“I joined a gym last year.”
“How many times did you go?” He worked out regularly. Running wasn’t an easy option anymore, but he found weight training very effective. Biking also worked well and he’d learned to love swimming. Surrounded by the cool water and cut off from sound, he discovered each stroke calmed his mind.
“Twice.”
He laughed.
Again she brushed the unruly curl from her forehead with the back of her hand. “I’m not a fan of sweating.”
“Really? How do you like it now? I bet you’re doing a hell of a lot.”
“Now’s different. It’s work. Gym sweat is boring. Mindless.” Her voice faded, her body demanding she hold on to her oxygen.
“Right.”
Finally, they got ahead of the mud. It took them another twenty minutes to dig deep enough so that the plastic bag could be lifted out of the mire.
The medical examiner technician arrived with a body bag. While Georgia cradled the plastic bag, cocooning the pink blanket and bones, Rick went to shore and took the bag. When he returned, she laid the body into the bag and he zipped it up. Georgia and Rick carried the body out together. Walking in muck while balancing the bag took more effort and by the time they handed the bag to the technicians, both were hot and winded.
Rick watched the techs put the bag on a stretcher in the back of the van and then slam the doors shut. The humid morning air seemed to thicken with each passing second. He’d sweat through his T-shirt and pants and smelled of the foul mud.
Georgia unzipped her jumpsuit, revealing a sweat-stained shirt. A swipe of mud brushed across her pale forehead.
Bishop approached but stopped short as the wind shifted and he got a good whiff of them both. He stepped back. “Nice work.”
“You should’ve joined us for the fun,” Georgia quipped. “That fancy suit of yours is perfect for this kind of work.”
“I tried. Boy Scout wanted this gig.” Bishop’s leveled, calm gaze stoked her short temper.
Rick knew from experience she’d fire back but he didn’t want to watch the verbal sparring. Too sore and hot to get involved in their skirmish, he headed back to his car.
His car engine still hummed and a glance in the backseat revealed Tracker, lying with his eyes closed, ears perked. From a storage bin, Rick grabbed a bottle of water and drank. The morning heat had warmed the bottle but he savored the liquid as it washed away the stale taste in his mouth. He stripped off the waders and then pulled off the T-shirt, wiped off with a towel, and put his shirt and shoes back on. At the station, his first stop would be the showers and the lockers where he kept a spare suit.
At the SUV’s driver’s-side door, Rick was anxious to sit down and get the weight off his leg when Bishop appeared. Without comment, he got in the car and Rick followed.
Bishop wrinkled his nose. “You stink.”
Rick put the car in drive. “No shit.”
Bishop shrugged. “See anything of note around the body?”
“No. But Georgia and her crew will check.”
“She’s driven,” he said more to himself.
Rick didn’t comment.
“The pond must’ve been drained when the body was buried. While you were in the muck, I talked to the maintenance office.” He flipped pages in his notebook. “Pond was drained seven years ago, twelve years ago, nineteen years ago, and it was built twenty-five years ago. That gives us four windows of opportunity.”
The air conditioner’s cool air seemed to sizzle as it hit his hot skin. “Will help narrow the missing persons files.”
“Yeah.”
Rick drove to the station, put Tracker at his desk with orders to stay, and found his way to the showers. He moved quickly to the locker room, stripping off the morning’s clothes and stepping under the hot spray of the shower. As the water beat down on his sore left side, he breathed a sigh of relief before turning his face to the spray. He soaped liberally and washed his hair, wondering if he’d ever get the smell of the muck from his body.
Out of the shower, he toweled, glancing only briefly at the scar that ran over his hip and down his thigh. He dressed and found Bishop at his desk on the phone. Tracker stared at Bishop, who looked at the dog and held up a hand as if to say, “What?”
Don’t let him off the hook, T. Suppressing a smile, Rick poured a coffee.
Bishop raised a brow at the dog and then turned back toward his desk as Rick approached. “The medical examiner says it will be a day at least before she has an evaluation but she’s making it top priority.”
“Great. What about Missing Persons?”
“They’ve sent some folders and are digging out the rest.” Bishop nodded toward Rick’s desk to a stack of manila folders that had to be forty deep. “Files of missing children who fit our rough description and our most recent time parameters. Basically the last thirty years.”
Rick sat and flipped open the first file and read. Tanya Logan, age four, missing for eleven years. He glanced at the image of the child’s smiling face. “Going to be a long day.”
“Give me half. Let’s see if we can narrow it down to at least a short list.”
“There’s no telling if our victim is in these files. No telling if a report was filed.”
Bishop unfastened his cuffs and carefully rolled them up, revealing muscled forearms sprinkled with dark hair. “Agreed. But we still got to do the work.”
He handed over half the stack. “I’ll do whatever it takes to catch this bastard.”