Page 3 of Dirty Liars

The CSI techs moved in with their equipment, meticulously combing every inch of carpet, checking behind furniture, and under the bed. One of them called out, “Found something!”

He held up a small brass casing with tweezers. “Twenty-two caliber. Expensive brand, not your standard ammunition.”

“Professional grade,” Jack commented, examining it without touching. “The killer missed one. He took all the other shell casings with him.”

A second tech called out from near the sliding glass doors that led to a large deck that overlooked Popes Gorge. “Door’s unlocked from the inside. Could be the killer’s exit route.”

Jack nodded and walked over to examine it, careful not to disturb any potential evidence. “Perfect escape route. No cameras on this side of the property, direct access to the wooded area behind the resort.”

I completed my preliminary examination and prepared both victims for transport. “I’ll need to get them back to the lab for the full autopsy. These bullets might tell us a lot more once I recover them.”

“The reservation was made under the names Theo and Chloe Vasilios,” Cole said, reading from his notebook. “Oliver Harris—the resort manager—said the couple checked in just after midnight. They were only booked for one night and a car was supposed to show up for them this morning to take them to the airport. The driver alerted the manager once they didn’t show up to the car.”

“Nothing unusual about their arrival?” Jack asked.

“Harris said they looked like they’d been drinking some, her more than him,” Cole said. “She was unsteady on her feet. He also said Mr. Vasilios seemed anxious to get to the room. Harris drove them here in the golf cart and a bellman followed behind with their luggage.”

“There are several suitcases still by the front door,” I said.

Jack walked the perimeter of the room again, his trained eyes missing nothing. “This was planned. The killers knew they were coming, knew the layout of this villa, and struck quickly after their arrival.”

“How’d they get in?” Cole asked. “Front door was locked when the manager came by this morning.”

“Could have been hiding inside already,” Jack suggested. “Or came in through the sliding doors off the deck.”

I finished bagging and tagging the evidence, preparing both bodies for transport back to my lab. The CSI team continued processing the scene, looking for additional shell casings, fingerprints, and any other traces the killers might have left behind.

“Birth control pills and a prescription bottle of Zoloft in her toiletry bag,” Cole reported, returning from the bathroom. “The Zoloft had Theo Vasilios’s name on it. Twenty-five milligrams.”

“Anxiety meds,” I said. “Maybe wedding jitters. But he’s at least two hundred pounds. Twenty-five milligrams is usually the starting dose when just getting acclimated to the medicine. For a guy his size, I would have started at fifty milligrams at minimum.”

“Can it affect sexual function?” Jack asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Not ideal for a wedding night.”

“But it might explain the separate rooms,” Jack said. “We need to find out everything we can about Theo and Chloe Vasilios. Their lives, their connections, their enemies. Someone wanted them dead badly enough to orchestrate this.”

“And they wanted to send a message,” I added, looking at the woman’s body bag. “The way she was killed—it feels personal.”

I took one last look around the villa. What should have been a sanctuary of love and new beginnings had become a tomb. Two lives ended before they’d truly begun their journey together. The champagne would never be drunk. The suitcases would never be unpacked. The honeymoon would forever remain in a bloody memorial. In the silence of that desecrated space, I made the same promise I always did—to speak for those who no longer could, to unravel the truth behind their violent end. To bring justice to the dead.

CHAPTERTWO

I checkedmy phone to read the text that had just come through. “Lily and Sheldon are here for retrieval.”

Lily wasn’t just Cole’s cohabitant—she was also the assistant coroner for the county. She was working part-time for me while finishing up medical school. Since I’d met her about a year ago, she’d done nothing but make my life easier. She was an amazing person, and I loved her, but I knew her time with me would be short lived. Once she finished school, she’d get a job paying a lot more than what King George County could offer. She had the kind of mind that caught details others missed, and hands steady enough to make even the most delicate incisions. I sometimes caught myself watching her work, remembering my own early days in medicine, before I’d chosen the dead over the living.

Sheldon also worked for me as my assistant funeral home director, and for the most part, he managed to make my life a little more manageable. Let’s just say Sheldon had a special talent for dealing with the dead, but when it came to the living, we were still in training mode. He’d come a long way since his fresh-out-of-mortuary-school days, though. At least he’d stopped describing the embalming process to horrified loved ones.

My job as coroner had been taking up more and more of my time over the last couple of years as the population of King George County had grown. People from the big cities had started populating the area because King George was an easy commute, but there was also a lot of land. Developers were clamoring to buy up land in King George, but Jack and the county council had done a great job of being selective in who could come in—like The Mad King and a hotel and conference center. Along with the controlled developments, there was also the hospital and a major university, along with four towns that were vastly different in size and society.

Bloody Mary, where the funeral home was located, was the smallest of the four towns. It was barely more than a crossroads with a post office and a couple of storefronts, but it had character—and characters—to spare. Newcastle had become the trendy spot for artists and small boutiques. King George Proper was a college and military town, full of bars, cheap apartments, and tract houses. Nottingham was where the money lived—an East Coast Silicon Valley—with sprawling estates and private security gates. Each had its own unique charm and challenges, and all of them fell under Jack’s jurisdiction.

It was a huge undertaking and Jack managed to make his job look easy. There were a lot of politics at play, and Jack might not want to admit it, but he could weave through the ins and outs of politics with his eyes closed. He was a natural, stepping into rooms of power with the same ease he used to calm a frightened witness. But along with the “progress” came big-city crime.

Murders took time to solve, and the victims deserved my full attention. But the demand from the funeral home was still there, and the dead and their families deserved the best service Graves Funeral Home could give them. It was a difficult balance—going between embalmings and autopsies—and one I was still trying to figure out if I was being honest. Sometimes I felt stretched between two worlds, neither of which I could neglect without serious consequences.

I used Lily and Sheldon’s arrival as a chance to leave the room and breathe in some fresh air. After more than a month of nonstop rain in King George, the weather had cleared and the temperatures had warmed. It was a beautiful sunny morning with not a cloud in the sky, the kind of day that made you forget, if only for a moment, that you’d been surrounded by death and decay just minutes before.

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