Here's what I got...

Here'a what I've got:  

I have this really killer thriller named Dead on Dutcher's Mountain.  There's scary sex, a scary racing car, scary vengeance, and a scary manhunt with a big explosion at the end.   Also there are love, hate, unresolved marital issues, a big-eyed little kid, courtship, and blushing surrender by a hairy-chested guy. 

And more than fifty grinning skeletons in a cave. 

Here's what it'll do for you:

Reading Dead on Dutcher's Mountain is good for you.  It's an outlet for your unexpressed violence that can bring you peace and sweet dreams.  It tells three really sweet love stories that restore your faith in romance.  It has a moonlit thrill ride in the mountains at more than a hundred twenty miles an hour that will tighten those belly muscles. I tell ya, it has it all.  I'm giving it to you for free, about a thousand words at a time, every Sunday. 

Here's what I want you to do:
Read Dead on Dutcher's Mountain until you can't do without knowing what comes next, then buy it for your Kindle or whatever machine you have.  You get it here: 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0066U7J3Y  its ASIN: B0066U7J3Y

Ready?  Here's the first installment:  

Dead on Dutcher's Mountain

by Margaret Raymond

One

“Hit me.”

Del Norte County’s Sheriff-Coroner Earl McCoy sat at a blackjack table in a corner of the Whole Tribe playing quietly and drinking his whiskey neat.  He was off-duty and out of uniform, but everyone in the card room knew him and most were being careful.  His pile of chips maintained its height; no big wins, but no big losses; the dealer, a Yurok, saw to it.

“No, it just pisses me off,” McCoy was saying, “I try to cover the whole county twenty-four hours a day without enough deputies; lumber camps inland, the fishing at the port, and pot growers ‘way inside the Siskiyous.  Not to mention wet-nursing all the tourists.  And now with the mine coming on-line...” 
The dealer shot him a glance; the others contemplated their hands.  The room was low-ceilinged and dim above the brightly lit gaming tables, and that did a lot to hide the greasy cobwebs behind photos of loggers and Indians.  The Whole Tribe relied on tourism; it was late fall; a howling Pacific storm was due, with heavy winds and maybe ten or twelve inches of rain; and it was Thursday; even the bar was slow.

McCoy was in his mid-thirties, smallish, and with the muscular build that would become stringy with age.  He was blond, precisely featured, and his tannish eyes accented the initial impression of wary intelligence.  Across from him and beside the dealer sat Dudmann Brock, boyish, pig-faced and overflowing his dry-cleaned coveralls.  Between Brock and McCoy sat Harry Zuber, a skinny old man with blond-gray hair streaked across his scalp.

But McCoy watched a tall stranger at the bar and directed his running complaint to Gordon Altstock, who sat on his right.  Altstock was manager of Dutcher’s Mining Company’s new operation.  He was narrow-faced and tan-haired, so obviously Ivy-League that his oarsman’s shoulders and nasal drawl were unnecessary clues.  Maybe it was the tattersal shirt.  His eyes often referred to Brock, the fat man.  McCoy wondered why, so he lingered.  And silently speculated about the dangers of mining chromite, which came with radioactive Cobalt-90 and lethal asbestos. 

He went on, aloud,  “Plus there’s this nut laying bear traps--the kind in bad movies, been outlawed a long time.  They‘re all over the county.  Catch mostly deer.”  Old man Zuber nodded.  “Then the supes cut my gas money and moved the garage outside of town without even consulting me.  So my people have to park out on Washington, and I have to cut back their patrols.  Wow!  You hit fifteen?  Well, you can imagine what salt air and eighty inches of rain even in a dry year will do to a car that sits out.  My men won’t have any vehicles left next spring, just rust piles.”

Altstock nodded.  “The paper mentioned your formal protest.  Beyond that, is there anything you can do, McCoy?  Is there any contingency money?  How about co-locating with the City?  Or can you get a bigger piece of the block grant?”  Altstock spoke fluent bureaucrat.

McCoy flicked the table with his cards for another hit.  “The contingency money went for gasoline when the price went up.  The City Manager hates me because I arrested his mother for dealing a controlled substance.”  He eyed the tall stranger; blond guy with a ponytail.  His forehead slanted back and narrowed from his brows, making him look exotic.  McCoy said, “Speaking of cars, you see that silver Accordo parked out back?”  The blond met his eyes in the mirror above the bar.

