1
Disposing of a body is rarely as easy as they make it seem in the movies. They’re heavy, for one thing. Oddly shaped, for another. The procedure is different for each location and method of death, and it’s obviously quite difficult to find any help. Impossible to find good help.
Miriam listened to the two big men prattle on as she considered the body and how to move it. One was 6’3” at least, bald, and clean shaven, with eyes the blue of a crystal lake. They would have been beautiful if he hadn’t had such a dumb look on his face. Like a cow chewing grass.
The other must have found all the hair he had lost. It was impossible to find any facial features under the sheet of hair grown into the forest of beard. It hung well beyond his well-fed waist. Well fed on the money he was being paid to stand around.
“I made things awkward with her,” the hairy one said. “I do that.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I’m very emotional.”
“You talk about how sad you are too much. That’s all.”
“I’ve got nothing else to talk about.”
“There must be something. No-one can sit around feeling sad all day.”
“I can.”
“You CAN’T, because after a while you’d have nothing to be sad about. You see, at some point you’d have to go out, and find something to be sad about. A newspaper article or someone being mean to you. Or an adorable rabbit, dead by the side of the road.”
“What’s your point?”
“Well, when you find something that makes you sad...an article or a TV show...just talk about THAT. Instead of how sad you are. Say something like, ‘hey, I read an article this morning, guess what it was about?’ I can guarantee it won’t be about you being sad.”
“I am sad. All the time. I just have a lot of emotions. I’m an emotional man.”
“Yes well. Try being emotional about something other than being emotional. That’s all I’m saying.”
“No-one wants to hear about men having emotions.”
“I certainly don’t. But I feel the same way about women,” he looked at Miriam, “I’m very equal opportunity.”
“Honestly,” she said, glaring at them both, “suck it up and get to work.”
“You didn’t tell us what to do.”
“What are you, five? I have to tell you? Get up, walk over here, pick up what’s left of this human being, and move it.”
“Redheads.”
She rolled her eyes. “And there goes YOUR thinly-held feminism.”
He chose to say nothing. Wisely.
“I don’t know how.”
“Then why are you here?”
They both shrugged. “Money.” They said in unison.
Never tell anyone what motivates you.
“Pick it up or I’ll make sure you never get paid again!”
That got them moving.
She took out the tape recorder. Large, black. Solid. It’s shiny surfaces glinting in the light. A constant. The red “record” button had been pushed so many times that an empty circle had formed in its center. She wondered, idly, if there were people who replaced such things as phone screens and record buttons.
“Krista Jones,” she began. The placid voice of a well-seasoned coroner. It comforted her, even coming out of her own mouth. “Female, age 47. Time of death is 8:48am, June 2nd, 2019.” Two months ago. A pause, short but necessary, as another part of her mind, the part that was emphatically NOT a coroner, filled in the rest of the details.
“Be careful,” she growled, at the men.
“It’s stiff.”
“And awkward.”
“They call them ‘stiffs’ for a reason, boys. It’s not just a cute nickname. That’s rigor mortis.”
Probably set in while she was walking around. Lord. How far would she have gotten?
“Doesn’t the coroner’s office have someone for this?”
Yeah. Yeah we do. The first time it happens.
“You’re it,” she smiled, thinly.
“Really?”
“Cutbacks,” she shrugged, and they understood. Of course they did. When it came to grunts like this, you could explain anything away by blaming the damned government.
And who else did they hate? Attractive women, bartenders who cut them off. Their team, when it lost. She hated them, hated the neanderthal slope of their foreheads and the way they handled the body. As always, there was a pang of longing inside of her for her team. Her efficient, trained, medical team who could have moved this thing without making it’s joints crack and it’s skin slide off like a chocolate bar being shucked of it’s wrapper.
Record.
“Multiple lacerations to the head, torso, and shoulders. Fatal injury to the throat. 3 inches wide, consistent with a dog bite. Lacerations to the back and legs consistent with scratches.”
Pause.
“Non-lethal wound to the back of the left knee. Defense wounds on the hands, broken nails suggesting resistance....and...”
She actually BIT the damned thing.
“Dog hair and tissue inside the mouth.”
Stop.
“Inside the mouth? What does that mean?”
“Get it on the stretcher. We’ll lift it out.”
“Nobody told us this place was nine floors up with no elevator.”
Nobody told ME.
Until they did.
“I tell you what. I’ll tell you what it means at the bottom.”
That, too, got them moving. And she filed a good story away in the list of their motivations. It wasn’t so bad working with people, once you learned their keys. She turned this one hard in the lock.
“I’ll tell you something else, too.”
They finished strapping down the body and practically flew down the stairs.
Record.
“The dog appears to have been a medium sized breed with a long, pointed snout. A border collie or...”
Pause. She grasped for a differential here, but she wasn’t a dog person, and in point of fact it HAD been a border collie.
“...or a poodle.” Whatever. They could figure it out from there. “Probable accidental death.”
But it wasn’t, and she knew that too. Accidental deaths didn’t come back. They couldn’t.
