It was 11:04 in the morning as police officers stood guard outside the door of a young woman’s studio apartment in Los Angeles. About thirty minutes ago, her boyfriend had frantically called 911 saying that he had found his girlfriend sprawled out on her bed, unresponsive, with ligature marks around her neck. He couldn’t tell whether someone had broken into her place, but nothing had seemed out of place. When police and emergency medical responders had arrived on the scene, however, they could tell that someone had forced themselves in through the window by the fire escape and that there was nothing they could do for the young woman. She had been dead by then for some several hours at least.
When police showed up a few minutes later, the boyfriend was quickly taken out into the hallway so that evidence could be preserved for the investigators and so that he could be calmed down long enough to answer some basic questions for the detectives. They had apparently been dating for about six months and she had trusted him with a key to her place. That morning she didn’t show up for coffee at the corner cafe and he got worried, deciding to go back to her place and check up on her. He was incredibly broken up about the whole affair, and police saw no reason to suspect him, yet at the same time they also didn’t have any immediate leads.
The girl, whose name apparently was Saema (a fact verified by her driver’s license), was about 5’7”, had an average build, and long, brown hair. She lay on her back with her feet dangling off of the bed, dressed in what she had apparently been wearing the night before. She was wearing a red FIFA soccer t-shirt which now was hiked up above her breasts. Her cleavage was filled with semi-dry, sticky semen that presumably was from her attacker. Her blue jeans were down around her knees and her panties pulled down a few inches – enough for her assailant to penetrate her – but not removed at all. Her pretty brown eyes were open, staring lifelessly at the white ceiling of her bedroom, her mouth partially agape.
Photos were being taken by one of the technicians from the crime scene’s unit, particularly making sure to document the marks on her neck.
“Cause of death seems pretty obvious,” the voice of a black-haired female whose face was obscured by a protective mask piped in. “Still, the ME’s probably going to want to do a full autopsy to be safe.”
Swabs were taken of the semen that had dried between her breasts and put in small glass containers for safe-keeping. Likewise, swabs were taken of both her vagina and her anus. Her assaulter didn’t seem to have vaginally penetrated her, but semen had been slowly dripping from her anus, so the investigators knew that he had come inside her asshole.
Her panties had a yellow stain from where urine had dripped out of her bladder upon death, yet this was not the only indignity Saema had suffered as she expired. “Looks like she shit herself,” the female investigator says, looking at the contents of the dead girl’s pink panties. Of course, this wasn’t that uncommon a sight with someone that had been dead for hours.
Reaching into her equipment bag, the woman’s gloved hand returns with a small device she uses to get a liver temperature with. Not wanting to contaminate any evidence by taking a rectal temp, this seems to be the best option. After a few moments, she noted the temperature on a log she had, nodding to the nearby detective.
“Liver temp confirms our vic’s time of death to be about 2:00 AM,” she says, putting the thermometer into a sterile bag to be cleaned later. “We’ll need to tag her, bag her, and get her down to the morgue to find out anything more.” Reaching back into her bag, she removes a white cardboard toe tag and, with the driver’s license laying on the table next to her, uses it to fill out some basic information:
Name: Saema Markal
Gender: Female
Race: Caucasion
DOB: 12/March/1990
DOD: 2/July/2015
Suspected COD: Strangulation
Case #: 20150702003
The girl was still wearing black flats on her feet, but her right foot was coming partially out of it, the shoe dangling from the tips of her toes. The investigator removes the small black shoe and places it in an evidence bag, freeing the girl’s dark chocolate-painted toes. She then takes a few moments to carefully tie the white string of the toe tag around Saema’s big toe, the nail of which was glistening in the sunlight coming through the nearby window.
The girl’s well-manicured hands were then folded over her chest as a nearby stretcher was brought next to the bed, a black body bag unzipped and waiting on top. With one detective grabbing her by the feet and another getting her at the shoulders, Saema was lifted and slid over into the plastic bag. A couple final photos were taken and then the bag was zipped up, the only thing exposed being a small hole through which the tips of her toes could be seen, the toe tag moved to dangle outside the bag for the purposes of quick identification while her corpse was in transit to and awaiting processing at the county coroner’s office.
