Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
The funeral home’s black Suburban pulled into the lot just as the sun cleared the tree line. Death didn’t care about beautiful mornings. Death just kept showing up, demanding attention, refusing to wait for a more appropriate hour.
Lily unfolded herself from the driver’s seat with the easy grace of a woman who’d long ago stopped apologizing for taking up space.
Nearly six feet of dark hair and endless legs, curves that made the shapeless scrubs she wore look like high fashion.
She’d barely closed the door before Cole was moving toward her, that lanky stride eating up the distance between them.
“Hey.” He said it soft, just for her, one hand coming up to rest on her hip like it belonged there.
“Hey yourself.” She smiled up at him. “You look like hell.”
“Dumpsters and heat aren’t a sexy combo like the TV shows make them.” He leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to the top of her head, easy and natural as breathing. “You eat anything yet?”
“Coffee.”
“That’s not food.”
“It’s a food group. Or it should be.”
He shook his head, but there was warmth in it. “I can stop by and bring you lunch once we get a break.”
“You and I both know you’re not going to get a break. But it’s the thought that counts.
“I’ll remember that next time I forget something.”
She laughed—a low, rich sound that made a couple of the deputies glance over—and pushed him gently back toward the crime scene. “Go. Detect things. I’ll handle the body.”
The passenger door of the Suburban opened, and Sheldon emerged into the sunlight like a creature who’d taken a wrong turn out of his burrow.
He was pocket sized—a few inches over five feet, soft around the middle—with sandy hair going thin on top and glasses so thick they made his eyes look like something you’d find at the bottom of a pond.
His army-green coveralls were already showing sweat stains under the arms, and he squinted against the glare like it had personally offended him.
“Did you know,” he announced, fumbling his glasses up his nose, “that the average American produces four point four pounds of trash per day? That’s nearly a ton and a half per year. Though interestingly, the decomposition rate varies significantly based on—”
“Sheldon.” Lily’s voice was gentle, patient. “Maybe not right now, okay?”
He blinked at her, then at the crime-scene tape, then at the body bag on the ground. Something clicked behind those magnified eyes. “Oh. Right. Because of the…” He gestured vaguely toward the dumpster. “The situation.”
“The situation,” Lily agreed. She put a hand on his shoulder, steering him toward the gurney the way you’d guide a puppy away from traffic. “Why don’t you help me get set up?”
“I can do that. I’m very good at setting up.
Mother says I have excellent organizational skills, which is apparently genetic because my father was an accountant before he left.
Did you know that forty-one percent of first marriages end in divorce?
The percentage goes up for second and third marriages, which seems counterintuitive, but—”
“Sheldon.” Still gentle. Still patient. “Gurney.”
“Gurney. Yes. Focusing now.”
I watched them work—Lily directing with calm efficiency, Sheldon orbiting her like a moon that couldn’t quite find its trajectory. She never snapped at him, never let frustration creep into her voice. She just kept guiding, redirecting, channeling all that anxious energy into something useful.
It was a gift. One I didn’t have the patience for most days.
“We’re going to need help with the lift,” I said. “He’s a big guy.”
Jack nodded and turned toward the crime-scene tape. “Riley, Plank—give them a hand loading.”
The two deputies headed our way. Riley moved with the loose-limbed ease of someone comfortable in his own skin, while Plank still had that slightly green tinge around his edges from his time in the dumpster. But neither of them hesitated. Good men. The kind who did the hard work without complaint.
The gurney wheels clattered against the asphalt as Lily locked them into place beside the body bag. Sheldon hovered nearby, his hands twitching at his sides.
“Did you know,” he said to no one in particular, “that the human body loses approximately twenty-one grams of weight at the moment of death? It was measured in a 1907 experiment by Duncan MacDougall, though his methodology has been widely criticized. He only used six subjects, which is hardly a representative sample size—”
“Sheldon.” Lily handed him a strap. “Hold this.”
He took it, clutching it to his chest like a lifeline. “Holding. I’m holding it.”
“Good. Keep holding it.”
Riley and Plank positioned themselves on either side of the body bag while Lily crouched at the head. The morning sun beat down on all of them, relentless, turning the parking lot into a griddle.
