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Quaide extended a hand. “Quaide Livingston.”
The guy shook it. “Officer Faller. What were you told about the find here?”
“Not a lot,” he admitted. “But I’m guessing you believe the cause of death to be suspicious if we were called in.”
Sentry slipped into the dark corners of the underworld and picked apart crimes from the inside. In the past six weeks Quaide had been with the team, he spent a lot of time sitting at bars pretending to fit in with a group of local outlaws believed to be working a drug trade spanning the Colorado-Montana border.
Most of those nights he spent trying to keep the taste of rust out of his mouth for all that he’d lost. His position of authority was a small thing to let go of compared to Dove.
Officer Faller looked past Quaide. His expression transformed to one of surprise.
Quaide twisted to see a young woman coming toward them. In jeans, hiking boots and a leather bomber jacket, she could be any other resident of East Canon. But as she drew closer, he made out the words printed on her coat: Medical Examiner.
“Hi, guys,” she breezed out with a toss of her loose brown curls. “What do we got?”
Her amber eyes shifted from the cop to Quaide. “I don’t think we’ve met. You’re Lexis’s man?”
His inner alpha beast let out a challenge but he contained it. “Livingston.”
“Ah yes. Former FBI.”
He lifted a brow. “I don’t like being known before I know the knower.”
“Are you Dr. Seuss?”
Okay, the woman immediately grated on his nerves.
Straightening his shoulders, he stared down at her. “Who are you?”
She gave him a cool look. “Dr. Raven Barker-Moore.”
That explained her lofty view of herself.
“The medical examiner.” She tipped her head back to hold his gaze in a challenge that most people wouldn’t be comfortable with. Quaide was made of tougher stuff.
Without another word to him, the woman set off down the bank to where the other officer was crouched, snapping photos.
Quaide met Faller’s eyes and he managed to keep from rolling his. The former medical examiner in the area had about four decades’ worth of experience on this girl. She didn’t look old enough to have a bachelor’s degree, let alone a doctorate. And she sure as hell didn’t appear to have what it took to perform such a demanding job.
He waved at Faller. “Lead the way.”
When they approached the body, he drew every minute detail into his mind even as he formed a bigger scenario about what happened.
The sweet reek of damp grass drying out in the sun was the only smell he detected, which meant the body was still fresh.
Instantly, he started recording audio notes on his phone. “Victim appears to be late twenties, early thirties. Male. Dressed in green cargo pants and a green plaid shirt. No fishing rod in sight.”
As if trying to outdo him, the medical examiner brought her phone to her lips and began dictating as well. Their voices overlapped for a few sentences until Quaide stopped to let her get her need to show off out of her system.
The man lay half out of the water. His phone was on the bank near his chest as though it had fallen out of his breast pocket.
The medical examiner hooked a bunch of curls behind one ear to reveal a silver spike piercing her earlobe, stretching it in a fat gauge. She was definitely living up to his first assumption about her age.
He switched his focus from Barker-Moore to the officer snapping photos.
When he finished, Quaide snapped on a latex glove, bent over and picked up the victim’s phone. He swiped the screen, and it came alive. After a night in the rain, it shouldn’t work, yet it did.
Another clue that the body had been dumped.
