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He looked a little awkward. “People wanted the body kept somewhere more secure.”
“More secure than the cells?”
A hard look. “The way they see it, frozen corpses don’t walk.”
She stared at him, aghast. “Marcus is dead.”
“And so are those creatures out there.”
Not true. Vampyr physiology was understood much better these days. Their hearts beat a minimal amount, but they weren’t dead. Nor were they immortal. They aged, just very slowly over hundreds of years. They couldn’t turn into mist or fly like bats. They weren’t invisible in mirrors. They could recover from injuries that humans could not. But they were not invincible. A stab to the heart or decapitation would kill a vampyr. Just like it would a human.
However, to some of the folk here, that would probably be semantics. And Barbara wasn’t here to win hearts and minds. That took more time than she had left on this planet. She was here to do her job.
“Okay,” she said. “Well, let’s unzip him and see what we’ve got.”
—
It never got easier. It was impossible to look at a young, deceased person and not think about all that potential unfulfilled. A waste. An overused phrase, but it was true. Sometimes Barbara could almost feel it. The unused energy humming around the corpse like an electrical field. She put her cup down on the floor and studied the youngster.
He was a pretty kid. Blond, probably tan in summer. Freckles on his nose. Now pale, almost blue. Skinny, as she had noted before. Ribs standing out like a toast rack on his exposed body, clad just in boxers (the rest of his clothes bagged for evidence).
But I bet you ate like a horse, Marcus. Bet some of the other kids ribbed you about your weight, too.
For some, imagining a body as a living human being made the job harder. For Barbara, it made her remember that she was dealing with a person who’d had feelings and thoughts and dreams, not just a slab of meat.
She glanced at Nicholls, who was sipping his coffee and shuffling his feet to keep warm.
“Let’s wheel him out into the kitchen, where it’s not sub-arctic.”
They pushed the steel trolley out of the deep freeze into the Grill’s kitchen. Nicholls slammed the freezer door shut.
“This going to take long?”
“You don’t need to stay if you don’t want to.”
He grimaced. “I’d rather be present, if that’s okay with you.”
He didn’t trust her. But that was his call.
“As you wish, sir.”
Barbara slipped on her glasses. Then she set a small Dictaphone on the side of the table and pressed record. She would use her phone to take pictures. Finally, she pulled on a pair of latex gloves.
She turned to the body.
“So, Marcus, I’m just going to take a look at the rest of you before we get to that nasty gash on your neck, okay?”
She sensed Nicholls raising his eyebrows. She didn’t give a sweet dime. She examined Marcus’s arms and hands, looking for defensive marks. No bruises, which she would expect if he had been violently restrained. From the video it looked as if the perpetrator had pinned him down to stop him struggling. But the lack of bruising would suggest—again—the attack was less brutal than it appeared.
She took several pictures.
“No bruising on the arms, which would indicate the victim didn’t struggle.”
“Marcus was wearing a thick sweatshirt,” Nicholls interrupted.
“I’m sorry, sir?”
“That might explain the lack of bruising.”
