Lost in Blue - Chapter 3

 

𝖅𝖜𝖊𝖎: Traces in the morgue 

Superior Wolfgang Eckert was an entity Dorn could only describe as the exact opposite of the stern policeman stereotype. Communicative. Optimistic. The ability to keep his easy-going, but demandingly charismatic nature under severe pressure, putting his competence as a workaholic at disposal.

All those qualities made Henning admire his supervisor, wishfully hoping that he himself might be compared to him in the slightest bit in the future. Considering that he was Wolfgang’s favorite, Dorn’s chances to climb the career ladder were definitely not impossible to achieve.

And so he found himself knocking at his office’s door, permitted to enter after hearing a “Come in!” in response.

Thick eyebrows raised at the young man’s entrance, Eckert took a moment to look up from his desk, a pile of paperwork neatly stacked to his side.

“Guten Tag, Herr Dorn,” he greeted him formally, taking a sip of his black tea.

“Good afternoon, Herr Eckert,” Dorn reciprocated, closing the door behind him, “I came here to give a short report concerning the interrogation of the woman salvaged from the Rhine.”

“I expected no less. Please, take a seat,” Wolfgang gestured towards the chair opposite of him. Nodding, Dorn did his superior’s bidding.

Once colored medium brown, he noticed that Eckert’s short cut straight hair was traversed by few gray streaks, hinting at the man’s latest anniversary, scraping past the age of fourty five. Despite being middle aged, his appearance was sleek, the mustache he sported neatly trimmed – something Henning imagined his boss grooming with the utmost care early in the mornings in front of his bathroom mirror, given his meticulous behavior at work.

Sitting up straight as a candle, Eckert’s left hand flew across the paper, placing a few signatures where needed, the ball pen clicking hastily as he filled out forms.

“As expected, she didn’t remember a single thing,” Dorn began to explain the situation, aware of his superior’s mannerisms, “The staff at the hospital did not tell her anything. Whether Eduard Arzt lets her see the corpse at the morgue is still undecided.”

Wolfgang’s dark hazel eyes looked up sporadically to confirm he was listening, giving off the impression that the doctor’s reaction didn’t come as a surprise.

“Arzt is a stubborn one,” he only commented, shrugging it off, “Matters are urgent, but for now, we will have to do the best on our part. Forensic pathologist Melanie Schneider confirmed the cause of death to be of unnatural circumstances, therefore the unidentified corpse will be stored several weeks longer at the morgue than originally planned. I still want you to go and take a look. Frau Schneider will certainly provide you with all the valuable details tomorrow.”

Upon hearing the forensics name in charge, Henning couldn’t help himself but grimace, even cringe. Reluctance and dislike didn’t even come close to describe what he felt towards the epitome of the borderline crazy nuisance named Melanie Schneider.

Shuddering, he remembered how casually she dealt with death, stripping the victims of their entire humanity without flinching, wholeheartedly not being affected by the sight of a mutilated body as she analyzed every inch of their dead flesh. Someone had to do the job, he knew, but for his taste, Melanie had way too much fun doing that specific kind of work.

Casting his feelings aside, his professional stoicism quickly took over,

“As you wish.”

Turning on his heel, Dorn was ready to exit the room, but Eckert called him back: “Henning.”

All of a sudden, the clicking of the ball pen stopped. Dorn turned around halfway to face Wolfgang’s intense gaze.

“I heard from Dieter Kühn that the victim called you a certain name, upon seeing you. I believe it was ‘Ruven’. Did she tell you why?”

After a second of hesitation, Dorn replied truthfully, “No, she didn’t. I haven’t even the slightest clue why she would call me that.”

Logically, it would only be reasonable – and easier - to allocate that fact to an amnesiac’s pipe dreams, but Henning felt that this single weird detail held a deeper meaning than the one allowed to be on the surface – or a part of his brain viciously fed him delusions.

His superior squinted his eyes, visibly pondering.

“I guess time will tell. For now, at the very least, I made sure that this case will not be covered by the media – officially the accidentally sunken steamboat has been successfully retrieved by Kühn’s salvage team. I expect everyone in our team to give their best. After all, a possible murderer might be on the loose. Let’s restore Sankt Goarshausen’s peace.”

Fueled by his superiors speech, Henning Dorn exited Eckert’s bureau. Duty called, it didn’t wait. After all, its screams drowned the policeman’s voice to take a desired coffee break.

𝕹 𝕴 𝖃𝕰 𝕿 𝕺 𝕽 𝕰 𝕿𝕰𝖄

“Ah!” a shrill exclamation hit him as he waited at the front of the Loreley clinic’s reception desk.

It was only 9am in the morning.

“Henni-boy! I am so glad to see you!” Arms outstretched, the slender, 1.66 meters tall person approached, threatening to wrap their arms around him.

So why.

“It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other.”

Why did God, if there even existed one, have to punish him so much.

“How is your mother doing? Everything fine?”

Caffeine had not even begun to run through his system and he already had to endure the tone of Melanie Schneider’s strident, high-pitched voice ringing in his ears, perforating his eardrum – it was a miracle they didn’t bleed. He clearly hadn’t consumed enough coffee to steel himself for her presence.

