"Jesus Christ."
He's seen some fucked up shit during his service but this? He'd have emptied his gut in his earlier days. He might have lost most of his sensitivity, but seeing dead children still makes him sick to the stomach.
"No shit," distractedly murmurs Jeremy while flipping through his notes on the dead teen - one Natalie Frisk. He's a great guy, don't get him wrong, just... outside of work. Seeing the physician react (or rather, not react) to the bodies he investigates never fails to give the policeman the creeps."This one's gonna take some time. Can't say for sure how exactly she died."
Is he kidding?
"What. You don't think this-" he points at the remaining half of the girl's skull. "-is the cause?"
"Nah I think that's post-mortem." Jeremy takes a sip of coffee from his cup, making a slurping sound. "I mean, sure, that was the kicker if she actually lived that long, which, you know, I hope she didn't." Yeah this is exactly why the man doesn't have that many friends. "The good detective there says the kid got her kneecaps smashed somewhere over there." He points some twenty feet in the street's direction." The brain, uh, what's left of it, is near the dumpster but that's not where her vomit is. You see that hole here?" he points at her... stomach, technically. "Done with a blunt object, baseball bat I believe. Do you even know what kind of effort it takes to-" He suddenly pauses, only now noticing the look he's being given. "Uhm- anyway. Looks like a message if you ask me. Too much... everything, for your regular murder."
"Yeah, I've figured."
Poor kid. It takes special kind of shit luck to get into something like this. A slit throat, a fatal brain trauma, internal heamorrhage and sometimes even asphyxiation - those are pretty common in the ABB territory, not this. "Say, this wasn't a sexual assault?"
"Doesn't look like it. Not unless someone has a very particular way of..." he trails off, an uncomfortable expression appearing on his face. He shakes his head to clear it, they both do. Seriously, the policeman hopes nobody ever figures out what lurks in the physician's head. "No. It was not. I fucking hope not, anyway. Those are like, one in a few million cases- and it's still too many if you ask me."
They both fall silent as their co-workers pack up the body.
"You think ABB did it?" asks Jeremy.
"Probably. Doesn't matter anyway. No weapons, no witnesses, no nothing. Figures. Maybe you'll find something in the morgue but I think it's just gonna be one of those cases. I'm more worried about what's gonna happen when this hits the news. A white girl getting butchered like this in Lung's territory?" Whatever comes, it won't be pretty.
His friend blinks a couple of times before the implication hits him.
"Fuck's sake, I was hoping for a slow week." Well, that's one way to look at it. He himself had lost the hope long ago. Slow weeks just don't happen in Brockton Bay. It's either bad or even worse. Speaking of which...
"Hey. Wanna bet who ends up losing territory this time?" The officer is aware that his boss would grill his ass for making such bets but hell, it's not like the police, PRT or the goddamn Protectorate ever managed to wrestle back any ground they've lost to the gangs over the years.
"Kaiser, same as the last time." Hah!
"Merchants." Jeremy's head snaps to him with indignation coloring his features.
"That's fucking cheating!"