That particular smell was unmistakable. It clung to the wind like chewing gum to a hot sidewalk, possessing its own particular gooeyness that oozed its way along the path from nostrils to lungs with the sole intent to choke and revile. It was an odor that favored Dumpsters, bogs and septic tanks the world over, and encountering it in the middle of the city’s Botanical Gardens was what primarily raised the alarm. The body of the gentleman turning out to be the source didn’t seem nearly as surprising.
He lay in the midst of the topiary roses, his face as serene as one merely napping in the shade on a spring day. His suit was evidently custom tailored and barely rumpled, as if Death could not even attempt to ruin the dapper image. The salt-and-pepper moustache was neatly trimmed so that it just touched the upper lip. The skin of his face and hands was smooth and flawless as only years of over-indulgent care can provide. The silver-tipped cane positioned at his side wasn’t even necessary to point out that the man had been good money in life and that he, likewise, took pride in such.
Baden MacNamarra knelt beside the corpse. Perched easily on her toes, she took shallow breaths through her mouth to best avoid the reeling sensation that typically accompanied the odor of decomposition. She’d plaited her copper-red hair to keep it out of the way of the investigation, but its length still trailed past her waist to touch the brick path behind her. She had tugged a set of coveralls over her typical business casual of khakis and button-up blouse. In a moment of subconscious awareness, she grabbed her braid to wrap it about her head and pin it into place. Even though she was no biological forensic specialist, she knew that the slightest thing could contaminate the scene.
She scanned the scene quickly, taking in the rusty color of the brick path, the bits of leaf and twig that littered the bordering, the dusting of topsoil that lay everywhere. Nothing seemed to be particularly out of the ordinary. It was a garden and nothing more. The immediate vicinity was dominated by roses and violets, myrtle providing an appropriate ground cover. The scent of the flowers did little to freshen the air, however. Her brow furrowing in mild frustration, she turned to the man kneeling beside her, Evan Williams, who was the coroner on duty.
“What are you getting from this?” Baden asked, keeping her voice low. “I’m seeing nothing particularly out of the ordinary apart from our D.B.”
Evan shook his black, curly head and let out a long breath from between pursed lips. He didn’t seem to have even gotten a chance to shave that morning. It had been a predawn call-in, and the insomniacs in the bunch were certainly the worse for wear.
“It’s definitely too early to call cause-of-death,” he replied tiredly, finishing up examining the prone man’s eyes and exposed skin. “But there aren’t any outward signs of…anything. There’s no bruising, no wounds of any kind, no signs of asphyxiation. There isn’t even anything to point towards a severe allergic reaction to any of the plants here. For all I can gather right here and now, it could very well be a case of natural causes.”
Baden shook her head.
“It’s too immaculate. The body’s positioning doesn’t suggest any kind of spontaneous collapse. And look at the cane.” She pointed to the length of ebony wood topped with silver and small pearls. It lay almost perfectly parallel to the man’s left leg, his hand flat beside it with the palm down. “He was laid out like this by somebody else.”
Evan began to pack up his kit, tugging off his latex gloves and thrusting them into a biohazard bag. “You’re thinking foul play? With a corpse minus any possible wounds?”
Baden shrugged. “I’m certainly not ruling out the possibility. It could be injection or ingestion…possibly even absorption of something fatal, but he should be showing some sort of outward sign. Besides,” she tilted her head and raised an eyebrow pointedly, “why else would they call me in?”
Evan huffed softly through his nostrils, a sound that meant to pass as a sort of laugh. Baden’s job was not at all a common one. In fact, it was so uncommon that only two others were known to have the position anywhere. Law enforcement groups had finally begun to properly employ experts in the metaphysical rather than the crackpot psychics and over-indulged philosophers that had weaseled their ways in previously. The emergence of the Collegium Domini, uninventively named, had everything to do with it, and Baden almost wished that humanity had never become so enlightened as now. The selective memory of history left things be forgotten for very good reasons, and the lifeless man before her was a tragically appropriate point.
