Page 5 of Dirty Liars

“Let’s load up the male first,” Lily said, unfolding the body bag with practiced efficiency. The sound of the zipper echoed in the quiet room. “Less mess. The female vic is going to need extra care with all that blood.”

“I’m going to head out and go catch a few hours’ sleep,” Cole said, stifling a yawn. The shadows under his eyes spoke of his all-night shift. “Call me if you need an extra set of hands. You can find Oliver Harris in his office in the main resort building.”

“Thanks for taking the call,” Jack said, clasping Cole’s shoulder briefly.

“Yeah, well, I’ll send you an invoice,” Cole said, tipping his hat, kissing Lily once more, and then heading out the door with the weary step of a man who’d seen too much death in too short a time.

“Once you get them unloaded and into the cooler y’all can take off,” I said, watching as Lily and Sheldon positioned the gurney beside the bed. “It’ll probably be a couple of hours before I can get back and start the autopsies.”

“I’d like to observe,” Lily said, her face lighting up at the prospect of more hands-on training. Her dedication to learning never ceased to impress me. “I need some more hours for this month for school, so I’ll hang around until you get back. I need to study anyway, and the funeral home is quiet.” She carefully arranged the body bag, her movements precise and respectful.

“It won’t be too quiet,” Sheldon said, his voice rising with a note of anxiety that made Jack and me exchange glances. “Victor Mobley’s viewing is tonight. I heard he was a Hells Angel. Emmy Lu said riders have come in all the way from California to see him laid to rest. Forty-three motorcycles by her last count. Did you know that Hells Angels was founded in 1948 in California? They actually trademarked their name and logo. It’s one of the most aggressively protected trademarks in the?—”

“Emmy Lu has better information than my dispatchers,” Jack interrupted, shaking his head with a mixture of amusement and resignation. Emmy Lu had an uncanny network of sources that put most intelligence agencies to shame. “About a hundred bikers rode into town around midnight last night. Wanda Baker said her B&B is full for the weekend, and so is the D&Q Motel. The rest of them are at the hotels in King George.”

Baker Bed and Breakfast and the D&Q Motel were the only places to stay in Bloody Mary close to where the funeral home was located. D&Q stood for Drawn and Quartered, but locals had been calling it the D&Q for several decades as to not scare off potential business. The original owners had thought the macabre name would be eye catching. They’d been right, but not in the way they’d hoped.

“Maybe I should help out with the viewing,” I said, looking warily at Sheldon as he fumbled with the gurney straps. His hands were trembling slightly, his normally pale face even whiter at the prospect of hosting a funeral home full of outlaw bikers. He looked like a bikers’ favorite target—soft, nervous, the kind of person who might faint if someone said boo. “Just in case things get out of hand.”

“He should be fine,” Jack assured me, but I could see the slight crease between his brows that appeared whenever he was worried about something. “Outlaw bikers live by a code. And the death of one of their own means there’s a certain standard of behavior until the burial is over. But once he’s in the ground is when we’ll need to be on guard. They’ll hit the bars and start looking for trouble. The sooner we can escort them out of town the better.”

“I’m thinking about getting a tattoo,” Sheldon said out of the blue. “One of my friends has a full sleeve and the ladies are all over him whenever we go to the bars. Do you think I should get a sleeve?” He flexed his pudgy arm experimentally, as if imagining the artwork that might adorn it.

The question was directed at Lily, but Jack and I stopped in our tracks to listen to the conversation, and I noticed a couple of the CSI techs were listening intently as well, their evidence collection momentarily forgotten.

Bless Lily’s heart. She was always unfailingly kind, even when presented with the most absurd scenarios. She paused in her work, giving Sheldon her full attention. “I thought you hated needles?”

“That’s true,” Sheldon said, his eyes wide behind his glasses, blinking rapidly as the memory surfaced. “Maybe I shouldn’t. Or maybe I could do anesthesia. They could put me completely under while they do the work.”

“Also a needle,” she reminded him gently, the way one might explain something to a child. “And it seems risky. You never know what might happen to you if you go under in a tattoo parlor.”

“That’s true,” he said, nodding vigorously. “That happened to me once when I went to a palm reader in New Orleans. I woke up two days later in a cemetery with no memory of how I got there. Just my underwear and one sock. I still have dreams about it sometimes.”

“Good Lord,” Jack whispered, leaning close to me so only I could hear. “It’s a miracle he made it to adulthood. I still can’t believe you let him out in the field.”

“The social interactions have been good for him,” I said, watching Sheldon with a mix of amusement and concern as he recounted his New Orleans adventure to a captivated Lily. “He’s really come a long way. Not to mention how much we’ve all improved when we play Trivial Pursuit. Besides, he’s got a good heart. And in our line of work, that counts for a lot.”

Jack’s fingers brushed against mine briefly, a small gesture of agreement. In the midst of death, surrounded by the remnants of violence, these small moments of connection—of normality and even humor—were what kept us human. They were reminders that even in the darkest places, there was still room for light.

CHAPTERTHREE

Jackand I left Lily and Sheldon and the crime-scene techs and made our way back to the main resort. As we wound our way through the golf cart path in Jack’s truck, I noticed other villas hidden in the trees.

“These other villas are pretty far away from where our victims were found,” I said. “If they’re even occupied I’m not sure they’d have heard anything. The waterfalls would probably muffle the sound.”

“It’d be a slim chance anyone heard anything,” Jack agreed. “Maybe if the wind was blowing just right and carried the sound.”

“This property is huge,” I said. “Hard to contain since it backs up to a national forest on one side and the Potomac on the other. You can’t fence nature. The killer could have come in from anywhere.

“Yes,” Jack said. “I can send a few units out to drive the perimeter and see if there was an obvious breach. Maybe an abandoned car or something. But it would make more sense for the killer to have been on the property as a guest. They’d have had to walk miles through some pretty rough terrain to come in the back way, and then they’d have to go back out the same way once they’d finished taking out the targets.”

“You think the manager will give us the guest list?” I asked.

“I’ve already requested a warrant for it,” Jack said. “It should come through signed at any moment. Are you sure you’re doing okay?” Concern etched his face as he glanced at me. “I was really worried about you back there.”

“Worried about me or worried I’d contaminate the crime scene?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

Jack grinned and squeezed my shoulder. “Both. How long do you think we’ll be able to keep this a secret?”

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