Disclaimer! I do not own Bungou Stray Dogs. The characters are owned by Kafka Asagiri and illustrated by Sango Harukawa. The only things I own are my storyline and OC's. I am not making money off of this story, nor do I plan to.
This story takes place sometime after season 3 of the anime. This can be seen as canon divergence as I do not follow the manga nor the light novels.
That being said: trigger warning for descriptions of gore, corpses, autopsies, and murders.
I tried my best to find out the proper procedures for an autopsy for a homicide victim as well as the investigation/procedures for homicide investigations but I most likely got some things wrong. Some of it is completely made up. If anyone can point me towards some good sources then please DM me or leave a comment!
…...
No matter how many times she saw a dead body, homicides always made Charlie Dickens's stomach turn.
It was 7:34 AM, April 21st. What should have been a nice spring evening, clear of clouds and the perfect night to catch up on much-needed sleep. Instead, she was out at an old and rickety hotel building and studying a murder victim.
The old photos in her hand did nothing to hide the awful smell permeating the room. Large fluorescent lights lit up the entire room in a cold white glow and only one or two other police personnel were in the room. Charlie had to hide a visible gag as her shoe stepped into a crusted puddle of blood. Luckily the disposable shoes she wore over her boots kept the blood from leaving red smears or flakes on her boots, but that didn't stop the fact that a body had been leaking. Bodies weren't supposed to leak like that. With a grimace, she scrunched her nose to adjust the mask over her nose and mouth and looked back at the photos in her hand.
They were certainly old, ripped around the edges, and worn by time. The contents of the photos were 'supposedly' of the last known photos of the victim she was studying now. However, they were so old that it had to be a lie... Right? With a huff, she flipped through the photos while glancing at the corpse in front of her. It seemed straightforward enough, the victim: a thirty-seven-year-old Englishman had been found in his apartment after fellow tenants complained of a rotting smell. He was discovered to have been murdered, his jaw broken and two bullets fired into the chest, one had clipped his neck and likely an artery. His blood had sprayed nearly everything, walls, furniture, the ceiling.
However, something was off… There had been an obvious scuffle. But, if his injuries were consistent with other killings of similar killers, there shouldn't have been even a small fight. If her theory was correct, there shouldn't have been a scuffle at all, he would have been held down and murdered. But instead… He managed to fight.
With another futile attempt at hiding a gag, Charlie rolled her neck and slipped the photos into the evidence bag in her hand, straightening out her suit as she handed it off to another member of the investigation. The suit itself was her standard white suit. It covered her head to toe in a white microguard material, the hood hiding her hair and keeping any flyaways from getting in her face. She also wore two pairs of nitrile gloves, shoe coverings, a respirator mask over her face, and a pair of goggles covering her eyes. She refrained from touching her face as to not contaminate any evidence she may find and to keep any bodily fluids from coming into contact with her. The last thing she wanted was to get blood in her mouth because the body before her leaked again. Her shoulders sagged as she huffed and continued to investigate the scene. Any objects were carefully turned over and placed back exactly how she found them, any small bits of evidence were picked up using tweezers, any larger pieces were picked up using her gloved fingers.
"Anything interesting?" She jumped, banging her head and nearly dropping the picture frame she had found underneath the dining room table. Backing out from underneath the table on her hands and knees, she stood and turned to find police detective Minoura. The taller man was dressed similarly to herself, identical white suit and everything. Normally he would be dressed in his standard button-down and tie, but seeing as there was blood quite literally everywhere (even on the ceiling… that was just plain nasty) he had donned a suit identical to hers.
"Ah, Minoura-san… Just a picture that had been knocked underneath the table. You should probably take it in as evidence." She explained and put the frame delicately in the evidence bag he offered. With a nod, he tagged the evidence and handed it off to be added to everything else.
Several minutes later, she exited the apartment, pulling the mask from her face and taking a deep breath of air. She passed the police vehicles as police and other law enforcement finished up their initial investigation. Her hands were sweaty, her cheeks red, and her short hair stuck to the nape of her neck. The layers of nitrile gloves covering her hands were almost slimy with sweat as she peeled them off with stiff fingers and fanned her face with them. The apartment had been so incredibly stuffy, and her mask and suit hadn't helped.
However, she didn't have time to worry about how hot it was, it was time for her to get to work; her real work. After all, soon she'd have a body on her table to cut open.
…
The body had been tagged and x-rayed as well as examined by the diener already and was being cleaned. Charlie watched from behind the glass where she was dressing in a clean surgical gown over her scrubs and running trainers. She slipped on her goggles, scrub cap, face mask, and then a face shield (one could never be too careful when handling a homicide victim). Then she pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves, then another pair, and then a third just to be safe. Her eyes flicked about as she watched the assistant rinse the body with a detergent solution followed by the antiseptic used on all corpses.
The diener was finishing up the cleaning when she stepped into the room, ignoring the urge to itch her face as she went.
"Need any help with the autopsy Miss Dickens?" He asked curiously, voice slightly muffled behind the mask. Her assistant was Jacob Marley. He was an older man, perhaps in his forties (she never bothered to ask), with graying hair and smile lines by his eyes.
"No thanks, Mr. Marley. Go, enjoy your evening. And tell Ebenezer I say hello!" She called after the man as he left the room, him offering a wave as he went.
