The Removalist

by Matthew Franklin Sias

  With the body secured to the Stokes Litter and feeling barely beginning to return to my distal appendages, it is a matter of waiting for the helicopter to arrive.

  Forty minutes or so later, the almost imperceptible whine of a helicopter can be heard in the crisp air. Tentatively and carefully, the pilot guides the ship through the tree-lined hills and into our view. Soon it is overhead, whipping up dry snow and creating a localized blizzard. A crew member descends with a line, and it is quickly secured to the litter. In moments, the body is aloft, swinging slightly as the chopper makes its way out of the ravine and towards the airport.

  I still have the socks.

  Of Maggots and Men

  Among the candidates for “my favorite insect,” flies and their horrible little children, maggots, rank rather low on my list. At once both fascinating and revolting, maggots have been nature’s little morticians for eons, munching happily on dead flesh and then loping away to pupate and become adult flies. Within hours of a death, the ubiquitous fly homes in on the smell of a dead body, like a shark to blood. A body left outside for even three hours may have what appears to be Parmesan Cheese in the nostrils and corners of the mouth—fly egg clusters, soon to become wiggling white maggots.

  At first feeding on fluids exuding from mucous membranes and open wounds, the maggots go through three molts, or instars, before leaving the body to form a pupa. Through these molts, they increase in size and ferocity, ultimately burrowing underneath the skin to augment the natural process of decomposition. On a completely maggot-infested body, one can actually hear the maggots eat—the soft smacking sound of thousands of organisms wriggling over each other and chewing with their hook-like mouth parts while they continue to breathe through spiracles on their hind end. A body in advanced decomposition that has been exposed to fly activity will exhibit large balls of maggots, known as maggot masses, in the nose and mouth. These masses will actually generate their own heat.

  As the time for pupation approaches, the mature maggots crawl off to form their cocoons. In nature, maggots find shelter under rotting leaves or other tree debris. In an urban apartment, they crawl to the baseboards and, if feasible, underneath rugs or clothing. When they emerge from the pupae, they are adult flies, and the life cycle starts again.

  Needless to say, flies are unwelcome in a morgue or funeral home. As I was assisting with an open-casket funeral at a church, a well-meaning funeral attendant decided to open chapel doors on either side of the sanctuary, allowing “fresh air” to enter the church. The doors were quickly closed by the funeral director/embalmer who had prepared the body, as leaving them open would be like hanging a “Welcome” sign for the local fly population. A loved one gazing down at poor dear departed Grandma as a fly emerges from her left nostril generally does not make for a good “memory picture.”

  Maggots, the tricky little bastards, seem to be very good at infiltrating their local surroundings. Several months back, my pathology crew and I were completing an autopsy on a man found dead in a ravine. His remains consisted of a skeleton, a few lumps that resembled internal organs, and a thriving community of maggots swarming so fervently as to make the corpse appear alive. My task here apparently involved taking photographs as well as corralling the maggots as best as possible into a dustbin. Snap snap. Sweep sweep. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

  Upon completing the autopsy, limited though it was due to the degree of our client’s degradation, we double-bagged the remains, and closed the cooler door with confidence, knowing that soon some poor funeral home employee would arrive to take possession of our malodorous customer.

  Several days later, we received some complaints from office staff several yards down the hallway. It seemed that a few adventuresome maggots had gone on a field trip. This meant they would have needed to escape my broom and dustpan, enter the anteroom, slip under the door, and lope down the hallway undetected, until making their presence known to the Human Resources Department, probably to inquire about a job.

  Lest I malign our wiggly friends too much, maggots are not entirely useless creatures. When they aren’t infesting my morgue, maggots are excellent recyclers of dead animals the world over. Furthermore, they have medical use. In the case of non-healing leg ulcers, medical-grade maggots (one wonders what qualifications a maggot would need for this honor) have been applied to the affected areas, and in a short time, are found to have gobbled up all of the dead flesh, leaving the living parts alone.

