Chapter Text
1/10/51 - cal: 1347/2100 - ex: no - p.m.: no
You’ve kept it together this far. That’s the mantra. He’d come knocking. You’d stayed put. Eventually he’d left.
2/10/51 - cal: 1620/2100 - ex: no - p.m.: 7, poor
You have two cases open at the moment:
THE ICEBOX KILLER
And
THE LONESOME BODY
The first: A missing persons case gone sour. Six year old Hélène Anouilh stuffed (?) into a freezer unit in the long-abandoned basement of what used to be an uptown home appliance store. The freezer — incredible, after so long, that it locks, that it’s there at all, most of the rest stolen, stripped for parts, smashed into a state of uselessness by angry young men for whatever meagre power they could eke out of such an action — the freezer isn’t connected to any power source, but the winter cold — such as it was at the time, three weeks you’ve had this one open —the winter cold in that underground chamber has preserved the body perfectly. There is no wound to which you can attribute the death. There are no signs of a struggle. The orphanage were satisfied with knowing there was no-one left to look for. You’re not so sure.
The second: Corpse found in supposedly unoccupied tenement after the thump of it’s rotting off the rope round its neck. Downstairs neighbours alerted by sound, then smell, soon alerted by black pool of liquid on kitchen floor. RCM called when nobody can get into apartment. Locked (from inside? Or is there a key?) the door, when unlocked, releases cadaverine. Empty rooms, almost empty. Pallets with mattress on top. Knee-high tare pile. Plastic wrappers. Pot of old piss. No water connected up here. No windows but the ones in the once-kitchen, stripped now. Absent appliances apparent in the square patches of clean linoleum. Ghosts on the walls. It’s an attic more than a home. Rope swaying in rafters. Body too decayed to ID. Dental records, no. In any case, teeth on the floor + jaw detaching. Witnesses? No, obviously not. His head would still be on him if there were. It’s open and shut, really, but you’re making a meal of it.
3/10/51 - cal: 1980/2100 - ex: no - p.m.: 6, ok
You barter with Mercier. He’s reluctant initially, but he doesn’t have a good reason to want specific days off and caves when you offer to take both your shifts this cycle. At home you cook simple food, put covered dishes in the fridge, freeze others to re-heat at a later date. Tournee commentators report a five car pileup. You look forward to an uninterrupted stretch of distraction.
4/10/51 - cal: 1610/2100 - ex: no - p.m.: 5, poor
AUTOPSY, UPDATED REPORTS.
THE ICEBOX KILLER
H was buried ASAP. You took whatever pictures you needed for later analysis. Its best to get field autopsies done quickly and efficiently without needless lingering. When she wouldn’t uncurl, you took the pictures. Its better like this. Clean. Professional. Nothing being overlooked. Pictures don’t rot. You can take your time. You don’t take your time. You spend a long time doing nothing. You stay late, go home tired, sleep light, come in tired again. The pictures lie on the desk, in the corner of your eye.
THE LONESOME BODY
Its barely human. Skeletal fingertips. Toothless maw. Face overwritten with filth. Nothing to learn here after three weeks, a month, however long he’d hung before his vertebra gave out. You told the guys in processing you’d deal with disposal but they’ll have to throw him away soon. He’s a contamination hazard.
THE ICEBOX KILLER
In the photographs, she looks like she’s sleeping. You inspect the little body behind its glossy screen and you feel… nothing. Not sadness, not anger, not the usual abstraction of grief. Nothing, not even repulsion from your own numbness.
THE LONESOME BODY
It was a waste. Nothing to see. You’d followed procedure. You’d filled out the form. You’d dug a gloved thumb through the rotting tissue to see how it felt. The slimy protein strands parted like flakes of old fish.
5/10/51 - cal: 1860/2100 - ex: no - p.m.: 5, ok
It’s been like this before, remember? After the shooting. The four month mark of your stint in processing. After your transfer request was denied the first, the second, the third time. You don’t recall how you got back, but you did somehow, and it will happen this time too. You’ve kept it together this far.
