Hanging Falls Read online

  HANGING FALLS

  A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery

  Margaret Mizushima

  For my siblings by birth and by marriage, with gratitude for your love and support

  Acknowledgments

  First, I’d like to express my gratitude to the readers of the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. Your leisure time is precious, and I appreciate you sharing those moments with me. Thank you to those of you who’ve written to encourage me to keep adding stories to the series. You keep me going back to the keyboard.

  I owe a huge, heartfelt thank you to the many professionals who helped bring Hanging Falls to print:

  To Lieutenant Glenn J. Wilson (Ret.); Charles Mizushima, DVM; and Tracy Brisendine, Medicolegal Death Investigator, for their time and assistance with procedural content. As always, any inaccuracies or fictional enhancements are on me.

  To Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary Management, for her encouragement and guidance; to publisher Matthew Martz, for his vision, insight, and support; to the fabulous team at Crooked Lane Books—Jenny Chen, Melissa Rechter, and Madeline Rathle—for helping me in an endless variety of ways; to my editor, Martin Biro, for guiding me toward a better novel; to my copyeditor, Rachel Keith, for her unflagging attention to accuracy and detail; and to publicist Maryglenn McCombs, for helping spread the news about the Timber Creek K-9 series.

  To Scott Graham, author of the National Parks Mysteries, for his early input; and to Susan Hemphill and Bill Hazard, for their assistance with drafts.

  And last but by no means least, I want to express my love and gratitude to friends and family who’ve supported me throughout the years. Like most of my stories, the theme of family, both by blood and by choice, runs through this episode. I’m so grateful for those of you who’ve shared my life’s journey with me.

  And to my husband, Charlie; daughters, Sarah and Beth; and son-in-law, Adam: thank you for providing a safe place to land and for always cheering me on.

  ONE

  Friday morning, mid-July

  A stitch in her side plagued Deputy Mattie Cobb as she jogged uphill, telling her that her level of anxiety and this form of exercise didn’t mix. Running in the Colorado high country around Timber Creek had soothed her for years, but not today. Her mind kept jumping back to the one thing that made her so … well, she’d have to say frightened, excited, and nervous all at once.

  Though Mattie rarely took vacations, starting tomorrow she’d scheduled a week off from her duties as K-9 officer in the county sheriff’s department. It was unsettling enough to think about being away from work and outside her normal routine, but in addition to that, she and her patrol dog, a German shepherd named Robo, would leave early in the morning to drive to San Diego to meet her sister for the very first time.

  Her sister! Just thinking about it took her breath away.

  A few weeks ago, she’d learned through a DNA match on an ancestry database that an unknown family member was looking for her, and a flurry of emails had revealed that she had a sister and grandmother living in California.

  It seemed impossible. Though she’d dreamed of finding family—or more specifically, her mother, since she’d been unaware the others existed—the thought of actually meeting this new sister and grandma scared her.

  Mattie pushed herself up the steep path toward Hanging Falls, her feet crunching on stones as she took note of spots where washout had damaged the trail enough that it would need repair. She breathed in the moist air of the dampened forest. El Niño weather patterns had caused atypical levels of monsoon-like rainfall this summer in the Colorado mountains, resulting in floods throughout the high country. While at first everyone had welcomed the moisture—hoping the forests would recover from years of drought—now too much water had wreaked its own kind of havoc. In Timber Creek, when it came to rain and snow, it seemed like it was either feast or famine.

  Mattie’s K-9 partner, Robo, kept pace beside her. As they jogged, they alternated running on the easier footing in the middle of the trail with navigating the more challenging, uneven ground at the edge. Dealing with ankle-turning stones, clumps of foliage, and tree roots helped keep Mattie’s focus sharp and her legs strong for the times when she needed to follow Robo off-trail during a wilderness search.