  From a forensic standpoint, maggots have found use in the determination of the cause of death as well. Maggots feeding on a corpse may ingest the drugs that have been involved in a death. By putting a chunk of maggots into a blender and making a “maggot milkshake,” these drugs may be isolated and tested. I’ve never done this particular technique, and I’m not in a hurry to rush out and buy a blender for the express purpose of pureeing maggots, but I include this only as an academic curiosity.

  As the body degrades further, eventually the maggots run out of viable flesh and the flies stop laying eggs. The skin shrinks and dries, stretched over the bones like a leathery canvas, inviting other creatures, such as beetles, to feast on what is left.

  Aside from the insect decomposers, ants, rats, and even family pets can inflict damage on a corpse, each with its own distinctive pattern of injury. Ants tend to produce an abrasion-like pattern with their tiny jaws, whereas rats create a neat, bloodless, scalloping wound, eventually producing an appearance reminiscent of an anatomical dissection. Dogs and cats, left hungry by their dead owners, can wreak havoc on a body, at times dismembering it and leaving parts throughout the house.

  Sometimes, however, a death can be so lonely that even the flies aren’t invited.

  The Man That Nobody Missed

  The pager chirps to life, with impeccable timing, right as I breeze through the doors of Safeway, only caffeine in my stomach and hungry for solid food. The sky is gray and the asphalt is dry on a cold late January day. The acrid, yet intoxicating odor of freshly brewed coffee wafts from the Starbucks kiosk.

  I press the button and read the message on the blue screen: “Contact Officer Williams. We have a death.” I dial the number on the screen. A female voice answers: “We’re at the President Hotel at an unattended death. Looks like he’s been down…a while.”

  “How long is a while?”

  “A week at least. Maybe more.”

  “I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”

  I start the van and gird myself for the sight, and most especially the smell, of a decomposed human being, that nostril-searing funk that warns all within nose-shot to stay away, or risk losing your cookies. I go through my mental checklist of those items I need, starting with a heavy-duty, fluid-impermeable body bag and ending with the odor-blocking gel given to me by a now-deceased Deputy Coroner. The gel was supposed to be smeared under one’s nose, and exude an aroma not unlike a bakery, allowing one, at least temporarily, to forget that one was in the presence of a rotting corpse, and instead imagine buttered croissants. I had yet to use the gel on an actual case.

  I start the van and head right out of the parking lot, onto bustling College Way and cars full of post-Christmas shoppers, past Denny’s and Petco, under the freeway full of whizzing cars, and towards the old downtown area, where my “client” lies waiting for me.

  I pull up to the curb beside the President Hotel, a run-down building long past its prime. After retrieving the yellow plastic case that contains my digital camera, I place it on the extra-wide heavy-duty gurney, and head into the building. The lobby smells of loneliness and age and is completely deserted. I board the elevator with my gear and head up to the second floor.

  The smell hits me as soon as the elevator door opens to the second floor. It is clear something is definitely not right here. Faint at first, then increasing exponentially as I round the corner, the smell of death is unlike any other, thick, cloying, and immediately recognizable, the chemicals putrescine and cadaverine combining to create the ultimate miasma
of foulness.

  A detective, young, tall, and balding, stands outside the beat-up door to the apartment. Police standing outside a residence is often a very bad sign.

  I introduce myself and walk into the modest, cluttered apartment, camera dangling around my neck. A small rickety table stands in the entryway, bearing a set of keys and a dented bowl containing spare change. The door frame is damaged, splintered from being kicked in. A large black fly buzzes aimlessly over kitchen counters dotted with food debris and littered with empty cans of cheap beer. The dirty white cabinet doors have been flung open to reveal several randomly arranged medication bottles. I pick one up, the label faded, the cap dirty and slightly tacky—Atenolol, a high blood pressure medication. Another is labeled Simvastatin, a cholesterol-lowering drug. A bottle labeled Vicodin 5/500 mg looks slightly newer. I make a rough estimate of the amount of pills left to make sure it is consistent with normal use and that the man had not overdosed. On the label is written a physician’s name and prescription date. Things are looking up. If the man has a verifiable medical history and has recently seen a physician, my job becomes easier. It becomes more likely that he has died of natural causes and his doctor would sign off on his cause of death. I take photographs of these and then toss them into a paper bag for disposal.

