1. The Body
The Body
Vedder
“Shit.” I took the hair tie off my wrist and pulled the top half of my hair into a high ponytail. “That’s not pretty.”
Rain was falling hard, and the river rushed downstream, pooling into a little offshoot where the body floated face down along with leaves and other detritus caught in the flow.
“I haven’t even had my coffee yet.” Captain Riley Lyons was young—relatively speaking. At thirty years old, he was a single dad who ran the entirety of the Mourningkill Fire Department. Nice guy.
I went into my truck, pulled out a thermos, uncapped it, and handed him a brew.
My hair was soaked; raindrops pounded a rhythm onto my rain jacket.
“Thanks, man,” he said, accepting it and raising it in a toast. “I’ve been up all damn night.”
“Take it easy then,” I told him. “Me and the young’un here can get this done.”
We both looked at the green-in-the-gills young’un in question. Ian Gray was in the youth program. Funny kid. His sharp, upturned nose currently made him look like a drowning rat.
He was not made for any kind of service.
He did not belong within a mile of anything involving the word emergency. He folded like a road map.
The call came in at dawn on a Saturday, waking me from a restless sleep. My day only went downhill from there.
I stared at the bloated body wrapped in a Hawaiian shirt bobbing with the waves. He was halfway onto a rocky outcrop that kept him in place; I couldn’t see his face, but it looked dark. Rotted. And the smell was absolutely lovely. Like eu de sewer water. The world’s worst cologne.
I wasn’t a medical examiner, but the blackened soft tissue and the white skin made me think he’d been a floater for quite some time.
“How’d he get found?” Captain Lyons asked, hands on his hips.
He had one of those smooth-as-silk voices and was trying to make his youthful face look older with a moustache reminiscent of 70s porn.
Or maybe it was a Movember thing? I wasn’t sure, and I really didn’t feel like talking about testicles with another dude.
At least not that dude. We didn’t know each other like that.
With my old teammates? Testicles were discussed as frequently as the weather.
Not great in civilian company, though, and I didn’t know if the Captain and I were cool like that.
Whitelaw sighed. “Old Man Smithy was out fishing like always and saw something bobbing in the water. Thought it was trash, kicked it over, because you know what he’s like about people leaving trash in the wild—”
“Oh, I know!” Captain Lyons rolled his eyes, running his fingers through his black hair. “Don’t let him catch you accidentally dropping a gum wrapper. That’s a capital offense.”
I had never met Old Man Smithy. I was kinda scared now.
“He called it in and used his paddle to push it to the shoreline.” Sheriff Whitlaw tipped her wide-brimmed hat back and rubbed her forehead.
She had narrow, willow-leaf shaped eyes, a deep tan, and one of those severe, hollowed-out cheeks that came from having very, very low body fat.
And she was not a skinny woman. She probably spent all her free time throwing around some serious iron.
“He went back to fishing after I got here.”
“In this?” I asked, looking up at the gray sky.
Summer was transitioning into a very, very wet autumn.
“To Old Man Smithy, this downpour is nothing but a bit of drizzle. It takes a serious act of God to keep him off the water,” Captain Lyons said with a chuckle, loudly sipping his coffee. Looking at the body, he winced, “This is not the nicest way to go.”
The body bobbed in the water like the world’s saddest rubber ducky.
“No, it sure isn’t.” The large brim of her brown cop hat obscured her eyes as she looked down at the body, her fingers hooked into the wide utility belt that doubled the circumference of her waist thanks to her service weapon, walkie-talkie, and other various tools.
Her dark-blue clothes gave her a masculine cut, and I got the impression she liked it that way, because her makeup-free face, wide shoulders, and severe bun added a sharpness that dared a person to fuck around and find out.
“Thanks for coming, boys.” Her husky voice seemed as if it had never known an upward inflection; it was deep and a little roughened by shouting—or perhaps smoking.
She had a stressful job, so maybe it was the latter.
Then again, with her muscularity of a fitness buff, maybe she was just built that way.
Her narrow brown eyes landed on me before drifting over to my partner. She cringed. She tried to hide it, but I saw it. Just a tiny flinch, then the cover-up as she looked away from Ian’s pale, almost green, face.