Dressed in a white tunic, caramel colored shoulder-length hair tied into a low ponytail, the forensic pathologist’s smile revealed clean, white teeth. Irises as brown as chocolate, no longer hidden behind a pair of thick, black glasses like a year ago, so it seemed, lasciviously eyed him from the bottom up.

As if he’d ever take up that offer.

Melanie certainly was no looker, Dorn would rate her average at best due to his biased opinion, but some men would be swayed by her piercing glance and gladly submit to the wickedness she kept within – or well, rather hidden between two features known as full C-cups breasts endowing her torso.

“Guten Morgen, Schneider,” he grumbled, suppressing a dissatisfied sigh, “Everything is fine, danke. Let’s get to business. Where is the boy?”

“Oh, cold as ice, you meanie. You always disliked small talk,” she put a finger on her lower lip, a gesture Dorn figured was supposed to come across as sexy. Little did she know it had quite the opposite effect on him, only demonstrating her lack of sex appeal in his eyes.

“Schneider, the boy.”

“Fine, fine. Your last name really captures your character, you know that? Prickly as a thorn.”

“I didn’t come all the way here to chat. The. Corpse. Now.”

As much as he disliked being rude, the annoying woman in front of him literally didn’t understand it any other way. He had tried to be polite in the past, but she didn’t catch on to the message that he solely sought her presence for work-related reasons, so all there was left for him was to reject her advances brutally.

“Okay, okay, Henni-boy,” Melanie pouted, finally dropping her taxing attitude, “Come with me.”

Schneider lead the way, Henning followed her in silence, crossing numerous hospital patient’s clad in their white gowns along the way, some coughing, some walking with crutches, young, old, men, women, children.

The latter reminded him that all these different people had something in common the little boy he was about to see didn’t posses: a life with the prospect of a possible recovery. It was the hope of a better tomorrow, a brighter future – something the youngling had been robbed of.

Unfortunately, one thing was certain: what has been lost, could not be retrieved. Revival was impossible, but putting the dead person at rest, punishing their tormentor by locking them away from society was not. That was exactly what the policeman fought for, why he was here in the first place.

Absorbed in his own thoughts, Henning had barely counted how many rooms they had to pass through, how many faces he had come across. Only the pathologist’s voice he had blanked out along the way, pulled him back to reality, when the both of them found themselves shoulder to shoulder in a narrow corridor, in front of a secured door.

“We’re here.”

Schneider stepped forward, opening the entrance to the house of the dead. What a peculiar situation – above the clinic rested the living, below, the departed were stored away in a cold, dark room, banned from the other’s sights.

Each step echoed clearly, the tension in him grew, the knot in his stomach expanded in horror of what was to come. The chilliness made its way to his joints, painfully stiffening them. His own mind, the racing thoughts, didn’t alleviate his reluctance. Death itself wasn’t the reason that made his hair stand on end, but rather the simple fact that the corpse was a child, a human being that life still had too much to offer for.

Melanie Schneider, the ruthless expert she was, seemed to be unaffected by the tense, dead silent atmosphere, whistling mindlessly the melody of Ed Sheeran’s current hit ‘Shape of you’ – macabre choice, in light of the situation - while she fully pulled out the funeral bier from the morgue cooler. The policeman shot her an angry glance, one the pathologist undoubtedly didn’t notice for being too invested in her work.

Dorn stepped forward, silently examining the little boy’s small frame from head to toe. Undressed and skin pale in color, the blueish green bruises stood out in comparison like a flower in a desert.

Rigor mortis had set his terrified facial features in stone the very first time Henning had come across the wax corpse. But now, some kind soul had the mercy to have closed his eyelids, to spare the young boy some dignity.

The sight made his stomach churn, but the policeman kept a stern expression as he swallowed the nausea down.

“See? Blunt force trauma. Those contusions don’t seem to be the normal kind,” Melanie’s rubber glove vested hand pointed at the effusions of blood spread along the boy’s limbs, “There are some scratches. None could be traced to the Rhine’s fish or any other animal.”

“Maybe it was inflicted with a weapon?” he inquired, as neutral as possible.

“Negative. I don’t think that’s the case, they wouldn’t resemble claw marks otherwise.”

“I take it the cause of death wasn’t the blunt force trauma, then?”

“Nein, I assume water dammed up in his lungs. Most likely, he was beaten and then drowned, but I’ll know for sure when Arzt and I will perform the autopsy.”

The latter rang an all too familiar bell, “Eduard Arzt?”

“Ja, it takes two physicians to conduct a post-mortem examination.”

Averting his gaze from the dead body, Dorn suppressed a heavy sigh. He had the sense that said doctor’s involvement would impede the case’s progress, but for his sake he hoped his suspicions proved him wrong.

“What about the DNA results?”

“They usually range from around ten to twenty work days, so you have to exercise patience until then. Maybe I can convince the doc to let the surviving victim do one, too. As soon as the results arrive, I’ll give Eckert a call,” she assured him.

“Good. I’m done here, then. Eckert awaits my return.” He turned on his heel.

“Henning,” she suddenly spoke, puckering her lips again, “Feel free to drop by whenever you have time.”

Rolling his eyes, he exited the room without saying another word. Despite being a nuisance, Schneider was a capable pathologist, one he could rely on, one that would not impede investigations. That was all that mattered to him.

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