  On the refrigerator, tacked on with a magnet, is a reminder notice from a physician’s office, reading “Mr. Scott Warner is scheduled for an appointment January 11 at 10:00 a.m.” The date is circled. I look at my cell phone and check the date: January 24. This man has likely been dead for at least thirteen days.

  I photograph this and then ask the detective the pertinent questions: “When was Scott last seen alive and by whom?”

  The detective says it’s been about a month since anyone has spoken to the decedent. Finally a friend had knocked on his door, received no answer and called police for a welfare check. Next of kin? Still not known. An officer hands me a dilapidated address book that smells of cigarette smoke, its pages stained and dog-eared, along with a cell phone. These two items will be vital in finding the dead man’s relatives.

  With the living area, such as it is, photographed, it is time to move on to the body itself, the heart of the investigation. Sidestepping multiple unlabeled boxes in the narrow hallway, I make my way into the bedroom. The odor of death increases. The room is sparely furnished, a bare mattress squarely in the middle of the space, beside it a plastic bin that passes for a bedside table. Atop the bin is a tiny lamp, still on, its shade askew, illuminating an opened burger wrapper, flecked with cheese and ketchup, dried up. An ancient radio, now off, sits above an old steam radiator below an open window. It is the apartment of a transient, one who had recently moved in and had no plans of staying permanently.

  Mr. Warner, or the remains thereof, reclines diagonally on the mattress, partially covered by a down sleeping bag, his sockless feet hanging off the side of the bed. His formerly Caucasian skin is black, which is not to say Negroid, but rather obsidian with the effects of decomposition, contrasted by the white whiskers that adorn his upper lip and cheeks to form a Fu Manchu mustache. A gray T-shirt is stretched over his ample upper body, made even larger by bloat. His eyes are squeezed shut, his fingers and toes dried and shriveled, mummified. Pajama bottoms, soaked with decomposition fluid, cover his lower body. As foul as he is, I need to examine him for signs of injury or foul play. My thickly gloved hands touch cold skin, sloughing off in my hand as I pull up his T-shirt and examine his chest and abdomen. No stab wounds, no bullet holes, just fluid-filled blisters, or bullae, of moderate to advanced decomposition.

  The scene investigation completed, the property inventoried, and the medications accounted for, it is now time for the most odious task of all, the removal of Mr. Warner’s decomposed body from his apartment. This will require the assistance of my less-than-enthusiastic law enforcement comrades.

  “Ready to move him?” I say.

  The officer suddenly remembers an old back injury, and the two detectives grumble as they don the thin, white Tyvek suits that cover them from neck to foot. This will be messy.

  Then I remember the odor-blocking gel and offer some to both detectives, before smearing some on my upper lip—an excellent opportunity to see if this stuff really works.

  I unzip a black heavy-duty body bag and lay it on the floor. Inside it I lay a plastic liner that should contain the majority of the juice and keep it from oozing out the zipper. My plan is to wrap the body in the bed sheet and then hoist the whole package into the plastic liner without sullying the body bag. Easier said than done.

  With the help of the two bunny-suit-clad detectives, I slide Mr. Warner off the bed and attempt to gently lay him in the body bag. This proves to be problematic as Mr. Warner is just as heavy as he looks. With an unceremonious thud he stops short of the goal, dripping purge fluid on the outside of the body bag and liner. One of the detectives turns to gag, recomposes himself, and then continues the operation.

  Ultimately, somehow, we get the solid portion of Mr. Warner into the bag and leave a large green and brown stain on the mattress. Since the ancient building’s elevator doesn’t accommodate a full-size gurney, we have to drag the body into it and sort of prop him up as he rides down to the lobby. There really is no suitable conversation that can be had between three sweaty people gathered around a decomposed body. “So, any plans for the weekend? How ’bout them Seahawks?” Doesn’t happen. We ride in silence.