As her body-bagged corpse was wheeled out into the hallway, residents of the apartment stood looking on, wondering what had happened. The apartment was in a nice part of the city and crime, while not unheard of, was pretty low around the building, so the supposed-murder of a young girl was concerning. People would also be concerned about there being a rapist on the loose too. Many of them murmured amongst themselves as the stretcher was brought down the hall, carefully taken down a couple flights of stairs, and then wheeled outside to where the coroner’s van was.
Local reporters for the newspapers and regional news outlets were already on the scene, the death of a young, middle class woman being very newsworthy, taking pictures and trying to get the investigators and detectives to answer their questions. Saema’s black bag may have kept her hidden from their lenses, but a couple of them would manage to zoom in far enough on the toe tag hanging out of the bag to figure out who she was. After the doors of the van were opened, the techs who were wheeling her outside grab at a plastic handle on the top and foot of the body bag and swing it unceremoniously into the back of the vehicle. Saema was dead, after all, so what did a little roughness matter to her?
As the lead investigator from the Medical Examiner’s Office walked up, she snapped her gloves off and took her face mask off as well. She was shorter, around 5’3”, with long brown hair and brown eyes.
“I’m gonna finish up here, grab a bite, and then meet you guys at the morgue. Think we’ve got a couple more stiffs just brought in too,” she says, checking through a couple quick texts from the lead technician on duty. “Should be an interesting couple of days.”
After the doors were shut, she banged on them twice with her fist and the driver nodded, putting the van in drive, and leaving the scene. As the coroner’s van made its way through the mid-day LA traffic, Saema’s corpse shifted in its bag with each sudden turn or stop, her head moving side to side, and the toe tag on her big toe dancing wildly. All-in-all, the ride would be about 35 minutes, though time to her mattered little.
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The van was parked out behind the main building in front of a set of steel double-doors which required the scanning of a valid city identification card to open. Saema’s body bag was dragged by one of its handles onto a waiting gurney and once the door was opened, brought into a small inprocessing room. There, a security guard reviewed her paperwork real fast before handing the clipboard to the technician at the desk. The morgue tech, a middle-aged Hispanic man, looked over the paperwork and then tugged at the zipper at the feet of the body bag. As the plastic fell away, Saema’s feet, which had been pressed against the bag’s inside, fell forward, exposing her pretty, soft soles to the room.
The Hispanic tech read the information on her toe tag and compared it to information on the paperwork given to him by the affectionately-called “corpse couriers,” and then unzipped the top of the bag. He looked inside, lifeless brown eyes staring up at him half-opened, the girl’s lips parted in a look of surprise and resignation. He initialed the paperwork and then threw the flap back over her face, not even bothering to zip it back up. Dignity and privacy didn’t matter where she was going.
“Put her in 22 with the others we got in over the last 12 hours. We’ll get her processed before long,” he said, clearing his throat, and going back to his desk to pick up his iPhone and resume texting his younger girlfriend.
Saema’s body was wheeled through another set of doors and into a long, white corridor from which several other hallways branched off. The walls and ceiling were a rather plain white color, with greyish floor tiles below, the place reeking for form and function rather than interior decorating. As the couriers made a couple turns, they passed bodies bursa eskort on stretchers lying in the hallway, a couple covered in hospital shrouds and a couple others lying under clear plastic wrapping. One of the bodies lying under a clear covering was that of a 32-year-old African American man, quite naked with the tip of his flaccid penis pressing against the plastic, a hole with blackish-red blood drying around it above his left eye a giveaway as to the cause of his death. About twenty-five feet away, they passed the body of a 43-year-old woman whose neck looked severed and distorted, her face slightly bloated, dried blood coming out of her ears and nose. The toe tag that hung from the right big toe of her stiff, contorted feet stated that she had expired in a car accident some hours before.
A few moments later, the cart containing Saema’s bagged corpse arrived at Receiving Room 22, the room designated by the technician earlier. After one of the men transporting her body swiped his card into the digital locking system, a green light clicked on and he pushed the large metal door open. Cool air rushed out into the hallway. This room was kept at a much lower temperature from the outer halls, which, while cool enough to keep further decomposition at a minimum, weren’t as cool as this incoming room or, naturally, the freezer rooms where bodies were stored for longer durations. Saema’s cart was wheeled into place at the end of a row of other bodies being stored here temporarily, and once the two men responsible for dropping her off had initialed and noted the time and date on her paperwork, they hung the clipboard from a small hook on the gurney’s left side, not far from the girl’s feet.
