “Brannigan?”

  Terry nodded.

  I was puzzled at that one.

  Jill Brannigan was one of the summer temps I had hired to bag material in the plant. Each year, I offer the athletic directors at the two nearby universities the chance to keep their athletes strong and in shape during the off-season and to help those college students earn some money. From my days on the University of Wyoming basketball team, I knew how hard it was to get into shape and stay in shape during the summer breaks. And we could always use the help. We had hired two from Colorado State University out of Fort Collins, twenty miles south of our plant, and two from the University of Wyoming out of Laramie, thirty miles north. A basketball player at CSU, Jill was the perfect candidate for our summer employment program.

  “Well, she should be out bagging in the warehouse if she’s not with Kyle. If you’ll go get her while I finish up with Bill, I’ll meet you in my office with the detective.”

  Terry swallowed and shook his head. “Jill didn’t come to work this morning. I think that’s what the detective’s here to talk with you about.”

  “Damn. Wonder what this is all about. Find Joe. Please.” I was more polite than I felt like being.

  Nodding and apologizing, Bill turned abruptly and made his way back to his truck.

  “She’s a no-call, a no-show,” Joe Renker explained to Larimer County Detective Doug Brandt.

  “Ever happen before?” Brandt asked my operations manager.

  “Never. Jill is reliable, hard-working. Bags more product than some of the guys twice her size,” Joe added.

  “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  Joe appeared calm, but I knew better. “She’s on day rotation now. Six am to six pm, Wednesday through Saturday. It would have been last Saturday. At six pm.”

  “You were here?”

  Joe nodded. “Yep. Every shift change.”

  “Notice anything different about her?”

  “Like what?” Joe asked.

  “Was she agitated, upset, distracted, anything?”

  Joe looked at me. I saw something behind his eyes that was not meant for Brandt. “Not that I can remember.”

  “Jill’s been with us for only about seven weeks,” I explained. “She’s a seasonal temporary worker. Summer help.”

  He was jotting notes while I spoke. The pencil looked like a toothpick in his beefy hands. I wondered how the hell he got that index finger through the trigger guard or if he had to have a custom-made gun. “How many other seasonal temporary workers do you have?”

  “Four temps, total. Jill is one of them. We also have two football p
layers from UW and a men’s basketball player from CSU.”

  “Jill also being from CSU,” he said.

  “Yep, women’s basketball player,”I said. “Don’t you usually wait twenty-four hours before investigating a missing persons case?”

  Brandt nodded. “Jill’s roommate called us yesterday. She said the last time she saw Jill was Monday night when she left for the library to study.”

  “Study? I thought all the kids were on summer break.”

  “According to the roommate, Jill is taking an independent study for credit this summer. That and one art class. She apparently wants to get ahead for the fall. She had a paper due and headed to the library to do some research.” When I observed his discomfort as he leaned back in the chair, I resisted the urge to wince, afraid I’d be pummeled by buttons popping off his shirt.

  “And she just never came home? Disappeared?” I asked.

  Brandt nodded.

  “That doesn’t sound like Jill,” I said, turning to Joe.

  Joe let out a breath. “No, it doesn’t.”

  Brandt continued. “That’s what her roommate said too. We’ve checked the library, Jill’s home in Wisconsin, places she hung out with friends, the entire campus. We’re concerned—” The detective’s pager sounded. “Excuse me.”

  Brandt stepped out of my office, walked past the scale dispatcher, and left through the front door. Joe and I watched him through the windows, his face sagging within seconds of answering the cell phone. The conversation was short-lived. For such a large man, Brandt moved like a cat. He bolted for his car and took off without explanation, lights flashing.

  Joe said, “Huh. Well, that’s not good.”

  “DETECTIVE BRANDT? THIS IS Special Agent Streeter Pierce from the Denver Bureau.”

  “Fudge,” the man said.

  “Pardon me?” Streeter looked at the phone receiver as if he could see the man on the other side.

  “Oh, hell. It’s just that my plate is heaped plenty full already. More than I have the stomach for, and I don’t need one more thing. I don’t need you Bureau guys coming in here and pulling rank, you know?”

  His honesty was refreshing, Streeter thought. “I know. But notice that I didn’t jam my credentials down your throat. I heard a rumor from the coroner’s office concerning your vic at the reservoir up there, and I have a couple of questions if you have a second.”

  “Okay, okay, but we haven’t come up with a complete game plan up here yet, and already the television crews are begging for a press conference so they can get this on the late night news.”

  “Don’t,” Streeter said, his gravelly voice steady and confident.

  “Don’t?” asked Brandt.

  “Don’t. If you’re not ready, don’t let them push you faster than you’re willing to go. Even if your police chief agrees with them.”

  “How’d you know . . . ?”

  Staring out at the city lights, Streeter kicked back in his chair and put his feet on the corner of the desk. He knew everyone else had gone home hours ago, leaving him alone in the sanctuary of solitude. Streeter also knew that Brandt’s office was probably swarming with people. Poor bastard.

  “Let them all know you have scheduled a press conference and set it for tomorrow morning at nine. That will get them off your back and give you time to formulate your strategy. Plus, by nine, most people will have already completed their commute to work, which means your audience will be minimal. Facts will change and evolve between now and tomorrow’s five o’clock news when most people will see it,” Streeter coached.

  “Except for the articles in the morning papers,” Brandt added.

