Cho gestured to the two techs working carefully to move the corpse, and we watched along with the other detectives as they eased the body out of the mud and onto a stretcher.
“Not good,” Calloway muttered.
Stanton grunted—never the most talkative of detectives, and just as close to retirement as Frank, which was why I was rumored to be partnering with Calloway. I guess neither Calloway nor I were the young guns anymore, and one day it would be us facing the eternal boredom of forced retirement. At least I had the Cave to fall back on—I wondered what Calloway would do with her easy days after we were done. She caught my gaze and winked, and I raised an eyebrow back, which I guess was the start of some future partner shorthand.
Stanton caught me smiling and snarled at me, and I met his gaze head-on. Fuck him and his attitude. Fuck him all the way to Christmas and back.
The techs wrapped the body in a clean sheet, and when the zipper rasped up the body bag, a hush fell over the line. Plasticcreaked, rain hissed on the tarps, and someone cleared their throat as if they needed to break the silence. Every move was careful, rehearsed, and precise to collect evidence. A metallicclicksounded as the stretcher locks engaged, and the wheels crunched through gravel toward the tent.
Then it was all about the waiting. I widened the perimeter to scour the area, taking as many photos as I could, before heading back with Frank to where every available cop on site was huddled around the main tent.
Cho’s voice was flat as he summarized for the recorder, sweeping a small flashlight over the body. “Male, Caucasian, significant facial damage, skeletal mutilation, and head trauma make it hard to be sure on age,” he said, voice steady while the beam followed the line of the jaw to the ribs. He frowned, using his gloved hand to turn the head slightly. “Surgical marks on chest and abdomen.” He pressed the light lower. “Kidneys are gone. Liver too. Heart intact, but…” He bent forward, frowning. “… ribs punctured lungs, and the heart was cut out but remains in the cavity.”
Next to me, Stanton swore softly. “Organ trafficking?”
“Possibly. Hearts that are damaged are likely to be rejected as potential donors, so they’re left. Eyes removed postmortem.” The coroner gestured, and the techs positioned the flashlights while he checked again.
“The rest was cut out pre-mortem?” Calloway asked, horror in her voice.
“That’s how organ donation works,” Cho said, and Stanton huffed at his partner as if she were an idiot—he did that a lot.
One of the techs laid out an evidence bag. Inside, clothes clung together, streaked with blood and grit. As I was closest, I leaned in with my flashlight to examine through the plastic, catching the glint of leather through the gore—jeans, a black T-shirt, and a torn biker cut.Prospectwas still readable on the patch.
“Bikers,” Stanton muttered. “Always fucking bikers.”
I took photos as Cho worked, the camera flash catching on wet skin and latex gloves cataloging tattoos, and the open scars from organ removal—whoever took his insides never bothered to sew him back up, leaving the heart there. I took a moment to upload everything I had to the Cave server, including the tattoos on the corpse’s arms.
“You have a signal up here?” Calloway asked, and I threw her a quick smile.
“No,” I lied. The only reason I had any signal this high on a remote hillside was that the Cave had outfitted my phone with a boosted, encrypted mesh link that piggybacked on any nearby emergency band. Totally illegal. Completely untraceable. I waved my phone around to underscore the lack of signal and probably oversold it from the quirk of a smile she sent me.
“What doyouthink, Cho?” Frank asked quietly.
I’d learned from Frank to trust a coroner’s first instinct. Cho had likely seen this kind of mutilation before, in a hundred variations, and the set of his shoulders told me he already had a theory forming. I trusted that instinct more than I trusted most reports.
“An obvious dump site,” he said as he met my gaze. “Older bones no idea, this new guy, opportunistic dumping of an organ-trafficked body.”
“You’ve seen this before?” I asked Cho, keeping my tone casual.
He hesitated. “Variations,” he said. “Different cities have similar reports. Organ trafficking is the new hot commodity.” His voice stayed flat, clinical, but the words carried weight. “Cartels, outlaw MCs, breakaway gangs—everyone’s shifting. Drugs are traceable. Guns make noise. But organs?” He shookhis head. “Clean profit. No serial numbers. No witnesses. Bodies go missing in the chaos, and no one asks questions until it’s too late.”
We walked the perimeter, but given we weren’t leads and with nothing left to squeeze from the scene, we headed back to the car; there was no sense in hanging around—no witnesses to interview—Stanton and Calloway had taken in the hiker who’d found the carnage, cops were guarding the scene. “Organized Crime’ll take this the second it smells like their scene,” Frank muttered.
“Yeah.”
“Let ‘em. We’ll both get sleep.” He glanced at me but kept quiet.
We headed back to the precinct and straight to the bullpen, an open-plan office, with most of the desks empty right now—too much crime, too little time. I dropped into my chair, the springs groaning under me, and rubbed the back of my neck. My body felt as if it were running on fumes and bitter coffee. Two hours’ sleep and a morning spent knee-deep in mud and corpses will do that.
Frank lumbered into his seat opposite mine, tossing his jacket over the back of his chair, then lowered his voice. “Wonder how long it’ll be before we get an ID on the dead guy?”
We played this game a lot. He knew I got shady answers, I’d pretend I didn’t. “No idea,” I said, keeping my tone neutral. In truth, the Cave would already be running the images I’d uploaded through every database we had access to. Maybe we’d have an ID before the department did. That was how things worked—two lives, two systems, and the covert one always got there first.
Frank grunted, clearly unconvinced but too tired to argue. The rain tapped against the windows, and the faint hum of the vending machine filled the silence as I opened my laptop. Mythoughts were still back at the hillside, with the mud, the bones, and that fresh corpse. I researched the MC—The Iron Bulls from the cut we found—in case it belonged to the victim, checking out the photos of the clothes we found there: non-biker garb like athletic wear, snug shorts, a T-shirt, and worn-in sneakers.
Two hours of paperwork and half-hearted follow-ups later, we called it a day—but instead of heading home to sleep, I drove straight to the Cave. The private elevator at the back of Killian’s law office carried me up, soundless and sterile, to the warren of hidden rooms that passed for our command center. From the outside, it looked like a tidy legal firm, but inside, we had the Cave, humming with servers, secure lines, and secrets.
I belongedheremore than anywhere else. Even worse, a part of me craved it—the pull of crossing lines, the quiet hum under my skin when I stepped outside the law, and no one could tell me no.
