Page 1 of Twin Jeopardy

Chapter One

“Look right down there in that gully. Just to the left of that tree branch that’s sticking up out of the gravel. See that flash of white? I’m sure that’s bones.”

Eagle Mountain Search and Rescue volunteer Vince Shepherd moved in closer beside the couple who had summoned the team to this remote mountain trail above Galloway Basin. He squinted toward the spot the man had indicated. Yes, that definitely looked like a long bone. A femur, maybe? And was that a rib cage? His heart pounded with a mixture of hope and fear.

“They sure look human to me,” the female half of the pair, a sturdy brunette who wore her hair in a long braid, said.

Search and rescue captain Danny Irwin lowered the binoculars he had focused on whatever was down there in the gully. “It’s worth checking out,” he said. “Thanks for calling it in.”

“Looks like a pretty gnarly climb down there.” The male hiker, red-haired and red-bearded, frowned into the gully. “Lots of downed trees and loose rock.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Danny said. Tall and lanky, with shaggy brown hair and a laconic manner, in another context he might have been mistaken for a surfer instead of a registered nurse and search and rescue veteran. He looked past them to the gathered volunteers—only six responders, since this had been deemed a nonemergency call and not everyone was free on a Friday morning. “Three of us will make the hike down,” he said. “The other three need to monitor the situation up top, in case any of us get into trouble.”

“I’ll go down with you.” Vince stepped forward. He was one of the newer members of the group, but he had done a lot of hiking and climbing before he joined up, and he wanted to get a closer look at those bones. Part of him dreaded seeing them, but better to know the truth sooner rather than later. It was a long shot that those bones had anything to do with his sister, but what if they really did belong to her?

“I’ll go too,” Hannah Gwynn said. A paramedic, Hannah served as the team’s current medical officer.

“If you hike down from the top end of the gulley, it’s not that steep.” Sheri Stevens, on summer vacation from her teaching position, looked up the mountainside. “You won’t need to rope up or anything.”

“Yeah, we just have to pick our way around the dead trees, boulders and loose gravel swept down by spring runoff,” Danny said. He looked to Vince. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah.”

They left Sheri, along with Grace Wilcox and Caleb Garrison, to monitor the situation up top. The hikers who had called in the find elected to head back down the mountain. Danny led the way, picking a path through the debris-choked gully. The July sun beat down, but at this high elevation the warmth was welcome. Wildflowers carpeted the meadows alongside the gully, and if it weren’t for the reason for their presence here, it would have been an enjoyable outing. The climb wasn’t physically challenging, but it was tedious and frustrating, requiring frequent backtracking and constant readjustments to the unsteady footing. “How did those bones ever end up down here?” Vince wondered out loud as he clambered over a fallen tree trunk, then skirted a large boulder.

“They might have washed down from farther up the mountain,” Hannah said. She hopped over a mudhole, then pulled aside a fallen branch to clear a better path.

Danny stopped to gauge their progress, then pulled out his handheld radio. “How much farther do we have to go?” he asked.

“You’ve got about five hundred feet,” Sheri replied. “You’ll know you’re close when you see that big branch sticking up. It’s got most of the bark peeled off of it. The bones are just beyond that.”

“I may need you to direct us when we get there,” Danny said. “There’s so much debris down here it’s hard to distinguish details.”

They squeezed through a tangle of tree limbs, then trudged across a section of mud, boots sinking with each step, before scaling a jumble of granite slabs. “Guess I’m getting my workout in for the day,” Vince said, as he hauled himself to the top of what he hoped was the final slab. From here, he had a view down the gully. “I think that’s the tree Sheri was talking about.” He pointed toward a jagged branch, the bare wood shining white in the sun.

“I see a path through to there,” Danny said. He hopped down from the slab and set out again, shoving aside knots of brush as he went. Hannah followed, with Vince bringing up the rear.

“You’re almost there,” Sheri radioed. “Look uphill.”

A few minutes later, Danny stopped. “We’re here,” he said, and crouched down to examine something on the ground.

Vince hung back. “Is it human bones?” he called.

Hannah moved in closer and leaned over Danny’s shoulder. “It’s a skeleton, all right,” she said. “Kind of small. Maybe a child?”

For a moment, Vince stopped breathing. Valerie had been ten when she disappeared from the family’s campsite above Galloway Basin. A four-foot dynamo with sandy-brown curls cut short, she had a dimple in her left cheek that matched Vince’s own. He forced himself to move forward until he was standing beside Hannah, looking down on a small rib cage, and a heap of arm and leg bones.

Danny moved up the gully a few steps and began shifting a pile of rocks. After a few seconds, he stood once more. “It’s not a human,” he said. “It’s a bear.”

“What?” Hannah looked up from her scrutiny of the bones.

“The skull is right here.” Danny pulled out something from among the rocks and held it up. The skull was oblong, with a prominent jaw, one oversize canine tooth jutting from one corner of the mouth.

“A bear?” Vince staggered a little. Not Valerie.

“Kind of a small one.” Danny leaned over the skeleton once more. “See, if you look closer, you can tell the femur is too short to be human, and the shoulder blades are a lot wider.”

“You’re right,” Hannah said. “I guess I was thinking ‘human’ because that’s what the hikers called in, and at first glance it’s similar.”

---