Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
The woods were quiet.
Too quiet.
Wind whispered through the pines now and then, brushing branches together, but otherwise it was just the crunch of boots over dried leaves as Sam, Jo, and Kevin followed the narrow trail in single file.
Lucy ranged ahead, nose low, tail working in quick, tight sweeps. Every few steps she paused, checked the air, then moved on with that focused, methodical trot Sam knew meant she was locked in.
A hiker waited where the trail widened, arms wrapped around himself like he was cold, though the air wasn’t. Mid-thirties, windbreaker, decent boots. His face had that greenish edge people got when the world had just shown them something they weren’t built for.
Sam stopped in front of him. “You’re the one who called it in?”
The man nodded fast. “Yeah. I—I was walking the loop, took a shortcut off-trail, and…” He swallowed, Adam’s apple jumping. “He’s just there. I didn’t touch anything. I swear.”
“I appreciate you staying put,” Sam said. “Head back to the trailhead. Officers will meet you there, take your statement.”
The man latched onto the instruction like a lifeline. “Okay. Yeah. Okay.” He turned and hurried away, boots clumsy on the uneven ground.
Sam let out a slow breath and moved on.
The body lay just beyond the tree line, facedown, partially brushed over with leaves. Not enough to hide it. Just enough to suggest someone had tried and stopped.
Jo dropped to a crouch beside it, snapping on gloves. Kevin already had his phone up, snapping a series of shots from different angles, the faint click of the camera oddly loud in the stillness.
Sam hung back a few steps. Not because he couldn’t handle a body—he’d seen more than he cared to count—but because the scene needed to breathe first. Let Jo and Kevin do their jobs. Let Lucy talk in her own language.
He turned slightly, keeping one eye on the body and one on the dog.
Lucy had given the body a cursory sniff, then peeled away. Whatever brought the man here, it wasn’t centered on the spot where he’d ended up. She circled outward in widening loops, nose twitching, tail going from wag to metronome.
Sam trusted her.
He let her work.
The victim looked late thirties. Dark jeans, button-down shirt, a little wrinkled like it had seen a long day before today. No obvious blood pooling around him, no spray on the nearby trunks, no torn-up ground to suggest a fight.
Jo eased back a sleeve, studying the skin. “Not much lividity. He hasn’t been lying here long.”
Kevin leaned in for another photo. “So we’re looking at a dump site, not a murder scene.”
“Looks that way,” Jo said. “Whoever killed him brought him in from somewhere else.”
Sam nodded. That made the clothes more important than usual. Fibers. Transfer. Whatever the killer brushed against on the way in and out could be clinging to the fabric.
They just had to find it.
A sharp huff broke his focus.
Lucy.
She’d gone still a few feet away, ears forward, gaze pinned on a low bush. Her nose hovered an inch off the ground, then slid toward something caught in the twigs.
Sam followed her line, stepping in. He crouched and pushed aside a crust of dry leaves.
A scrap of fabric clung to a branch, snagged and twisted.
Dark. Smooth. Looked like it had come off something expensive, not flannel or hiking gear.
Sam slipped an evidence bag from his belt. “Got something.”
Jo rose, brushing leaf bits off her knees. “What is it?”
He held the bag up once the fabric was inside. “Somebody caught their clothes on the way out.”
Kevin frowned. “Means they were moving fast.”
“Or hauling dead weight,” Jo said. “Literally.”
Sam looked down at Lucy. “Good girl.”
Her tail flicked once, but her body stayed taut. She wasn’t done.
She turned sharply and pulled away from the main cluster of trees, nose dragging a line in the air. Sam followed, keeping close but not crowding her.
She led him about thirty feet past the body, off the faint trail the hiker had mentioned.
Then she stopped.
Her nose hovered just above the ground. She inhaled, then looked up at him, eyes bright, waiting.
Sam crouched again. The ground here told a different story. Leaves were pressed flat in an uneven oval. Bare dirt showed through in scuffed patches where the top layer had been scraped or dragged aside.
Like something heavy had been set down.
Not just anywhere.
Here.
Right here.
His stomach tightened. This was where the body first touched ground.
“Jo. Kevin,” he called.
They came over, Kevin lowering his camera, Jo already scanning the disturbed area with a crime-scene eye.
Jo let out a slow breath. “So the hiker stumbled on the second spot. This was the first.”
“Looks that way,” Sam said.
Jo nudged a flattened patch with her toe, careful not to disturb more than they had to. “So what does that tell us?”
Sam exhaled through his nose, mind tracing possibilities. “Tells us our guy brought the body here and waited. Maybe to make sure he wasn’t seen. Maybe for someone else to show.”
Kevin shifted his weight. “Which means…?”
Sam glanced down at Lucy. She watched him, steady and intent.
“Which means he wasn’t alone,” Sam said. “Not the whole time.”
Lucy’s ears flicked at his tone, as if she agreed.
Lucy found it.
Jo wouldn’t have spotted it on her own—not buried under the blanket of dead leaves, not with everyone pulled toward the obvious focal point of the body. But Lucy rarely missed much.
The K9 had drifted a little past where Sam and Kevin were working, nose sweeping slow and deliberate. Then she stopped, muscles going still, ears pointed forward.
She pawed once at the ground, then backed up and turned, fixing Jo with a keen, expectant look.
Jo knew that look.
“Alright, let’s see,” she murmured, moving over. She knelt beside Lucy and brushed aside the leaves where the paw had landed.
Her fingers hit something solid.
She froze.
It was small, half-swallowed by dirt. Not much to look at.
She swallowed and lifted it carefully.
An earring.
The design was unusual - an engraving with a broken chain with a single, intact link shaped like an eye.. The kind of thing someone would notice. The kind of thing that meant something to whoever wore it.
Jo turned it over in her gloved fingers. The metalwork was intricate, deliberate. Not costume jewelry you’d pick up anywhere.
Jo glanced toward the others. Kevin was still working the perimeter around the body, camera clicking. Sam stood a little off to the side, radio at his shoulder, calling in forensics and securing the scene. Neither of them was looking her way.
The earring lay far enough from the dump site that it could’ve been nothing.
Wrong direction from the scuffed earth, not on the line anyone hauling a body would have taken.
People lost stuff in the woods all the time—hikers, kids, half the town cutting through to save five minutes.
It might not have anything to do with the man in the leaves.
But something about it felt wrong. Too specific. Too unusual to be random.
She exhaled and slid it into an evidence bag. Chain of custody mattered. The case mattered. Let the lab figure out if it connected.
Lucy huffed softly beside her, as if reminding her of the present moment. Jo reached up and scratched behind the dog’s ear. “Good girl.”
Lucy accepted the praise with a quiet wag of her tail, then turned her attention back to the woods, nose working again.
Jo barely noticed. Her thoughts were already cataloging the find, running through possibilities.
“You good?”
Jo blinked and looked up.
Kevin had stepped closer, boot toes just inside her peripheral vision. He watched her with an amused tilt to his mouth, but there was a question behind it.
“Yeah,” Jo said. “Just thinking.”
“Dangerous habit,” Kevin said lightly, but he held her gaze for a second longer than usual before turning back toward the body.
She glanced at Lucy. The dog was still watching her, head slightly cocked, like she was waiting for the next command.
Jo dropped her eyes to the evidence bag in her hand, the odd eye-shaped post visible through the plastic.
Something about it bothered her.
She just couldn’t put her finger on what.