  As she took in the scent that her brain classified as “wet forest,” she wondered what the aroma smelled like to Robo. A dog would interpret scents in layers, dissecting each one and classifying it as it came to him: the crisp smell of fresh pine, the earthy scent of damp soil, the musky odor of decaying leaves and vegetation. And then there would be additional layers that Mattie couldn’t detect with her inferior human nose—oh, a rabbit passed by here a few hours ago; there’s a deer hidden in the forest over there; and hey now, Moose and Glenna are just up ahead.

  The local district wildlife manager, Glenna Dalton, had invited Mattie and Robo to join up with her and her Rhodesian ridgeback, Moose, to scout out wildlife habitat and trail conditions prior to the start of hunting season. Mattie had been happy to go. She’d hoped the exercise would settle her nerves.

  The pain in her side sharpened, and she knew she would need to stop soon to rest. She forced herself uphill, her goal the top of this last ridge where she could see what lay ahead. Surely the falls were around the next corner.

  She pushed herself up the last fifty yards of steep slope, the pain turning into a blazing burn as she crested the ridge.

  “Okay, Robo, let’s stop here for a minute.”

  Robo threw her a confused glance before sitting at her left heel without needing to be told. He scanned the terrain while she smoothed the fur on his head, his nose bobbing as he sampled the air. Mattie wondered if he thought they were about to track a lost person or a fugitive as they often did.

  Or maybe he was just searching for Glenna and Moose. She’d expected to see them when she came to this lookout and was surprised to find that she and Robo had fallen far enough behind that the pair had disappeared back into the forest.

  Mattie puffed hard, taking in oxygen from the thin air. They’d reached a point in altitude right below tree line, and while the forest was still thick where she stood, the lip of the natural bowl that was their destination could now be seen about five hundred yards farther uphill, near enough to detect its stony rim, relatively treeless and littered with boulders and shale.

  She’d been here countless times before, and she knew that the bowl at the end of the trail would be filled with a pristine, jewel-like lake fed by spring waters and snowmelt that spilled down a sheer thirty-foot drop, resulting in a spectacular cascade called Hanging Falls.

  On her way up, the river below had been swollen and in many places even running outside its banks. Trails were washed out, and falls of all sizes crashed down rocky waterways as the abnormally high levels of snowpack continued to melt and rain continued to fall. Colorado Forest Service and Parks and Wildlife personnel would have to team up to make repairs as soon as the snowmelt diminished.

  But right now, it was all she could do to battle the tightness in her chest and try to catch her breath. She clasped her painful side, going into a runner’s lunge to stretch her psoas muscles and hamstrings.

  “You should be able to do better than this,” she chided herself. “Must be getting old and out of shape.”

  As Mattie stretched, her thoughts wandered back to her family. She knew precious little about them, but she felt like she’d discovered hidden treasure. Her sister, Julia Prescott, was thirty-five, four years older than Mattie. Julia lived in the southern part of San Diego with her husband, Jeff, and two sons, ages ten and eight. Nephews! And to top it off, their maternal grandmother, Yolanda Mendoza, lived with Julia. Her sister referred to their grandmother as Abuela, and that’s how Mattie had begun to
think of her.

  It was almost more than she could take in and process.

  She removed Julia’s last email from her shirt pocket, one she’d printed and kept next to her heart. She unfolded the email carefully, thinking she’d read it so many times that she’d almost memorized it.

  My dear little sister,

  Even as I write this, I can’t believe that we’ve found you. I’ve prayed for this for decades and still have trouble believing my prayers have been answered. I can’t wait to see you next week and to hold you in my arms like I did when you were a baby. I have many old photos of our parents and us kids to show you, and I’ve made copies of all of them for you to take home when you have to leave.

  Joey and Jason can’t wait to meet their auntie. I cried all week after you told me that our brother Willie was dead and that you didn’t know where our mother is. I guess it was too much to hope to be able to have all of you returned to me at once.

  I understand when you say you don’t want to share details about Willie’s death until we’re together. I feel the same about discussing our father’s death. Some things are just too muddled to write down on a page in black and white. It makes it hard to see the gray that surrounds the circumstances. We’ll have to talk about them when we see each other next week.

