Could Someone Please Come and Get the Dead Hooker from my Lawn?

You hear a lot of things as a 911 operator but this was a new one. I was actually shocked and oddly sickened. Most especially the way he said it. He said it with that self satisfied paid up member of the old boys club tone that I did not care for. Not even a little bit of human kindness flowed through the sound of his voice, none at all. In what was rare, because I fully understand how much depends on my doing my work swiftly and logically, I took a breath and a second to respond. As per my training I said it back to him.

“You need someone to come and get the dead hooker off your lawn?”

“Yes.” and again he sneered it, practically made my ear go into a spasm, so offensive was his tone.

“May I have your address, please sir?” in my best professional voice, my finger had already hit the police button and the address was in fact already on my screen. Nothing so I prompted “Sir?”

He gave me his address and I told him the police were on their way. He asked me how long and I answered him with the standard “soon”. I tried to find out a little more by asking if he new the victim but he hung up within a nanosecond of “soon” The rest of my shift was uneventful, but the call kept replaying itself in my mind.

On my way home I couldn’t resist driving by the address. Even when I was a few blocks away I knew this was more than and overdose case on his front lawn. I decided I should check it out. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I did not find out this and that, it would eat me up. I may have left the police force, but once a cop, always a cop. So I parked the car around the corner from where the hubbub stated. The buildings all around were lit like a bizarre Christmas vignette with the red, blue and white strobe lights bounding off the windows. The medical examiner was on the scene with the ominous black van, and the crime lab just behind with their black explorer. Everyone in the perimeter was wearing latex gloves. It took my eyes a bit before I saw someone I recognized.

“Peter”, he startled slightly. “Christ Megs, like hearing from the dead, how the hell have you been?” Wow, nothing prepares you for that moment, the moment all and everything floods back because you’ve just thrown yourself back into a world you had long ago abandoned. There were awkward glances back and forth, but ultimately I settled for “I’m ok”, then to explain myself a bit and also in the hope of getting him to bring me up to date on the goings-in I prodded him with “I’m a 911 operator now, I took this call.”

“You’re shitting me? Megs, an operator, I’d have thought you’d have married again and had ten kids. Geez, it’s been years, I’m off in an hour, can you hang around for a bit and we’ll go have a beer?”

How could I resist?

“Is that the house?” I asked Peter, again not because I did not know the answer but to prompt him, and it worked. “Yeah, cranky old man, retired tax collector. Pissed she died there. Messed up his lawn. Typical tax collector, not a shred of humanity.” With that, Peter went back to the task at hand, collecting evidence and making sure no one walked off with anything, always a souvenir hunter in the crowd.

Wow, what a rush to be at a scene again. Almost five years to the days since quitting. I couldn’t be around it anymore. First my partner dies from a drug overdose, that whole mess turned my life so inside out I decided it just was not worth it. I needed simple work and a simple life or I would break into little pieces. I got myself a cat, a job as 911 operator and a shrink.

So I hung around waiting for Peter to finish his shift. I stood around keeping my ears and eyes open, without getting underfoot. I noticed the medical examiner gently lifting the body, almost as if the victim were a small child. Of course this “hooker” barely weighed 90 pounds, poor thing. There was so much pooled blood under her that the drying blood on the grass was able to form a pool, sticky like caramel. In the middle of her back was a small wound and just under it another. Otherwise the body revealed no other signs of violence against it. Unless of course you consider the line of work she was in as a long succession of rapes given consent by virtue of desperation. I still saw all Johns as nothing more than rapists.

She was dressed in cheap flashy clothing. One had to wonder exactly where they bought these clothes. I’d never seen a story with this crap on their display dummies. The wildly sequined bandaid top with the tight patent “pleather” skirt which was barely more than a belt. Her shoes had heels over the 4 inch mark which must have been unbearable for walking back and forth in all night long on cold concrete.

As the medical examiner lowered her body with considerable tenderness, I could not help but realize that she was someone’s little girl. Probably she was no more than 15 or 16 at most. A fact which made all her Johns not even just rapists but also child molesters. Most likely she was a runaway, a child of a poorly maintained foster care system. I had seen plenty of that while I was still a cop with a badge.

“Well, damn, Megs, how the hell are you?” He could always put an immediate smile on my face. Dan was a mountain of a man, his formidable physique was defined even through his Burberry knockoff trench coat. He looked much more like a star football player than a medical examiner. Perhaps because of his very dark skin but his eyes sparkled, reflecting the pulsing strobes of the squad cars.

“‘am ok”, I mumbled, caught off guard by being deeply in thought.

“Yeah,” replied Dan, “I can see that you are”

“She can’t be more than fifteen, sixteen tops. Was she stabbed?”

“Two times as far as I can tell. What brings you by here, I heard you’d busted yourself to 9111 operator.”

I liked Dan, he was a thoroughly good human being. He cared for the living and the dead and treated all go’s creatures as if they were special to him. I think probably they were all special to him. He was the sort of person with whom you could immediately build a bond. He was thus perfect for his job. No-one I’d ever met was more capable of breaking bad news and taking the bereaved next of kin to identify the body. We continued to exchange pleasantries and also discussed the findings on the scene. Perhaps he should not have told me, but he did. I think he knew I could be trusted with it.

So he told me about the stab wounds, that likely they were from a very slim bladed knife. Perhaps a switchblade. She likely bled out there, on the law, for a period of a couple of hours. She might have screamed, but no one bothered to hear her. The police were unable to come up with a single witness. The resident was home apparently, but heard nothing because he was watching TV. It was only when he was about to walk his dog that he noticed he had a dead, or possibly at that time, dying hooker on his lawn.