Page 2 of Overkill

Chapter 1

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.