Killing Trail: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery Read online

  Typically she dressed in a khaki coverall with an arm patch bearing the county emblem. Today, for the meeting at the high school, she’d dressed in her best uniform. Not ideal, but it couldn’t be helped, and she decided not to give it a second thought. She strapped on a utility belt bearing several loops and pouches, all packed with her own equipment: a whistle, water and energy food, a compass, a portable radio, a small first aid kit, short strips of blaze-orange flagging tape to mark trails or evidence, and most importantly, a tennis ball for Robo to play with at the end of a successful exercise or mission.

  Mattie tied an eighteen-inch strip of orange flagging tape to her wrist. It fluttered lightly, telling her that a mild breeze came from the south, across the face of the hill they were standing on, the same direction from which they’d come. She needed to start her evidence search downwind, north of the area in front of the cabin, so she wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene herself. She led Robo past the group of men who were still standing near the porch.

  “Go to it, Cobb,” Brody said as she passed.

  His words could’ve been construed as encouragement, but Mattie knew him better than that. She’d worked with him for seven years, ever since she’d been a rookie herself. Brody tried to appear friendly at times, but she’d learned never to trust it. She ignored him, along with the quiver that rattled her belly.

  Once she reached the spot where she wanted to start, she knelt beside Robo, forced back her stage fright, and focused on her dog. She ruffled the thick, silky fur around his neck.

  “Are you ready to work, Robo? Are you ready to find something?”

  He gazed into her eyes, and the world faded away. Mattie knew he wouldn’t let her down. He knew what to do, and so did she.

  She unhooked the leash from the active ring on his collar and transferred it to the dead ring so that she wouldn’t inadvertently give him an obedience signal. Standing, she gestured toward the ground in front of him and gave the command specifically used for evidence detection: “Seek.”

  She expected Robo to put his nose down and start working a grid. They’d done it before in training.

  But he didn’t.

  Robo raised his head, sniffed the breeze, and then turned to stare at her, his body rigid, his ears pricked.

  Mattie’s heart rose to her throat. Was Robo refusing her command? Dismay immobilized her for a few seconds.

  “Good dog you got there, Cobb.”

  “Back off, Brody,” Sheriff McCoy said. He nodded at Mattie. “Take your time, Deputy.”

  She started to reissue the seek command, but swallowed the word when comprehension hit her. Robo wasn’t being disobedient. He was showing her a full alert.

  But a full alert for what? Drugs? Something in the forest?

  Should she force him to walk the grid like she’d intended, and he could indicate what he’d found when they came to it?

  Robo must have known what she was thinking. He walked to the end of his leash and looked south, upwind into the forest. He turned to look at her, his posture stiff and ears forward, his eyes drilling into hers.

  Now what the hell do I do? Lead or follow?

  Chapter 2

  During training at the academy, Mattie had experienced an exercise that taught her a valuable lesson.

  She and Robo were supposed to practice finding a missing person. Robo’s trainer, Jim Matson, a retired police sergeant who trained police service dogs, set up a track for Robo to follow. Jim left the area and headed east, downwind on a heavily forested slope. Mattie and Robo waited an hour for Jim to get well away and hidden.

  When the time came for Mattie to start Robo on the trail, she put him in his tracking harness, gave him some water, and let him sniff the scent article. Robo immediately turned toward the west and tried to lead her in the direction opposite the one Jim had taken. Mattie corrected Robo, forcing him back to the initial track. Robo tried to go the wrong way again. They wrestled with “who’s the boss?” for a few minutes until Robo gave up and took the eastward track, throwing her a disgusted “if you insist” look over his shoulder before putting his nose to the ground.

  Halfway into the exercise, Mattie realized she’d made a mistake. Robo was leading her in a huge circle. After a mile and a half of tracking through rough terrain—over deadfall, through streams, around huge boulders—Robo led Mattie to Jim. She knew her face was flushed with embarrassment as well as heat from the trek.

