Jake stared at the woman’s body as Chuckie the evidence tech retrieved the body from the water. “How long has she been there?”
Murder. Again. This time there weren’t guns involved. There had been far too many homicides in recent days in Finley Creek lately. Far too many for a city of around sixty thousand people. There was a reason for that.
Jake had been trying to identify that reason for eighteen months now.
It still stung that Marshall had pulled him from the case.
Chuckie shook her head. In the setting sun, her brown hair looked almost red. “It’s hard to tell. With all the rains we’ve had, and the condition of the body, anything from weeks to days. We’ll know more once we get her to the ME.”
Jake knew better to ask when that was going to be. Everything was backlogged because of the storm. It would be for months to come. The TSP was now starting to rebuild on the actual location. “Keep me in the loop. I’ve been looking for her for weeks.”
“She still has a wallet. That’s surprising,” Chuckie said. She pulled it from the victim’s back pocket. “It’s stuck in her pocket pretty tightly.”
It took some maneuvering, but she was able to get the slim folio clear. Chuckie flipped it open and pointed a small waterproof penlight at the contents. “ID is partially legible. Connie, but the last name is obscured by ink bleed. ID number is still fully visible. We’ll have you a full ID by the end of the day.”
“Just confirm it. She’s Callum’s missing nurse. She disappeared a week or two before the tornado.”
He’d been searching for her for weeks. Only one of the cases he had. His load had doubled since the tornado. No surprise. Everyone’s had. Jake stepped back.
He had a family notification to make.
Damn it. Those were the worst part of the job.
He hadn’t made it halfway across the city before Marshall was calling him again.
Damn it. This shit never ended.