It’s dark outside and I can’t shake the feeling that someone has followed me home. It’s disconcerting but not unexpected. Not after this day. I’ve been awake now for more than twenty hours and I’m bone tired after assisting a patrol officer with a call. The memory of the man from that call is what follows me, what won’t let me rest.

Echo Valley is a small jurisdiction in southwest Colorado. There are places here where time seems to thin. Where I can face any direction and see life and death caught between the upheaval that forged the San Juan mountains to the north, and the Colorado Plateau with its basin and gullies and sandstone monuments that stretches south. I feel an obligation to this land. It’s in my blood.

Death visits Echo Valley as frequently as anywhere else, I suppose, but most of the deaths here are natural. This latest one wasn’t. On the surface, it appears the wound was self-inflicted, but I’ve discovered in police work, appearances can be deceiving and it’s only a suicide when the coroner deems it so. Until that time, it has to be treated as suspicious. Evidence not gathered immediately is too often lost. I owe it to this man to determine the truth.

Daylight fades fast during the winter months, and I photographed the exterior of the scene before my partner arrived. Squint MacAllister was what my mother would have called a tall drink of water. When I’d joined the department twelve years ago, he’d been my training officer and today we’re the department’s only detectives. He sees what’s in front of us, while I often recognize what’s missing. The different perspectives make us a good team.

We worked systematically, processing the small dwelling. There’s a lot to do on such a scene: sketches, more photos, evidence collection, gunshot residue swabs, bagging the hands. Squint dusted for latents. I vacuumed trace evidence. It was a lot like cleaning house only with a log that established us as the first link in the evidentiary chain of custody.

The downtown bars were closing by the time I returned to the station to book evidence. Quinn Kirkwood, the woman who’d reported the death, waited for me in her car. I’d spoken to her once already, and despite my armful of evidence, she wanted to file a new report. I offered to call a nightshift officer for her. That led to a high-decibel earful about the nature of her complaint. Bottom line, I’ll be meeting with her later today. Until then, my focus remains on the first call.

Memories of the dead never completely fade, sometimes, like tonight, they follow you home. That’s a part of police work, too. It’s a profession that is enormously rewarding, but occasionally demands a price. Not all calls go gently into that good night. Life is messy. Plans sometimes fail, and cops don’t magically know all the answers.

I started this day in the shadow of the courthouse. I’ve lost faith in some things over the years, but I’ve never lost faith in justice. Which is why in a couple of hours, when dawn brightens a new and busy day, I’ll pull on clean clothes, shrug off my fatigue, and do my best to shed light on the darkness of a dead man’s final days.

Shadow Ridge is the first book in the NEW “Jo Wyatt” traditional mystery series, released October 6, 2020.

Death is one click away when a string of murders rocks a small Colorado town.

Echo Valley, Colorado, is a place where the natural beauty of a stunning river valley meets a budding hipster urbanity. But when an internet stalker is revealed to be a cold-blooded killer in real life the peaceful community is rocked to its core.

It should have been an open-and-shut case: the suicide of Tye Horton, the designer of a cutting-edge video game. But Detective Jo Wyatt is immediately suspicious of Quinn Kirkwood, who reported the death. When Quinn reveals an internet stalker is terrorizing her, Jo is skeptical. Doubts aside, she delves into the claim and uncovers a link that ties Quinn to a small group of beta-testers who had worked with Horton. When a second member of the group dies in a car accident, Jo’s investigation leads her to the father of a young man who had killed himself a year earlier. But there’s more to this case than a suicide, and as Jo unearths the layers, a more sinister pattern begins to emerge–one driven by desperation, shame, and a single-minded drive for revenge.

As Jo closes in, she edges ever closer to the shattering truth–and a deadly showdown that will put her to the ultimate test.

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About the author
M.E. BROWNING served twenty-two years in law enforcement and retired as a captain before turning to a life of crime fiction. Writing as Micki Browning, she penned the Agatha-nominated and award-winning Mer Cavallo mysteries, and her short stories and nonfiction have appeared in anthologies, magazines, and textbooks. As M.E. Browning, she recently began a new series of Jo Wyatt mysteries with Shadow Ridge. Visit mebrowning.com to learn more.

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