Too Near the Edge

What Others are Saying
about
Too Near the Edge
:

"Osterkamp has combined elements of her
professional experience and the community of Boulder, Colorado into
a nicely crafted plot. The result is a very readable mystery that
kept me wondering who really pushed Adam off the edge of the Grand
Canyon right up to the point where the culprit was unmasked. A
winner for sure.”

--TCM Reviews

“The mystery deepens and gets more
complicated, leading to a very exciting and unexpected standoff
towards the end.”

--Armchair Interviews

“Gets hold of you from the first page and you
can’t seem to put it down. This exciting novel by Lynn Osterkamp is
recommended to anyone who loves mysteries. Throw in humor with a
paranormal twist and you have an adventure on your hands.”

--BookPleasures.com

Too Near the Edge

a novel

by

Lynn Osterkamp

Smashwords Edition

Published by:

PMI Books

Boulder, Colorado

http://www.pmibooks.com

Too Near the Edge

Copyright © 2006 by Lynn Osterkamp

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you
share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it,
or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return
to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for
respecting the author's work.

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

Smashwords edition copyright © 2011 by Lynn
Osterkamp

This book is available in print at most online
retailers.

Discover other titles by Lynn Osterkamp at
http://www.lynnosterkamp.com

“The bottom line in this case is the
difference between accidental death and a homicide is the push of a
hand.”

Deputy Brett Rye

Going over the edge at the Grand Canyon
doesn’t allow for do-overs. Rocks are hard and nature has no
airbags. In the early morning of April 15, Adam Meyer became the
first canyon fatality of the year. Later in the day, his
blood-spattered and torn bright yellow Marmot precip jacket led
rangers to his crumpled body almost 300 feet below the rim, where
one ranger vomited at the sight of Adam’s crushed skull and broken
neck. A rescue team sent to document the scene and remove the
corpse by helicopter, noted that despite the victim’s fatal
injuries, his cell phone, clutched in his right hand, remained
intact.

Adam had started the day with high hopes the
transcendent power of nature would open his heart and calm his
fears. After a fitful night’s sleep, his alarm clock woke him at
5:30 am in time for sunrise over the canyon. He pulled on jeans,
turtleneck, a fleece pullover, boots and his Marmot jacket. He put
on his backpack—packed with food, water, and a map— grabbed his
wind-proof gloves and hat, opened the cabin door and stepped out
into the icy morning.

He’d arrived at the Bright Angel Lodge cabins
in darkness the night before, so this would be his first view of
the six-million-year-old canyon. His head overflowed with
information about it—close to a mile deep, ten miles wide and 277
river-miles long. Anticipation made his gut queasy and he almost
fell stepping across the slippery parking lot behind the cabins
toward the rim trail. As he stood on the edge looking down at the
gigantic gorge, Adam became momentarily disoriented—like he was
being sucked into the opening.

He turned his focus to the individual spires
and buttes in the shadows before him and regained his equilibrium.
He had, indeed, come to the right place. The awe-inspiring view
more than met his expectations. As a burst of excitement and joy
washed through him, he wished Sharon and Nathan could be with him
to share the breath-taking sight. He loved them so much. They were
the lights of his life, and he missed them. But this was not a
vacation for Adam.

He’d come to the canyon to resolve an
unrelenting worry. First, he looked for help at home in Boulder,
Colorado—a town with more therapists and healers per square inch
than ants on a discarded candy bar. But each time he got close to
discussing his concerns, fear stopped him from disclosing any
details. Thinking about it wore him out. Every way he explored the
problem it got more complicated. Deep down, he believed he had
stumbled into pure evil. Terror was eating away at his spirit.

Even worse, his anxiety was contagious. His
preoccupations created distance between himself and his wife,
Sharon. She’d pleaded with him to tell her what was bothering him.
But he couldn’t talk to her about this, despite the intimacy they
shared. Now fear of losing her tormented him. He worried he’d
pushed her away, and neglected Nathan, who was only eight and
missed his attention. Adam needed direction in a way he never had
before. He hoped to find it here.

Friends in Boulder told him about a
homeopathic principle that works on desperation of the soul or
spirit. The principle says you can treat an undesirable condition
by choosing weather and landscape to match your mood, and immersing
yourself in it for a few hours. For example, meeting bleakness with
bleakness has a powerful cleansing effect.

He took the advice and decided to visit the
Grand Canyon. He believed nothing but the vast space of the canyon
could be a match for his huge problems and his emptiness. Perhaps
the 18-mile rim walk and the view of its spires and spaces, would
help him find his bearings.

Now he hiked slowly along the paved trail
between Bright Angel and Maricopa Point. The rising sun began to
brighten tips of pinnacles below. Gradually craggy hollows came to
life. Spellbound, he gazed at the changing patterns of light and
shadow, and absorbed the natural quiet of the canyon. Its magnetic
energy connected him to the earth. His problems shrank in the face
of the permanence and enormous size of rock formations below.