6/10/51 - cal: 2239/2100 - ex: run - p.m.: 6, good
Alice comes to Jamrock. You leave work on time for once, meet her at a dining cart close to the station to make the most of her time. Your own apartment isn’t up to standard right now.
“Its going well? You’re settling in.”
It has the tone of a statement, that second part. She doesn’t seem to doubt you would find equilibrium in whatever circumstances you find yourself in. Kind of her. Either that or your mask is holding out better than you thought.
“Its going well.” You lie. “I settled in faster than I thought I would.”
“The caseload is ok?”
“Yes. The stories we heard were exaggerated. Its not so bad, really.”
“That’s good. Thats good.”
“And you? How are things without me?”
“Not too bad. The precinct burned down once or twice since you left, but our torrential weeping took care of it.” That gets a little laugh out of you, which surprises you more than her. She smiles. “Things are how they were, mostly. Not much to report.”
When you leave, you walk her to the rail car. It gets dark early in the autumn months, more muggings, more Johns & Janes. As the white spots cut over the hill 200 yards away illuminating potholes and grout sprouting weeds, she turns to you and hugs you. Its odd, too long, but not long enough for you to figure out what to do before she’s pulling back again.
You raise one eyebrow in a way you dearly hope comes off as playful. “I’m flattered, but I believe fraternising with subordinates is still against RCM code of conduct.”
“Lucky for me, then, that you aren’t my superior anymore.” She wiggles her eyebrows suggestively, making you laugh for the second time in as many hours.
“You must have missed me.”
“I have” she says. Simple. “I was worried. It’s good to see you’re still the same”
You smile, mostly. It’s mostly a smile. The railcar screeches.
7/10/51 - cal: 1730/2100 - ex: run - p.m.: 7, good
Desk work. Paper pushing. Him with his memos, his stilted conversation starters evaporating under the sterilising ray of your professionalism. Viquemare with his glib world-weariness and miasma of self-pity, coming to commiserate with you under the guise of checking said memo’s have found their home. “You see now?” He seems to say between the lines. “We’re the same, you and I. You understand why I’m like this, dont you?”
You’re not the same. You don’t see. He doesn’t know shit.
8/10/51 - cal: 1972/2100 - ex: no - p.m.: 6, ok
VICTIM BIOGRAPHIES
HÉLÈNE ANOUILH: Precocious, aloof, a little dim in certain areas, with a tremendous capacity for tantrums when presented with sudden or unwanted tasks. Liked to whistle. Often, loudly. Wasn’t good at it. Drew pictures of cats in the hundreds. Had once found and hidden a feral kitten under her skirts for most of a day. Had not been allowed to keep it. Best friend adopted a month before her disappearance, causing her to become reticent and irritable. Shared a room with nine other girls ages 7 to 13. Had become violent in her final week. Had, in a fit, destroyed one of their books. Unprovoked, said the nuns, but the other girls were understanding. Things were hard for her. She had night terrors. Wandered in her sleep.
THE LONESOME BODY:
Name: unknown
Age: unknown
Sex: M unknown, decomposition too advanced
Race: unknown, decomposition too advanced
Height: approx. 180 with head
Weight: hard to say, 42kg at time of autopsy, but he’d seeped into the floor by then
Eyes: unknown, decomposition too advanced
Hair: approx. Shoulder length, remaining strands when washed were a mix of grey and brown
Beard: unable to find evidence of facial hair, decomposition too advanced
Blood type: unknown, decomposition too advanced
Contents in blood: unknown, presumed alcohol, decomposition too advanced
Marks and wounds: unknown, decomposition too advanced
C.O.D: presumed asphyxia but decomposition too advanced to say for certain
Date of autopsy: 08/10/51
Location of autopsy: processing dept., precinct 41
9/10/51 - cal: 1539/2100 - ex: no - p.m.: 7, poor
He’d come knocking again, or someone had. You like to believe it was him because it justifies ignoring it.
10/10/51 - cal: 1827/2100 - ex: long walk - p.m.: 7, poor
You do the rounds that are required of you.
Vagrant: Overdose
Mugging victim: Gunshot wound
Older resident of Rue Principale: Accidental death, slipped on an early patch of ice.
