Page 72 of Silent Bones

“Looks like our guy was still investigating,” she said.

Noah bagged the meth. The notebook. The photo. Miles’ phone.

He stood in the center of the room, looking back at the couch.

“If this was an OD,” he said, “it’s not clean. No prep mess. No junkie clutter. No usage history we know of.”

“Yeah,” McKenzie said. “Staged, maybe?”

Noah nodded. “Someone wanted it to look sloppy. But nottoosloppy. Just enough to pass as tragic.”

He pulled out his phone and called it in, not as an overdose, but as a suspicious death.

The lightsin the autopsy suite hummed faintly, cutting a sterile line down the center of the tile. Noah stood at the foot of the stainless-steel table while Addie Chambers peeled off her gloves and reached for the dictation mic.

Miles’ body lay still, a white sheet folded below his sternum. The kind of silence in the room felt heavier than death. Like something hadn’t finished saying what it came to say.

Addie looked tired, her hair tied up in a loose knot. Her blue gown was streaked faintly from the first cut.

“Toxicology’s pending,” she said, adjusting the mic. “But just looking at him, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Noah folded his arms. “Why?”

“The needle’s placement.” She gestured toward the inside of Miles’ elbow. “No previous track marks. No fumbling. No bruising like you’d see if someone was chasing a vein. Whoever injected him knew what they were doing, or he wasn’t conscious when it happened.”

Callie stood near the sink, arms crossed tight. “So you think it was suicide?”

Addie shook her head. “Doubt it.”

Noah looked down at the pale curve of Miles’ neck. “Anything else?”

She stepped to the opposite side of the table and gently tilted his head, then ran a gloved finger just beneath the hairline.

“Here.” She pointed. “Faint bruising at the base of the skull. Not defensive. More like a grip. Someone might’ve held him down. Could’ve been support... could’ve been restraint.”

“Could’ve been a kill.”

Addie met his eyes. “Could’ve been.”

Noah didn’t say anything for a long moment.

He thought of Miles. Rambling, cocky, full of ideas. He’d been annoying, sure. But he’d been alive. Focused.Obsessed, maybe, but pointed in a direction. Most people weren’t. That wasn’t a suicidal man. Though it was possible he was a new user and had just overdosed, the bruising was telling.

Addie gave him a moment, then peeled off her gloves and disposed of them with a snap. “You’ll have the preliminary tox in about a week, full tox will take a couple of months. Maybe sooner if I push the lab.”

“Push it.”

Back in the hallway,they found McKenzie leaning against the tiled wall, flipping through the notebook they’d recovered from the apartment.

Noah took it from him and thumbed through the pages.

Miles’ handwriting was barely legible, cramped and fast, like he was trying to outrun the thought before it escaped. Notes were scattered across the margins: campsite sketches, names, question marks scratched besideVoss,Strudwell, andHawkins.

Callie leaned in as he flipped to the next page, a fur sample taped inside with a strip of athletic tape. Beneath it, a caption:“Doesn’t burn like natural hair. Synthetic? Or altered?”

Then another, partly scribbled out:

“What if Bigfoot is a myth?”