“On three,” Lily said. “One, two—”
They lifted. Two hundred and twenty pounds of dead weight rose from the asphalt, transferred to the gurney with the efficiency of people who’d done this too many times before. Sheldon held his strap with white-knuckled intensity, his face going red from the effort of keeping the gurney steady.
“Got him,” Riley said.
Lily was already securing the straps, her movements quick and sure. “Sheldon, you can let go now.”
He didn’t let go.
“Sheldon.”
“Right. Letting go.” He released the strap and stepped back, pulling a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket to mop at his forehead.
“That was heavier than I expected. Though I suppose decomposition gases could add to the overall mass. Did you know that the average adult male contains enough gas postmortem to—”
“Why don’t you get the doors?” Lily suggested, nodding toward the Suburban.
“Doors. Yes. I can do doors.” He scurried toward the vehicle, nearly tripping over a crack in the pavement. “Door opening is actually a very underrated skill. There’s a whole science to the timing of it—”
The rear doors of the Suburban swung open, and Riley and Plank maneuvered the gurney into position. The body slid into the dim interior with a soft metallic whisper, and then they were closing the doors, sealing him away for the trip back to the funeral home.
Lily stripped off her gloves and tossed them into a biohazard bag. “I’ll get him logged in and prepped. Have everything ready for you when you get back.”
“Shouldn’t be long. We’re just going to canvass the immediate area, see if anyone recognizes his description.”
She nodded, already moving toward the driver’s side. “I’ll pull the x-ray equipment and get the table set up.”
“Perfect.”
Riley and Plank climbed into the back of the Suburban, folding themselves into the space on either side of the gurney. Sheldon was already in the passenger seat, his handkerchief now being used to clean his glasses in small, obsessive circles.
Lily paused before getting in, her eyes finding Cole across the parking lot. He was talking to one of the uniforms, his Stetson pushed back on his head, but he must have felt her gaze because he looked up and winked at her.
Then she was behind the wheel, the engine turning over, and I watched the black Suburban with its white magnetic signs pull out of the lot and disappear into morning traffic.
Somewhere in that vehicle, a young man I didn’t know was beginning his final journey. In a few hours, he’d be on my table, and I’d learn everything his body had to tell me. Every wound, every bruise, every secret written in tissue and bone.
But first, I needed to find out who he’d been while he was still alive.
I stripped off my coveralls—the thick canvas had done its job, keeping the worst of the scene off my clothes underneath, but the material was damp with sweat and smelled like death and garbage.
I stuffed them into a biohazard bag and tossed it in the back of Jack’s Tahoe.
The lanyard with my coroner’s ID went around my neck, the laminated card settling against my chest—King George County Coroner’s Office, my unsmiling photo, my name in block letters.
“You ready?”
Jack’s hand found the small of my back, warm and steady. I leaned into it for just a moment—letting myself take the comfort he was offering—then straightened and nodded.
“Yeah.”
Cole ambled over, his Stetson pulled low against the sun that had turned from brutal to punishing in the hours we’d been working the scene.
It had to be close to ten by now—the morning had disappeared into evidence collection and body extraction and the endless documentation that turned a death into a case.
“I’ll take the nail salon and the check-cashing place,” he said. “Y’all take the vape shop and the Chinese place.” He nodded toward the strip mall, where a few more cars had appeared in the parking lot as businesses prepared to open. “Meet back here in an hour?”
“Make it forty-five,” Jack said. “I’ve got a council meeting at one o’clock I just can’t wait to be at.”
Cole chuckled. “Copy that.”
He headed off with that lanky, unhurried stride, and Jack and I followed a few paces behind.
The strip mall looked different now that the sun had climbed high enough to burn away the early morning shadows.
The beige stucco showed every water stain, every crack, every place where the cheap construction had started to give up the ghost. The parking lot was filling up—a minivan outside the nail salon, a couple of sedans near the check-cashing place, a delivery truck idling by the Chinese restaurant’s back entrance.
The Chinese place was called Lucky Dragon, according to the faded red lettering on the window. A paper sign taped to the glass announced LUNCH SPECIAL $6.99 in handwritten marker, and through the smudged window I could see someone moving around inside, getting ready for the day.
Jack held the door for me, and the smell hit us both at the same time—hot oil, garlic, ginger, and something sweeter underneath. Soy sauce, maybe. Or the syrupy glaze they put on the orange chicken.