Dirty Rotten Scoundrel Read Online Free PDF

her back.”
    “It’ll do him some good,” Colburn said. “A little humility never hurt anyone.”
    “Where did Chen come from?” I asked.
    “She worked the streets in Atlanta. Mostly inner city. It was her home turf and she was comfortable there.”
    “ King George County is a long way from inner city Atlanta. How’s she liking the slow life?”
    I felt Jack’s shrug beside me. “She was one of the responding officers on the Greenwood Elementary shooting.”
    “Jesus,” I whispered. “I can’t imagine.”
    The Greenwood Elementary Shooting had been national news for weeks now. Five high s choolers had made a suicide pact and decided along the way they were going to take as many members of their small town that they could with them. They’d started with the elementary school. That’s where it had ended too. Sixty-two children and teachers dead.
    “Yeah. Chen did the work and waded through the blood, and then when it was all over she went to her chief and turned in her badge and gun. Chief Walker and I are friends, so he gave me a call and told me she was too good a cop to not work the job at all. That maybe she just needed a change of pace. It didn’t take much to convince her to pick up a badge again. Cop to the bone. Sometimes you just need a little break.”
    I ducked my head so Jack wouldn’t see my smile. All his cops were cops to the bone, but they all had stories and pasts that haunted them. The sheriff’s office was turning into a kind of rehabilitation center, and I wondered if Jack realized what he was doing. I snuck a glance at him from the corner of my eye and saw he was watching me. Of course he knew what he was doing. Nothing much got past Jack.
    I turned my attention back to the body and then looked at Colburn. “I didn’t realize we were in mob territory. We’re a long way from Jersey and Vegas.”
    “ But we’re a stone’s throw from Washington D.C., and the mob and politics have gone hand in hand since the dawn of time. If the vic’s from that area it could be politically motivated. Or it could be none of the above.”
    “I’ll see if I can find any wounds ante mortem. Maybe he put up a fight. But like I said, at this point it’ll be hard to determine what was caused by fighting and what was caused by the river.”
    Colburn squatted down next to the body but across from me. “We’ve had a lot of rain the last couple of days. The river is moving more than usual. This guy could be from any state that butts up against the Potomac River. I’ve got Lewis checking missing persons just to make sure. If you think he’s been dead at least forty-eight hours then a report should’ve been filed by now. If we can get an ID on him soon we’ll be able to determine if he’s one of ours. If he’s not we’ll have to give him over to another jurisdiction.”
    I looked back at the body and stuck my finger into the mouth cavity. “The bullet fractured teeth. It’ll make it harder to get a dental match. And the condition of the skin after sitting in water all this time is going to make retrieving the fingerprints difficult. I’ll work on the identification and then keep him on ice until we know for sure if he’s ours.”
    “Anything wash up with him?” Jack asked.
    Colburn looked up and down the shoreline to where the circle from the spotlights ended. “Not that we’ve found so far. When daylight hits we’ll comb as far as we can and see what’s what.”
    “All right. Let’s bag him up and get him to the lab. It’ll take a little time to get the prints. It’s delicate work. But I should be able to have them to you in a few hours. Maybe sooner now that I have an assistant.”
    I looked over at Jack and grinned. Everyone knew Jack was a hell of a cop and there wasn’t much that bothered him. The autopsies didn’t faze him one bit. But I only had one lab, and when I needed to put on my coroner cap I had to do autopsies in the same place where I prepared bodies for burial, and