Good, thought Xander. “So how are you and Cathy getting along?” he chimed, understanding his friend’s need to not talk about what was going on right now.
“Oh. Great. But this thing with... well, it doesn’t help matters.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“It’s Grendel. I know how she feels about him...”
“Yeah,” Xander said calmly, getting up from his seat. “And she feels better about you. You know how lucky you are to have a girl like that love you?”
“Yeah, but...”
“But nothing. It’s not worth the crap it’ll cause for you two.”
Mike frowned, then smirked a little. “I hate it when you’re right, you know that?”
“Then you’re just going to have to stop being so damn stupid all the time,” Xander replied, slapping him on the back heartily.
“You wanna get a bite at Tiffany’s?”
“Sure.” They headed off, and Xander took one last look back at the pictures in the folder. “I don’t think I’m gonna eat though. I haven’t really got that much of an appetite today.”
As much as we’d like to forget it sometimes, everyone remembers a death. Not only friends and loved ones, but also acquaintances. Even people we have never met will mourn our passing thanks to media, the internet, and word of mouth. Whether we like it or not, death is always a recorded event in our society.
Especially by the body experiencing it.
Be it for explanations natural or external, an examination of any cadaver will tell you how it came to be in that state. Every body has a story to tell, it just cannot form the words all on its own.
If the victim or victims were shot, there will be an entry wound of a certain size and depth depending on the weapon fired. It will tell us the positioning of the weapon, the victim, and the shooter. In some cases there is an exit wound and gunpowder residue as well, all of which can be used to reconstruct the events leading to the person’s demise.
If the victim was strangled, veins in the eyes will appear bloodshot and pronounced.
If the victim was stabbed, taking a mold of the puncture wound can reveal the size, shape, and sometimes even the origin of the weapon used.
Hairs, slivers of glass, fibers, bug cocoons, defensive wounds and other foreign substances all contribute to figuring out how and under what circumstances death finally occurred.
“Coral Beach Precinct Morgue, Tuesday the twentieth. My name is Harry Ford. I’ll be your mortician for this evening.”
“Come on, Harry. Quit fooling around and start the tape. This guy’s creepy,” Lance Berkshire said to his partner. He scratched the few strands of remaining hair around his right ear, his stocky frame jittering a little as he did so. He always found it cold here, and just a little moist.
He stared down at what remained of Jamie Dawkins, struggling to sum up enough saliva to allow him to speak again. After a moment, he clicked on the tape recorder. The plastic gears spun the film around them for almost a full minute before he had gathered up enough courage to start. “Subject name: Dawkins R. Jamie. Male. Caucasian, five-five, two-hundred fifty-five pounds. Cause of death: undetermined. Hey Harry, pass me the scalpel.”
Harry’s hand convulsed as he picked up the thin titanium knife and handed it to his partner. The flippancy known as Gallow’s Humor he had clung to wavered for a moment, as he found himself unable to tear his eyes away from the vacant stare of their patient.
Lance began poking at the cold body, making one clean slice to fully expose the thorax. He wouldn’t have to do much cutting though since the entire chest cavity had been pretty much removed. There were rips and tears around the edges of the hole the killer had made, each of them with four distinct claw marks, that had made the first officer on the scene think it had been an attack by a wolf or a bear.
His final cuts made at the neck and pelvis, Lance braced a hand on either side of the chest cavity and pushed. It opened like a hinge in dire need of oiling, and the sound it made was a wet suck followed by a snap. He looked at the rib cage he had just forced open, which was now just broken shards of bone, except for one which was smooth.
“Harry, look at this.”
“What? It’s a rib. So?” Harry said, raising an eyebrow and leaning his lanky frame inward, peering down at what Lance was indicating, a bit of his blonde hair falling down into his eyes.
“So? Look at it. It’s been perfectly sawed off, like it was done with a tool. And look here,” Lance said, making a broad sweeping motion across the corpse’s torso. “All the body cavity organs have been taken, except the lungs. They haven’t even been touched. They even worked around them to get to other organs. I don’t know any animals that picky.”
Harry maneuvered the light hanging from the ceiling to get a better look. “You mean a human did this? Something with a soul? Geez.”
“That’s what I think,” he heaved, his frown seeming as though it were trying to escape the sides of his mouth. He checked a box and scribbled something down on his chart, his eyes darting back and forth to Jamie’s open chest.
“What?” Harry asked, trying to follow Lance’s gaze. “What is it?”
“The lungs are a bit dark.”
“Probably a smoker.”
“He’s just a kid.”
“Most smokers are.”
Lance shot him a wry look, then laid down his clipboard and picked up his scalpel again. “Why weren’t the lungs taken, anyway?” he asked rhetorically, fortifying one hand against the body’s shoulder as he stuck his scalpel into one of the lungs. It resisted at first, the rubbery flesh bending inward against the pressure, then