Farther along, the trail changed to an
unpaved path, some sections narrow and close to the edge with no
wall between the hiker and the chasm. Adam stopped to peer over a
3,000-foot precipice called The Abyss, where sheer rock walls
dropped steeply to the shadowy cavern bottom. Scraggly evergreen
trees clung tenaciously to hillsides, wherever they found enough
sand for their roots. Countless slag heaps of fallen rocks attested
to the restlessness of nature.

Standing at the rim in the early-morning
hush, he began to relax. It was as if the world stopped to let him
meditate.

After a few minutes scratchy noises from a
ground squirrel scampering by distracted him. Then he heard soft
sounds of footsteps on the path behind him. He turned to greet a
fellow hiker, but saw only an empty tree-lined trail. His eyes
stopped at a red and black sign immediately on his left. “Danger!”
the sign proclaimed in large block letters. “Use caution near the
edge,” the warning continued. “People die here falling from the
edge.” He peeked over the edge again and shuddered. His stomach
heaved as he imagined the long fall to the hard canyon bottom.

Suddenly, a hand struck the center of his
back, pushing him towards the yawning canyon. “Hey!” Adam yelled.
He slid across the icy path to the rim of the chasm. “Stop! Help
me!” In a futile attempt to stop the fatal fall, he grabbed at a
stunted bush to halt his skid toward the brink. For a brief moment,
he dangled over the edge, but the branches ripped out of his hands
like a kite string in the wind. “Help!” he cried, reaching into his
pocket for his cell phone in a useless attempt to make one last
contact.

Adam’s bloodcurdling screams echoed through
the canyon as he sky-dived head first toward the mighty Colorado
River 5,000 feet below. He rotated in the air five or six times,
slammed head-first into a rocky cliff, bounced off onto a ledge and
rolled to a halt on his back.

Three months later

When the phone rang on that scorching hot
Saturday morning in July, I was sitting cross-legged on my covered
front porch, gazing intently at a potted red geranium flower. I
tried to let go, to let my mind drift into frictionless flow like
Masuka had us doing in class yesterday. My eyes kind of crossed,
and the geranium took on an impressionist tone. But I couldn’t
empty my mind the way I knew I should.

Pablo kept popping up in my mind’s eye. I
could see his thick black curly hair that I love to run my hands
through, his chocolate-brown eyes, and his solid muscular
shoulders. So nice. But then, I saw his scowling face from last
night’s argument. Why didn’t he give me more respect? I wanted him
to accept my work as every bit as important and significant as his
own, but instead he focused on the parts he thought were flaky. Had
I made a huge mistake telling him about Tyler?

I wanted to refocus, get clear. Why did I
continue to let Pablo dominate my thoughts? Over the past few
years, I’d spent countless hours agonizing over our relationship.
Do I love him? Does he love me? Do we have a future together, or
should we go our separate ways as we did once before? Oops…now I
was beyond distracted.

Would I ever learn to be centered the way
Masuka is? Like many meditation teachers and devotees in Boulder,
Colorado, Masuka floats through life like a wispy cloud on a summer
day. Nothing ruffles her. In meditation class the week before, when
Bill accused her of pretending and putting on airs, Masuka smiled
gently at him and said “However you see me is what works for you
now.” Bill decided he didn’t want to see her at all. He got up and
stomped out. Masuka simply directed our attention back to the
bamboo that was our focus, and reminded us to tenderly clear our
minds of upsetting thoughts.

I wished I could be that blasé about Pablo,
but I was nowhere near that. Actually the more I thought about last
night, the more his reaction struck me as intolerant arrogance. My
anger grew until I could almost feel steam blowing out my ears.
Arghh! No way could I sit in front of this geranium anymore.
Instead of peaceful calm, energy coursed through my body like an
electric current. So when my cell phone rang, I jumped about a foot
and dropped the phone when I tried to grab it out of my pocket.

“Cleo Sims Grief Counseling,” I answered,
hoping the phone had survived.

“Hey, Cleo. I have a new client for you. You
absolutely have to help my friend Sharon, whether she wants it or
not.” I recognized the gravelly voice of my close friend Elisa, who
had a way of being sure of what would help someone else, without
giving much thought to that person’s own ideas.

“Hey, Elisa, slow down. I have enough
difficult clients without taking on people who don’t want my
help.”

“She does want it; she just doesn’t know it
yet. Anyway, she’ll be at our party tonight so I can introduce her
to you. I just wanted to make sure you’re coming.”

“Wait a minute, Elisa. Who’s Sharon? I can’t
remember you mentioning her before.” Elisa can be outrageous, but
that’s one of the things I love about her. She keeps me laughing.
And she’s a good-hearted, caring person who has helped me over and
over again when I needed someone. So I wanted to hear more about
what she wanted me to do for her friend who might not want my
help.