You’re thinking about the two of them the whole time. They do laps in your brain as you write down these other, inconsequential endings. Him, putting the rope around his neck. Her, crawling in there to die. What were they feeling? How can you ever file the papers when you can’t know what they were feeling?
12/10/51 - cal: 1784/2100 - ex: no - p.m.: 9, heavy
Most nights smoking on the balcony, some nights smoking in bed, one night not smoking at all— too tired to undress at the end of the day, you had curled as close to the wall as you could and slept hard. No dreams this time. No recreations. You wake up thinking about it anyway.
Any one thing on its own would be forgivable. The reaction was forgivable, understandable even, but the reaction after the reciprocation? It was too strange. Too calculated. Like he’d loosened you up just to strike where you’re weakest. You couldn’t move past that.
14/10/51 - cal: 1930/2100 - ex: sex - p.m.: 5, poor
When he asks you to a bar with him, you say yes. You do not rationalise. What is there to excuse? You’re going out, you’re going to have a drink with a recently sober alcoholic, you’re going to take him home, and you’re going to let him fuck you. It will be forgettable. Regrettable. Unmentioned and unmentionable. Interest will be lost. You’ll have your answer. Things will be easier. Life will go on.
Its the same, this and the body. You want to see what it feels like.
You’re right about one thing: you regret it. You’d made your escape already, but here he is, sticking his nose in it like always. You’re resigned to it going as it usually does:
HDB: prod prod
KK: Dismiss.
HDB: question question
KK: Divert. Redirect. Shut down.
HDB: more of those questions, more and more of the same question.
KK: giving in, eventually. Still not wanting to leave.
Other times you found ways to stop it early, tossed off something inconsequential, let him have it and the reluctance, frustration, embarrassment that follows all the inconsequential things you keep to yourself. Its enough to make him feel like he’s made another crack. You like it. No point denying that here. Not the dogmatism maybe, but the persistent need to know. About you. He’s like an ill-trained dog digging up the lawn, but theres nothing to hide the scent here. Theres one fact to unearth and he’s going to make you say it.
“Why are you out here?”
“Because im smoking.”
“Cant you smoke in there?”
“Im not allowed.”
“Theres an ashtray in your bedroom.”
“Yes. Fine. Im out here because I cant be in there with you”
“Then why were you in there before?”
“Because I didn’t want to be out here alone for once.”
“What does that mean?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re being evasive.”
“And if I say I’m not?”
“Let me ask another way: why haven’t you let me talk to you?
“I was busy.”
“I came to see you.”
“And I was busy”
“Were you busy?”
“No, Harrier, I wasn’t busy. I didn’t want to talk to you.”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“Then we didn’t want the same things. What is the point of all this?”
“What did you want?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter! This is *my* head! Why do you never answer *my* questions?”
“Please. Just tell me what you wanted.”
“I dont know! But I didn’t expect-“
You’re so lost in your script revision that it takes you a moment to realise he’s not pushing it.
The change puts you on edge, or something like it. You aren’t sure. You’re, what? Disappointed? Relieved? Its too hard to parse out in this state. Annoyed. Theres an easy one. You’re annoyed with yourself for this whole stupid scene.
When he goes to the door, you want to ask him if he’ll stay till the sober morning, but you don’t. If theres one indignity you can spare yourself here, it’s that.
15/10/51 - cal: 1423/2100 - ex: manual labor - p.m.: 5, poor
You work on the engine spitefully. It is yours now, only yours, and you’re going to finish it alone. You’ve considered selling it with all its scavenged parts and personal touches. You could make a pretty penny.
The flame decal on its side keeps flashing in your periphery. You pick at it briefly, then move to the other side.
16/10/51 - cal: 1730/2100 - ex: no - p.m.: 6, ok
One of Hélène’s dorm mates — one of the older girls — comes forward with a story about hide and seek. She names two others, 10 and 13, says the four of them had been playing when Hélène disappeared. Says they looked for her an hour, an hour thirty, but gave up around sunset, thinking she’d walked home. Says they didn’t mention she was missing because she wandered at night (“sleep walker” she says “it was late when we got in. We saw the empty bed and figured she’d already started.”).
