The space was packed—chairs scraping, bodies shifting, a buzz of voices rising and falling. Detectives traded quick words, papers rustling, pens tapping. It wasn’t excitement, not really—but the charged hum of a big case landing in our precinct, the kind of energy that made everyone sit a little straighter, listening harder, waiting for the next reveal.
“Settle down,” Captain Davis threw out, then stood to one side, arms crossed, and Stanton, as the lead detective, started.
“So, we’ve got our first DNA match,” Stanton said. “The newest victim is Kyle Rourke, Iron Bulls MC prospect, fresh out of eight years in Snake River Correctional for a robbery turned violent.” He grimaced and then glanced around the room.
Murmurs rippled around the room. Frank scribbled notes, his jaw tight. I sat back in my chair, staring at the name scrawled on the board. They had less than what we had in the Cave, but we didn’t have much more apart from a tenuous connection to some shady backstreet doctor.
“Here’s where we stand,” Stanton said, voice sharp enough to cut through the chatter. Calloway was next to him with an armful of files. “Off the record, the coroner is suggesting late eighties, early nineties dumping ground—old bones, old crimes, organ trafficking—a space reopened in the last few weeks to make room for a new body. The only victim with a trail that is anywhere near warm is Kyle Rourke. Cho estimates at least 17 people are in there, but he isn’t in a position to confirm anything concrete. We need names of the older remains stat.”
“Why would we focus so hard on the older sets of remains?” Dean Barker asked.
Everyone turned to look at him. Barker was a newly minted detective—still had that new guy shine—and questioned everything from the coffee to the protocols, all restless energy and too many opinions. Usually, that kind of curiosity was good for a detective, but with him, it came wrapped in superiority that grated on everyone. Still, he had a point about the resources we could burn through on bones in a pit that was older than I was. The room went still, the air thick enough to cut.
Barker’s cheeks flushed pink, but he kept going anyway, too arrogant or too green to read the room. “Come on,” he pressed, “this place was obviously a dumping ground for lowlife crews—inter-gang hits, putting out their trash.”
Chief Davis nodded. “You have a point,” he began.
Davis let that sit for a beat too long, his gaze drifting over the room until it landed back on Barker.
“Thing about dump sites,” Davis went on, “is they only look historical until you find out there’s a new body thrown in.”
The message landed. Barker frowned, not getting it. Stanton stared down at his notes. Frank shifted in his chair and didn’t look at me at all.
Barker opened his mouth again. “I’m just saying, sir?—”
“Why don’t we ask Rosen?” Stanton deadpanned, and Frank inhaled.
“Asshole,” Frank muttered, and Barker glanced between Stanton and Frank, confused.
“The last time a case with carved-up bodies and missing organs hit this department, my father was on the task force,” I said before someone else dumped it in the room. “It didn’t end well, and my dad was convicted of obstruction and evidence tampering, along with inciting violence, which ended with my little brother dying.” I deliberately met Stanton’s narrowed gaze.“Does anyone else have anything to add?” What my father had done wasn’t a secret, but I sure as hell wasn’t carrying his sentence for him.
Barker’s eyes widened.
“Your father was neck-deep in a case that ruined careers and shredded families,” Stanton snapped.
“That’s enough,” Davis thundered, and Stanton went rigid, jaw tight, as if he had more to say but swallowed it when I turned and met his stare head-on.
Davis wasn’t done with Barker’s comment either, and he was angry. “Every single one of those bones belonged to someone who mattered to somebody. Criminals or not, next time you question why we’re here, remember that every skull, every rib, every scrap of DNA in that pit once had a heartbeat. And we owe them a name.” Then he paused, and only when Barker glanced at him did he finish. “Agreed?”
“Yes, sir, sorry, sir,” Barker said quickly, his posture stiff and his face blotched red. He sat ramrod-straight in his chair, eyes down, every trace of arrogance hidden, although he flicked a concerned look at me.
Davis nodded. “I’ve requested administrative support from the County and obtained approval from the DA’s office for a limited budget. We’re already catching heat from the mayor’s office—this many man-hours on what looks like gangland cleanup is an embarrassment, especially since the dump site sits on disused city land leased to a private developer. Political mess on top of human remains.” He scanned the room. “Still, we work with what we’ve got. Stanton, what intel from the Iron Bulls?”
“The MC claims they’ve got no missing prospects, suggested someone stole the cut, and that’s all they were giving us,” Frank replied grimly. “We didn’t have anything solid enough to warrant a search, but now that we can tie a name to a bodyactively prospecting for the MC, we can revisit—and this time, we don’t have to tread lightly.”
“Get it done.”
By the time the meeting ended, the Iron Bulls issue had been assigned to Stanton and Calloway, while the rest of us worked on our own cases and investigated missing reports from three decades ago. It was busy work, and I wanted to get out of the department and head over to the Cave.
That would at least stop me from wanting to punch Stanton.
Time to move.
SIX
Doc
It had beenhard to wait this long, but the night swallowed me as I cut through the city, heading toward the industrial side where the head of my cleanup crew lived. Leon Novak—ex-military, loyal when paid on time and on call for me twenty-four-seven for good money. When I called Novak, he and his team stripped a scene—burned or buried what was left —handled it so no one ever asked questions. Only tonight, I wasn’t calling in advance, and Novak had no idea I’d be visiting. Someone had killed my patient, and I was starting at the top. I slipped a blade between the door and the frame, pushed, and was inside within seconds. The house was dark, the air heavy with the smell of bleach and gun oil. I moved through the living room, silent, until I reached his bedroom.
