Chapter 1 #2
I pressed my free hand against my stomach—flat still, no sign yet of the secret growing beneath the surface.
Ten weeks. In another month I wouldn’t be able to hide it anymore.
In another month, everyone would know, and the questions would start.
Could I do this job pregnant? Could I stand over an autopsy table with a baby pressing against my bladder?
Could I kneel in blood and mud at crime scenes while my body was busy building something new?
I didn’t know. But I knew I wasn’t ready to stop. Not yet. And that terrified me in ways I didn’t want to examine too closely.
We crossed the bridge into King George Proper, the county’s largest town, home to the naval base at Dahlgren and King George University.
This was where bars and cheap apartments sprouted up to serve the steady influx of military personnel and college students who cycled through on two-year rotations, a catchall for people who hadn’t figured out where to go next.
It wasn’t traditional like Bloody Mary with its multigenerational farming families and old Victorian homes.
Wasn’t artsy like Newcastle with its cobblestone streets and bohemian vibe, or dripping with tech money like Nottingham where the mini Silicon Valley had swallowed whatever small-town character used to exist. King George Proper was transient.
Temporary. A place where people worked and drank and grabbed fast food on their lunch breaks while waiting for their lives to take them somewhere else.
The old Miller’s Auto Body sat at the far end of a tired stretch of commercial property, hunkered down like it was ashamed of itself.
A squat concrete rectangle with bay doors gone rust-orange and windows so grimy they’d turned the color of old cataracts.
Whatever sign had once hung above the entrance had faded past legibility years ago, leaving just a ghost of letters that might have spelled anything.
The place had been closed since before I’d taken over as coroner—left to rot while the county argued about zoning variances and commercial developers circled like patient vultures waiting for the property values to hit rock bottom.
The strip mall next door was newer, built in that soul-crushing style of beige stucco and tinted glass that seemed designed to be forgotten the moment you looked away.
A nail salon, a vape shop, a Chinese takeout place with a flickering neon sign, and one of those check-cashing joints that preyed on people too poor or too desperate to have bank accounts.
All closed now, their storefronts dark, but the parking lot lights were on—pale orange circles pooling across empty asphalt like something had bled out and left stains.
The dumpster sat behind Miller’s, right where the two properties met in a no-man’s-land of cracked concrete and weeds pushing through the seams. I could see the crime-scene tape from the road, bright yellow against the gray pre-dawn light, that cheerful color that always seemed obscene at murder scenes.
Two patrol cars were parked at angles near the tape, their light bars dark but their presence unmistakable.
A third vehicle—a white pickup truck, unmarked, mud splattered, with a dent in the rear bumper I recognized—told me Cole had beaten us here.
Jack pulled in and killed the engine. The sudden silence felt heavy, expectant. And for a moment, neither of us moved.
He squeezed my hand once and then let go. When I looked over, the sheriff had already settled behind his eyes, the last traces of the man who’d made me laugh in the shower tucked away somewhere safe where the job couldn’t touch him.
We were both moving then, out of the car, into the heat, walking toward death like we’d done a hundred times before.
* * *
The smell hit me before I’d cleared the tape.
Sweet and ripe and unmistakable. That perfume of decomposition that you never forgot once you’d learned it.
The human body, breaking down, releasing gases and fluids in its final transformation from person to evidence.
Underneath it, the sour funk of rotting food, the chemical bite of old motor oil and something astringent that might have been cleaning solvent, and that other smell, the one that always lurked at scenes like this.
The copper-penny scent of blood, even when you couldn’t see it.
Even when it had dried and darkened and seeped into places you’d never think to look.
My stomach clenched. The morning sickness had been merciful these last couple of days, but there were certain smells that instantly made me vomit. Apparently decomp was on the list.
I breathed through my mouth, short, shallow breaths that bypassed most of my olfactory system, and kept walking.
The trick wasn’t to ignore the smell. That was impossible.
The trick was to compartmentalize it, to file it away in the part of your brain that dealt with professional necessities rather than the part that wanted to gag and run.
