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Red Light. Part 1
When you decide to dedicate your life to protecting others and train to be the best in your graduation class at cadet training, you think that all your hard work is going to help stop what goes on in the world. You will be a preventer of atrocities and reduce the crime by sheer leg work and reconditioning of offenders.
But it doesn't work like that...
The crime you deal with is ugly, bitter, dirty and often very justified. The passion you began with, to change the system dwindles to barely an ember of hope. Then once in a while a case comes along that rocks even your steel heart, some how it cracks that shell of allowance and acceptance. You find yourself wondering why and how could this happen to someone.
It can happen... And it does...
They say you can never un-see something, that the visual memory will linger, creep into your Nightmares, flash before your eyes when you least expect it, that this is the worst thing a crime scene can do to you.
It is a lie, because as much as all that is true, there is something far worse, something that lingers not only in your memory, but in your very body, and that was my first sense of the crime I had been called to.
I knew the smell of rancid fish, even rancid meat, I had experienced the charred smell of fish too, even the smell of burnt meat, both smells hammered your sense of smell and would not leave you for days afterward, so imagine the smell of decaying and smouldering flesh. Not animal flesh, no, human.
The smell of a dead individual whose body was quickly decomposing while it slowly burned. It was unbearable but as the responding officer I had no choice but to accept it, to stand near by and try to focus on the scene. There was a crime and I had to do my job.
The work I had to do was impossible, no one would expect this to have happened anywhere else, not a car park or a local field, but at the end of a dark alleyway. The lack of light, few windows over looking the scene, the sheer amount of discarded rubbish around. Someone must have had it out for me, this was hell, with a side of tormenting flesh to deal with.
1st Hour
As an officer I know the importance of the first hour after a crime scene is discovered. Despite it took over the hour for anyone else to join me at the scene I quickly got to work.
I left the body as it was, I had no right to remove or alter anything about it. Yet there was enough to shift through in the alleyway. Almost every piece of trash could be important, finger prints, dna, every receipt a possible time lead to some ones whereabouts.
Or a massive waste of time and resources, you see the problem was that there was so much, I could do nothing with any of it. So I couldn't collect evidence, but my phone could help. I began taking pictures, of the body, the alleyway, views from the body looking out from where it lay. I took pictures of the alley, the rubbish, the road, marks on the walls, steps, on the road. Of the stray cats and rodents I spotted who seemed eager to get close to the body.
Then I would stand and look through the pictures, examining anything that looked out of place, marked them down in my note pad, then began taking a closer look.
When help eventually arrived I was dismissed and sent back to the station. But I had already discovered enough to start looking into possible leads. So I remained on duty passed clocking off time and began my own investigation.
4th Hour.
By the time I got back to the station, logged my details, filed the incident report I needed to, it had been just over three hours since I discovered the body. I was in the forth hour of my investigation, and I was eager to start unravelling the leads I had.
At first I thought no windows overlooked the scene, but I was wrong. The camera had allowed me to discover that one of the back bedroom windows of the nearby street, could, and more than that the light had been on while he was there.
Forensics had already determined the time of death being no more than two hours before I got there. I had found little evidence of the victim having moved along the alley. At a guess I would say the body was dumped. Therefore the first thing I needed to do was to test this theory.
I got back into my car and the smell of the charred grilled chicken I had two nights ago brought back a flash back of the body and the god awful smell it had. I decided that I needed to get the car valeted, the smell had to go.
Casually I drove back to the crime scene, there was still a lot of activity, including locals and reporters who had gathered, drawn in by the lights and the swarm of uniformed officers now at the scene. Door to door enquires it seemed had already started, so I pulled into a space on the street I needed and walked to the house I had to visit.
When the door opened a young woman greeted me as 'Officer' I still had my uniform on so that wasn't a surprise. I greeted her and explained that I had a few...
But it doesn't work like that...
The crime you deal with is ugly, bitter, dirty and often very justified. The passion you began with, to change the system dwindles to barely an ember of hope. Then once in a while a case comes along that rocks even your steel heart, some how it cracks that shell of allowance and acceptance. You find yourself wondering why and how could this happen to someone.
It can happen... And it does...
They say you can never un-see something, that the visual memory will linger, creep into your Nightmares, flash before your eyes when you least expect it, that this is the worst thing a crime scene can do to you.
It is a lie, because as much as all that is true, there is something far worse, something that lingers not only in your memory, but in your very body, and that was my first sense of the crime I had been called to.
I knew the smell of rancid fish, even rancid meat, I had experienced the charred smell of fish too, even the smell of burnt meat, both smells hammered your sense of smell and would not leave you for days afterward, so imagine the smell of decaying and smouldering flesh. Not animal flesh, no, human.
The smell of a dead individual whose body was quickly decomposing while it slowly burned. It was unbearable but as the responding officer I had no choice but to accept it, to stand near by and try to focus on the scene. There was a crime and I had to do my job.
The work I had to do was impossible, no one would expect this to have happened anywhere else, not a car park or a local field, but at the end of a dark alleyway. The lack of light, few windows over looking the scene, the sheer amount of discarded rubbish around. Someone must have had it out for me, this was hell, with a side of tormenting flesh to deal with.
1st Hour
As an officer I know the importance of the first hour after a crime scene is discovered. Despite it took over the hour for anyone else to join me at the scene I quickly got to work.
I left the body as it was, I had no right to remove or alter anything about it. Yet there was enough to shift through in the alleyway. Almost every piece of trash could be important, finger prints, dna, every receipt a possible time lead to some ones whereabouts.
Or a massive waste of time and resources, you see the problem was that there was so much, I could do nothing with any of it. So I couldn't collect evidence, but my phone could help. I began taking pictures, of the body, the alleyway, views from the body looking out from where it lay. I took pictures of the alley, the rubbish, the road, marks on the walls, steps, on the road. Of the stray cats and rodents I spotted who seemed eager to get close to the body.
Then I would stand and look through the pictures, examining anything that looked out of place, marked them down in my note pad, then began taking a closer look.
When help eventually arrived I was dismissed and sent back to the station. But I had already discovered enough to start looking into possible leads. So I remained on duty passed clocking off time and began my own investigation.
4th Hour.
By the time I got back to the station, logged my details, filed the incident report I needed to, it had been just over three hours since I discovered the body. I was in the forth hour of my investigation, and I was eager to start unravelling the leads I had.
At first I thought no windows overlooked the scene, but I was wrong. The camera had allowed me to discover that one of the back bedroom windows of the nearby street, could, and more than that the light had been on while he was there.
Forensics had already determined the time of death being no more than two hours before I got there. I had found little evidence of the victim having moved along the alley. At a guess I would say the body was dumped. Therefore the first thing I needed to do was to test this theory.
I got back into my car and the smell of the charred grilled chicken I had two nights ago brought back a flash back of the body and the god awful smell it had. I decided that I needed to get the car valeted, the smell had to go.
Casually I drove back to the crime scene, there was still a lot of activity, including locals and reporters who had gathered, drawn in by the lights and the swarm of uniformed officers now at the scene. Door to door enquires it seemed had already started, so I pulled into a space on the street I needed and walked to the house I had to visit.
When the door opened a young woman greeted me as 'Officer' I still had my uniform on so that wasn't a surprise. I greeted her and explained that I had a few...
