Other Stories

     Detective Harry Long of the NYPD met his partner in the wide alley where Tina’s body had been found. It had not yet been moved.  She had been a prostitute who was known to them as an occasional informer.  Her nude body was found half dumped into a large trash receptacle, her torso into the receptacle itself and her legs hanging down outside of it.  She was only twenty-two.  Harry looked at the long legs that hung down, the shape of her femurs, her fibulas and tibias still beautiful even in death.  Upon her pelvis, which emitted no glow from the sacrum, there was a design that appeared to have been made with some sort of a marker.  The ileum bore a large, round, black dot with a larger “X” underneath, and rays around the drawing.  It was some form of the Jolly Roger placed there by the amateur artist hand of her murderer.  The detective’s elastic skull made a grim expression when he saw it on her.

     “It’s about time you got here, Harry,” his partner Ted Strell said as he finished writing his notes with his long, bony fingers.

     Ted had gotten to the scene first and had jumped right in.  He was thirty-eight, stood at 6’4”, and had his bones on the slim but wiry side. It was a drizzly morning and he was wearing a gray overcoat but not a hat.  The light brown hair that came from his skull scalp was a bit damp, though not really wet.  He had not had the chance to shave, and so there was stubble on his maxilla and mandible.

     “Hey, it’s not easy to get here immediately when your wife’s pregnant,” Harry responded. 

     Ted was divorced with no children.  Harry had been married for seven years, already the father of a boy and a girl.  The size of his wife’s shell uterus showed she was only a couple of months from her due date for their third child.  He had been giving the children their breakfast while his wife was showering when he got the call.  Harry was forty, not so tall as Ted but still six-foot.  His bones were thicker than his partner’s and gave him a stocky appearance despite his height.  Harry was wearing a beige raincoat and a matching hat with a short brim.  His dark brown hair, with some touches of gray, could be seen at the sides of his skull.  Harry had taken a few minutes to shave, and so his maxilla and mandible were smooth in contrast to Ted’s appearance.