  They found Jim sitting on a boulder about one hundred yards from the starting point, shaking his head. Earlier, he’d circled around and positioned himself upwind. Through a pair of binoculars, he’d watched the entire fiasco from the start of the exercise. If Mattie had listened to Robo, who was catching Jim’s scent through the air, they would have found him in only a few minutes.

  Jim had said, “Now play with your dog and tell him he’s a good boy. And tell him you’re sorry you didn’t listen to him. Always listen to your dog.”

  Later, Mattie discovered that she’d been the only rookie handler set up with this exercise. Finally, by the end of her training, she got up the nerve to ask Jim why.

  In his slow country drawl, he replied, “Deputy Cobb, you are a fine officer. But I can tell that you always want to control things. I can tell by the way you shine your boots every night, and I can tell by the way you try to manage this dog. This is one of the best dogs I ever trained. If you don’t learn to trust him, you’ll never be any better than a human cop can be. But if you learn to listen to him and trust that he knows what he’s doing, you two can be the best damn K-9 team in the country.”

  Mattie vowed she would do better.

  Always listen to your dog.

  Mattie heard Jim Matson’s words as if he were standing beside her. The back of her neck tingled. She glanced at Sheriff McCoy. “He’s alerting to something in the woods.”

  “Probably a deer,” Brody muttered.

  For an instant, the comment threw her. Could it be true?

  But Robo’s unblinking gaze continued to bore into her, erasing her doubt. She walked up to him, leaned forward, and unsnapped the leash from his collar.

  A more experienced handler might send Robo into the woods off lead, but she didn’t yet trust their relationship enough for that. From a loop on her utility belt, she took a thirty-foot-long leash and attached it to the ring on Robo’s tracking harness.

  “Okay, Robo,” she said, “we’ll do it your way.”

  Not knowing what they were after, she decided to use the tracking command. “Search.”

  Robo bolted toward the edge of the woods. The thirty-foot lead whipped through her fingers, making them sting. She grabbed onto the end and followed, knowing she’d have to run like hell to keep up.

  Rabbit brush and felled timber marked the edge of the clearing. Robo hit it at a dead run, coming to the end of his lead at the same time. Mattie sprinted after him, giving Robo enough slack to keep moving forward.

  “Good boy. Search.”

  Robo darted between two pine trees, entered the forest, and headed downhill. Mattie swept through the boughs, eyes to the ground, jumping over ankle-turning stones, stepping carefully between tufts of buffalo grass and scattered granite rocks. Each footfall jarred as she charged over the rough terrain. Still, she wasn’t fast enough to keep up with her dog.

  Robo slowed to accommodate her pace. His ears shifted forward and back, monitoring the environment up ahead and then checking on Mattie’s progress behind. As they continued downhill, weaving between trees and around boulders, Mattie heard the crack of tree branches and the thud of someone running behind her. At least one of her colleagues was following, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off the rugged terrain to check.

  Within minutes, Mattie reached that familiar physical place where her body warmed and her breath came and went in rapid cycles. She knew she could maintain this pace forever—well, at least an hour or so—if she had to. The noise behind her fell away, and she kept going.

  Robo lifted his
head, nose to the breeze, and she knew he was trailing the scent through the air. Whatever he’d found, they would come upon it suddenly, since there was little visibility. The forest had become dense, and there were no worn pathways to speak of. Dried branches scratched her arms; pine needles pricked her face and hands. Once again, the thought of Robo chasing a wild animal began to tickle her insecurities.

  She was thirty feet behind Robo now, the full length of the leash, and occasionally she lost sight of him as he charged around thickets of squaw currant bushes or prickly rose. After a few minutes, they reached the bottom of the hill and leveled out into a dry creek bed. Without pause, Robo surged across it and up the steep bank on the other side with a half-dozen leaps.

  As Mattie scrambled up the hill behind him, her leather boot sole slipped and she fell to one knee, cracking it against a sharp rock. She sucked in a breath. “Shit!”

  Robo paused and looked back at her over his shoulder. She could swear he had one eyebrow arched as if asking, “What?”

  “It’s okay,” she said, rubbing her sore knee as she got up. “Go on. Search.”

