The "Human" Being

Chapter One

“The body is this way, Detective,” said Officer Phillips, motioning towards a corpse that lay on the cold grass. It was a chilly night and pretty dark too, the moon was the only natural type of lighting out here. I walked slowly towards the body, trudging my feet along the long grass. The body came into view, it seemed to be in a pretty bad state. It was kind of hard to see and I could just make out the body. I was trying to fix my eyes on the corpse so that I could see where she had been attacked. I bent down beside it, as soon as I was going to touch her face, I felt a bony hand rest on my shoulder.

I shuddered and quickly rose to my feet only to see a dark figure in front of me. He came closer so I could see his face. He was an elderly man with very short, thin, white hair and his face was very wrinkly with lines that seemed to get deeper as he aged. He was wearing a pair of glasses with a thin, silver coloured frame and a white lab coat.

 “Detective Salvador...” He addressed me; his voice was quiet and raspy. “I’m Elliot Graver, the coroner. I’m sorry if I gave you a fright.”

"Uh, nice to meet you, I'm Detective Salvador and that is my partner Detective Galloway," I replied pointing to my partner who stood by the police car, talking to Officer Phillips. "So, what can you tell me about the body?"

"Well..." He bent down beside the body, I mimicked him and bent down on the other side. "We have identified the body and her name is Trish Miller, aged 25. We have examined the body but there were no signs of severe injuries that could have caused death, we are assuming that she was suffocated by the killer. We also found a large incision on her chest, but I would need to take the body back to the morgue to investigate further and what the purpose of the incision was."

"Thank you Mr. Graver, you take the body to the morgue and contact me when you find any important information, I'll stay here and look around for clues," I said, still staring at the body that was lying in front of me.

"I will," said Graver, standing up. He made his way to Officer Phillips to get a van to transport the corpse.

I stood up, got my pocket torch out and started investigating for clues. I walked around the undisturbed area, flashing my torch at everything on the grass. I checked around about three to five times and still nothing, just plain long, green grass. Fog escaped my mouth with every exhale of breath, I realised it was getting colder and late. I don't think I was going to find something so I made my way back to Galloway. "Find anything, Detective?" He asked.

"No, I checked many times but no luck. Why don't you go and check it out, maybe you'll find something I missed," I asked, annoyed with his laziness.

"Uh, nah I can't see anything in this darkness, you know my eyes aren't that good," replied Galloway, making an unconvincing excuse.

"Fine, let's go, maybe the officers will find something," I said, making my way around the car to the passenger's seat. "We'll see you again, Officer Phillips."

We got into the car and drove off in the darkness, leaving Officer Phillips and the crime scene behind.

It seemed to be faster going back than going to the crime scene even though it took about the same time. I slowly pushed myself to get out of the car, oh no, I've been spending too much time with Galloway, but I seriously didn't want to get back to work. We finally got inside and I glanced at the old analogue clock, it was 9:10pm. I sighed and went to my desk.

When I finally got myself to think again, I got a phone call. "Hello, this is Detective Salvador, how can I help?" I asked, quite lazily actually.

"Hello, this is Graver, I have more information on the victim. You may want to make your way to the morgue," he told me in his raspy voice.

"Yes, okay, we're on our way, we'll be there soon," I said, then hung up. I turned to my partner. "C'mon Galloway, we need to go to the morgue, Graver's got more information that may be helpful to us."

Galloway had his feet propped up on his desk and was playing with a stress ball, throwing it up and catching it. "Okay, lets go then," he said, I knew he wasn't up for it but I didn't care. Work is work.

We ended up getting to the morgue in about 5 minutes, I had to drive again but it wasn't so bad. "What took you gentlemen so long?" asked Graver when we entered. My partner and I exchanged glances but remained silent.

"So, what have you found out Mr. Graver?" I asked, wanting to get this show on the road.

"Well, if you come with me I'll show you," he motioned towards the room with the body on a metal table. We followed him in there and we saw the large incision stretched and the light shining up on it so we could kind of see inside. "I have made a conclusion that she had died of strangulation but this incision was the most interesting. You see I looked inside and her heart....it was gone!"

"Gone?" I was confused yet interested to know more.

"Yes, completely gone, someone had pushed through her rib cage, breaking many ribs and surgically removed the heart."

"Surgically removed you say, do you think a person educated on surgery and such could have done this?"

"Yes, I believe so, the killer could've hired a surgeon or could've been one in the past."

"But what would someone do with a heart?"

"Many things actually, but they're mainly used for black marketing."

I noted all this down, I've never had this sort of case before. "Is that all?"

"Yes, that's all I could find, other than this the killer had been quite discrete with the way he killed her."

"Thank you," I replied. We came out of the morgue, my mind was boggling with all this information. I had many questions too but I had no way of getting the answers.