And suddenly she was all alone at approximately 9:00 PM in an autopsy suite with the body of a homicide investigation.
Talk about spooky.
However, Charlie was used to spooky. So she simply pressed the pedal below the table to turn on her voice recorder and got to work.
"Patient has been identified as thirty-seven-year-old Rudyard Kipling. Approximately one hundred ninety-three point four centimeters tall and weighing in at one hundred sixty-five kilograms. Buzzcut with gray hair, green eyes. Identifying marks include a snake tattoo sleeve along the right shoulder, a tattoo of a bear on the back, and a Bengal tiger on his right calf. The cause of death is thought to be a severed carotid artery as a result of a gunshot wound to the neck. Shells at the crime scene indicate the handgun is a forty caliber Glock pistol." She finished giving her beginning statement before picking up her scalpel.
"Beginning preliminary incision." She said to the microphone hanging above the autopsy table. She pressed her gloved thumb and forefinger on the flesh, spreading it taut above the breastbone of the patient. Without hesitation, she dragged the scalpel from one shoulder to the sternum, pushing as deeply as she could to cut through the skin before dragging an identical cut to the sternum from the other shoulder.
Blood was extracted for further DNA testing and the chest cavity was opened in order to remove and weigh the organs. Nearly three and a half hours into the autopsy and it was starting to get cold, Jacob probably forgot to turn the heater on when he left. Her throat was sore from recording all her findings and the continuous talking to the microphone. A quick glance at the clock showed it was 12:51. Well past midnight and nearing the witching hour.
So she wasn't all that surprised when the spirit of the dead patient floated down through the ceiling and hovered over his corpse.
The only real difference between the corpse and the ghost was the eyes. The ghost's eyes were blank, completely white with no pupils or irises. He still had the injuries that killed him, his jaw hung broken and limp against his neck, and the bullet holes in his neck and chest were continuously oozing and dripping though it didn't leave any residue on the floor. She simply stared, brown eyes stared into empty white until she finally broke the silence.
"Rudyard Kipling right?" She asked and the ghost jumped, his form fizzling in the way ghosts always did when they got startled. His jaw flapped about as if he was trying to speak but nothing came out except broken gurgles and rasps. Poor thing, it must be annoying not being able to speak.
Charlie watched the man as he raised his fingers to his jaw, grasping ahold of it with both hands and forcibly shoving it into place, the skin knitting together with a sharp crack. She had to make a conscious effort not to cringe at the sound.
"Better?" She asked and Kipling nodded.
"You can see me?" He asked, his Japanese tinged with a distinct English accent and Charlie nodded,
"I can. I have some questions for you if that's alright." The ghost was suddenly two inches from her face, jaw stretched open farther than any human jaw should have been able to.
"How can you see me?" The screech vibrated in her bones and made her ears ring, she had to make a conscious effort not to touch her face and smear old blood and fluids on her face shield.
"It's my ability, don't think too much about it. Can I ask you some questions?"
The man hovered for a few more moments, allowing Charlie to start prepping the body to sew back up. She returned the organs that weren't needed for the investigation back to the body and prepped the needle to stitch up the corpse.
"What are your questions." Not a question, a demand. Still, it was progress.
"How were you killed?" She had found that being straightforward brought about the best results when speaking with ghosts. The man before her curled his broken lips into a snarl,
"How do you think wench?" He growled and she glanced down at her attire,
"First of all, I'm not a wench. I'm not dressed like a prostitute. And second, it could either be the bullet to your carotid or your broken jaw or the bullet to your sternum. Please just be helpful and tell me if you want the person who did this to be brought to justice." Kipling watched her as she began to methodically sew up the body in front of her as she spoke.
"It was dark… I- I was off work and just got home…" His form flickered like a TV full of static as he began to speak, voice quiet as he recounted his death.
"Someone… someone was waiting in my apartment… I- I didn't see their face. It was dark. But someone came up behind me and I was held still while the first person- they-" his form flickered more wildly, becoming almost indistinguishable among the growing static and shadows. The lights flickered in the autopsy suite, some of the lights in the hallway shattered. But Charlie simply waited until he stopped flickering and continued.
"They broke my jaw first… wedged my jaw between the dining table and stomped on it. I think… I think it was the gunshots that killed me, I don't remember after the first bullet." The brunette looked at the flickering man for a moment before turning her attention back to the body. She sewed in silence, finishing the stitching in silence before the man spoke again.
"You have to solve this murder. I want that person thrown in jail where they can rot in hell for what they did to me." His growl vibrated in her ears as he disappeared from her line of sight, leaving her alone in the autopsy suite with flickering lights and glass littering the floor.
…
FairyTailWzard's OC's (DO NOT STEAL, THESE CHARACTERS ARE MINE):
Charlene "Charlie" Dickens: Sleep deprived 23 year old medical examiner works to solve homicides for the police, Port Mafia, and the Armed Detective Agency. Ability: The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain; allows her to see and interact with the spirits of the dead.
Rudyard Kipling: Deceased Englishman in his 30s, unknown background. Ability: The Jungle Book; he can manifest his tattoos into real animals. Has tattoos of a python, bengal tiger, and a large bear.