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GATHERING MIST
A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery
BY MARGARET MIZUSHIMA

BLURB

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GATHERING MIST
A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery
BY MARGARET MIZUSHIMA

Excerpt

Thursday, Early December

Weather could make or break a search and rescue mission, and the wind would play havoc with the scent trail today.

Deputy Mattie Wray stood at the back of her K-9 unit beside her patrol partner Robo, a large German shepherd who weighed just short of a hundred pounds. Brilliant sunlight glistened off his glossy black coat while he lifted his nose and sniffed the air as if tasting it. Wind ruffled his fur.

Their mission today: find a missing child by air scenting. Mattie knew the child was somewhere in this vicinity but she didn’t know exactly where, and at this point they didn’t have a scent trail on the ground for Robo to find. Her dog’s ground tracking skills were strong, but lately he’d been using air scent to find objects and people more often, so Mattie felt sure he would be up for this new challenge.

“Take a break,” Mattie told Robo quietly, sending him off to her Explorer’s tire. Nothing halted the momentum of a search mission faster than a potty stop. “Okay, let’s put on your harness.”

She removed his blue nylon tracking harness from the storage compartment in the back of her unit and lowered it toward Robo. He stepped up and lifted his head for her to slip it over his ears before she buckled it into place under his chest. As a team, they associated this harness with a search for a human, while his nylon collar signaled a drug or evidence search. Overlap of these skills always existed during missions, but for the most part, Robo had learned to anticipate the major emphasis for his work based on his equipment.

Mattie zipped up her Carhartt coat to protect her from the gale’s icy chill. A cold front was driving in from the northwest and dipping down into southern Colorado, threatening snow for Timber Creek County tonight. She needed to hurry and get started.

Since she would ask Robo to air scent today, it was important for her to know from which direction the air flowed at all times. She snipped off three feet of orange flagging tape and tied it to her left wrist. When she raised her arm, the tape fluttered out toward the southeast in a horizontal position and snapped in the wind. She strapped on her duty belt and turned back to her dog, who eagerly awaited instruction as he watched her with uplifted eyes and danced on his front paws.

“You’re a good boy, aren’t you?” Mattie took out his bowl and splashed fresh water into it from the jug she always carried for him. This would moisten the membranes in his mouth and indirectly his sinuses, an important step to enhance his ability to take in scent.

While he drank, she shrugged into a backpack that contained her own equipment including extra water and food for both of them, a Mylar space blanket that could retain up to ninety percent of a person’s body heat, heat packs for feet and hands, a first aid kit, a GPS unit, a compass, and a map of the wilderness area around Timber Creek.

Finally, she closed the hatch of her Explorer and began the high-pitched chatter Robo loved, meant to increase his prey drive. “Do you want to find someone? Yeah? Let’s go! Let’s go find someone.”

Robo pranced in heel position beside her, looking up at Mattie with intelligent, adoring eyes as the wind buffeted his fur. She gave him the eye contact he wanted and leaned over to ruffle his fur, keeping up the chatter that made him so excited. The mission they were about to embark on held many new challenges for both Robo and her, but she felt confident they were ready as a team and could accomplish the job together.

At last she withdrew a plastic bag from her pocket, opened it and lowered it for Robo to whiff. The bag contained a scent article: a pink sock that she’d taken from the missing child’s laundry basket earlier. The sole of the sock, darkened from being worn around the house without shoes, attested to the fact that it had not been laundered and would be laden with the child’s scent.

Robo wagged his tail vigorously as he took in the smell. Mattie stroked the black fur on top of his head, giving him one last pat before she raised her arm to give him the command he’d been waiting for.

“Search!” she said, flinging her arm out to encompass the area, planning to establish a large grid pattern. Robo lowered his nose to the ground and busily tried to find the track, which didn’t surprise her. Typically she directed him toward the ground at the beginning of a search to find a scent track . . . but today she knew there wouldn’t be one here.

She observed him closely, letting him think it through and watching to see if he’d work out the problem by himself. She would intervene if he started to look frustrated, but she believed it important to let a dog in training learn to think through problems as much as possible. That way, when they were separated— and in the high country she often sent Robo into areas where the terrain was too treacherous for a human to follow—he would still be able to think through a problem without her directing his every move.

She continued to watch while he sniffed furiously at the ground in front of him for about a minute. When he raised his head and sampled the wind, she rejoiced inside. It was exactly what she wanted him to do.

“Good boy!” She waved toward the expanse in front of them again as she turned to walk toward her left. “Let’s find someone out here.”

Robo surged ahead of her with his head up, facing into the wind. Rocky ground, covered with dormant buffalo grass, surrounded them and stretched out for about a mile and a half as it ran uphill toward the foothills north of Timber Creek. Boulders and stones littered the area. Patches of rabbit brush and scrub oak grew on the hillside along with scattered groves of spruce and limber pine. A rocky outcropping lined the area to the northwest a little over a mile away.

Mattie jogged behind her dog, letting him range out in front. After he’d traveled about a hundred yards, she called him back toward her as she shifted direction and started running toward the right. She wanted to establish boundaries for them to search, working the area back and forth until Robo either found human scent or they determined no scent was present, a process referred to as clearing the area.

Robo already knew how to quarter an area for scent, characterized by sweeping back and forth with his nose either to the ground or in the air in a grid-like pattern. But today Mattie wanted to set the width of the grid, as if the territory had been assigned to them. When he’d crossed about three hundred yards, she was close behind him, dodging stones and clumps of grass as she ran.

When they hit the edge of her imaginary boundary, she reversed directions again, moving back to the left but angling ever forward into the wind. Robo immediately went with her, loping out in front. “Good boy!” she shouted, marveling at what a quick study her dog was, even though that’s how he’d always been when picking up new skills.

She decided not to cue him again, wanting to see if Robo stuck loosely to the grid she’d established. She also wanted to allow him the freedom to follow his nose once he caught the child’s scent in the air.

Sergeant Jim Madsen said that Robo was the best dog he’d ever trained. And while Robo was the only dog that Mattie had ever partnered with, she knew the words of the more experienced handler and trainer had to be true. Robo never failed to amaze her.

Mattie and Robo kept up the back-and-forth pattern, working the grid while moving uphill toward the rocky horizon. After they’d moved about a half mile upslope, Robo stopped short and raised his head as high as he could, sniffing the air with his lips slightly parted. He stared toward the rock formations to the northwest, his ears pricked forward and his chin raised.

Mattie recognized her dog’s signal for an alert. He’d caught the child’s scent on the wind. She did a quick wind check with the tape on her arm—still coming directly from the northwest. She glanced around and made a mental note of her surroundings so she could record the details of terrain, direction, and distance in her training journal once they found their subject. She noticed they were in an area where the grasses grew taller as they approached the creek that ran through the dry land.

“You smell her, don’t you? Good boy. Let’s go find her.”

About Author Margaret Mizushima…

Links to Margaret’s websites, blogs, books, #ad, etc.:

Amazon Kindle: https://amzn.to/3K58syd

Penguin Random House:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/759656/gathering-mist-by-margaret-mizushima/9798892423717/

Find her on Facebook/AuthorMargaretMizushima, X @margmizu, Instagram @margmizu, and her website:
www.margaretmizushima.com

Special Giveaway: Margaret is giving away a hardcover copy (U.S. Only) of GATHERING MIST to one lucky winner who comments on her Karen’s Killer Book Bench blog. Good luck!

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Thanks, Margaret, for sharing your book with us!

Don’t miss the chance to read this book!