The body lay just beyond the tree line, facedown, partially brushed over with leaves. Not enough to hide it. Just enough to suggest someone had tried and stopped.
Jo dropped to a crouch beside it, snapping on gloves. Kevin already had his phone up, snapping a series of shots from different angles, the faint click of the camera oddly loud in the stillness.
Sam hung back a few steps. Not because he couldn’t handle a body—he’d seen more than he cared to count—but because the scene needed to breathe first. Let Jo and Kevin do their jobs. Let Lucy talk in her own language.
He turned slightly, keeping one eye on the body and one on the dog.
Lucy had given the body a cursory sniff, then peeled away. Whatever brought the man here, it wasn’t centered on the spot where he’d ended up. She circled outward in widening loops, nose twitching, tail going from wag to metronome.
Sam trusted her.
He let her work.
The victim looked late thirties. Dark jeans, button-down shirt, a little wrinkled like it had seen a long day before today. No obvious blood pooling around him, no spray on the nearby trunks, no torn-up ground to suggest a fight.
Jo eased back a sleeve, studying the skin. “Not much lividity. He hasn’t been lying here long.”
Kevin leaned in for another photo. “So we’re looking at a dump site, not a murder scene.”
“Looks that way,” Jo said. “Whoever killed him brought him in from somewhere else.”
Sam nodded. That made the clothes more important than usual. Fibers. Transfer. Whatever the killer brushed against on the way in and out could be clinging to the fabric.
They just had to find it.
A sharp huff broke his focus.
Lucy.
She’d gone still a few feet away, ears forward, gaze pinned on a low bush. Her nose hovered an inch off the ground, then slid toward something caught in the twigs.
Sam followed her line, stepping in. He crouched and pushed aside a crust of dry leaves.
A scrap of fabric clung to a branch, snagged and twisted.
Dark. Smooth. Looked like it had come off something expensive, not flannel or hiking gear.
Sam slipped an evidence bag from his belt. “Got something.”
Jo rose, brushing leaf bits off her knees. “What is it?”
He held the bag up once the fabric was inside. “Somebody caught their clothes on the way out.”
Kevin frowned. “Means they were moving fast.”
“Or hauling dead weight,” Jo said. “Literally.”
Sam looked down at Lucy. “Good girl.”
Her tail flicked once, but her body stayed taut. She wasn’t done.
She turned sharply and pulled away from the main cluster of trees, nose dragging a line in the air. Sam followed, keeping close but not crowding her.
She led him about thirty feet past the body, off the faint trail the hiker had mentioned.
Then she stopped.
Her nose hovered just above the ground. She inhaled, then looked up at him, eyes bright, waiting.