“No.  I parked up on the road.”

“Sure is pretty.  They’re hand-made, only about thirty a year.  Italian.”  The stranger nodded.  “Shouldn’t be out in the weather like that.  If it were mine, I’d keep it in my front room.” 
The blond nearly smiled.  Altstock snorted and threw a look to Dudmann Brock.  Brock grunted.  “Bust,” McCoy said.

The dealer threw out another hand.  Altstock called for a hit and stood.  McCoy doubled on a pair of tens.  He rechecked the stranger, then Brock.  Altstock checked Brock too.  Zuber, showing a two, was dealt a Jack and folded.  Brock was happy with a five showing.  McCoy resumed.

“Isn’t your production man at the mine some kind of racing driver?”

“That’s what they say,” Altstock allowed.  “I haven’t met him, except over the phone.  He’s not due until Friday; can’t be his car out there.”  His pile of chips had grown.  Brock signaled a hostess with a stubby forefinger, passed her a fifty, and received chips.  The dealer dealt.

McCoy contemplated his new hand.  “I still think the original mine was sabotaged,” he finally said.

Zuber nodded.  “Any engineer’ll tell you that.”

“What do you mean?” Altstock asked.  He leaned forward to see around McCoy.  “I thought they determined it was taken in a flood.”

Zuber said, “I was home sick that day, or I’d be up there dead like the rest of them.”

“But why do you feel it was sabotaged?”

“There’s a granite ridge right over the vein we were working.  Goes right through the mountain.”

“Yes, but with an aquifer beneath it.  I’m Altstock, the manager of the new operation.”

“Zuber.”

McCoy leaned back as the men shook hands.

Alststock said, “I’ve been looking at that mountain pretty hard for a month.  It looks like a straightforward thing to me.”

“Then you’d better take another look, Mr. Altstock,” Zuber said, and sought agreement from Brock, who nodded.  The old man waxed pedantic.  “There’s limestone up on top, and even some sandstone, but they’re bedded on that granite that makes the ridge going south, the one you’re thinking about.  But if you’ll go a couple miles around that south end, along the creek bed to where the other creek joins it, and hike from there up past the big azalea patch, there’s another layer of granite sticking out.  It’s laid under that first one, with the sandstone and the aquifer between them.  Can’t see it from anywhere else, but there has to be an old study of some kind, has it marked down.”

“I see.”  Alstock picked up his hand, thoughtful.

McCoy won the hand, re-anted and finished his drink, signaling for another.  The blond ponytail had turned on his bar stool to listen.  Big guy, McCoy noted again.  Very big guy.

“Not that it doesn’t make a nice story, that mudslide,” Zuber resumed, “but the granite I’m talking about, just over that old shaft and all that nickel we were after back then, it’s a good thirty feet thick, and there’s not a fault anywhere near it.”  He leaned back and surveyed the room, having made his point.  His rheumy eyes flickered when they reached the blond, continued to the bartender, then flicked back to the blond.
Brock joined in.  “There’s no reason for that top stuff to slide the way it did, either; even with heavy rain,” he said.  “McCoy’s right.  But you can’t prove any of it.”

The table got quiet again.  The blond went into the men’s room, came out, then left with a nod to the bouncer.  Zuber watched him all the way.  Altstock won three hands straight and began to squirm like a kid.  McCoy eyed the dealer, who shook his head.  The play continued.  The first rain tapped on the shingled roof. 

Altstock broke the quiet.  “I understand you plan to raid the marijuana growers, sheriff.”

Brock said, “Yeah.  They say you found some weed not far from the mine.”

The two men’s complicity was so transparent that McCoy wanted to hug them.  He thumbed the corner of his hole card.  “Sometimes I wonder why they even bother with a newspaper up here,” he said.  “Yeah, we found some bales of grass close to the road, ‘way up in a pin oak.  But we couldn’t follow up just then.  It’s at the edge of my territory, anyway.”  He raised the bet with a chip.  “I’d like to personally catch this guy, though.  There must have been a couple of hundred pounds of it up there, still dry.”


more next time...