"Stacey, Eddie," Brynholf said."This is Officer O'Rourke."
"Officer," Eddie said.They shook hands.
"I hear the two of you are here on special assignment, huh?"O'Rourke asked."I gotta warn you.It's messy in there.We got hip waders, respirators, and rubber gloves.Don't touch nothing.Don't slip.And don't breathe in.Got some Vicks back in the truck but this is a bucket and shop vac job for the most part."
We walked behind him.As we neared the doorway, Brynholf waved off the gloves.
"I'm heading back home in a minute," he said."You guys are here, and I don't need to see it again."
Brynholf walked to the far edge of the balcony, pushed past some police, and lit a cigarette as he stared into the distance.He did not look well.
"Never seen anything like this before, and I've worked homicide for about a decade in this city," O'Rourke said."Looks like whatever it was liquefied him.Like someone put him in a blender on pulse for an hour.Here.Scrub up."
Me and Eddie locked eyes as we each slid into our PPE.O'Rourke put a fresh pair of waders and gloves on.
"Hold your breath," O'Rourke said, through the mask, and then opened the door.
We walked into a dimly lit living room.It smelled of rank body odor.Syringes and a filled ashtray were on a coffee table in front of an old tube TV that was flickering, the screen rolling over and over again.There was a group of technicians taking pictures and trying for fingerprints on the door jamb behind us.
"See.Here's what we're thinking.Syringes and surgical tubing here.Even a little arm band.That's a little further up, in the kitchen, where it fell off when he got to his feet.Everything looks normal here—excepting that bloody handprint on the wall over there by the light switch."
"And look at the door," Eddie said to me.
It looked like skin was dangling from it.I felt my gorge rise up in my stomach.
"Yeah," the man said."Looks like a typical junkie trying to get a fix.Got some heroin here in a baggie—needs to be analyzed still, but I've seen it before.Some pure shit.Whoever this was, before he spiked whatever it was in his body, he did the good shit.See—I imagine it happened like this.He sat back on the couch.Decided he was going to shoot up.Got his whole little needle kit going here.Wrapped himself up nice and good.Popped out a big enough vein.Whatever it is didn't set right with him.He got to his feet.Maybe he popped a vein, maybe his corpuscles were already leaking.He goes to put a hand on the light switch, leans on the door frame here, where the skin is."
O'Rourke carefully pushed and held the door open.
"Careful," he said.
Eddie and I walked into the kitchen.There was a pile of something on the ground.I stared at it, my mind unable to register what I was seeing for a moment, but then my college anatomy course memories kicked in, and I started seeing recognizable bits.
My stomach bobbed again.I immediately turned and ran over to the sink, ripped off my mask, and threw up.
"Yeah, it's bad," O'Rourke said.
"It's just as bad a second time," Eddie said."Maybe worse."I had never heard him sound so revolted before in the entire time I knew him.
I didn't know how to describe it even as I was seeing it.Footprints left bloody tatters of flesh on the ground.He rounded the kitchen table—was it a he?Nobody could know.And then more and more piles of bubbles and fleshy pink fluid.And here toe bones.There ankle bones.And some split thigh bones.A torso's worth of molten body fluid, like everything, sluiced right off the body and splashed.And then a brain and a skull, an outstretched hand clawing up against the wall between the kitchen and the hallway…
Something furry slipped from my pant leg.I tried not to look.
"That is bad," I said.
"Yeah," O'Rourke said."Looks like whatever he injected dissolved him from the inside out."
"No kidding," I said.
Whatever the furry thing was from before had crawled its way back up my pant leg.I could feel a little pull on my knee.
"I think I've seen what I need to," I said."You good, Eddie?"
"Yeah," he said."Maybe good isn't the best word for it, though…"
4.
"What the hellwas that back in there?"I asked when we got back into the car.
