Accidents Happen
On my drive through the woods to meet Glen at the mine’s security gate I passed two gutted deer hanging in hunters’ camps and one more posed rack forward strapped to the top of a car. November 15th—first day of deer season in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—was proving successful for the hunters, less so for the deer. Every camp I passed had a smear of smoke drifting from its chimney and a half dozen trucks parked in the yard. Opening day is almost a national holiday hereabouts and many businesses shut down for the first week of deer season. Not the mine; it ran 24/7. Since I don’t hunt, it seemed like a good day for the fool’s errand I was on.
Glen and I owned neighboring camps deep in the woods, fifteen miles from the nearest place you can buy anything. Toward the end of his annual Halloween party, his wife, Margie, cornered me and Jon Nyland, Glen’s boss. She convinced Jon to bring me onsite to look into the mine’s mysterious deaths. “A serial killer is on the loose,” she said. “Glen could be next.”
I asked myself again what a forensic accountant, city born and raised, was doing investigating mine accidents. Sure, Margie knew that, working for Criminal Investigations Group, I had solved a couple of murders. Fortunately, my financial sleuthing uncovered the killers before they claimed me as their next victim. Once Margie laid her hand on my arm and asked, “Seamus McCree, are you going to help me?” my desire to be useful trumped my common sense.