  Abuela is beside herself with joy, though she has become very quiet the past few days. I think it’s overwhelming for her to have found her cherished granddaughter only to discover that it’s too late to ever see her grandson again. She’s getting older, but she has never given up hope that she will still see our beloved mother again before her life ends. And now I have renewed hope that we can pool our resources and make that wish come true.

  I’ll text you directions to my house, and like I told you when we talked, both you and your dog Robo are welcome to stay with us. (I still have trouble imagining my baby sister as a K9 cop!) I know you mentioned finding a pet-friendly motel nearby, but we would love to have you as our guest. Please consider staying here with us, your family.

  We love you and can’t wait to see you.

  Hugs and kisses,

  Your sister, Julia

  It broke Mattie’s heart to think about Willie’s death. Although she, her mother, and her brother had been kidnapped when Mattie was only two years old, Willie had been killed by one of their abductors only a few months ago. Her pain from that was still raw, and tears welled in her eyes.

  It was nice of her sister to open her home to both her and Robo. Though Mattie didn’t doubt the sincerity of Julia’s invitation, a wave of anxiety engulfed her each time she thought about spending twenty-four hours per day with these dear people who were family—but still strangers.

  She’d already made a reservation at a motel near Julia’s house, where she and Robo could seek respite at the end of the day or whenever the circle of this new family began to close in on her. Although finding family was what she wanted more than anything in the world, she knew herself well enough to expect that it would not necessarily be all joy and comfort. She would need to take breaks to do her yoga and practice her breathing exercises to stay centered.

  And if how she’d been coping lately was any indication, she was in danger of becoming a complete mess.

  She folded the email and returned it to her pocket while she spoke quietly to her dog. “Okay, that’s enough lagging behind. Let’s go find Moose and Glenna.”

  Even though she felt like taking a much slower pace, she told him to heel and struck out at a jog to tackle the last five hundred yards. Once a high school cross-country track champion, she didn’t like to come in last.

  Boulders on the trail made a rough staircase to the top. Mattie and Robo left the thick stand of pine and hopped from one rocky surface to another as they breached the rim where the trail flattened out onto a slab of stone. On the other side of the rise, Glenna sat on a boulder waiting, apparently enjoying the view.

  A dazzling lake filled with water the color of deep sapphire nestled in a depression surrounded by granite peaks under partly cloudy skies. The sun broke through the cloud cover in patches, sending shafts of light down in intervals, as if spotlighting some of the boulders while most of them remained in shadow.

  On the far side of the bowl, Hanging Falls tumbled down a rocky chute and spilled into the lake, churning up the water beneath it. The falls were more violent than Mattie had ever seen them, fueled by the last deluge. Stark white snowfields cloaked the rugged peaks above the falls, ice melt adding to the runoff that fed the rolling water.

  “Hey, Glenna,” Mattie panted, trying to catch her breath without showing how winded she’d become. “You kicked my butt coming up here.”

  The unusual humidity in the typically dry Colorado altitude made Glenna’s curly black hair frizz, allowing it to escape the ponytail she’d drawn together earlier at her nape beneath her floppy, wide-brimmed hat. “I haven’t been here long. Only a few minutes.”

  Mattie suspected it had been longer, since she and Robo had spent upwards of ten minutes resting before their final ascent. Glenna was at least six inches taller than Mattie’s five foot four, with a much longer stride, but still—that was no excuse for falling so far behind.

  Mattie stretched against a boulder beside Glenna while Robo scouted the immediate area, sniffing grassy tufts and brilliant-purple wildflowers. “Where’s Moose?”

  Glenna gave Mattie a quick assessment with large hazel eyes framed by black lashes. “Are you okay?”

  Mattie’s shortness of breath embarrassed her. “Sure. I have a stitch in my side that got to me. I’ll be ready to move on in a few minutes.”

