Detective Samantha Andrews was on the scene thirty minutes
after the call came in. Most of the time, the Seattle police department would
be two to three hours after the initial call came in, giving her ample time to
assess the crime scene prior to contamination.
Today, she was not so lucky. A body had been dumped on the southbound
I-5 exit to Spokane Way. That morning, all of the local news stations were
around the perimeter, getting glancing shots of the body. Ed Murray mandated
that the force be present ASAP, as to put on a good show and delude any ideas
that the police department was stretched thin and that the homeless problem was
being well managed.
“That idiot,” Samantha
thought. She got the call at 3:30, giving her enough time to put on her
uniform, put her long blonde hair in a pony-tail and cap prior to heading out. It
was 5:00 AM now. She was hunched over the body, taking pictures of the dried,
foamy residue in the victim’s cheeks and chin. There was a white powder residue
around the nostrils of the John Doe. The powder was swabbed and bagged for
evidence. She assumed a cocaine overdose. Forensics would let her know
otherwise.
Jammer, the coroner, was finishing up a temperature probe to
determine time of death. He shook his head and then probed again. He was a
short Caucasian man with inquisitive blue eyes and brown hair that beginning to
thin at the crown of his head. He wore thin black rimmed glasses
“Jammer, what’s the issue?” Samantha asked as the probe
broke the skin and headed towards the liver.
“The time line isn’t adding up. Of course I won’t know more
until I get this back to autopsy, but we got the call at the witching hour of
the morning correct?”
Sam nodded.
“Yet his core temperature is still above normal. Significantly
so as a matter of fact.” He pulled the temperature probe out and showed the
reading to the detective. The digital meter showed 102 Fahrenheit. “Perhaps he
was put up against some burning barrel when he died, but for a core temp to
remain so high, for so long would indicate an excruciating fever prior to his
death. It is congruent with a drug overdose, but what drug our John Doe took
here, we will have to wait and see.”
Just then, the detective’s phone rang. It was dispatch, and the
news wasn’t anything she wanted to hear.
“Detective Samantha, we have multiple reports of body dumps in
your area, with more coming in by the minute, the first address is-”
“Hold on. Do all the bodies appear to be death by overdose?”
“Yes Ma’am,” the dispatcher said.
“Email me the addresses, and I will get to them when I can.”
She hung up the phone and looked over at Jammer.
“Homicide?” Jammer asked.
“How else could you explain multiple body drops of overdose
on…” her phone beeped with the new email that came through. She scanned through
the addresses, picturing them on a map in her head, “the most major interstate
exits into Seattle,” she continued. “That white powder? Some new strain of
cocaine you think?”
“I have seen multiple overdose cases,” Jammer started. “Heroin
being the most prominent. But I have never seen temps this high, for this long.
Whatever it was that he did overdose on, it isn’t something I am familiar with.”
“Let’s get these bodies back to the lab, and quickly prior
to any further contamination.”
“Agreed.”
Most of the Seattle workforce was late to work with
interstate exits being closed. Some called in sick, others who had the option
of telecommuting did so at the first reports of a three hour commute from
Everett to Seattle.
Talk show hosts either criticized or blamed the cities
reaction to the homeless problem as the root cause of the dead bodies on the
streets. Others stated the importance of utilizing and expanding mass transit
and homeless outreach programs.
A week later, they were all but forgotten in the main stream
media.
The mass spectrometer showed that the white powdery
substance wasn’t cocaine or heroin exactly, but contained similar properties to
them. From the particulates that they could find, the forensics lab concluded
that the white powder was a new drug on the street, ten times more powerful the
heroin, and seemed to be 100% more fatal.
