The call from the coroner's office came shortly after 9AM. Still busy gathering all the information on who touched their freight at any given time between its arduous journey from Nappanee to San Francisco, Mike had been busy writing up notes on his initial investigation, even questions he needed answered before getting a better idea just what they were dealing with here.

Finding a head without its body wasn't an everyday occurrence, even in his city. It was safe to assume the same held true for the quiet, more rural regions of Nappanee, Indiana.

"Say Bernie, what about identification marks? Anything?"

On the other end, the ME fell quiet for a moment, and the rustling of paper could be heard.

"Nothing, Lieutenant. The…eh…head is in good enough condition, you can send Burt down here to do a sketch on it, maybe you can get an ID from Missing Persons. I ran the dentals through our data bank but couldn't find a match. The results of the tox screen should be in later this afternoon. My preliminary analysis is that he was struck to the head with a blunt object, roughly 2 inches by 2 inches, rounded and smooth surface. It's possible that he fell onto something too, it's hard to tell. Regardless, the impact was powerful enough to render him unconscious but not kill him. It was the decapitation that did it. The head was removed with a very fine instrument, there aren't too many jagged edges to be found. It cut the bones in his neck almost perfectly."

"So, something that might lie around in a slaughterhouse perhaps?"

Motioning for Steve to join him when he watched the young Inspector return from a quick break, Mike balanced the receiver between his shoulder and ear, before taking a sip of coffee.

"It's possible, Lieutenant. Whoever cut the head off did a neat job, pardon the expression. It was somebody familiar with using knifes and saws for sure. It's surprisingly hard to decapitate a human being. Most times when a killer does it for the first time, they actually fail. They might make it halfway through but then don't get the blade past the vertebras or even the cartilage tissue of the trachea."

Swallowing against the mental image, Mike watched his partner step inside and lean across the desk, trying to eavesdrop.

"That definitely sounds like somebody who is used to dealing with plenty of blood and gore. This will help us we narrow down our search. Thank you, Bernie, keep me up to date on the tox screen!"

Hanging up the phone, Mike drew in a deep breath, before running a hand across his freshly shaven chin, his partner's bright green eyes on him the entire time.

"I take it we're still missing the other appendages?"

"We sure do, Buddy Boy, we sure do…", Mike sighed and pointed at his notes, "Bernie said it's a Caucasian male, mid-thirties, some very fine instrument was used to sever his head before it was shoved into that plastic bag. No identifying marks and the dental records came back without a match. So, we're going to have to start from the beginning here."

"Did he say anything about an accident?"

The young Inspector's earnest question intrigued Mike, and he glanced up, before pursing his lips.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I guess…I guess I read about it in one of my magazines. It happens a lot in the big cattle slaughterhouses down in Texas. They hire illegal immigrants to run the kill floors and processing stations and every once in a while, somebody gets maimed or killed by the machinery. Well, if the accident was made official, they could lose their license, a day's worth of production, people would lose their jobs, not to mention the bad PR…so the issue is silenced and the bodies just…disappear."

Leaning back to ponder, Mike considered the options.

"I admit, it's a stretch to think that somebody would accidentally get decapitated and another person would wrap his head up along with the frozen chicken to hide the evidence. It would come out eventually. Not sure if that's the best plan of action."

"Yeah, but in a bad enough situation where people get killed or injured far too often, this might be a cry for help. And it might give whoever took care of the head enough time to get out of there before somebody noticed. And in those big chicken processing facilities, they could, I mean…throw the rest of the body into the blood tank. Have you ever seen those blood tanks? They're huge. Then it wouldn't get noticed until nighttime when the tanks get emptied."

Mike froze in his spot at his partner's enthusiastic explanation, before shaking his head wearily.

"Let's keep that in the back of our minds. I am afraid until we dig into the situation further and ask some questions, everything is more or less…speculation."

Getting up from his desk, Mike gently nudged his partner's shoulder, before reaching for his black overcoat and fedora.

"Let's go grab some breakfast, my treat today. My stomach is churning from hearing about severed heads, killing floors and blood tanks. And I have to admit, I am beginning to worry about your nightly reading habits, Buddy Boy…really, really worry…"