Sam crouched again. The ground here told a different story. Leaves were pressed flat in an uneven oval. Bare dirt showed through in scuffed patches where the top layer had been scraped or dragged aside.
Like something heavy had been set down.
Not just anywhere.
Here.
Right here.
His stomach tightened. This was where the body first touched ground.
“Jo. Kevin,” he called.
They came over, Kevin lowering his camera, Jo already scanning the disturbed area with a crime-scene eye.
Jo let out a slow breath. “So the hiker stumbled on the second spot. This was the first.”
“Looks that way,” Sam said.
Jo nudged a flattened patch with her toe, careful not to disturb more than they had to. “So what does that tell us?”
Sam exhaled through his nose, mind tracing possibilities. “Tells us our guy brought the body here and waited. Maybe to make sure he wasn’t seen. Maybe for someone else to show.”
Kevin shifted his weight. “Which means…?”
Sam glanced down at Lucy. She watched him, steady and intent.
“Which means he wasn’t alone,” Sam said. “Not the whole time.”
Lucy’s ears flicked at his tone, as if she agreed.
Lucy found it.
Jo wouldn’t have spotted it on her own—not buried under the blanket of dead leaves, not with everyone pulled toward the obvious focal point of the body. But Lucy rarely missed much.
The K9 had drifted a little past where Sam and Kevin were working, nose sweeping slow and deliberate. Then she stopped, muscles going still, ears pointed forward.
She pawed once at the ground, then backed up and turned, fixing Jo with a keen, expectant look.
Jo knew that look.
“Alright, let’s see,” she murmured, moving over. She knelt beside Lucy and brushed aside the leaves where the paw had landed.
Her fingers hit something solid.
She froze.
It was small, half-swallowed by dirt. Not much to look at.
She swallowed and lifted it carefully.
An earring.
The design was unusual - an engraving with a broken chain with a single, intact link shaped like an eye.. The kind of thing someone would notice. The kind of thing that meant something to whoever wore it.
Jo turned it over in her gloved fingers. The metalwork was intricate, deliberate. Not costume jewelry you’d pick up anywhere.
Jo glanced toward the others. Kevin was still working the perimeter around the body, camera clicking. Sam stood a little off to the side, radio at his shoulder, calling in forensics and securing the scene. Neither of them was looking her way.