  “Which will have minimal information since you haven’t given anyone a statement yet, right?”

  “Right,” Brandt said. “What did you say your name was?”

  Streeter rested his head back on the chair. He had the detective eating out of his hand now. Cooperation between departments was always the biggest hurdle in any case that crossed jurisdiction, and Streeter knew exactly how to clear it.

  “Special Agent Streeter Pierce from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Denver,”he answered. “I need some information from you and I see I caught you at a bad time. Why don’t I call you back in twenty minutes and give you a chance to make a few phone calls about that press conference you’re going to hold tomorrow morning.”

  “Hey, thanks,” Brandt sighed. “I’ll be here.”

  Streeter glanced at the clock, took a deep breath, and called the state coroner. “Berta? It’s Streeter.”

  Berta was one of a handful of people he called by their first names. Although everyone—with just a few exceptions—called him by his first name, Streeter was accustomed to using last names as a reminder to keep distance between himself and most people. Bad things tended to happen to those who were close to him. Berta, on the other hand, called everyone by his or her first name, regardless of whether she was at home, in a grocery store, or at work as the chief coroner for the state of Colorado. She probably even called the governor by his first name. The thought brought a smile to his weary face.

  Her hushed whisper was reproachful. “Damn it, Streeter, it’s eight o’clock. I’m helping my kid with her math homework. Don’t you have something better to do than work?”

  “Nope,” he answered. “Are you on it?”

  “On what?”

  “The murder vic found west of Fort Collins,” he said calmly.

  She sighed. “I heard about it, but no. I didn’t see the point.”

  “The point is I need you,” Streeter said.

  “So what? So, do my kids. And my husband,” she said defensively.

  “Berta?”

  “She was assigned to Mark. He’s scheduled to start tomorrow morning after the ID.”

  “Berta,”Streeter pleaded, switching the phone to his other ear and pivoting his chair for a different view of the snowcapped Rockies in the distance.

  Her sigh of concession spoke volumes over her protests. “That’s why I hired Mark and Eddie and Shayla. They’re all capable, bright, young assistants.”

  “But they’re not you,” Streeter said.

  He could hear the young girl in the background singing a Room Five song, and he pictured her bopping to her iPod, tapping a pencil against her schoolbook. A pang of guilt stabbed his gut for having made this call.

  “All right,” she said. “But not until Hannah’s off to school in the morning.”

  “Great choice.”

  “You know I’m trying to retire, don’t you?”

  “Mmm.”

  “Jackass,” she whispered. This brought him another smile. “You know, you should think about retiring, old man.”

  “Come on, Berta. I only just hit the big 4-0.”

  He could hear Hannah croon a few more bars while Berta mulled over the situation. She finally connected the dots. “You think this has something to do with our de Milo?”

  “Don’t know for sure yet, but something in my gut says it does. I’ll be talking to the detective assigned to the case in a few minutes and I’ll know for sure. Just a hunch, but I think we may have a serial on our hands. That’s why I need you.”

  “Then meet me at ten. I should be in the middle of things by then.”

  “I’ll be there,” Streeter promised.

  “Frank’s going to kick your ass,” she promised back.

  “As he should,” Streeter said before hanging up, knowing her husband would do nothing of the sort.

  He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes, and then he raked his fingers through his butch. He could see his ghostly image in the windows and noted the similarity between himself and the snowcapped mountains. Neither seemed right being capped in white, this being June in the Rockies and he being only forty. “As old as the hills and twice as dusty,” according to his goddaughter, whom he’d seen last weekend. She couldn’t possibly know he’d gone prematurely gray—or white, as luck would have it—after Paula’s death. At least
she had made her father, Tony, laugh.

  Having Berta at the table reviewing the results eased his mind. Having Tony Gates rather than Doug Brandt as the lead detective would make it even better. But that wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t Denver Police Chief Tony Gates’s jurisdiction.

  Streeter filled his coffee cup, looked at the clock, and made the phone call to Brandt.

  “Better now?”

  “Yeah. Hey, thanks for the tip,” Brandt said, sounding more confident. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need some confirmation on a few details. The word down here is that the perp—how do I put it?—cut a window into the girl’s body. Is that true?”

  “That’s what the guy who found her keeps saying. We can’t muzzle the guy. He’s a mess. We held him for six hours going over and over his story. But we finally had to let him go.”

  “Not a suspect?”

  “Nah,”Brandt said. “And believe me, he’s an emotional basket case over this. Kept babbling about the window. We tried to keep him away from the press, but I won’t be surprised if his story hits the AP within hours.”

  “Tell me about the ‘window.’ What are they talking about?”

  Brandt’s voice became a bit shaky. “It was like someone took a cookie cutter and punched a hole right through her torso.”

  “How big?” Streeter was jotting down notes, trying to suppress the repulsion and shock that ripped through him. Remaining calm was critical to keep Brandt talking, but Streeter’s mind was already racing toward a connection with de Milo.

  “Oh, about six inches high and four inches across. Her stomach, lungs, heart were gone. Looked to me like the guy tossed her guts into the reservoir as fish bait.”

  “Why do you say that?” Streeter swallowed hard, tasting a bit of the bile that had crept up his throat.

  “I waded out into the shallows and found some bits of bone and stuff in the rocks. Too much to be fishermen gutting and deboning their catch of the day.”