“Sucks,” one of the guys, a tall, lanky man probably in his mid-20s, said. “Looked like a cute one from what I saw.”
“Looks like someone had fun with her,” the other one said with a shrug, walking towards the door. The first man punched him in the arm, perhaps to show disapproval, and followed him out into the hall.
The room Saema was now lying in was cold and drab, with white walls lined with metal cabinets with all sorts of instruments, evidence bags, and medical supplies either lined up inside the shelving or out on the counter space. It was simply one of several receiving areas like this – a room where newly brought in corpses were kept until they could be fully in-processed by morgue techs – stripped, photographed, rape kitted if necessary, finger-printed, and then brought to the next step in the journey. And in here, Saema wasn’t alone. Several steel morgue carts with black body bags were here with her. The bottom flap of each plastic bag was unzipped, leaving each corpse’s toe-tagged feet exposed, as per the ME’s policy, for quick identification.
The corpse in the body bag on the far side of the room was obviously female, based on the tagged feet sticking out of the end. Her feet were dainty and pale, her toe nails painted a glistening jade green, the second toe of each foot wearing a little silver toe ring. While her right foot was bare, the techs had kept the strappy sandal on her left, though it would be removed before long. Based on the toe-tag, she was a 19-year-old auto accident victim, and unlike the others in the room, the main part of the body bag was partially unzipped. From what was visible, she was a mousy girl with jet-black hair and thick-rimmed glasses that were heavily cracked. Blood had slowly dripped from her nose and ears, though by now it was mostly dried looking.
Next to the teen’s corpse lay that of an African American woman of 38. Her big, silky feet with long, ebon toes – the nails of which were painted bright red, but which had begun to chip – were bare and stiff, toes pointing straight at the ceiling. Rigor had obviously set in with her before she was found, her cause of death was unknown and an autopsy would be necessary on her.
The body bag next to the black woman contained the remains of an elderly male who had passed away under hospice care. His left foot had a sock on it and his right big toe had the expected toe tag. However, unlike the others, since he had died under medical care, a yellow anklet was tied to him, providing basic information from his primary care physician at the home he came from. On the gurney adjacent to him was the body-bagged corpse of a 56-year-old Chinese man, still wearing nice black dress shoes on his left foot, whose suspected cause of death was a heart attack.
The gurney next to Saema, though, was different from the others. The body bag laying atop it was a midnight blue and of a much higher quality. It was canvas with plastic internal lining, and along the sides the words “Livingston Funeral Services” could be read. The pair of feet sticking out was very pale, almost ashen in color, with glossy black nail polish on her long toes standing out in stark contrast. These feet had very tall arches, their owner obviously having been a runner in life. Here, the body had not one or two, but four toe tags – two on each foot. One was from the scene of her death, the second was from her processing at the morgue in 2012 and noted her official cause of death. The third was used for identification by the funeral home that had handled her arrangements. This fourth one was new, having been placed on the left big toe after her remains were exhumed, bagged, and brought to the LA County Coroner’s Office. Obviously, she had been buried barefoot. The body in the bag was that of one Miss Ashley Richdale, aged 28, who had died back in late-2012 but who had been exhumed the previous evening as per a court order to investigate whether she was poisoned as opposed to the overdose that had supposedly killed her in the first place.
It was in this room that Saema would have to remain, quietly, for the next hour since the lead investigator assigned to her case had gone out for lunch, and even had she been here right now to process bodies, Saema’s was apparently not the first corpse that needed to get such treatment.
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About fifteen minutes later, Victoria, the main investigator assigned to her case, finally arrived at the morgue. She checked over the paperwork at the desk, washed her hands at a sanitation sink near the entrance, and then used her access card to get into the main hallway, turning down a couple corridors until she reached and unlocked the door of Receiving Room 22. “Hey, Vicky,” a baritone voice behind her called.
“Oh, heya Carlos,” she said casually in reply, snapping on a new pair of gloves. She sniffed at the air for a moment, crinkling her nose to a particularly bad smell. “Gah, one of these stiffs just reeks,” she said, shaking her head.
Carlos pointed to the blue canvas body bag from the funeral home. “Gotta be that one,” he replied. “Been in the grave about a year-and-a-half. Glad I wasn’t the one having to crack open that casket that was sealed for 18 months. I really don’t envy the guys that did.”
