LITMIR.BIZ

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in Yosemite Valley in California, Red Rock Canyon in Nevada, Rifle Mountain Park in Colorado—wherever perpendicular faces of granite, sandstone, limestone, or any other kind of rock offered the intense challenges he and his fellow climbing devotees sought. Two decades later, witnessing Carmelita’s climbing prowess on safe indoor climbing walls filled him with unaccustomed fatherly pride.

      “We’ve both agreed,” he said. “The fact that she’s so talented is all to the good for her.”

      Until Carmelita had taken up climbing a year ago, she’d been shy and insecure, with only a handful of friends. But since establishing herself as the star of the youth climbing scene in Durango, she’d gained confidence and numerous new companions. Too many, perhaps—particularly of the older variety. But, as Chuck and Janelle repeatedly told each other, too many friends was a better problem for a teenager to have than too few.

      Back at the trailer, Chuck crowded into the front entry with Janelle, Rosie, and the cat. At the sight of the feline in Rosie’s arms, Carmelita set her phone aside and hopped down from her bunk.

      Rosie introduced Pasta Alfredo to her sister. “She’s a she. I checked.”

      “Let’s call her Fredo for short,” Carmelita suggested.

      “Okay,” Rosie agreed instantly. “Want to hold her?”

      “Not yet. We have to figure out how to take care of her first.”

      Carmelita grabbed her phone from the upper bunk and set to work, her fingers tapping the screen.

      “We should get her some milk,” Rosie suggested. “That’s what all cats want.”

      “Good idea,” Chuck said, reaching for the refrigerator handle.

      “Nope,” Carmelita said, her eyes on her phone. “It says here milk is only for kittens. It gives full-grown cats diarrhea.”

      “Yuck,” Rosie said.

      Chuck dropped his hand from the refrigerator.

      “It says canned tuna fish is okay in place of cat food,” Carmelita continued.

      “We’ve got that.” Janelle slipped past Chuck and opened the food cabinet.

      “Plus some water,” Carmelita said.

      “Will do.” Janelle pulled a can of tuna from the cupboard and turned to the sink.

      “What about a bed?” Rosie asked, cradling the cat. “I bet she’s really tired from being outside and running away from all the foxes and coyotes so she wouldn’t get eaten up.”

      Carmelita slid her fingertip down her phone, scrolling. “It says a towel would be okay for a pad, but a fleece blanket is best. And that they like to sleep up off the ground.”

      “Oh, oh, oh!” Rosie crowed. “She can have the fleece blanket on my bed. And she can lay on my bed, too. It’s above the floor.” She turned to Janelle. “Okay, Mamá?”

      “I guess,” said Janelle. “She has to sleep somewhere.” She set out two bowls on the counter next to the sink.

      Carmelita tugged the red pile blanket from Rosie’s lower bunk, folded it in quarters, and arranged it on the foot of the bed. As Carmelita stepped away from the layered blanket, Pasta Alfredo leapt from Rosie’s arms.

      “Wow!” Rosie stumbled backward. “She can fly!”

      The cat landed on the blanket and immediately began ripping at the fleece with her front claws.

      Chuck moaned. “She’s tearing it apart.”

      Janelle said, “With purpose, though. It looks like she knows what she’s doing.”

      “Yeah,” Rosie said. “See? She’s making a round spot.”

      Sure enough, the cat created a perfect circle of raised pile with her claws, then settled atop it.

      “You’re right,” Chuck admitted grudgingly. “She made her bed and now she’s lying in it, too.”

      Janelle opened the can of tuna. The trailer filled with the smell of fish.

      Chuck squeezed his nostrils between thumb and finger. “Ugh,” he said to the girls.

      “It’s just fishiness.” Rosie gave him a shove. “Geez.”

      On the blanket, Pasta Alfredo settled her head on her paws and closed her eyes.

      Rosie took Chuck’s hand and whispered, “She’s more tired than she is hungry.”

      Chuck nodded. “It does seem like she’s happy to be indoors.”

      Carmelita looked up from her phone. “She’ll need a litter box. It says we can use a cardboard box and tear some paper into strips until we get some real kitty litter.”

      Chuck said to Rosie, beside him, “We’ll have to check with everyone in the campground to find out if anybody’s missing her—the sooner the better.”

      His phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked the number on its screen.

      “It’s Sanford,” he told Janelle.

      As he put the phone to his ear, the vision of the dead woman’s hand and forearm, protruding from beneath toppled Landscape Arch, came flooding back to him.

      7

      Chuck and Janelle met the chief ranger at Devil’s Garden Trailhead, outside the entrance to the campground. Three hours had passed since Janelle’s phoned-in report that Landscape Arch had collapsed, taking a woman to her death along with it. Other than the national park and emergency vehicles, the Devil’s Garden parking lot was empty.

      Sanford stamped mud from his black leather boots onto the wet pavement and eyed the quiet parking area. “I’ve closed the park, at least for the next few hours.”

      He ran Chuck and Janelle through a series of chronological questions. In response, they described the sound they’d heard while in the trailer, and what they’d encountered when they tracked the source of the sound to the collapsed arch.

      When the chief ranger completed his questioning, Chuck asked, “Did the loader manage to lift the rock?”

      “Barely.”

      “And?”

      Sanford pushed his glasses up his nose. “The body was crushed beyond recognition. Her body, that is. Gender is clear enough, along with the fact that she is—or was—a runner. Caucasian. Slight build. Young. Brown hair, no gray. No identification on her, not even a phone. Out for a morning jog, apparently.”

      Janelle’s brow furrowed. “In the middle of the storm?”

      “You know Moabites. They have to get their workouts in no matter what.”

      Chuck asked, “She’s a local, then?”

      “She almost certainly is, or was. She didn’t drive into the park. She probably left her car along the highway, outside the park boundary to the west. She would have taken one of the unofficial trails leading into the park from there. I’ve got a couple of people retracing her route. Should be easy to follow in the mud.”

      “Seems she knew where she was headed.”

      “To the arch? I’d expect so.”

      “She’d have been early enough to go out onto it before any tourists showed up on Devil’s Garden Trail and spotted her doing it.”

      “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was a regular at it. More and more people are sneaking onto the arches these days. They claim they feel special energy or something when they’re prancing around on them.”

      “She didn’t take the thumper truck into account, though.”

      “Based on the location of her body, she

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