Blood Orchid (Holly Barker 3)

She hung up, dressed, fed Daisy, and let her out while she had a quick bowl of cereal. The floater wasn’t going anywhere, so there was no great need to rush. Daisy came back and scratched at the screen door, wanting her cookie for a job well done. Holly gave it to her, then they both got into her car and drove north.

The floater was in a body bag when she got there, stretched out on an ambulance gurney. The medical examiner arrived a minute after she did.

“Let’s have a look,” she said to the EMT.

The EMT unzipped the entire length of the bag and peeled it back, revealing a white male, thirty to forty years of age, longish black hair, swarthy complexion. She reckoned he was six feet and weighed in at about one-eighty.

The ME walked over and stood beside her. “Look at the mouth,” he said.

Holly pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and peeled back the lips, which were tattered. “Missing his front teeth,” she said.

“Broken off,” the ME replied.

“Let’s roll him over.” The two of them rolled the body over, facedown. “There’s why,” Holly said, pointing to the back of the head.

The ME parted the hair on the back of the head to reveal a wound. “One shot to the back of the head, came out the mouth, took some teeth with it.”

“Was he kneeling?”

“The angle is right for it.”

They rolled the corpse onto its back again, and Holly examined the wrists. “No ligature marks,” she said. “He wasn’t tied up at the time.”

“A gun pointed at the head is enough to get a man on his knees,” the ME said. “He didn’t need to be tied.”

“Anybody go through his pockets?”

“No,” the officer replied. “We were waiting for the ME.”

“I’ll do it at the morgue,” the ME said. “Three to one he won’t have any ready ID.”

“I agree,” Holly said. “Do what you can with his clothes.”

“We always do,” the ME replied. “Okay, fellas, I’ll meet you at the morgue.”

The EMTs loaded the corpse into their wagon and drove away, with the ME right behind. Holly looked around. Nice spot, she thought. Nice house, nice dock, nice boat tied up to it. She heard a screen door slam and turned to see a man coming out of the house.

“Good morning,” she said. “Sorry to disturb you.”

“Thanks for hauling that thing away,” the man said.

“All part of the service. Did you hear anything last night? Anything like a gunshot?”

The man shook his head. “Nah. I reckon it happened upriver, probably at the bridge, and the tide brought him down here.”

“You should be a cop,” Holly said, trying not to sound sarcastic, since it was what she thought, too. “Did you get a good look at him?”

“Yep.”

“Ever seen him before?”

“Nope. Looks Cuban to me.”

“Maybe.”

“He just floated down here and came to rest against one of the piers of my dock. I guess the barnacles snagged some of his clothing. I was going fishing.” He pointed at his tackle beside the boat. “You going to be able to identify him?”

“Maybe. The body will be searched for ID, and we’ll take his fingerprints and check them with the state and the Feds. We’ll check the missing persons reports for somebody resembling him, too.”