Semper Fi

Mark’s recent article brings to mind a number of incidents I had the occasion to observe in the course of 25 years in the Police Service.  Police get called to incidents called “Person Cared For”; meaning an unknown situation generally requiring some level of medical attention.  Sometimes these calls are as simple as “So and so lay down to take a nap, and now they won’t wake up !”; up to “We haven’t seen so-and-so for a while, and, gee, there’s a really bad smell in the hall outside their apartment !”  The Officer responds and determines what the situation is; changing it to “Unattended Death” or “Attended Death”. The simple difference is whether there is a Doctor of Record who can sign off the death certificate.  Officer investigation or referral to the Coroner office determines the level of investigation.  Most of the time we get it right, but every now and again we get it wrong.

I was working as dispatcher one fine morning when I receive a call from a downtown businessman.  He reports someone broke into a storage area in his store, made a mess of the place, broke a window, spilled rust-colored paint on the floor (it was an art supply place) and may or may not have stolen some stuff.  I start the Complaint as “Burglary / Criminal Mischief” and send the Beat Officer to the call.  He clears shortly afterwards; no big deal, right ?  Wrongo, dear children. Big time !   A day or two later a corpse is found in an adjoining town rolled up in a carpet, as I remember.  Turns out he had been beaten and murdered  in the back of that business, with the body removed and dumped in another town !!  The spilled paint turns out to be blood, and the mess was from the killers trying to clean up the mess !!   Big investigation !!  I was interrogated by Internal Affairs about this and it was no fun, let me tell you !!  Fortunately, I had done everything by the book so I was all set. 

Then there was the time I was sent to a funeral home for a report of Disturbance - Noise, a report of a woman screaming.   I roll up and park out front.  I go up to the front door and find it unlocked. Entering, it’s all dark and spooky inside just like a typical monster movie.  I hear the woman screaming upstairs; howling like a banshee.  “Aaaaaa !” , as loud as she could, over and over and over !  Of course now I’m scared; I mean, WTF !!

I pull my pistol (we had revolvers back then, K-frame .357’s) and doing my best movement to contact I sneak-and-creep to the stairs up.  Along the way I get frightened by a corpse laid out on a processing table & only by the greatest force of will hold back from putting two or three rounds into it.  I’m worried about zombies & such.  The banshee chorus is still howling upstairs.  I make my way to the stairs & move up carefully and quietly.  First room at the top of the stair, the door is open.  I’m going to have to use my room-clearing skills here, very carefully.  I sneak up and carefully peek around the door frame.  And what do I see?

Just damn.  There’s a naked guy laying on the floor.  No weapon in hand, but he’s got a small hole in his head and there is blood running out of it in slow pulses.  I look around, locate and retrieve a .45 cal pistol.   Aw, crap !  This guy’s shot himself !  I call it in to Despatch, and the Sergeant & Lieutenant respond out since the shooter is known to them from other prior criminal involvements.

Turns out it’s mom down the hallway; and it’s her son on the floor.  Turns out too, that the guy was a druggie, and had contracted an STD one gets from sex with corpses. He had passed this on to his live human girlfriend who was less than pleased by this.  In this event he was wired on cocaine, and running around the house in his underwear yelling for Jesus to save him.  He then went into his room and shot himself. 

I remember being fascinated by how much blood drained out of him from the small entry and exit wounds.  You don’t bleed when you’re dead, although you can drain out if the drain point is low enough for gravity to come into play.  This was my first suicide call, although I had been to dead body calls before this.  In the time we were there the body faded from normal pinkish color to a blanched-white color. The blood separated into two distinct constituent parts.  Fascinating stuff !  Almost to distension to the eyes or face, just a simple entry-exit head wound.  No medical chance for him at all.

One time I got sent to Blake Street for a report of “Shots Fired”. Well, that’s an active gun call, so a bunch of us responded. It was night time so we spread out through the area and tried to track down the shooter.  I come around the corner of a building and I find a guy sitting on the ground leaning against an apartment building. On the ground by his hand I see a rifle or shotgun . Well, I point my pistol at him and yell “Don’t you fucking move !” in my best Policeman voice.  He complies with alacrity.  Turns out he’s a deader, shot himself with a shotgun.  Fascinating how you could look at him from the left side and see a normal silhouette; but when you looked from the front you could see he was missing the entire right side of his face / head.  Much of it was dispersed up the side of the 3 story apartment building as a fairly fine mist.  It was like looking at something on Discovery TV; you know, “Human Brain Exposed”, that sort of thing.

Saddest one I every went to was at a local motel.  Young lady, working as a waitress, living at a rent-by-the-week place. For some reason the property owner was concerned and called the Police. I was sent to the call. Using the property owner key we went into the room.  The woman had taken off her clothes and folded everything neatly on a chair.

She was tucked neatly under the blankets in bed.  No note found, but she had taken an overdose of prescribed meds.  Since the room was warm, the after-death process was operating and I could just barely catch the distinct scent of death.  What in her life had made it so empty, so hurtful, so painful, that this was her only choice ?  We never found out, family & friends were unable or unwilling to offer anything.  She just went to sleep, and didn’t bother to wake up.  I still think about that today; even though 25 years have passed.