  The wheeled cot, lowered to the ground, welcomes us in the lobby as the elevator’s elderly door creaks open. We heft the body onto it and secure it with belts as tightly as possible. The last thing we need is for the body to fall off when the weight shifts. I walk ahead, carrying my camera kit, and the detectives wheel the gurney.

  Ahead of us, the door to the stairway swings open and a rail-thin woman, plaid button-up hanging off her spare frame, breezes through. On her face is written the traces of a hard life. Between her spindly fingers she carries an unlit cigarette. She glances briefly at us and then heads towards the front door. “Blaah!” she says, and fans the air in front of her. “Smells like something died in here!” Never mind the three sweaty, biohazard-suited guys or, for that matter, the inert black lump being wheeled down the hallway. I wonder about some folks’ powers of observation.

  Into the cold, dry winter day we go, our silent companion creaking along on his extra-wide mortuary cot. I load him, the camera kit, and his property into the green van, and shut the double doors. The detectives doff their suits as quickly as they can, as if they are toxic.

  “So,” I say, “did that odor-blocking gel work?”

  “Not really,” says one of the detectives.

  I drive five minutes to the morgue, located at the back side of Skagit Valley Hospital, next to the dumpsters, biohazard bins, and a very attractive parking lot. I use my key card to enter, and wheel my cargo into the cavernous cooler, where another plastic-wrapped body already reposes, a casualty from the hospital, a woman who had died upstairs in the intensive care unit.

  I slide the body onto a shelf, write his name on the dry-erase board, and shut the heavy insulated door. The odor, as tenacious as an annoying child, follows me into the adjoining room.

  From the roll on the wall, I rip a plastic sheet to replenish my supply. On it I place the burgundy cot cover and snap the buckles. Ready for the next customer.

  When I arrive at the office, I set to work on the mundane task of inventorying the dead man’s property, which consists of a set of keys, a cell phone, and a thick black wallet that has, unfortunately, taken on the same putrid funk as the body itself. The wallet is stuffed with ragged little notes of little value, an identification card, and a few gift cards from Christmases past. There is no cash, and nothing leads me any closer to finding this person’s next of kin.

  I open the flip phone, nearly out of battery, and discover that the last call was on Christmas, a month prior, in which the decedent had placed a call to “Sisto.” I imagined a sma
ll boy, unable to yet pronounce his “r’s,” referring to his older sibling as such. It humanized him really, made him more than a smelly and inconvenient lump I had to dispose of. He had a family, a childhood, and surely never meant to end up the way he did.

  This “Sisto” was likely to be the man’s nearest next of kin, but my satisfaction at finding what was likely to lead me closer to closing the case was tempered by the trepidation always inherent in a death notification. As I had so many times, I was about to drop the worst news on an unsuspecting person.

  I rehearsed my lines, found a scrap of paper to scribble notes on, opened my own phone, took a deep breath, and dialed…

  The phone rang several times. I hoped a message would come on and I would be “off the hook” for the evening. Tomorrow, the duty investigator would get to “drop the bomb.” But then, a voice.

  “Hello?”

  “My name is Matthew and I work for the County.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know Scott Warner?”

  “Yes, he’s my brother.”

  Deep breath. “I am afraid I have some very bad news. Scott was found dead.”

  A brief pause. “What happened?”

  “It’s likely he died as a result of his alcohol problems.”

  A longer pause and a sigh. “Well, what should I do now?”

  I explain the need for his physician to sign a death certificate and for her to choose a funeral home. I brief her on the contents of his apartment and the few belongings I am securing at the office. She agrees to pick them up the following week.

  “I always knew this day would come,” she says. “He struggled for so long.”

  I imagined a day in late December, maybe Christmas day, when Scott, feeling ill perhaps, took to his bed. Since he didn’t appear to be tucked in for the night, maybe he thought he would just rest a while until the unpleasant feeling passed. Eventually the processes that had been eroding his body for so long reached their conclusion and his heart shuddered to a stop.