Body One

The first was both better and worse than she had expected.

It was better for the same reason that it was worse, namely that it hardly looked like a human body anymore. Most of the flesh was gone and what was there was blackened to the point of looking more like clumps of shoe polish than flesh.

“Where the hell did you find this one?” She asked, this one didn’t smell too bad, the rot being overtaken by a damp stink.

“She was fished out of the bay a week ago,” West explained. “They got to her just before the tendon gave out, otherwise she would have been in bits.”

Maria didn’t need to ask for a time of ****, this one had been dead for a good long while, she glanced at the file that West had produced. She ran down the list of what physical traits they did know for this one although she didn’t have to look far to know this was not one of the girls she was looking for.

About a decade ago the city passed a sweeping set of laws that aimed to deal with the unique healthcare challenges of a city with a mostly female population. These had included yearly health check ups for the population. Of course there were other reasons for the checks, reasons that Maria could only make educated guesses at, but it did mean that she knew the vital statistics of all of the missing women.

This woman was too short to be any of the missing girls. When Maria pointed this out to West she got a exasperated sigh and a demand to know the height range she was looking for.

Armed with that information West produced a single body bag from the racks.