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“There’s something over here,”I called back to Chris, my longtime friend and colleague.
This morning, we’d both been called out to this DMORT op in Memphis.
Why was it always fucking Memphis?
“Can you pass me a few more flags? I’m in a bad spot and don’t want to move my feet.”
“Here’s four. That’s the last of this box. That enough, or do you think you’ll need more?” Chris stood slowly from his crouched position, and wiped the sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his PPE gown. I stared at a swath of blood he’d painted on his forehead.
“What?” he asked.
“You’ve got a little…” I gestured to the smear, and he wiped again, looking at the blood on his gloved fingers when he pulled his hand away.
“Shit. Well, I’ll be back once I get this disinfected. You almost done here, or do we need another box of markers?”
I swiveled my head as much as possible without moving my feet. The less I moved, the less I’d kick over. Blood and bits of tissue were camouflaged against the leaves and brush of the surrounding woods. Everywhere I focused, a body part emerged like an image in a Magic Eye painting. An ear here, a piece of bone there, a full leg still wearing its pants. Where was the other leg?
Stupid question. It could be anywhere. If anything was true about the nature of explosions, it was that there was no rhyme or reason why the parts fell where they fell.
“I think we’re gonna need a bigger box,” I told Chris.
Despite the heat and the decedent’s blood on his face, my favorite partner-in-crime-solving still looked as cool and composed as ever.
I was sweltering in this plastic-lined gown under the hot West Tennessee sun. Smoke and the smell of accelerant lingered in the air, even hours after we’d been airlifted into the middle of nowhere.
Explosion. Seven presumed bodies.
Meth lab, probably, but that part didn’t concern me.
My only job, as a member of this team, was to assist local law enforcement and pathologists any way possible. Right now, that meant I was just another set of hands without a brain, labeling the pieces for photography. Later (hopefully on the sooner end of later) I’d be picking up the pieces I labeled, before they started to rot too badly. Then we could begin classifying them into the proper bags on board the refrigerated truck, and finally, we’d set up radiography and other equipment to start assembling biographic profiles on the decedents.
Chris carefully made his way back to me, carrying a cardboard box with colorful evidence flags on wires, avoiding the blood and grease slicks on the leafy forest floor.
“I’m going to take a look over this way. Let me know if you get stuck in another nasty patch and I’ll come help.”
“Find any teeth yet?” I asked.
“Partial mandible with no intact molars or incisors. But in our case, the lack of teeth might be just as helpful. A couple others. I’ve already contacted the West Tennessee State Pen and Whiteville to give them a heads up I might be pulling records, but the agents seem pretty sure they know who was in the trailer. I might get to go home early if they don’t need me.”
Chris’s primary job on these operations was to identify victims. As a forensic odontologist with the University of Tennessee, he did the same thing I did, only he got paid a lot more, and trafficked exclusively in teeth. He also taught general dentistry and some specialty classes at the FAC, and as a side gig, he maintained a thriving dental practice. The man was as busy as me. I suspected it was why we got along so well.
“Lucky for you.” I groaned in complaint, but I did it more because it seemed like something I wassupposedto do, rather than because I hated being here.
I didn’t hate being here.
Sure, I hated the loss of life. Senseless death always brought a sense of emptiness along with it. But over the years, I’d grown accustomed to seeing bits of rotten flesh strewn about. This portrait was no more gruesome than anything I’d studied at the Body Farm, or anything I did all day in my career.
This was my normal.
Often, when remains were found with decomposing tissues intact, the rotting flesh was useless. It was impossible to distinguish between perimortem injuries that may have contributed to or caused death and normal postmortem decomp. In those cases, we’d have to clean the bones.
It was the bones that got me excited.
In my lab, I used various methodologies to cut, scrape, or macerate the soft tissue away from bone. I had human sized tanks and steel vats where I could boil remains in water, soak them in ammonia, or sometimes bleach. Occasionally, I worked with an entomologist who let his pack of dermestid beetles feast on the remains. That was always fun. And surprisingly fast.
Normies didn’t realize this, but once the flesh was removed, a new world opened up. Bones revealed all sorts of marks that could identify a victim or help us discover cause of death.
Flesh rots. Bones remain.