Baden scooted in closer as her colleague worked at getting his things out of the way. There was nothing more he could do until the body was on his table. Baden set a hand to the corpse’s forehead, a thumb on one temple and her middle finger on the other. It was the quickest way to determine if she was even remotely required at the autopsy and a good gauge of exactly how necessary she would be overall. A tingle ran up her arm from where her bare flesh met his. She knew that any CSAs watching her were cringing at the sight, her potentially compromising their physical evidence, but there was no other way to get a good read. And she was getting a doozy.
“Run him through the ESIS before you begin the autopsy,” she called over her shoulder to Evan’s retreating form.
The man’s brown eyes peered at her as he loaded his case into the back of his van. His full lips pursed before he crammed them between his teeth, only to release them with a click of his tongue. It was his typical reaction anymore when he found out that Baden would be standing over his shoulder for shift after shift, guaranteed. It was the equivalent of any normal person muttering, “Oh, dear Lord, please strike me dead.”
“How bad is it?” he asked, trying to sound nonchalant but failing with his choice of vocabulary.
“It’s bad,” Baden replied, graver than usual to the point where Evan’s grammatical groan was taken in stride. “There’s too much resonance to be just him alone. So, not only am I thinking that he is of the Educated, but so is the one that left him here like this. And, yes, I firmly believe that he was left here, laid out.”
“Okay, then explain the smell,” Evan said, walking back over. “He hasn’t been dead long enough for this powerful a decomp odor.”
Baden stood and carefully began to walk around the large, circular room. This particular space in the Botanical Gardens was about as eclectic as the Cirque du Soliel. The roses she’d become familiar with that morning dominated the center of the brick-pathed space, but in the surrounding beds was a cacophony of colors, species and climate preferences. The fact that the Gardens were only open for the summer months explained the ability for such a layout, but one would still expect a theme. It was a museum for flora and would normally require a certain structure.
“What is this? A tribute to the Day God Sneezed?”
“No, not quite.”
Both Baden and Evan turned at the new voice to see a woman walking toward them. She was dressed in a dirt-smudged pair of denim overalls and a yellow baby tee. Her russet brown hair was pulled tightly back from her face, and she managed to smile warmly through her own set of smears. A gallon pot of yellow orchids was cradled in her green-gloved hands.
“I’m Carrie Mason,” she said cheerfully, shifting her load to shake hands. Only Evan obliged. Baden merely nodded stiffly. Carrie’s smile twitched a little but didn’t fade. “This room is the Atrium. It has a little bit of everything because it’s where all the wings conjoin.” She pointed to the left. “Tropicals are down that way. Desert is to the rear.” With a nod of her head in the opposite direction, “Our temperate zone and European gardens are that way with an outdoor rock garden for Bonsai.”
“Then why the bad smell?” Evan pressed her, still convinced that his body was not the only cause.
Carrie laughed with a melodiousness that grated on Baden’s ears.
“That would be the Titan Arum.” She motioned them to follow her as she walked around the central circular plot of roses to where the Tropical Zone for the room was. There in the plot was a massive and strange-looking bloom of a violently burgundy hue on the inside of the lily-like spathe. Its spadix, the towering, baguette-shaped mass of flowers jutting from the middle, rose about four feet into the air. “It’s one of the largest flowers in the world, and, like the Rafflesia arnoldii, which supersedes it by being the largest single flower rather than an inflorescence, it has an absolutely putrescent odor in order to reproduce.”
Baden looked from Evan to Carrie and back again, her smooth forehead darkened with confusion.
“Pretend like we’re not botany majors for a minute, please.”
Carrie blushed and laughed. “Sorry, sorry. Essentially, the spadix—the part that sticks straight up in the air where a typical stamen would be in any other flower—is covered in tiny little blossoms that smell like a refrigerator gone bad with rotten meat. This attracts flies and other carrion insects in order to pollinate. We didn’t always have it and were even hesitant to include it. However, nature is nature, and we pride ourselves on having one of the most diverse collections.”
