The Detective [Part III]

PART III – The Morgue

The Detective walked into the morgue and found himself smack dab in the middle of a beer and pizza party. It was the monthly reward for the scrubbing down of all surfaces with anti-bacterial foam and the taking of a full inventory of bodies and parts. They even made sure every one was dead by pulling a quick rectal temperature of all of the corpses.

It’d started three years earlier after two bodies went missing and a vicious staff infection almost wiped out two precincts and most of the hospital staff. The staff infection had come from a stiff that turned out to still be alive. The infection was brought under control just before it mutated into a nasty flesh eater. The detective wasn’t sure why they had the party after though. He was pretty sure he could smell fresh vomit and urine just starting to push its way through the thick stench of cleanser. But, that wasn’t his problem.

His problem was that even though there was only a tooth at each of his crime scenes, they had to be kept here until the lab had time to process them. It was a bunch of red tape bullshit left over from the last Medical Examiner who had run the place like his own private museum and had enough clout to have the city codes changed to suit his needs. The Medical Examiner had died of a coronary while cleaning between the tiles of the morgue floor with a Q-Tip and alcohol.

So, all body parts not actively checked out as court required exhibits, or on their way back to whatever family claimed them had to remain under lock and key. This greatly slowed down lab work, since the Lab techs refused to fill out the 27 forms required to check the bits they needed out. They waited until the Primary Detectives got so pissed they went and filled them out themselves. This was why The Detective was here.

His guy on the inside was a narcoleptic former Sysadmin who’d gotten tired of working with warm bodies. Warm bodies had a way of opening their mouths and letting words fall out. The Detective spotted him across the room where he’d fallen asleep with a beer in his hand. It must have just happened since the two people he’d been talking to were still waiting for him to finish what he’d been saying. He’d still talk to “The Warms”, as he called them, once he had a few drinks in him. He could also produce all 27 forms needed to check something out of the morgue by typing a few specifics into a GUI interface he’d designed that’d process everything and spit it out of the printer in triplicate. It cost $100. It was worth it. The program was on his personal laptop only. He gave discounts to those who were directly capable of firing him. They got it for $25.

It took the Detective a few minutes to rouse his guy. The Detective hoped his guy wouldn’t have a hypnopompic hallucination when he woke up or The Detective would have to wait until he came to his senses. Then he’d have to hear about Alien Abductions again. Luckily his guy’s reaction to waking up this time was just a split second of not being able to breathe.

Ten minutes later The Detective was out the door $100 lighter but with a small Jar containing the tooth and a copy of the release order. It’d been almost 36 hours since they’d hit the scene and he’d have to wait another 48 before he had a sample for a DNA match. He wondered sometimes why he even bothered.

[This is an experiment. I don’t know where it is going. I write it and post it with only a questionable reread. It’s about the process of hitting the keys in the most reflexive of styles. It probably will go nowhere, but we’ll find out. I have no plan. I have no outline. I have no reason. It’s still © 2007 Greg Bunch, even if it sucks.]