Victoria walked over to that bag and sniffed at the small opening where the corpse’s pale feet were sticking out and then, surprisingly, took a big whiff from right between the woman’s toes. There was a musty smell mixed with perhaps a bit of pungency from very slow putrification, and of course the natural odor of toe cheese, but this definitely was not the source of the stink she sensed. Then, however, out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Saema’s clipboard, and particularly a note about the state of her body upon arrival.
Carlos, meanwhile, raised an eyebrow, but chuckled.
“It’s got to be this girl over here. Chart says that she soiled her panties when she expired,” she said. Carlos merely nodded and shook his head. “Alright, well…” she said, walking to the other side of the room, “what do you say we start with our car accident vic?”
As Victoria walked around the gurney, her hips bumped against the dead girl’s feet, causing her delicate toes to bend and flex and the toe tag to wave in the air. “Couldn’t even zip ya up, could they, Miss…Lane,” she said, looking at the girl’s exposed face due to the unflapped body bag. “Anne Lane, aged 19. Says here her and her stepmother died in a car wreck on the freeway last night around 10:45.” She slowly unzipped the body bag from one side, around her feet, and back to the other a bit, folding the black plastic over the side of the gurney and leaving the girl exposed to the room. Carlos went and grabbed a Nikon camera from the counter in the back, checked the settings and battery, and then came back and started taking pictures of the girl’s body as it had arrived here at the morgue. When he was finished, his female partner grabbed a pair of sterilized scissors and placed them down next to the body. “Let’s sit her up.”
Although the girl’s body was a bit stiff, they didn’t have too much of a problem getting her to sit up, after which they began by lifting her arms and then tugging the black Old Navy t-shirt up, past her pert breasts, and up past her arms and around her head, placing it in a plastic evidence bag. Next, escort bursa Victoria removed her thick, black-rimmed glasses and placed them in their as well. The bra was rather easy to unhook and take off, and as her small breasts were revealed, Carlos began taking pictures of her slightly distorted and bruised ribcage area. It was here that Vicky used the scissors to cut away at the fabric of her white shorts and then carefully snipping away at the thin strings of her purple panties, dampened with urine from her deathly evacuation. Finally, her petite foot was slid out of her sandal. With the undressing done, Carlos snapped a few more photos while Victoria made some notes on her clipboard and then grabbed a fingerprint sheet and an ink stamp, taking prints of her green-nailed and dainty fingers.
There was no need to do a rape kit on Anne Lane, but Carlos took a sterilized thermometer, had Victoria help shift the girl’s hips slightly and spread her cheeks against the plastic of the bag, and inserted it up her anus, leaving it there for a moment before removing it again, its tip covered in bowel mucus. Looking at the clock and then the temperature reported, he had Victoria note that the temperature matched her reported time of death. After the pair initialed some forms, they rolled her from one side to the other and back again, pulling the black plastic body bag out from under her, and then once finished, they threw a clear plastic tarp over her, leaving her tagged feet exposed.
Carlos then pushed her gurney out into the hallway, against the far wall, to await another technician to bring her down to the X-Ray lab. By the time he had reentered the room, his partner had already unzipped and pulled back the plastic of the body bag containing the 38-year-old black woman whose cause of death was unknown. Her body was stiff and rigid, toes pointing straight up at the ceiling, hands a bit contorted and bony, her arms tightly against her sides. Her brown eyes were glassy and partially opened, staring up at the ceiling and the only clothing she was wearing was a white-laced nighty. Her stomach was distended and bloated, her skin in places kind of an ashen grey. Liver temp from the scene had suggested she had been dead for at least 56 hours, and that was many hours ago even now. When Vicky went to stick the thermometer up her ebony asshole, the sphincter loosened and a terrible fume emerged. Vicky turned and nearly gagged, but this wasn’t uncommon in stiffs that had been gone from this world as long as she had.
After she had been processed and removed from the room, Vicky needed a bathroom break, so Carlos got to work on the elderly male that had died in hospice. This one would be a pretty quick thing since the man was 91 and no foul play was expected. The ME would give his body a cursory exam, sign off on his paperwork, and hopefully by the next day or so he would be in the care of whatever funeral home his family had arranged for his services.