  Glenna rose from the boulder where she’d been sitting and began to stretch her hamstrings. On duty, she was dressed in the khaki shirt-and-shorts uniform of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Department, her long legs tanned from being outside during the summer. “Moose ran on ahead.”

  Even as Glenna spoke, Mattie saw the big red dog break out of the pine down below and gallop along the edge of the lake, leaping over stones. The strip of hair that grew in the opposite direction along the Rhodesian ridgeback’s spine was a shade darker than the rest of his burnished coat. His black muzzle stood out and his ears flopped as he ran.

  “There he is,” Mattie said, pointing him out for Glenna and wishing she could allow Robo the freedom to take off and run to his heart’s content. But her dog had cost thousands of dollars, purchased by the citizens of Timber Creek and donated to the sheriff’s department to combat drug traffic in their community, and the responsibility of keeping him safe weighed constantly on her shoulders.

  Mattie scanned the bowl in front of her, taking in the meadow surrounding the lake, its grasses lush and green from the plentiful rain and sprinkled with wildflowers of all colors. White water spilled out of the lake and coursed through a riverbed filled with wild rapids that would only gain momentum as it flowed downhill from here.

  Glenna rose from her lunge. “Ready to go on down?” she asked. “We can walk.”

  “Sure.” Mattie decided to let Robo run ahead. The grassy meadow looked safe enough to let him roam. “Go ahead, Robo. You’re free.”

  That was all it took for him to break away at a lope, heading down the trail toward Moose. Glenna took the lead at a walk and Mattie followed on the narrow trail, avoiding muddy spots and puddles where rainfall had pooled in stony depressions. The gradual descent toward the lake afforded more time to recover.

  “So … word around town is that you and Cole Walker are a couple,” Glenna said. “Is that true?”

  Mattie didn’t like sharing personal information with just anyone, but she’d been working on being more open with others instead of closing them off. Her relationship with Cole still felt brand-new and maybe even a little shaky at times, but she could discuss it with Glenna. Mattie enjoyed spending time with the wildlife manager, someone who might eventually become a friend. “I guess we are a couple … yeah … we are.”

  Glenna threw Mattie a smile over her sho
ulder. “You don’t sound too sure of that.”

  “Oh, I am,” she fibbed, because she didn’t want to get into details. “It’s just that I’m not comfortable talking about it yet. We’ve only recently made it public.”

  The hazel eyes Glenna turned on her held a twinkle. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I just wanted to confirm that Cole was off the market.”

  Mattie smiled, thinking of the way Cole focused on her instead of the obstacles his family life had thrown up in front of them. “Oh, he is. Or as far as I’m concerned, he is.”

  “So my next question is … does he have a brother?”

  Mattie chuckled. “Sorry, but no. Just a sister.”

  “Well, darn. Then let me know if you get tired of him.”

  The unmistakable deep-pitched bay that could come only from Moose resounded over the lake and echoed off the granite wall on the other side.

  “Oh no,” Glenna said. “What has he found?”

  “Not a cougar, I hope.” Concern for Robo pushed Mattie forward. Stepping off-trail to dash past Glenna, she sprinted toward the lake, shouting at the top of her lungs for Robo to come.

  Glenna ran close behind, but downhill had been Mattie’s specialty in high school. Her shorter legs and lower center of gravity allowed her to travel faster than taller runners whose stride outmatched her when going uphill. She pulled ahead on the smooth pathway, continuing to shout for her dog.

  But Robo’s familiar bark had joined the echo. Mattie reached the lake and took the trail along its edge where she’d last seen the dogs. The footing was rockier and uneven here, and she watched the path, shouting to Robo while she ran. She entered a band of pine that wrapped like a finger around the pool at the base of the falls.

  Darn it! She hoped the two of them hadn’t cornered a dangerous animal and gotten themselves into trouble. She imagined the worst, her heart in her throat, as she pounded along the path. The noise of the tumbling cascade filtered through the evergreens, growing in volume as she approached.