the fifth day

An elderly man with a metal detector found the body by accident in the grassy overgrowth east of the shuttered factory. At first he thought it was a pile of old clothes but closer inspection yielded blood and decay and bone and dark brown hair.

The responding officers roped off the area and waited for the detective, who arrived swiftly, cleanly dressed, eyes ringed with dark circles. He sipped from a metal mug and stood observing. 

Been here longer than two days but no more than seven, an officer said. 

Flies buzzed and officers worked to clear the ground around the dead girl. 

Look for any kind of wheeled tracks, the detective said. Car, truck, bicycle, wheelbarrow. 

A young crime scene assistant snapped photos while the detective stood wordlessly. 

The afternoon faded quickly into evening, cool and luminous. Pastel streaks exploded in pre-dusk sunlight.

The detective spoke into his digital recorder: 

The body lay face-down, packed into the surface and limbs twisted as if dropped from above. Left forearm and hand unattached, not yet found. No automobile tracks. Tall shrubs and grasses; tracks should be easy to identify. Winged insects, snakes, reeds, muskrats. The body was likely maimed and killed, then dumped here, maybe a helicopter. Ask around if anyone’s heard recent low-flying choppers. Ankles bound together with cheap twine dug into the skin. Compound fracture in left femur.

Medical examiners raised the body onto a gurney and the detective spoke again to the recorder:

One eye closed, the other a recess where the eye had been. Hair long and brown, matted with dried blood, dirt. Skull broken. Her appearance and clothing suggest a female teenager at the time of death but need the ME to confirm. Muddy grit and dried blood in the fingernails of the right hand. Need time with the metal detector man.

In the waning daylight they’d carefully loaded the body into a van and transported it to the coroner’s office. The detective stood to study the depression in the brush until the moonless dark when everyone had gone. He walked to his sedan by cell phone light and drove to the coroner for the fifth day that week.