“What is it?” she asked, stepping out.
Sara, still in her jacket from the night before, drove the rusted pickup along the landfill road. The Waste Management Authority site was a labyrinth of gravel mounds and seagulls circling like sentinels. She found Detective Madsen already there, his silhouette sharp against the pale sky.
John Porter.
Back at the station, Sara pulled up the WMA’s employee logs. A name glowed on her screen: Danny Voss. The same man who now worked the night shift at the docks—and whose brother had done time for assault. She called Rose, her partner, who picked up on the first ring.
Madsen pointed to a tarp-covered shape near the compactor zone. “Contractor saw a bag snagged on the scale. Not household waste.”
The morning fog hadn’t lifted from the harbor when Sara Garrett’s phone buzzed with a text she’d been dreading: “They found something at the WMA.”
The medical examiner pulled back the tarp. Inside a torn black bag was a man’s blazer—expensive wool, singed at the edges—and a single dress shoe. No body. But inside the blazer pocket: a wallet. Sara’s hands trembled as she opened it.