Her statement fits the other facts. You extrapolate the rest: a child, too invested in a game, staying quiet when her friends call for her, smiling to herself, thrilled by her cleverness, only noticing the door won’t open when the voices have faded and the cold has already sapped most of the strength from her body. The case gets filed under death by misadventure.
17/10/51 - cal: 1765/2100 - ex: no - p.m.: 9, poor
She’s a local drunk, the super confesses. She’d been living up there for a few months. He’d let her stay in the understanding that she’d move on come spring. (“Guess she didn’t have anywhere to move on to.” He says. He doesn’t seem overly upset.)
It’s a suicide. What more do you want?
19/10/51 - cal: 2014/2100 - ex: no - p.m.: 8, poor
You’re so bored.
22/10/51 - cal: 1918/2100 - ex: sex - p.m.: 7, ok
He always puts his mouth on you first. Your neck, your chest, lips wrapped around the too-slight joints of your fingers. He puts his mouth on your cunt. That is what it becomes in these moments: a cunt. These are the parts of you that elude change.
You keep your gloves on once, grip his hair and fuck the worn leather over his tongue when he tries to remove them. He likes it. You fuck his face once, flip him on the mattress and kneel above his mouth, smear a wet trail from his chin to his nose. He likes that too.
Open your eyes, you think at him. Look at me. But he’s not actually a mind reader.
23/10/51 - cal: 1928/2100 - ex: sex - p.m.: 5, good
Somethings off. You don’t know what yet. You intend to keep it that way.
25/10/51 - cal: 2230/2100 - ex: sex - p.m.: 7, ok
His dick is miraculously hard this time and you’re six drinks stupid. You tell him he should fuck you. There’s nothing to pass on, not on your end. Him? You don’t know. You don’t care. You aren’t thinking about that kind of safety.
You’re on your back when he tries to say it again, on your back with a loose hand at his throat. It’s more symbol than intention, but he’s pressing into it, into you, starts to gasp it, says “Fuck, Kim, I—“
You throttle the final syllables.
It’s not just desire in your grip: Theres real fury, too. Cartilage shifts under your palm. The pop of moving trachea zips through you. His eyes widen, face going red, redder, turning purple. Tears force their way forward to splash on your chest. Hips stutter against yours, speed up, hairy underbelly frotting at your dick. His mouth works wordlessly, but only desperate survival sounds and spittle escape the vice of your fingers. Involuntary inner muscles tighten. A confused amalgam of fear and ecstasy blooms in his features.
Theres drool on your wrist now. Theres a hot throb inside you. You let go.
He sobs when he comes, real snot-and-tears shudder-breathed sobbing, pressure built up in his lungs spilling over all at once. You wipe at his wet cheeks, try to clean him up a little, but this only makes him more frantic. His weight moulds you into the mattress, his hands giving up support duty to cradle your face in turn. Nose-close, glasses digging into your brow, salt water runs over the lenses, trickles down your temples into your hair. He’s still thrusting gently, still inconsolable as you pet him like a startled horse, whispering to someone: its ok, its ok.
His head falls on your shoulder. His body slows, stills. His breathing evens out against your collar bone. That rogue hand of yours goes to stroke his nape, but you catch it before it makes contact. You feel lit up inside. You feel like shit. You wish he’d kissed you.
Soft squelch: his spent dick slipping out of you: Falling asleep, you think. He’ll be finished after a stunt like that. You try to roll him off so you can get at yourself but he rouses, slides to his knees without complaint. Sucks you off like he meant it.
27/10/51 - cal: 1957/2100 - ex: no - p.m.: 7, poor
Weekday drinking takes its toll. You have a headache forty-three hours long. Writing is slow. Your back aches where you hunch over the papers, trying to get your eyes closer to the page. You were here before, remember? Back in the furnace room, in your final skin suits, then again during the re-transition. You know how it goes. Its this, the headache, the regret, then the liquid trickle of it into working hours to dodge both. An even more crushing kind of secrecy overtaking you: Seeing the problem. Sniffing yourself. Slurring paranoia of imagined badge removal. Projected backslide into even worse territory. Pulling the leash in, getting your shit together, making yourself sit on the balcony and wait out the want.
