"The stench overpowered" generically describes an olfactory sensation, which blunts the power of olfactory sensations. Olfactory sensations are potent tools for immersing a reader in the moment of a depiction. Long dead undead, to my thinking, might also have a conscious method for disguising their odor. That's one thing that challenges my suspension of disbelief in the undead genres. From personal experience I know that a ripe corpse smells bad from a long way away."even the most hardened cop." this reads like a generalized summary exposition. Taking the opportunity to begin character introductions might more effectively show a specific hardened cop's reaction to the causal stench.
"Everbody," "giving all" "he asked to all" are also generic in nature and from a narrator telling. I much prefer third person objective narrators to drop into the background and have a focal character step into first position as soon as possible.
Ancilliary characters are necessary for dressing the scene, sure, but they're portrayed as a homogenous "all," almost scene dressing statues similar to other white noise syndromes, like a white room.
"pulled his aching body out of his car." Adam's car is already introduced as his in the previous sentence.
"Who found this?" This is Adam's first question at the scene? Seems like a low priority question for later on given the circumstances.
"How can someone kill a ghoul?" This question is potent, and I think because it's potent it's the one the opening might pose for the entire story. If it's more artfully posed and not directly asked, it might be the overarching question the story might artfully answer by the ending. In other words, putting the question into the mind of a reader rather than outright asking it could be at the core of the opening and the story's depiction. The murder of an undead ghoul is an intriguing imaginative premise. Just saying the question seems like it gives away more of the story than might be artfully prudent.
"Carmen, come over here and see if you can sense if there’s any lifeforce left in this thing." Seems to me Carmen has been at the scene for awhile and logically would already know, and might be the character able to artfully pose the question of how one might kill a ghoul, be an ideal character for first reacting to the stench, and be the focal ancilliary character representing the "all" of bystanders when Adam arrives. And she might then name Adam, rather than the narrator telling his name and position, which would become apparent by her reactions to his taking charge. I'm kind of wondering if she might be a better opening focal viewpoint character than Adam, for that matter.
"Adam coughed and gagged as he shuffled from the awful smell as fast as he could." Coughing and gagging don't come easily as concurrent actions, not without going into a paroxysmal fit that threatens an actual efflux of vomit. "As" used as a conjunction connecting concurrent actions suggests to me a syntax issue, and it seems more so when the conjoined clause uses "as" twice more as correlative adverbial conjunctions.
I'm intrigued by the potential for sympathy with the murdered ghoul. I mean, that strikes me as a plausible sympathy factor in a mystery story with a vile and no longer threatening murdered, perhaps noble in his own right, creature. There's something-something original there that could be profound.
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