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Mmm, Mmm, Good
Ford adjusted the mask on his face and stepped out of the darkness. The sword at his hip swung just enough to tap his leg, reminding him that, come whatever danger, he was armed. He pulled his cape over one arm and stepped into the room. It was empty.
Suddenly, a pair of hands snaked up the sides of his face and pulled at the mask. He turned around, producing his rapier and pointing it at his attacker. It was Lorna. She was dressed in a bodice and long, flowing dress. Her hair was pulled up in a loose bun.
"Please, monsieur," she said, with a French accent. "I must know who zis brave man is who zaved our lives!"
"I cannot," Ford said, turning to go.
"Please!" she called. Ford turned to look at her. She put her chin on her right shoulder and looked up at him through her mascara-thickened lashes. "I would be, how you say, grateful?"
"These demmed women," Ford muttered. "Very well."
"You!" Lorna gasped as Ford removed the mask. "Monsieur Percy! You are ze Zcarlet Pimpernel?"
"Yes, m'lady." Ford said.
"Please," Lorna said, pushing him backwards onto the table. "Allow me to show you how... indebted... I am to you for zaving my family."
She ruffled the bunch of lace at Ford's throat and he fought her weakly. However, his resistance was soon overcome and in moments she had the shirt open. She slid her hands around his sides and up his back, forcing a kiss over his mouth to stifle his protests. When he'd quieted, she started kissing his neck, then his chest. Ford tilted his head back as her kisses reached his navel and she tugged loose his belt.
Suddenly, a sporadic beeping pulled him back to reality.
"Dammit!" Ford shouted as Lorna stood up. "Is that me or you?"
Lorna walked over to the couch and fished inside her purse. She pulled out a beeper and, with the push of a button, squelched the beeping.
"It's me," she said.
"Do we have time to..."
"No," she said, cutting him off.
"Damn," Ford cursed. "I guess we'll just have to continue this later."
"Can't tonight," Lorna said. "I have to prepare my testimony for court tomorrow."
"Damn football players. Why can't they keep from killing people?"
"That's a question you'd have to ask Romeo Armstrong," Lorna said, slipping into a pair of jeans. "I'll be in the lab most of the night. Give me a call tomorrow and we'll have breakfast."
"What have we got, Mike?" is what Lorna started to say. She got as far as "we" before coughing and covering her face with her hand to fight off the smell.
The apartment they were working in was barely large enough to contain the CSU as they buzzed about, performing their various tasks. Dennis Arashito, the CSU photographer, stood in the doorway of the bathroom taking line-of-approach photographs. He stood aside to let Lorna through.
"This is a bad one," he said, smiling. "Good luck."
"First," Mike Webber said, coming out of the bathroom. "Have you eaten?"
"Not yet," Lorna replied.
"Good," Webber smiled. "Secondly, sorry for paging you, but when you see what we have to work with you'll know why I wanted you to supervise."
Lorna nodded and took a breath to steady her nerves. She'd worked around dead people for years, having started as a funeral home makeup artist, so she was inured to death. However, there were times she encountered more disturbing scenes to which she had yet to grow accustomed. Webber smiled and handed her a bottle of Vic's Vapor Rub. Lorna dabbed a little under her nose and entered the bathroom.
The body in the bathtub was several days old, at least, and had absorbed a good amount of the water, giving it a bloated, overweight look. The remaining water was soupy-yellow, and a matching coloration stained the sides of the tub an inch or two above the water. The eyes, mouth, and nose were worn away, with small, fattish yellow worms crawling around. There was a matching cluster of maggots on the wrist of the right hand, which was dangling over the side of the tub.
"Looks like a suicide," Lorna said.
"That's what we thought," Webber agreed.
"Too much like a suicide," Lorna continued. "Did you find the knife?"
"Not yet. We think it might be in the water."
"I'm betting you won't find one," Lorna said, kneeling down next to the tub. "The skin is bruised around the neck. Get the glue gun and check for latents."
"Right," Webber said. He turned and whispered something to another officer, who nodded and walked off.
Lorna grabbed a plastic jar and started scraping maggots off of the wrist into it.
"Second instar," Lorna said. Webber nodded.
"At least two days," he replied.
"Was the window open when you got here?" she asked. Webber nodded again. "Well, that narrows down our time of death. Can you get me a glass and some water to boil these maggots? I want chem to check them for the usual."
"Hey, watch where you point that thing," she heard someone call.
"Oh, no," Lorna said.
"What's that smell?" Ford said, poking his head into the bathroom. "Yeesh. You gotta wonder what condition the other apartments are in if they didn't notice this smell."
"Chris," Lorna said. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm here to help," Ford replied. "And you can count on me to do my part."
"You don't have a part," she said.
"See? I'm done already."
"Did you need something?" She asked. "Or did you just get lonely?"
"I brought you coffee," Ford said. He pulled his hand out from behind his back and held it out toward her. When he saw that it was empty, he turned around and looked behind him, then looked inside his jacket.
"Which," he added. "I left in the car with Jake. Ooh! A telescope!"
Lorna shook her head as Ford walked off to scan the neighborhood. In a moment, the officer returned with the glue gun and they set it up so that it could begin heating the glue pan. Lorna hated the glue gun because it left the whole area smelling of glue fumes, quite nasty in a small place such as this. However, using glue fumes was the best way to detect fingerprints on a human body.
"Hey," Ford called. "Somebody's dragging a body of a car trunk and carrying it into that warehouse! I'm going to go check it out."
Mike Webber laughed as he disappeared down the hallway.
"He's a handful."
"Like having my own two year-old," Lorna said.
In a few minutes, the pan was hot enough to turn the glue to a gas and Lorna donned a mask. The long, plastic hose that extended from the pan was tipped with what looked like the end of a vacuum cleaner attachment. From the end came the glue fumes that would adhere to the body oils left by the fingerprints, if there were any.
After a few moments of spraying around the neck of the corpse, Lorna felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked up to see Mike Webber.
"Hey," he said. "Chris said he was going to check out that warehouse down the street, right?"
Lorna nodded.
"Cause it's on fire."
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