Clean In Half

"Clean In Half"

By: Louis Williams

"Clean in half," Sarah replied, looking down at the body. It sat on the floor of an abandoned warehouse, a thick red pool of blood resting around it on the dusty floor. Sick yellow light filtered in from dirty windows near the ceiling. Rafters above looked as if they had been rained on when one or all of the sky lights began leaking. The entire place smelled of rot, dust, and now blood.

She was the county coroner and had been for almost fifteen years. In the old hound dog's time, she had seen quite a bit, but this was entirely new. One side of the feline sat a few inches from the other. The waist and legs lay as if they had been asleep, his tail hung neatly between his two legs, almost like a child of some kind, a kitten ready to be tucked into bed. The dark amber pool sat around him, almost as if someone had poured blood onto the floor and laid the two halves upon it.

Chase leaned forward and knelt. His thick, scaled tail raised a bit as he did so, keeping it out of the gore. His knees popped a bit as he knelt. His large frame was getting harder on his joints now, the weight of years of long nights and bad food while studying clues and chasing nonsense phrases in interrogation rooms from suspects was catching up to him. Not that it would do any good now to slow down and eat properly, to get the weight off his joints and tail. Not that he would have anyway. Gators grow up not out as they say. 'You don't get fat, you get tall,' was the joke. Yes, he didn't get fat. But his heart would still crack open one day from the strain of it, of having to push blood thick with saturated fats and oils through miles and miles more of vessels.

Chase wasn't thinking of his heart or his health then, however. He took the aches, the pains, like he took his weight: just part of the job, another part that would one day kill him. He stared down at the young feline's frame, examining it with cold efficiency. "You get anything from the scent?" He turned one of the poor SOB's handpaws over, looking at it. No defensive wounds. Like he was caught off guard.
"Blood, more blood," Sarah replied sniffing. It was a damn shame. A damn, bloody, gory shame. "It's almost like they didn't," she stopped as she neared the right handpaw. "Wait a minute." She began again, tracing the steps she had taken to sniff examine the body. Starting at the head like she was trained to do so many years ago.

She could still hear her instructor yelling at her to 'always start at the head! The body tells a tale for us who can read it! It's our job to tell the whole story for those can't smell the story! They can't know the proper story, if you don't start in the right spot!' Her instructor, an older german shepherd at the time shouted, as he pounded her exam table over and over again in the clinical room. She had flinched then, flinched at his shouting, at the stench of death and rot, at the whole thing.

Sarah didn't flinch now. She moved up to the head and sniffed again. Blood. She moved down to the T-shirt, clean on one side, blood soaked on the other. More blood. But, something else An acrid burning smell that was just barely there. "Bleach," she replied.
Chase leaned back, a bit, taken aback. His tail tip danced dangerously close to the pool of blood, but managed to stay up and clean. "Bleach?"

Sarah nodded, her floppy ears almost shaking. "It's not as if the body's been sprayed down, but it's in there. They're hiding something." She moved again, working her sniffer towards the shoulders, working her way down the handpaws. "Gunpowder. A faint hint of it below the bleach."

"So, our victim here, shot at someone. Then was split in half?" Chase tilted his head in the canine way, visibly confused. Sarah found it bemusing almost smiling a bit. In other circumstances she might've.

"Yes," she replied. "And at some point, during all of this, the poor guy got into bleach, or it got into him. But also, look how there's no spurts here. No spray on the walls or floor around, just a large red pool?"

"I've noticed," Chase replied, standing back up carefully. As he raised up, his tail lowered instinctively just a bit too quickly, the tip touching the thick red pool. Damn. He tried to hide the grimace on his face. "I've also noticed there's no defensive wounds. If something was going to slice you clean in half, I don't know about you, but I'd put a hand up, strictly by instinct. Try to block it somehow."

The coroner stood; her hound dog face looked a bit sadder than usual. "Yes, but what if it was something moving too fast."

"I've got a feeling," Chase sighed, looking down at the body. "That he was just a little too dead to defend himself." He had noticed, on the poor feline's clothing, that despite the dirt and muck, there didn't seem to be any blood on it, at least not on the parts that wasn't laying in it. No major spatters on the top of his pants or shirt. Why was that?"

"Could have been dead first," Sarah agreed. "I'll test the blood first thing and get back to you."

"You think poisoning," Chase asked, tilting his head in the familiar canine way. He had teased her for doing it until he had subconsciously picked up the habit.

This time she couldn't help herself. Her ears did cock a smile. "I don't know what to think. I'm not paid to guess, but give facts. I can tell you I smell, something. You'll get this report fast tracked."

"Poor son of a bitch," Chase grumbled, looking down at the feline. An expression of shock stared back up at him. A frozen expression that hopefully his loved ones would never see. It would be best if they didn't ever catch any of that, if they could avoid looking upon them in death at all, in Chase's opinion. It always hurt. Always. Leaves a lingering bitter image of your loved one instead of that last good memory. That last good taste of the life they lived before their end. "Who did this to you? Who hated you this much?"

Chase looked down at the victim again as if examining them for the first time. An old dark T-shirt that looked to be more dirt than cloth. A pair of pants stained and torn from a life of hardship, of eating from trashcans and sleeping beneath bridges. Fur matted, swirled and messed from a street life. A hard life.

But beneath the grime. Beneath the filthy used up clothing and the unkempt unwashed fur was a life. A young life of someone who looked not to even have ever reached their eighteenth birthday. Someone's son, someone's brother. At one point someone loved this child, until they didn't. Was he a runaway? Was he abandoned? What was his life? What was his senseless death? "I'll find them, don't worry." Chase whispered to the body. "You can't speak anymore. I'll speak for you. I'll uncover whoever did this to you, and make them pay."

Sarah stood writing a quick report on the gurney nearby. It was the first of many. The body would have to be brought back to the morgue for further examining and more reports to be written. There were still photographs being taken of the scene. But she buried herself in her work as Chase made his pledge, suppressing the sigh she felt building up within. He took this personal again.
You can't help it. Sarah knew he couldn't help it, she couldn't either. It reminded him of his own child. She saw a flash of Carlie laying there herself when she first seen the body, her young pup's face staring up at her mother in a horrified expression. It sickened Sarah too, but you had to bury it. Bury it with cheap jokes about death, bury it with alcohol, bury it with over eating or whatever grace or strength or means you had, but bury it you must. Once it was personal, that's when mistakes happen. That's when innocent people get accused and criminals walk free. That was something Sarah knew all too well.

She looked over at chase. He was examining the footpaws now, seeing something buried deep within them. It was subtle, but it was there. In her heart of hearts, she knew he was going to push this case to its limits. There was no doubt in her mind that he would find the killer. Question was would he even have a job when he did?

She looked back down at the paperwork on the gurney in front of her. Lots of things to accomplish. Lots of things. Reports upon reports to write, the position of the body, the condition, the fluids around it, who was present, everyone who touched it. A chain of evidence must be established so all of this could be held up in court. Lots of things.

As Chase turned to leave the building to head to whatever witnesses that could be found outside, Sarah found herself whispering a small prayer. It was something she hadn't done since she was a child praying with her mother at night before bed. But still she did it, "please, don't let him kill himself over this." She said, to God, or the angels or whoever was listening. "Please, don't let him do it. Keep him safe."