Gene had a question first.
“Do you believe this is him?” he asked.
The agent stared at the body.
“I think so. He had a tattoo on his thigh of a snake,” he stated. “If this man has one, it’s definitely Jarod.”
Gene used a piece of driftwood to lift the man’s short’s leg, and check out his skin.
Lo-and-behold, there was a snake looking back at them from around his thigh.
“Shit,” Lucas stated. “It’s Jarod.”
Yeah, it looked like it was.
Now that they knew that, Gene could answer his other question, because the ME, who was heading their way, would have to answer the rest.
“We were walking down the beach in the surf, and he literally bumped into us,” Gene said, pointing at Corbin who wasn’t too far away.
Then, he continued.
“At first, I thought he was a drowning victim, so I flipped him over to resuscitate. The minute I touched him, and saw the start of the bloat, I knew he was too far gone to do CPR.”
The ME reached them and sighed when he heard that.
“So you touched and moved him?” he asked.
Agent Mayfield stopped that before it started. It appeared, the man hadn’t liked hearing that.
“Calm down, Doc. He had to see if he could save him. You would have flipped a potential drowning victim over, too. It happens all of the time here. People go out on boats, have too much to drink, get battered on the rocks, and wash ashore.”
The ME still looked angsty, so Lucas tried to clear the way for the man.
This case was out of their hands, and if they were lucky, and they were nice, Gene Cantrell would let them help out.
“Greyson Croft called us, and he vouched for the man, Doc. You can put the aggression away.”
The ME said nothing more, but the irritation was crystal clear, and Gene got it.
Immediately, the agent introduced him.
“Agent Cantrell, this is Doctor Ben Crowley, and as you can tell by his sunny disposition, when it comes to the body, he’s in charge of the dead here. We finally got an ME and morgue, and he runs it.”
Oh, he could tell the man was going to be a stickler, too. Then again, all the good ones were.
Gene focused on the doctor.
“He has a tattoo on his thigh, and it matches Agent Mayfield’s ID of him.”
The man didn’t say anything, but Gene knew what he was thinking.
Yeah, he’d be the one who decided that.
Lucas was curious.
“Who is this?” Lucas asked, nodding his head toward the man not far away. “You said Jarod bumped into you guys in the waves. Is this the other person?”
This was a mess, and Gene knew it.
