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“I never said that. I said I didn’t kill them. Self-defense for Bruno, and yes, I witnessed what happened to that woman, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to tell you. I presumed she’d gotten back to town—I thought that’s what Bruno was doing. You said she was still missing, and I had no idea where she might be, so I kept my mouth shut.”
I nod slowly, as if assimilating and accepting this. “You and Bruno were partners, as you’ve admitted.”
“I was his damnvictim.He found me staking out my mining claim, and he saw that I’d found gold, and he was a fucking mining engineer. He knew what I had, and he wanted in or he’d steal it out from under me. That’s what your damn laws do. Screw over hardworking miners who are trying to follow the rules.”
“Bruno sees you’ve found a site with gold—which you arenotcurrently collecting—and he demands a share.”
“Yes.”
“He also promises, I’m sure, to help, since he has the connections and experience.”
“I didn’t need his damn help.”
Mark can make up any story he wants now that Bruno is dead, but I suspect there’s an underpinning of truth to this one. Bruno found the mine while poking around in the forest on his off time. He recognized the area as a potential location for gold in the creeks and rivers flowing from the mountains. He hopedto find a few flakes, a souvenir and a way to pass the time. Instead, he found Mark’s site.
He would have told Mark that he could help. Connections, resources, expertise, whatever he needed. He’d have pitched himself as a partner, but there’d have been a threat underlying that, too, because Mark hadn’t yet filed his claim.
It wasn’t quite the hostage situation Mark asserts. It wasn’t a fully voluntary partnership either. That made it uneasy and volatile, ripe for trouble, which came when Penny innocently found herself in Mark’s camp just when Bruno had stopped by to talk to him.
Bruno talks to Penny, makes up some story that she would have accepted. She wouldn’t know a placer mining operation when she saw it, especially at night. But Mark panicked and hit her, and then Bruno panicked and put her in that cave until he could talk to her and buy her silence. Only he died before he could return.
“All right,” I say, again willing to accept this half-truth. “Explain why you shot one of the construction crew tonight.”
“I have no idea who I shot,” Mark says. “Some crazy man came charging out of the woods, shouting at me for getting too close to that secret construction site.”
“What?” Gunnar’s voice comes from below us. “That’s not what happened at all.”
“Yes,” I say. “He’s still alive. And his hearing is apparently fine. You caught him following you, and he said the missing woman had identified you as her attacker.”
“Which is a lie.”
“So you shot him for lying? Seems extreme.”
“I fired warning shots. One hit him.”
I nod. “Okay, that’s possible.”
“What?” Gunnar says again. “Those were not—”
“Enough from you,” I call down to Gunnar. “You can give a full statement later, along with the statement from Penny, identifying Mark here as her attacker. But you’re alive, and she’s alive, and I don’t think the department is going to pursue that nearly as much as the other charge.”
Mark says, “I did not work an illegal claim. I told you—”
“I don’t care about the claim. I care about your wife.”
A pause, as if he’d forgotten all about Denise. Then he says, “My wife is dead. One of those construction bastards killed her. Probably Bruno. I don’t know why I didn’t see that before—”
“Denise died earlier that day. While Bruno was in town with an alibi.”
“And I was out hunting.”
“You claimed to have gone hunting that night. The night you also pushed Bruno off a cliff.”
“I lied, okay? I went earlier that day.”
“We found your fingerprints in the pit where your wife was buried. They’re on file, and I matched them.”
“Because I came back from hunting and found her dead,” he says, matching me lie for lie.
