6/23/05a

9:04 a.m. Well, my Subject went to the corner gas station to buy milk and came back home. She was moving without restriction and I got about 2 minutes of film on her.

Back to my story...

I show up to the MEO at noon on Monday with a couple dozen cookies and a mug of coffee. I'm working till 9pm tonight. It's an overlapping shift with the 4pm to midnight guy. I prefer these to working graveyard (haha) shifts alone.

I drop off the food in the break room and proceed to the investigator section. I hear laughing as I approach the office and am not surprised to see two homicide detectives kicking back in our circa 1970 office chairs. I smile. I really like it when the detectives come visit us.

"Well, if it isn't Polly! How ya doin' darlin'?" Detective Flap asks. "Nice skirt." And what follows is some good clean sexual harrassment on the job. We all joke around for a while before I ask what's going on. "Here for an autopsy," Detective Carl answers. Carl is quieter and kinder than Flap. I liked him instantly when I first met him. I have watched him on cases and know that he is careful and concise. He keeps his mind open and his ego doesn't get in the way of his work. Unfortunately, he's partnered with Flap. Flap is dominating, big-mouthed and impetuous. He jumps to a conclusion on a case and he sees no other possibilities. Detectives like him frighten me because they don't seem to care that one misjudgement on their part could send an innocent man to jail or set a guilty one free. It's all about closing the case for guys like him.

I pick up the pile of investigative reports from the weekend. I sit down and bite into a cookie while I read. At 9pm last night we had a gunshot suicide case from the south side of town. The vic left a note telling his ex-wife that he'll see her in hell. That's nice.

Then there's an unexplained death of a 40-year-old man. He hadn't been to a doctor in years. He also weighed 390 pounds. I look at the scene photographs. His ankles are red and swollen. Congestive heart failure. You get that big and your heart can't pump the blood sufficiently. The heart is a muscle just like any other. And just like a bicep, it will grow if it's exercised hard enough. The heart gets big enough and there's not enough room to pump.

I move on to yesterday morning's case. This is the homicide that Flap and Carl are here for. Apparently, an older couple from Georgia left their hotel room yesterday morning to get some breakfast. On the way to their car, a young black man held them up, demanding the woman's purse. She refused to give it to him so he shot her in the face right in front of her husband. The assailant took the purse and ran.

More later...