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skonen_bladesI recognize some of the faces staring up at me. The rain is pattering softly on the top of the forensic tent, keeping the crime scene dry.
I’ve seen these faces on photocopied posters in shop windows in the poor part of town. We don’t post pictures on milk cartons around here. That’s for the rich. For children the world cares about.
The only thing that could have led them into a trap was hope and trust. Kids have so much of that no matter how bad the world gets.
I never considered myself to be a happy guy but when I look back on who I was five years ago, before I started this job, I see a rosy-cheeked simpleton who practically skipped to the academy. In my mind’s eye, I look like a five-year-old kid, too stupid to see this life coming. Clean-shaven and optimistic.
Now here I am, looking down on dead faces recently uncovered. Their eyes are clouded but other than that, they just looked shocked. Pale with surprise. Their young faces look into my mind’s eye like it was a mirror. These kids, swimming in a shallow grave like exposed fish, remind me of who I was so long ago.
These days, I have a huge beard and I started smoking again because nothing matters. When the boss comments on my hygiene, I tell him to fire me. He hasn’t yet. As long as I stay away from the television cameras, he says, I can stay. I do good work.
I think that I get good results from crime scenes like these because I can’t imagine a life where this is possible. I try to understand. I look at all the details, waiting for it to make some sort of sense to me. Sometimes I uncover clues that lead us to a perpetrator but even if that happens and I get transcripts of the interrogation, it never makes sense to me.
I’m on the hunt for answers in the worst part of the human condition.
A spray of dirt lies across the minnow-pale chest of the boy on the top. There’s a white girl’s freckled arm poking out of the dirt beneath him and above that, a shock of red hair. I can’t see her face. The forensic team is on its way to carefully dig up the rest.
I think of numbers here. There are currently 82 unsolved child disappearances in the city’s case files. That’s for the last three years. I figure most of them were snatched by anxious parents in divorce cases. They’re probably hiding out somewhere, full of candied attention and take-out dinners in motel rooms.
I’d put the body count in this ditch at a rough guess of twelve, knocking that number down to 70 or so.
I feel like we just found out where the Pied Piper put those kids from that story.
Already, I can see a bit of a boot print and and a cigarette butt. That could give us the weight, shoe size, approximate height, and blood type of whoever buried these flowers. The killer was rushed. We might get a break.
For now, I’m just staring at the scene, trying to let an understanding sink into me.
It’s not happening.
tags
I’ve seen these faces on photocopied posters in shop windows in the poor part of town. We don’t post pictures on milk cartons around here. That’s for the rich. For children the world cares about.
The only thing that could have led them into a trap was hope and trust. Kids have so much of that no matter how bad the world gets.
I never considered myself to be a happy guy but when I look back on who I was five years ago, before I started this job, I see a rosy-cheeked simpleton who practically skipped to the academy. In my mind’s eye, I look like a five-year-old kid, too stupid to see this life coming. Clean-shaven and optimistic.
Now here I am, looking down on dead faces recently uncovered. Their eyes are clouded but other than that, they just looked shocked. Pale with surprise. Their young faces look into my mind’s eye like it was a mirror. These kids, swimming in a shallow grave like exposed fish, remind me of who I was so long ago.
These days, I have a huge beard and I started smoking again because nothing matters. When the boss comments on my hygiene, I tell him to fire me. He hasn’t yet. As long as I stay away from the television cameras, he says, I can stay. I do good work.
I think that I get good results from crime scenes like these because I can’t imagine a life where this is possible. I try to understand. I look at all the details, waiting for it to make some sort of sense to me. Sometimes I uncover clues that lead us to a perpetrator but even if that happens and I get transcripts of the interrogation, it never makes sense to me.
I’m on the hunt for answers in the worst part of the human condition.
A spray of dirt lies across the minnow-pale chest of the boy on the top. There’s a white girl’s freckled arm poking out of the dirt beneath him and above that, a shock of red hair. I can’t see her face. The forensic team is on its way to carefully dig up the rest.
I think of numbers here. There are currently 82 unsolved child disappearances in the city’s case files. That’s for the last three years. I figure most of them were snatched by anxious parents in divorce cases. They’re probably hiding out somewhere, full of candied attention and take-out dinners in motel rooms.
I’d put the body count in this ditch at a rough guess of twelve, knocking that number down to 70 or so.
I feel like we just found out where the Pied Piper put those kids from that story.
Already, I can see a bit of a boot print and and a cigarette butt. That could give us the weight, shoe size, approximate height, and blood type of whoever buried these flowers. The killer was rushed. We might get a break.
For now, I’m just staring at the scene, trying to let an understanding sink into me.
It’s not happening.
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no subject
Date: 22 Oct 2008 09:17 (UTC)"Minnow-pale" is excellent.
Another good one!
no subject
Date: 22 Oct 2008 11:40 (UTC)Very good...very grim. Poor flowers.