  Moving on with a limp, Mattie could feel warm blood trickle down her shin. Robo slowed his pace for her, staying close as he continued. In the back of her mind, she plotted their course, realizing they had charged downhill parallel to the road she’d driven up. Now they seemed to be heading up the next slope, still parallel to the road. She began to wonder if Robo had scented something when he’d sniffed outside the vehicle’s window on their way up the mountain.

  Despite the pain in her knee, Mattie quickened her pace. Robo responded by moving ahead to the end of his lead. Although it felt like much farther, Mattie gauged they’d covered about a mile since leaving the cabin. Once again, they headed downhill.

  Disappearing from sight, Robo entered a thick stand of juniper surrounded by scrub brush. Mattie heard a deep growl, followed by a snarling bark.

  Robo’s lead went slack.

  He’d come to an abrupt halt inside the thicket, out of sight. Stories she’d heard about dogs tracking armed criminals and leading their handlers directly into an ambush made every hair rise on the back of her neck.

  Reaching for her Glock 9mm with one hand and holding onto Robo’s leash with the other, Mattie hit the ground and rolled to shelter behind the trunk of a large ponderosa. She sat with her back to the rough bark, her heart pounding.

  She rose to her knees, hugging the tree trunk. She knew only one thing for certain: she wanted her dog beside her. But if he’d engaged a bad guy, she might endanger Robo’s life by calling him off. He’d been trained to bite and hold an arm bearing a weapon. Releasing that arm could free up the weapon to be turned against him. Careful not to expose herself too much, she peered around the tree trunk and tried to get a visual on her dog.

  He was trotting out from among the junipers, a happy grin on his face.

  To her amazement, he came right up and bumped his nose against the pouch that held his tennis ball, his reward for successfully completing a find. He sat down at her feet, an expectant look on his face, tail waving, ready to play.

  She grabbed Robo’s harness and hauled him in close, trying to shield him with the tree trunk while keeping herself hidden. “Stay,” she told him.

  What the hell? She tried to size up the situation. Robo must have found something in the thicket. But what?

  A dope stash, maybe, but that was unlikely. Dope was usually wrapped up tight against the elements, which impeded scent release. Not a person with a gun either. If someone was armed or threatening, Robo would have engaged him. An unarmed human, then?

  She looked at Robo, wishing he could speak. He met her gaze without waver. He looked alert now, his playfulness set aside. She supposed he’d noticed that she’d drawn her weapon and had decided his work was not done after all.

  Still worried about ambush, Mattie peered around the tree trunk, her handgun ready. “Police! Throw out your weapon!”

  From inside the thicket came a deep, menacing growl followed by a ferocious bark.

  Christ! There’s another dog inside there.

  Robo had trailed another dog. And if that dog was all alone, unaccompanied by a human, there’d been a serious breach in his training. He’d been trained to track humans and to ignore other dogs.

  From somewhere behind her, Mattie heard the crack of rocks colliding and branches breaking. The others must have crested the hill and were now headed down toward her, probably at a distance of about half a football field. But the trees were too dense for her to see them.

  She assumed the one closest would be Brody. “Brody! Hold up. Take cover.”

  “What’ve you got?”

  “Unidentified party hidden in some juniper.”

  “We’ve got your back.”

  At least now, the person in the thicket knew he had more than one cop to deal with. But on the down side, if she and Robo had failed, they now had a witness.

  She pushed on. “Throw out your weapon and show yourself, or I’ll send in the dog!”

  Robo stood up. With ears pricked forward, he leaned around Mattie’s legs to stare at the stand of juniper.

  Mattie knew the threat of a dog usually put the fear of God into the heart of a fugitive. If someone was in there hiding, that ought to bring him out.

  Teeth bared, a huge black dog charged a few feet out of the thicket, uttering a deep-pitched growl. Suddenly, it whined and dropped down to a crouch. When it turned to slink back into the bush, Mattie could see its haunches were covered with dirty, matted fur. It had revealed itself for only a few seconds, but long enough for Mattie to recognize it as a Bernese mountain dog. And it appeared injured.