Its lying in bed, after, unhappy to be aware, wondering how dark a stain you’d leave—how long it would take for someone to find you.
28/10/51 - cal: 1698/2100 - ex: long walk - p.m.: 5, poor
When you get off this time, when you find him in the bus shelter and the usual question comes, you say:
“We’re not doing this anymore.”
He swallows, nods.
“Ok.”
Shifts from foot to foot.
You expect to be persuaded. You expect him to take this rats-nest of a situation and untwist it, re-spool it, weave its threads into rational patterns.
You wait.
It doesn’t come. You just stand there, the two of you, split down the middle by the shadow of a concrete beam.
When he leaves, before you can beat him to it, something in his body crumbles. He ages ten years in the fraction of a second it takes to lean down and press a dry kiss to your temple.
He leaves you alone there. The bus comes, leaves. You go home and pour out the bottle.
29/10/51 - cal: 1539/2100 - ex: run - p.m.: 6, poor
You run. You go to the garage and work on your engine. You run out of pre-made dishes and don’t have the will to cook. The next week will be all cheese sandwiches and coffee. You try not to worry your cheeks too much in the bathroom. It’ll come back. You’ll eat slightly less, then slightly more, then the usual amount.
30/10/51 - cal: 1438/2100 - ex: run - p.m.: 7, poor
Theres a sore spot over your Adams apple where he’d suckled the skin. It isn’t visible, but you can feel it.
Juvenile OD: you have to tell a tired, tired man that his daughter won’t be coming home this time. You stand with your hands behind you while the dry news rattles through his airways. He croaks and claws at his scalp, but the tears don’t want to come. You’re grateful.
31/10 - cal: 1690/2100 - ex: run - p.m.: 5, poor
Him:
Kissing you
You:
Struggling against the cuffs.
Clinking metal, wet suck of flesh
You feel him smile where your mouths meet.
You’re both sober. You’re still angry,
But its getting better. You’re sharing a bed
In a separate apartment, one that doesn’t
Have a dry rotted inner wall or
Purple stains on the carpet.
You want to bite him, but you want to be kissed
more than you want to bite him. It’s a
prize match in your gut as you
rub your erections together. His hand
petting your stomach, and
the way you’re wet against him,
with the movement, its
his head keeps
catching at you. You want
all-contact. You want
To push your fingers through his skin
Feel him up inside, but your hands
Are stuck behind you. You want him,
in, but
no
Amount
Of
Angling
Seems
to
He breaks the kiss
“You want something?”
Genuine, concerned.
You, still moving
Weak laughter
“Hah, I want something.”
His hand stills you hips
“Ohh. You *want* something.”
Teasing you now
The smile again
Manoeuvring
And you expect it, then,
But it doesn’t come.
There is no inward slide,
Only the repeated threat of it.
What you want
It seems
Is to not get
What you want.
What you want
It seems
is to be given
something better:
His mouth in your mouth
Your pulse in his veins
Skins porous, sticky
With shared sweat,
Like your outer layers
Want inside each other.
He pulls you closer now
To put his hands behind you.
Laces your fingers where
They’re bound. You wonder
Why everything has to be
such an ordeal when
This feels so
Easy and
You want
You want
You want
You push your hand out of yourself and go to wash up. No need to sleep like a pig.
1/11/51 - cal: 1740/2100 -ex: run - p.m.: 7, poor
You have two cases open at the moment:
THE CASE OF THE BORING DIY ACCIDENT
And
THE BODY THAT ISNT INTERESTING
You haven’t named them this on paper because you haven’t named them. Someone fell in a way that looks kind of like they were pushed, someone else got stabbed in the neck in a part of town where neck stabbings happen. You need to convince the board that the former was an accident because it happened to a stupid man in a nice apartment, and you need to prove the latter either was or wasn’t perpetrated by one specific neck-stabbing suspect because someone else wants plausible leverage to convict him for a different neck stabbing they can’t quite pin.
It doesn’t matter. They’re dead either way. Who are you helping here? What are you doing?