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“Kev said he was about to radio you. Call just came in... Oh man.”

“What you got?”

“Head out to Kincaid Lake. Hikers found a body in the woods.”

THE BODY WASN’T ON STATE PARK LAND.Although the hikers had started out in the park, they’d strayed from the path and ended up on private property. Which put jurisdiction squarely with Kincaid police.

“ME been here yet?” Eric asked the officer standing guard.

“Not yet. On his way.”

He scanned the area. A middle-aged couple he didn’t recognize huddled together under a sycamore. Must be the ones who’d discovered the body. He couldn’t touch the victim until the medical examiner had done his thing, but he’d take a cursory look at the scene and snap a few photos before interviewing the couple. Hopefully, the tree cover here had provided enough protection from Friday morning’s rain to preserve any evidence left behind—assuming this guy hadn’t been dumped more recently than that.

Eric signed the crime scene log, slipped on a pair of booties, and ducked under the tape cordoned around the area. The wind shifted, and the smell of death blasted him full on. Ugh.

Closing off any emotion, he squatted beside the body and gathered what details were obvious on the surface. Caucasian male. Tall. Probably in his early twenties. Had to have died at least a few days ago. The evenings had been cool, but the days warm, and the body was beginning to show early signs of decay and a bit of scavenging.

Looked like he’d been unceremoniously dug from a shallow grave. Probably by coyotes, if Eric had to guess. The local population had exploded over the past several years. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to have done too much damage, at least not from what he could see. One leg of the filthy jeans was shredded. Thenavy T-shirt sporting a music band he didn’t recognize seemed to be intact. Both were obviously bloodstained beneath the dried mud and dust still clinging to them.

He used his work phone to snap photos of the victim’s body and the immediate area before turning his attention to the couple. Puffy eyes and runny mascara indicated the woman had been crying. Both of them looked a bit gray.

The man straightened as he approached.

“Hello, folks. I’m Detective Thornton. You discovered the victim?”

“Yes.” The man took the lead.

“Can I get your names?”

“Mark Loesing, and this is my wife, Barb.”

Eric spent the next fifteen minutes interviewing them, but it was obvious they knew little more than he did. They were camping at the park, had gone off-trail during their early-morning hike, and stumbled across the body. They’d had to move around a bit to find cell phone signal before calling it in, then they’d returned to the scene to wait for the police to arrive. They claimed they hadn’t touched anything, for which Eric was grateful.

After getting their contact information and requesting they remain in town, he cleared them to go. Another more formal interview might be necessary later, but there was no reason to keep them at the scene.

As the couple trekked back toward the park, Eric reentered the cordoned-off area to join the ME, who’d arrived while he conducted his interview.

“Starnes.”

“Thornton,” the ME responded without looking up. “Two early morning callouts in less than a week is pushing it.”

“My apologies.”

Starnes harrumphed like Eric had killed the guy himself just to force the ME out of his office before he’d had a chance to finish his first pot of coffee.

Eric angled to see over the man’s shoulder, trying not to cast a shadow on the body in the already filtered light of the woods. “Anything of note?”

“Besides the fact that he was murdered and it didn’t happen here?”

19

Dion hitched his backpackhigher on his shoulders. Part of him wished he could have stayed at Eric’s place. He quickly squelched it. Detective Thornton had always been good to him, but he was still a cop. Even if he wanted to keep Dion more than one night before turning him over to the system, he’d change his mind in a hurry once he discovered what Dion had been up to over the last year. What he was responsible for.

His hands balled into fists. He hadn’t known.

He shouldn’t have tried to argue with the big guy. He wasn’t usually an idiot.

No, he was just a bottom-of-the-chain drug dealer who hated drugs almost as much as Detective Thornton. He grunted. Maybe he was an idiot. But his job had kept food on the table for him and Lucky when Mom blew her entire paycheck on meth. He’d never sold to her, and she never questioned where her boys’ food and clothes came from. Things were working out just fine until she’d found his stash last week. Of course she’d stolen it. All of it. Then kicked him out when he confronted her. He’d had to wipe out his meager savings to cover the loss so the three of them didn’t end up on a hit list.