  “Great, Cobb. Your dog found another dog.”

  Mattie glanced behind her and saw Brody about twenty feet back, partially shielded by another large pine. He had drawn his weapon and was holding it down beside his leg.

  “I’m going in with Robo,” Mattie told him. “Cover us.”

  She unsnapped Robo’s lead. She didn’t want it hampering his ability to move. “Robo, show me what you found. Show me!”

  Robo sprang up and darted into the scrub oak. Staying low to the ground, Mattie crashed in close behind him, weapon pointed straight ahead. Growling and snarling filled the thicket.

  In the middle of the stand was a small space, relatively clear. Once inside, she could see that the Bernese had been digging. Mounds of dark earth were piled between Mattie and the dog. Robo lay at the base of the nearest mound, teeth bare and growling. The Bernese stood in a depression on the other side, hackles raised and snarling, filtered light glinting off great white teeth. It looked as if the Bernese might attack Robo at any moment.

  No humans present. Heart sinking, Mattie tried to diffuse the dogs’ standoff. Robo was already in a down position, the position he used to indicate his find. She stayed motionless and spoke to the other dog, hoping to soothe it.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  The Bernese stopped snarling. Anxiously, it shifted its gaze from Robo to Mattie and then back. Clearly, the dog seemed most threatened by Robo. She knew that if she called him out of his crouch, the Bernese might attack; a single move on Robo’s part could start a full-blown dogfight.

  “Robo, quiet.”

  The growl rumbling in Robo’s chest ceased.

  The Bernese wore a red nylon collar with tags dangling at its chest. The tag on top bore white letters with the dog’s name. Mattie could just make it out: Belle.

  “Belle, down.”

  The Bernese threw another worried glance toward Robo but hunkered down, peering over the mound of dirt to watch Mattie.

  This dog was obviously guarding something. Mattie tried to see over the dirt mound.

  “This is interesting,” Brody said with sarcasm, making his way through the juniper.

  McCoy materialized through the brush off to the side, his breath heaving in noisy gusts. “What is it?”

  Johnson followed Brody, sucking a
ir, sweat gleaming on his freckled cheeks.

  “Stay still,” Mattie told the others. “Let me get a leash on this dog.” She knew Robo wouldn’t budge until she released him. Edging up to the Bernese, Mattie spoke in a soothing tone. “It’s okay, Belle. Stay. Good girl.”

  Belle whined once. Head lowered, she peered up at Mattie, white rims showing at the base of brown eyes.

  With relief, Mattie saw that the dog had decided to submit. She holstered her weapon and reached for the short leash stored in her utility belt. With slow, deliberate movements, she approached the dog. “Good girl. Let me help you.”

  As she moved to the other side of the dirt mound and snapped the leash onto Belle’s collar, she discovered what the dog had been guarding. It snatched her breath away.

  Belle had uncovered the head, chest, and arms of a girl, her waxy face smudged with mud where the dog had licked it. Dark hair, pert nose, and a bloodstained shirt. Dead.

  “What is it, Deputy?”

  Mattie faced McCoy. “We’ve got a body.”

  Chapter 3

  As Timber Creek’s one and only veterinarian, Cole Walker had endured many a sleepless night, but none had exhausted him as thoroughly as the last. And this time, he had nothing to show for it. No recovering animal, no grateful client. All he had was a manila envelope from yesterday’s mail, his final divorce papers stuffed inside. They’d haunted him throughout the night.

  The struggle to change Olivia’s mind was now officially over. No more mulling over what he should’ve done, what he should’ve said. It was over. She’d left for Denver three months ago, moved in with her old college roommate, and filed for divorce. Said she needed to “find herself.”

  Cole hadn’t even known she was lost.

  Now, after working the longest day of his life, Cole’s limbs were heavy with fatigue. He shuffled over to the gray mare he was treating for colic. She stood quietly in the stocks, used to hold horses so they wouldn’t hurt themselves or the people trying to care for them. Her eyelids drooped from the analgesic he’d administered earlier, and Cole thought she looked as worn out and dejected as he felt.