Just for good measure, I took the jar of Vicks out of my bag and dabbed some under my nose—an old trick rookies used before they got used to the smell.
Cole was standing near the dumpster, his Stetson pushed back on his head at that angle that meant he’d been here awhile.
A cup of gas station coffee steamed in one hand, the cardboard sleeve printed with the logo of the Quik-Mart.
Even at this hour, in this heat, with a dead body ten feet away, he looked like he’d stepped out of an old Western.
He wore Wranglers that fit well enough to explain why he was never without female attention, cowboy boots, a white button-down shirt beneath a lightweight vest that didn’t quite hide the holster on his belt or the badge glinting beside it.
Cole had that old-west gunslinger look to him—lanky build, all legs, broad shoulders tapering to narrow hips.
He was around forty but wearing it well, with dark blond hair freshly cut and a face that was simply, undeniably handsome.
He’d left a trail of broken hearts across three counties before Lily Jacobs came along and knocked him sideways.
His slow, lanky gait as he walked toward us matched the drawl that made people underestimate him, at least until they found themselves across from him in an interrogation room, realizing too late that his mind was sharper than his lazy demeanor suggested.
“Doc,” he said, nodding at me. “Hell of a way to start a Wednesday.”
“What’ve we got?” Jack asked, already scanning the perimeter with that rapid tactical assessment he’d never lost from his military days.
“Male victim.” Cole took a sip of his coffee, unhurried, like we were discussing the weather instead of murder.
“Mid-twenties, big guy. Someone wrapped him in a blanket and stuffed him in the dumpster headfirst. Sanitation driver found him about an hour ago.” He jerked his chin toward a man sitting on the bumper of one of the patrol cars, a shock blanket around his shoulders despite the heat.
“Ray Tolliver. He’s got twenty-three years on this route.
Says he’s seen plenty of weird stuff in dumpsters over the years—dead dogs, drug paraphernalia, once a whole crate of what turned out to be stolen electronics. But nothing like this.”
I looked over at Tolliver. He was a big man, heavyset, with dark brown skin gone ashy gray beneath the parking lot lights and hands that wouldn’t stop shaking even wrapped around the cup of coffee someone had given him.
His uniform shirt was sweat stained and untucked, and his eyes had that thousand-yard stare you saw on people who’d just had their understanding of the world fundamentally rearranged.
“He touch anything?” Jack asked.
“Says he lifted the lid and saw the blanket hanging out. Pulled the blanket back to check and got an eyeful of what was underneath.” Cole shrugged one shoulder, a minimal movement that somehow conveyed a wealth of sympathy.
“Dropped it like it burned him and called 911. Hasn’t stopped shaking since.
Riley’s been with him, but I don’t think we’re going to get much more from him. Man’s in shock.”
Twenty-three years of hauling other people’s garbage, and this was the morning that would define all the rest of his mornings.
I’d seen it before. Some people recovered from moments like this.
They built scar tissue over the memory and eventually went back to their lives, a little warier, a little more aware of the darkness that could hide in ordinary places.
Others never did. They quit their jobs, started drinking, and jumped at shadows for the rest of their days.
I hoped Ray Tolliver would be one of the lucky ones. But that wasn’t something I could control.
I set my medical bag on the ground and pulled out gloves.
The dumpster loomed ahead of me, a dark green metal box spotted with rust along the bottom and old graffiti on one side, the paint too faded to read.
The lid was propped open with a length of two-by-four that someone had wedged into place.
From where I stood, I could see the corner of fabric hanging over the edge, blue and quilted, the cheap polyester fill of a moving blanket you’d buy at a hardware store for fifteen dollars and throw away when you were done.
Only someone hadn’t thrown this one away. Someone had wrapped a body in it and stuffed it in with the garbage.
Lieutenant Daniels headed up the CSI team.
She was already working the perimeter, her camera clicking in steady rhythm as she documented everything.
Her braids were pulled back in a neat ponytail, the new blond additions catching the first hint of dawn light, and her tawny eyes moved methodically across the scene with the calm competence of someone who’d processed more crime scenes than most cops would see in a career.