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As Vicky sat on the toilet in the stall of the clean-looking women’s room, her pants just below her knees, she farted really loudly and then could not help but chuckle. Then, while she peed, she thought to herself about the excitement she got helping process the female bodies into the morgue and thought about how it would be to be like them, only able to feel for a while, and how the handling and all the personal attention must seem.
She shook her head. This was probably why her love-life was in shambles. She was 32, worked for the coroner’s office, and had strange fantasies and desires. Most guys just didn’t understand and weren’t willing to indulge her, so she just settled for going home, firing up Neverwinter on her computer, and talking to her online friends over Vent while getting lost in some fantasy adventures.
When she had finished, she took a moment to wash up, check her hair in the mirror, and then proceed out into the hall, where she pulled out another pair of gloves from a dispenser, put them on, and then returned to help Carlos with whatever bodies remained.
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Just outside room 22, two more stretchers were resting against the white-tiled wall, one with the body of a male (or so she thought based on the loafers the corpse was wearing) in the traditional black plastic bag, but the other was yet another exhumed body in a thick, canvas mortuary bag. This one was female, with two white high-heeled shoes sticking out the end, both of which had discolored in the grave into more of a faded cream color.
“Lazy fucks,” Vicky said as she swiped her card and reentered the room.
“What’s up?” Carlos asked, looking up as he was just about to unzip the navy blue bag from Livingston Funeral Home.
“Lazy techs couldn’t be bothered to tag the two corpses we’ve got waiting for us in the hall for after we’re done with these,” she said. Carlos rolled his eyes and shrugged, then began pulling away at the zipper of Ashley Richdale’s container. As her body finally lay exposed to any onlookers that might come by, Carlos began taking pictures of her as Victoria looked her over. The girl had been buried in a long, dark-green silky slip that came down just past her knees. Her hands were folded over her breasts, her fingernails also painted a deep ebony color, and what looked to be a long-dried and wilted rose resting between her hands and her bosom. Her hair was a ginger color and of medium length, done up well for her wake and funeral viewings, her lips being painted a cherry red. Her skin was almost ghost white, with small patches of ashen or even light bluish flesh here and there, but for someone that had been dead for as long as she had, the embalmers had truly done fantastic work.
Not wanting to disturb the body too much, Victoria opted not to try and sit her up but instead to carefully cut away at the black slip she was wearing. After all, her family would buy a replacement upon reinterment, though they also might just bury her naked since there may not be another viewing of her at this point, unless the family requested it. Once the silk fabric was cut away, and the bra underneath that removed as well, the evidence of her previous autopsy and the telltale signs of embalming were quickly visible. Incision marks could be seen from where she had been aspirated and then filled with embalming fluids, and her chest and abdominal cavities had a long, y-shaped incision running along them, now stitched up with a faded black stringing of sorts. Vicky expertly snipped off the woman’s adult diaper that had been used to secure any leaking substances, and turned her head upon seeing a dried, dark substance within before tossing it in a biohazard bin. No temperature would need to be taken, so Carlos took some photographs of her peaceful, stark-naked toe-tagged corpse before a plastic tarp was thrown over her, too, and she was wheeled out pale, stiff, and stinky feet first into the hallway.
Now, it was finally time for them to begin processing Saema.
The top flap of Saema’s body bag had been left carelessly unzipped, so Victoria grabbed the zipper that was about halfway down the bag and pulled it around the rest of its journey, folding the bag back and exposing the 25-year-old’s lifeless body to the room. After replacing the camera’s SD card, Carlos snapped some photographs of her body, starting with whole-body shots, then focusing in on her face, neck, and her sullied breasts. Going downwards, he took several photos of her well-trimmed sex and then her cum-dripping asshole. He also had to take pictures of her panties and the kernel-filled turds smushed up inside them. Finally, he walked to the foot of the gurney and snapped some pictures of her chocolate-painted toes and the toe tag on her right foot.
Before disturbing the body any, Victoria went and got a vial of sterilized cotton swabs and evidence tubes for storage. Starting between the girl’s cleavage, she carefully swabbed at the clumped-up semen between her breasts, dabbing up as much as she could with the swab, and repeating it with a second swab for good measure. Both of these were put in separate vials and sealed for later analysis by the crime lab. Walking down near the girl’s waist, she had Carlos assist in carefully lifting her by the hips and, with another cotton swab, circled the outside of her puckered anus. Then, once she sealed that swab away, she took a second one and poked it up deep inside Saema’s asshole, getting as much evidence as she could there. Upon removal, the swab was covered with a mixture of semen, bowel mucus, and some of the girl’s shit.
