The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,71

aside small stones. “Whatever the coyote smelled. They’re not usually scavengers, but if prey is scarce, they’re not above it.”

Glancing around, Jem said, “This is a strange place to dump gravel.”

“It’s a pile of gravel. Why does it matter where it goes?”

“Look around,” Jem said. He used their joined hands to point out patches of disturbed earth. “You can see where they’ve pulled out fence posts. And look at the ground. No grass, not like the rest of the area.”

“So this area used to be a pen, but they’re changing it over to something else. A parking lot, maybe, for delivery trucks.”

“I guess,” Jem said.

Then Tean kicked aside some more gravel.

“Holy shit,” Jem said. “That’s a head.”

21

Tean was at work the next morning when the call came.

“Please hold for Dr. Castorena,” a nasally young man said.

Tean didn’t mind holding. His brain was fried. He and Jem had been at Zalie’s for over an hour waiting for the Heber City police, the Wasatch County sheriff, the Salt Lake City police, and the state Office of the Medical Examiner to get their collective butts out of bed. Then there was the tangled nightmare of jurisdiction. The sheriff, a balding, shrunken man who had to be close to seventy, had put Tean and Jem in the back of his Wrangler. Then Ammon had given him ten kinds of hell until the sheriff finally turned Jem and Tean over to the SLCPD, at which point, Ammon had sent them to headquarters with a patrol officer following Tean’s truck the whole way. They’d spent the rest of the early morning hours in an interview room, telling their story over and over again to Ammon’s partner, Kat, until she’d finally let them go.

After that, they’d driven home to find an ecstatic Scipio who had needed breakfast and a walk—not in that order—and then Tean had showered and changed, ignoring Jem’s suggestions that he take the day off. When he’d left the apartment, Jem and Scipio had been tangled together on the couch, one of the Lab’s legs resting on Jem’s head. Jem had been snoring.

A husky woman’s voice came on the line. “Dr. Leon?”

“Yes.”

“Elvira Castorena. Sorry. That is some pretentious nonsense, the ‘please hold’ business, but I can’t get Jeremy to do it any other way.”

“It’s no problem.”

“I’m not sure if you know this, but I’m the new state medical examiner. Dr. Seamount took early retirement, and I’ve stepped into the role.”

Tean was silent.

“I understand you and Dr. Seamount did not see eye to eye on a case,” Castorena said.

“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say at this point. It sounds like you already know what happened.”

She laughed. “You don’t need to say anything. The first part of the call was just to tell you that we won’t have that problem going forward. I look forward to collaborating with you on appropriate investigations; that’s all I wanted to say. The second part of the call is about one such investigation.”

“Joy Erickson.”

“Yes. We have a positive ID, and we’re moving forward with the investigation into cause and manner of death. I was hoping you could consult.”

“Absolutely.”

“Today?”

“Things are moving fast at the ME’s office now, it sounds like.”

That same deep laugh. “You know where we are?”

“I do.”

“Eleven?”

“Perfect time to work up an appetite.”

Castorena was still laughing when she hung up.

Tean gave the email on his computer screen one last glance. It was from Hannah, and it had been sent to both Tean and HR, informing them that at the direction of her doctor, Hannah was taking unpaid FMLA leave. The accompanying medical certification only specified traumatic stress, and it was signed by a Salt Lake psychiatrist—Rowen Kates—whom Tean had never heard Hannah mention before. HR had sent a separate email to Tean confirming that Hannah would be out of the office for two weeks, with a re-evaluation at the end of that period.

He still had an hour and a half before he needed to leave for the ME’s office, so he took out his phone. Tean placed a call to Hannah first. She didn’t answer. He tried Caleb, hoping he might be able to tell Tean more about what was going on, but the call was dismissed and sent to voicemail. Then he tried Miguel, the conservation officer tracking the canine distemper outbreak in Heber Valley, but he got voicemail there too. He called the lab where he had sent the samples from the coyote specimen; they were still processing the samples, so Tean thanked them and