Probably his first dead body.
And he couldn’t have picked a more morbid day for it.
The river, the black, soggy dirt at our feet, the rushing river—it made for a dismal vision straight out of a murder-mystery film.
And we even had a dead body to show for it.
If it weren’t for Ian looking as if he were about to puke, I’d have almost enjoyed the aesthetic.
Poor kid. Probably not what he thought he’d be doing when he signed up to be a volunteer firefighter.
“What can we do for you, ma’am?” I wiped my mouth with my hand, trying to massage away my less-than-appropriate smile at his expense.
The sheriff politely cleared her throat, likely wondering if she should ask if he was alright. Then she shook her head and turned to me, all business once again.
“Thanks for coming, gentlemen.” She nudged the brim of her hat; her strong jawline and willow-leaf shaped eyes looked right through me.
“I’m gonna need your extra hands to help me get him collected with as minimal damage as possible.
Can’t leave him in the water much longer, or we might lose more of his parts.
I already tried to fish him out, and well…
” She tugged an ziplock evidence bag from her cargo pocket.
Several strips of skin floated in the clear plastic like the most disgusting chicken strips I’d ever seen.
“I’m going to need help getting him out before he ends up getting washed downriver.
Our friends down the Hudson won’t appreciate this in their waters. ”
“Yeah, boss,” I mumbled. “I’m your huckleberry.”
“What the heck do you want me to do about this?” Ian looked terrified.
He was here for the college credits and was pretty damn arrogant about it.
Like most young men, he had already accomplished the things he hadn’t accomplished yet.
He took credit for things he’d do in the future like they were already written in stone.
He was going to college, he was going to be rich, he was going to get a great job, and change the world.
It didn’t matter that he hadn’t graduated yet.
He wanted to be treated like his future greatness wasn’t an aspiration, but a done deal.
And he definitely thought he was better than an old rube like me.
I went back to the truck, pulled a large heat blanket, and put on some latex gloves. This was going to be a disgusting task, but hey, at least no one was dying—the guy was already dead.
When I returned to the sheriff, she was standing on a rock outcropping, staring at the body still wedged between the rocks.
I couldn’t pick out any stab wounds; his head looked normal, without big, unnatural dents.
While I wasn’t a medical examiner or forensic pathologist, I liked to think I had some idea of what to look for.
Especially because I was familiar with gunshot wounds, having both inflicted them on others and having had them inflicted on me.
Out of curiosity, I asked, “See any signs of trauma?”
“Doesn’t look like it, does it?” Whitlaw answered in that rural accent that was not quite southern nor midwestern, but a weird combination that only really existed in this part of the Adirondacks.
She snapped on a fresh pair of gloves and helped me unfold the blanket as we squatted on either side of the corpse. It seemed we both slumped, not at all looking forward to this.
There was something very, very slippery about this guy, and the sheriff had already shown us the skin that had slipped right off him when she’d tried moving him on her own. If he were already breaking apart, we’d need at least one more set of hands.
“You wanna help me out here, Ian?” I said, gesturing at the middle section where we’d likely need help with twisting onto the blanket.
“You’ve got it covered.” His face scrunched in disgust. “R-R-Riley?”
“Captain Lyons,” I corrected him.
I didn’t care if these townies had known each other since they were in the cradle like Whitlaw and Lyons.
It didn’t matter that their families had been intertwined since the flood.
In a professional setting, Captain Riley Lyons deserved respect.
He was a hard worker. Ian Gray? The kid was a hard lurker. As useless as tits on a bull.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, took a deep breath that made me dizzy with the scent of a wet, dead body, and looked up. The captain, looking exhausted, hadn’t finished his coffee yet. The kid, other than being yellow-bellied, was as fresh as a daisy.
When I glanced at the sheriff, she was looking away, her fist covering her lips. I couldn’t blame her for laughing.
She straightened and was about to say something, but I beat her to the punch.
“Hey, brother,” I said, my voice stern. “Strap some gloves on and get your ass between me and Sheriff Whitlaw. Grab the dead guy’s belt. Help us flip him onto the blanket.”
