Hi. *Waves* Welcome to my very first fanfic that's been on hiatus for… years. If you've read me since this story, I swear I'm a better writer now. And that I will finish this story. Eventually. Promise.

This is a post-100-into-season-five fic (started before the season five finale). If you're reading this mid-2010 and beyond, this is AU and follows almost nothing that really happened.

The Body in the Park

Detective Emily Bryant had to look away. Twelve years with the Arlington Police Department couldn't prepare her for the scene before her. But she needed to focus. She had to turn around and look.

As she took a step forward, trying to push through the wave of nausea sweeping over her due to the intense smell, she grimaced at the sight. At first glance, the victim had been rotting away for several days. Her long hair was still matted to parts of the skull still intact. Pieces of her body were scattered in varying distances from her. And the smell of her corpse was so harsh that she couldn't imagine the woman had been dead here for very long without someone noticing the smell sooner than today. The smell, as it goes with dead bodies was. . . fresh.

"Detective Bryant!" she heard and turned, thankful for the distraction.

"What do you know, officer?" The detective took several steps back and away from the gruesome crime scene.

"We found a wallet along a jogging trail, about 100 yards north of the dump site…"

"The victim." Det. Bryant interrupted to correct him.

Sheepishly, the officer corrected himself. "…North of the victim. If the hair color on the… victim… is any indicator, the wallet probably belongs to her." The young officer looked at the body and his face lost all color.

"Pay attention," Detective Bryant snapped. "Any missing reports out for the ID in the wallet?"

"Yes, name is Catherine Park. She was reported missing by her boyfriend, Joe Crawley, three days ago. He was expecting her home from work one night, and she never showed. He had to wait the minimum 24 hours for the local police to pay attention. "

"Any indicators as to why she's in a park, in Arlington, when she lives in Bethesda?"

"None. The missing person's report says she works in D.C. She takes the Metro into work every day, but her route wouldn't share into these lines. . This area seems out of her way," the officer said, shrugging his shoulders.

Detective Bryant shook her head. "Well, we have a Maryland resident, found dead on Federal Park land in Virginia. Doesn't look like this will be our case much longer."

The officer answered optimistically. "The FBI has better experts to determine what was done to that poor girl. She's probably better off."

"I think at the end of the day, she'd feel better off if she wasn't raccoon food, cut up into a thousand pieces." Detective Bryant sighed, putting the wallet into an evidence bag, and walking away. Quickly, she turned around to another officer at the scene and shouted "Somebody, grab that raccoon! He's been eating the victim and could have evidence."

-*B*B*-