“Alright, that should satisfy the boys at the lab,” she says, putting the vials with the swabs in them in a rape kit box and then dropping that in an evidence bag with Saema’s name and casefile information on it.
Going to the foot of the gurney, Carlos took Saema’s right foot by its heel and with his other hand pulled forward on the black flat she was wearing, the shoe slipping right off, revealing another set of pretty-painted chocolate toes. He handed it to Vicky, who walked with it over to the evidence bag. But, before putting it in, she stuck her nose right down into the shoe and inhaled, an exhilarating thrill washing over her as she took in the exotic odor of the girl’s sweat, toe cheese, and natural smell.
“Can’t imagine that smells good,” Carlos said in jest at her, but Vicky just chuckled and put the shoe away.
Vicky grabbed Saema under the armpits and nodded at Carlos that it was time to sit her up. Saema’s body was going a bit rigid, but it wasn’t too hard to maneuver her into a sitting position. Carlos snapped a couple more photos of her in this position and then helped her by lifting Saema’s arms up over her head so that Vicky could pull her red FIFA t-shirt up, around her shoulders and head, and off of her corpse. The shirt, too, ended up in the evidence bag. Next, Saema undid the strap of the girl’s black, lacy bra that had been disheveled by her assaulter, freeing up her small, full breasts and tossing the bra into the bag. Saema had a small diamond-looking stud going through her left breast, which Carlos took a picture of to document before Vicky tugged at it and pulled it through the nipple, tearing a little of the flesh of the dead girl’s ariola. A dollop of dark red blood oozed from the torn, delicate flesh, but Vicky paid no mind. “Cute,” she said, as she put it in a small plastic baggy.
“Ummm, yeah. Ever thought about getting one? Bet you’d totally be hot in one,” her male companion joked as he set the corpse back down on its back.
Saema’s jeans were down around her knees, sort of bunched up, so Vicky and Carlos each grabbed a leg and tugged at the denim, pulling the pant legs slowly down to the girl’s ankles. Walking to the foot of the gurney, Carlos tugged at the pant cuffs at the ankles, pulling the pants beyond them and up over her feet. The left foot was easy for the pants to surpass, the girl’s toes bending under the pants as they passed them, but the toe tag on her right big toe kind of got snagged for a moment, but a bit of forceful tugging quickly solved that, and once the pants were past her foot, the toe tag waved back and forth wildly in the room for a few moments. Not wanting to move or touch the contents of Saema’s undergarment, Vicky used her trusty scissors to cut away at the pink fabric around her hips until the panties could easily be removed and carefully placed in a red, sealed plastic bag for examination at a later time. Now, she lay stark naked, nipples slightly erect, in this chilled morgue room.
“Since we did the rape kit, take the vic’s rectal temp while I get her fingerprinted,” the woman said, grabbing a sheet and an ink box. Carlos parted the girl’s cheeks and slid the rectal thermometer up her anus, letting it sit for a minute or two until he felt comfortable with the reading’s accuracy.
“Based on this, looks like she bit it around 2:00 AM,” he said plainly, making a note and then tossing the thermometer into a small receptacle for it to be sterilized later.
The fingerprinting done, Vicky carefully put the sheet of drying prints on her clipboard and fastened it there with the clasp. Grabbing her with one hand on her ankles and the other around her legs, with Carlos getting her by the side and shoulders, they rolled her over and began pulling the black plastic bag from under her. They then rolled her to the other side to complete the process and then let her roll back onto her back with a thud, her feet rolling wildly from side to side, the toe tag swaying with the movement.
Carlos took one final picture of Saema’s slightly stiff corpse before Victoria grabbed a clear plastic morgue tarp and draped it over her unceremoniously. The girl’s nipples pressed firmly against the see-through plastic, the oozing drops of blood making a crimson smear against the plastic. Carlos folded back the shroud so that the girl’s feet remained exposed, her toe tags clearly visible, before tossing the clipboard on the cart with her and then wheeling her out into the hallway in the line of corpses against the opposite wall.
