Diana arrived at the High School in response to Cordelia's call and found the two girls in the gym after Faith had cleaned herself up. Normally Faith would have investigated the dumpster herself to see if a vampire's victim was in there, but given how smells were setting her off during her pregnancy, she wasn't able to do it now and Cordelia was paying attention to her feelings and they were telling her it wasn't a vampire's victim in that dumpster. So the two girls called Diana, who'd called Mason and he, along with Xander and Jesse, pulled up beside her car and headed for the dumpster to investigate it themselves. If it was a vampire victim, they'd try to find the vampire, if Cordelia's feeling was right and it wasn't a vampire's victim, then something else would have to be done.
Mason opened the dumpster himself, noting Xander had detected the smell before he had and Jesse only seemed to smell one big smell. Mason knew what dead bodies smelled like too, but Xander didn't have his experience. He did, however, appear to have heightened senses beyond just his hearing, after the hyena possession. And Mason also noted that Xander wasn't letting that amplified sense of smell stop him from helping investigate what was in that dumpster.
"That's not a body." Xander observed, trying to make sense of the tangled mess he was seeing. "That's bodies, plural. Or maybe parts of bodies, plural, because I'm seeing arms, legs, heads and stuff but none of it's attached like it should be."
"You're right." Mason agreed. "No demon did this, those limbs weren't torn off. We're going to have to call the police on this one, boys. Two calls to the local cops in two days, this week's shaping up to be real different."
"Do you think one of them is the girl who's grave you found dug up yesterday?" Jesse asked, repulsed by the site of all those body parts. "And some of them seem to be missing."
"Missing?" Xander asked.
"Unlike you, Math isn't a problem for me. Most people have two arms and two legs, right? Which means there should be a certain number of both in there, but I'm seeing four arms and four legs, three heads and two part of the body that connects them all. None of which is connected to anything it's supposed to be connected to."
"Torso." Mason supplied. "And you're right, Jesse, two arms, two legs and one torso seems to be missing. Three heads indicates three bodies. There's plenty of room in the dumpster for all of it, because whoever dumped these things did it after the city had emptied it of the usual waste. They might have hoped the Janitors would just toss the collected garbage bags from the usual clean up of the school tomorrow into it without looking. Still very sloppy because that smell is very obvious."
"So, why keep arms, legs and a torso from different girls if you already had three complete bodies?" Xander asked. "And why not keep any of the heads?"
"All very good questions that I hope the police can find answers to." Mason answered. "Especially for the families of these people. Come on, let's check on the girls and I'll call the police." They headed into the gym and Xander, with Jesse following, made a beeline for the girls as Diana stepped over to Mason and Mason filled her in on what they'd found.
"You were right, Cordy." Xander told her. "It's not a vampire's victim. It looks like parts from different bodies that have been cut up and whoever did the cutting seems to have kept some of the parts."
"A human sicko?" Faith was shocked, she'd expected this to be vampire or other demon related. Human sickos were for news reports and crime TV, not for two teenage girls to stumble over.
"In Sunnydale?" Cordelia was equally as shocked. "Do we even have real crime in Sunnydale? The police thought the attack on the Bronze was a gang and the dead kids in the school the end of last year were because of a rabid dog. We know they were both vampire attacks, but the police don't. The police hardly have anything to do in Sunnydale."
"Mostly roust drunks." Xander muttered in agreement thinking about all the times the cops had hauled Tony Harris in for being drunk, only to release him once he was sober.
When a Detective Stein arrived not long after, Mason took him to see the collection of body parts in the dumpster and Xander felt a gut level annoyance set in. Like his response to Rupert Giles, which made Xander wonder if both were carryovers from the other timeline and tried to shrug it off. Whatever they'd done in the original timeline to cause that gut level annoyance that carried over, this was the timeline that mattered and aside from Giles' attitude toward Faith, neither had done anything bad.
But maybe he should keep an eye on Detective Stein, just in case. Because something about him seemed really off and it wasn't just that annoying feeling being generated in Xander's gut. Was it the psychic sense Diana thought he had telling him the Detective was a problem? And what kind of problem?