“I’m sure it’s bad for business,” Baden commented, her distaste not remotely disguised.
The typical crime scene analyst’s senses had to be sharp to do a decent job. Baden’s senses were off the chart, and the presence of this flower had completely muddled her perception of the scene. Such could turn out useful down the road as half the people she worked with on a daily basis would become far less cooperative if they found out that the chief Specialized Forensics consultant wasn’t at all actually human. She looked the part. She acted the part. That very morning she was even thinking the part, as lost and confused as the rest of them. But hers was an existence as curious as the cases she was called in to investigate.
“Meh, people don’t stay in this room long, anyway,” Carrie stated. “It’s only a sampling of what all we have to show off, and they’re more interested in the main attractions. It’s kind of like the movies. No one really wants to watch the previews so much as the feature presentation.”
“Alright, so, to get more back on track, who was the one that found the body? You?”
“Oh, hell no. I don’t get here until eight. The only one that would be here before that would be Troy. He’s the curator.”
“There’s no night watchman?” Evan asked.
“Nope. We’ve got plenty of cameras, and the number of people willing to steal anything from here are either far too geeky in the Green Thumb department or just…weird.”
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This section is my favorite part of Urbis. I like your story and how you use words like ESIS, it’s kind of like how C.S.I throw words out, yet we still understand whats going on. On the overall story, to me I kind of wanted a hint or something about what happened to the guy. I kind of ended right before she was going to spot a strange clue or suspicious person watching them. Also is this suppose to be a scifi cop story. I like the main character and how you describe. She did look and act the part of a cop, like you mentioned.
I like this! Unique voice. Great opening line. Like the Baden character. She developes nicely through the chapter. Good interactions with the other characters. Dialogue flows well.
knelt beside the corpse. Perched easily on her toes Point of confusion- knelt is usually on the knees. Stooped, squatted, those could be on the toes.
The flower—we have one of those in the Atlanta (Georgia) Botanical Gardens, the only such flower in the state—Giant Stinky we call her. But she only blooms for one 12 hour period a year. I wonder if the timing will have anything to do with why the dead man was placed when/where he was?
Question as to where the night watchman was? Who is in charge of the Botanical Garden and why wasn’t that person there? Rather than Carrie strolling in somewhat later with a pot in her hand?
“Evan shook his black, curly head”
That just makes it seem like his entire head is black and curly. It’s a mixed description.
“The selective memory of history left things be forgotten “
Left things be forgotten? ‘Let things be forgotten’, maybe?
“Cirque du Soliel”
Your ‘i’ and ‘e’ in Soleil are mixed around. Product of hurried typing, no doubt. I before e, except in neighbor and weigh… weird and French.
Your idea is good, though. I read a book called ‘A Few More Demons’ that was kind of something like this. Crime meshed with fantasy so it was about ten times more interesting than a crime novel or a fantasy novel.
The beginning was good it drew me in right away. It kept my interest through out the piece. Your descriptions were well done.
“It was his typical reaction anymore when he found out” this doesn’t make sense to me, the word “anymore” doesn’t seem to fit.
The only thing I didn’t like was the ending of the chapter. It seemed flat and an odd place to end. End with the discovery of a clue or something suspenseful to keep the reading from putting the book.
After skipping scores of texts over the last few days I started reading your chapter and had to carry on.
You write very well and the story is excellent. In my opinion, however, you lack structural and narrative technique, overuse of adjectives and adverbs, etc.
The tools available in this site are unwieldly for line edits and it would take an inordinate space to comment. This is the best I’ve read in quite some time and I would like to help.
If you send me the chapter over at carlos@carlosjcortes.com I’ll track out a few issues to the best of my scant ability.
Please, take my comments with a pinch of salt.
Take care,
Carlos
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