Chapter 10

The early afternoon sun glowed its way through Brian's light blue Oxford shirt. He'd abandoned his coat and tie in the backseat of one of the police cruisers. He was on his third packet of Odorscreen. None of the other cops had taken him up on his offer of sunscreen, but his extra Odorscreen packets had temporarily made him the most popular detective on the force.

He watched the evidence technicians carefully gather up soil from around the body in the pit. The coroner's wagon would be there soon to pick up the body. There had been a delay of two hours because by the time the police were ready to have the body taken away the Medical Examiner's office was in the middle of their shift change.

The lieutenant had arrived around noon. He was keeping a discreet and upwind distance from the body. Brian stood in the sun and half listened to the sergeant explaining to him what they'd found.

"You can see needle still sticking out of his arm, right there." He pointed, although they were too far away to see. "He's like a moment frozen in time. He must have OD'd and his friends buried him here."

"'First time I've ever seen that."

"Yeah, that's pretty, um, consciencious of his friends. It's not like they had to dig a whole. There was a natural crack or crag in the earth here, they just had to cover him up."

"'Still pretty unusual. Druggies usually leave their friends just wherever. They don't call an ambulance when they OD and they're still alive. They sure don't bury then when they."

"Well, maybe he got a little bit of help OD'ing."

Brian tuned out their conversation and listened to the two beat cops he'd given the Odorscreen to. They were standing right by the pit.


"The maggots had a field day with this one, they sorta wriggled this body half-way out of its clothes. See the white down there in his lap? That his bones."

"Yeah, I see it. What a mess."

"D'you hear Gene found a body in a van last week?"

"Yeah, I heard. It was an OD like this, right?"

"Yeah, another dumb-ass hype, but not like this. Gene's was fresh. The van was parked in back of a pizza place. hype was living in his van, and he was sitting down when he OD and he sort of slumped over when he died..."

The other cop made a face, he knew what was coming.

"...So when the M.E. guys moved him, man, his face looked like a pizza. And with the pizza smell coming from the building, oh, damn, I almost lost my lunch." They chuckled.

"What did Gene do when he found him?"

"That guy is so stupid. He probably saw the hype sitting up in the van was all like 'get out of the car!"

"Yeah, he'd be the only one who'd bring in a dead body on a resisting arrest charge."

"Yeah, he'd try to put cuffs on him and his arm would fall off." They started laughing. A little whistling past the graveyard. They saw Brian; they usually weren't as friendly with him, but the Odorscreen had put them in a good mood.

"Hey, Brian, take a look at this guy." He pointed to an open gym bag next to the corpse in the ditch. "He's got all his works in nice, neat plastic bag. A little box of hypodermic needles, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, cotton swabs in a ziplock. His clothes are all nicely folded. This guy was like the Martha Stewart of hypes. "

Brian stared down at the body. Something wasn't right. He looked at the exposed bones of the pelvis where decomposition and insect activity had almost completly exposed the bone. In contrast, the arms were almost pristine. The parts of the arms closest to the ground were black from pooled blood, of course, but the rest of the skin was only slightly green and barely puffy from the gasses of decomposition. The arms must have gotten splashed with the bleach. That would explain their condition. But something wasn't right.

"Hey, look, the guy had good taste in cars. There's a '72 Oldsmobile 442 mechanics manual in his bad. 'Looks like a couple other manuals too." The cop leaned over a little, but he couldn't read the names of the other manuals, but he notice something else, and the two joking cops grew as quiet as Brian, as quiet as the body in the pit.

This guy didn't work on cars. There was no grease on his small hands. There were no track marks on his arms. And his bare pelvis showed a large oval-shaped pelvic opening.

The wise-cracking old cop swayed a little in the dry, afternoon sun.

"This is a girl."