By now, a couple of the bodies had been taken away somewhere else, presumably to X-Ray, and only a couple more remained here.
“This one’s your case, Vicks, so why don’t you take her off to X-Ray and then get her on ice while I get started with these bodies we just got in?”
It was true that Saema was her case, so the woman didn’t bother to argue with Carlos. Besides, she needed to make sure that the rest of the processing of the girl’s body went as it should because a rape-murder wasn’t a case to mess around with. The ME would be very upset if any evidence was mishandled or procedure wasn’t followed, not to mention the detectives assigned the case and the victim’s family.
The main X-Ray room was down the hall and to the right, through some double-doors, so Victoria grabbed the handle at the head of the gurney and began to push the cart along the tiled floor. Saema’s eyes stared blankly at the passing lights along the ceiling from under the clear plastic, her tits pressed firmly into the shrouding, her feet wobbling back and forth as the cart turned the corner and made its way through the double doors and to the door clearly marked “X-Ray.” Inside, a bearded technician with glasses in a white lab coat was tapping a touch-screen monitor. He looked up as she entered with the corpse.
“Hey, Tim,” Vicky said, smiling. She liked Tim, who had been working with the ME’s office for about as long as she had.
“Hey yourself! Looks like a long day today, doesn’t it? Lots of clients to log in, scan, and shove in the fridge,” he said with a laugh. “Fold the plastic back and wheel her into the chamber and we’ll get her scanned up real quick.”
Victoria did like he said, folding the plastic off to the sides, and then slid Saema’s corpse into the scanner head first, feet facing into the room. She walked back into the small room that the technician was in, so as to be protected from any small amounts of radiation, and waited as the X-Ray machine lit up and began a series of scans on the corpse, sending 3D images of her body to the various screens in the computer room. From a cursory scan, nothing seemed out of place.
“Looks pretty normal to me,” the guy said. “We’ll get these files to the pathologists’ office so they can take a look prior to the autopsy.” Vicky walked back out there, threw the plasted back over Saema’s bare corpse, and smiled back at Tim as she walked with the gurney back out of the room and into the hallway.
“Alright miss, time to let you chill for a while,” she said as she began to push Saema’s cart down the hallway. “I would say I’ve got a hot date lined up, but we both know that’s a lie, don’t we?” It wasn’t really that strange to talk to the dead around here, but Victoria tried to keep it to a minimum and do so when no one was really around. A couple minutes later, she was at the large, thick steel door with a keycard access point that led into one of the LA County Coroner’s Office’s large storage freezers. A security guard sat at a desk just outside of it, but he barely looked up, just nodding at the woman. He’d seen her so much that he felt like he knew her personally, though they never really talked. Vicky wasn’t even sure if she knew the guy’s name, just that he talked about his little boy Kevin sometimes.
As she opened the large steel door, she pushed the cart into the dimly lit freezer. The room was large and sprawling, with several side areas branching off from the main area. In some alcoves on the side, bodies lay on storage shelves tightly wrapped in plastic (some clear, some white) with two toe tags dangling from their right big toes. These bodies were those that had already been autopsied, their bodies now being stored for pick-up by a funeral home or some other arrangements to be made. Some here were unclaimed, but had not yet reached the point where the state had to take over arrangements for the corpse. Some were black, others white, some Asian, some hispanic, and men, women, young and old. All were equal here as death was a fate that would befall everyone.
Going around a corner and down a small ramp, Victoria brought Saema’s wrapped body to an area that had mortuary drawers embedded into a steel wall-like container. These drawers lacked doors, but had pull-out shelving and were great for storing bodies prior to their autopsies. It was here, in crypt 2329, that Saema would rest until it was finally time for her autopsy. Vicky wheeled the cart to the designated unit, one of the lower-down ones, and then pressed down a couple levers on the gurney, which produced a “click” sound. The steel tray that Saema was laying on was then able to be moved off of the supports and wheels of the gurney, and thus Victoria got over to the corpse’s feet and pushed the base of the tray until it rolled and found its way inside the drawer.
Here, Saema would lie motionless for at least a day or two, possibly longer due to the volume of activity in the morgue at this time, her bare, toe-tagged feet sticking out into the room for identification, until it was finally time for her to be dissected like the soft piece of meat that she now was.