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spies. Content that they were alone, he leaned toward Marshall and started to whisper. “There’s something going on, man. I don’t know what, but I think there’s some kind of cover-up happening.”
    Marshall gave him a frustrated look. “Okay, go on. I need details. Start from the beginning.”
    “This morning we got the girl’s body in the office. Myself and another tech.”
    Marshall stopped him there with a knowing grin. “‘Another tech,’ huh? This other tech wouldn’t happen to be Brianna Olsen, the girl you’ve been too scared to ask out for the last year, would it?”
    Joseph scowled. “It is Brianna, and I am not too scared to ask her out. I’m just… waiting for the right time.”
    “Sure you are.”
    “ANYWAY, we were going over the body, determining the cause of death. Well, she had been hit by a car and dragged down the road… that’s what the ‘official,’” Joseph made air quotes with his fingers, “report will say, but that’s not all that happened to her.”
    There was another pause in the conversation as the waitress returned with Marshall’s coffee and a refill for Joseph. After she left, Marshall suggested, “Should you be drinking coffee right now? You seem jumpy enough.”
    Joseph gazed at the motor oil-like liquid in his cup. “Naw, I’ll drink it, but listen. As Brianna and I were examining the woman’s—”
    “Girl.”
    “What?”
    “You mean girl. She was only eighteen.”
    “Right, the girl. Well, the phone rings, and a second later our boss runs in and literally pushes us out of the room, saying he’ll take care of this one. He even tells us to take a break as he rushes us out of the room.”
    “That doesn’t seem that shady. Kinda weird, but maybe he wanted to help or thought the situation needed his expertise.”
    Joseph looked at him sideways. “Really? Since I’ve worked at the coroner’s office, my boss has offered to help or actually do work exactly—” Joseph paused dramatically. “Zero times. That guy is lazier than… than… than the laziest person you know. He never helps and definitely wouldn’t jump at a chance to examine a body unless he had reason to.”
    Marshall was a skeptic by nature, but Joseph’s testimony made him think twice about the possibility of something much deeper at hand. “Okay, so let’s say that your boss was acting shady and trying to cover something up. What would he be covering up? What had happened to the body?”
    “There were signs of being struck by a large object like a car and dragged, but we also found slits across her wrists and ankles. When we examined the body further, she had almost been completely drained of blood. Before we could get any deeper into the examination, we were thrown out of the room.”
    “She was bled dry?”
    “That’s what it looked like. I can tell you it wasn’t the impact of whatever hit her that killed her. There wasn’t enough blunt trauma or damage from being dragged to have killed her, either.”
    Marshall’s mind was running a million miles an hour as he sped through the possibilities. “Is it possible that she was bled dry and then thrown from a vehicle rather than a vehicle hitting and dragging her? And the impact from the road caused the blunt trauma?”
    Joseph nodded. “Yeah, but that’s not what the official word of the coroner is going to say. I saw the autopsy report before I left. It’s going to say that she died from a hit and run.”
    “Your boss walked into the room and that’s why you pretended I was your mom on the other end of the phone?”
    Joseph nodded again. “I’m telling you, man—whatever really happened to that girl—someone wants it hidden.”
    “Someone who has power and influence, too,” Marshall pursed his lips. “It would take someone pretty high up to have enough pull to call your boss and cover up the real cause of death.”
    The two men sat in silence. Marshall hadn’t even touched his coffee. Joseph was staring into his, but