He groaned like a child told to eat his peas or brush his teeth.
“He’s a good kid,” Captain Lyons mumbled. At my skeptical look, he amended, “He’s an okay kid.”
At Whitlaw’s lifted brow, he changed it again. “He’s a kid.”
I chuckled. Ian was unremarkable, he came from a rich family. Those advantages came with a golden parachute the rest of us could only dream of having.
Ian stomped his feet—literally stomped like a toddler having a tantrum—down the bank to us. I fished for gloves from one of my cargo pockets and held them out to him. He snatched them from my hand and took his damn sweet time putting them on.
Whitlaw tipped up her hat and gave me a look that said, ‘Is this guy for real?’ I shot one back, responding with, ‘Yup, unfortunately.’
Whitlaw shook her head, looking back down at the colorfully dressed corpse with a jaded stare that was no longer shocked by gruesome things.
“Mourningkill Lake has a pretty rough current. It holds things down at the bottom because of the cold, so everything kinda drifts down there.” Whitlaw answered a question I hadn’t even asked. “It’s a miracle this one floated up, to be honest.”
When Ian was good and ready, he squatted.
I held the body’s feet, Whitlaw had the shoulders, and the college kid grabbed his belt.
On the count of three, we flipped him out of the shallows; the water squished as he rolled onto his back, flopping like a dead fish and wrinkling onto the blanket as a wormy-something crawled out of a hole in his cheek.
“Jesus!” Ian said, covering his nose. “Oh my god! Oh my GOD!”
I didn’t know if the kid’s reaction was from the smell, or because the man’s entire face had been swept off. An open, triangular hole remained of his nose; the eyes were white with death. His hair might have been brown or blond.
“Hey, Jamie, it’s Whitlaw,” she said into her radio, the rain muffling her voice.
“I’m here, Sheriff.” The voice called back through the static.
“Yeah, I’m going to need someone from the county to come down.” She scratched her chin with the antenna as she looked down at the corpse, whispering, “Poor fucker.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the crackly voice answered. “I’m on it, over.”
“Thanks Jay. Out.”
She cut the communication, hooked the radio onto her belt, and pursed her lips to the side in thought as the autumn breeze pushed the scent of moldy death towards us. I rubbed the end of my nose when the smell of rot threatened to make me sneeze.
Ian dry heaved, bending over at the waist, his tongue sticking out of his mouth.
“Christ,” Whitlaw said through a long, exhausted sigh. “If you’re gonna upchuck, do it away from the body. Head up to the damn trucks.”
The rain came down harder, and puddles turned into streams pushing into the lake.
“Gonna be another flood warning.” Captain Lyons scratched his clean-shaven jaw. “Gotta get some sandbags started before the rivers spill over.”
“Yeah, it’s about that time,” Sheriff Whitlaw agreed. “When was the last time we had a big flood, eh?”
“Aw, man. I think Annie was just a baby, so ten years ago? Damn. Hard to remember I have a ten-year-old.”
“It’s hard to remember because we’re getting old. Seems like yesterday you and Midge were leading the homecoming float.” Whitlaw fondly chuckled at the memory. She bit her lip, her tone distinctly sadder when she whispered, “So much has happened...”
The two looked at Ian, who was right at the homecoming age they’d just talked about. He’d gone from green to a weird purple.
“I mean it, Gray. If you’re gonna puke, do it somewhere that won’t wash into the body.”
Ian did not listen. He turned his back, grabbed his knees, and vomited.
A total marshmallow.
But at least he hadn’t contaminated the body.
“You alright, son?” Captain Lyons asked while sipping his coffee.
“Any idea who this is?” I kicked my boot towards the body without touching it.
“Yuuuuup,” Captain Lyons said. “Damn shame.”
“We’ll need to get confirmation with DNA.” Whitlaw rose to her feet, her square shoulders tense like she anticipated a punch to the face. “But yeah, I have an idea who this is.”
“Ian, not a word of this to your parents until we get forensics back, alright?” Captain Lyons said. The kid straightened, wiping the back of his palm across his mouth. “I don’t want to get them worked up until we know for sure. And…maybe you should take the day off, too.”