There was a little bit of cold chicken in a
bag and some old bread around the second big bin. The trick was to clean it all
real good, being careful none of the filth of the rest of the thing inside the
containers could harm the good things that were waiting for anyone to grab. Viv
had been doing I for five years and now she knew how to look for the best in
the best parts of town. Of course, she had to go at night, but not loo late or
the guys of the garbage trucks would throw it all away.
One day, she was even lucky enough to find
half a pizza. And I was very good, made out of a lot of vegetables. The only
bad thing was that it was cold but to that she was already used to and she
didn’t care at all. In other places it was very hard to get any of that but
that neighborhood, called Spring Heights, had the best meals for any person
that happened to live on the streets. The problem was the security crews and
the police who loved to fuck anyone who entered those communities.
Every time Viv was caught there, she reminded
the police that she wasn’t doing anything wrong and that no one could get
harmed by her feeding herself with things no one even wanted anymore. It wasn’t
like she grabbed clothes or real expensive things from he garbage. She could’ve
but people in that area seemed to be very careful not to throw away things that
were very valuable, except when it was about food. Then they didn’t care at all
about the treasures that they gave away.
One day she was even able to eat three sushi
rolls. Viv was scared about that food because she knew it was raw fish and
that, if old, she may have been in for some serious stomachache, but nothing
happened and she realized how overrated that kind of food was.
But her moment happened the day she found
something very different in the garbage. She had managed to avoid the private
security, again, and was checking on some boxes by a big house on the hill,
when she was almost paralyzed with fear. When she took out a plastic bag filled
with lots of crap, there was something in there she knew wasn’t very common to
see in the trash: it was a human ear.
It was the first time Viv ran to the police.
At first, they didn’t want to talk to her because they knew her really well but
after some serious consideration, they heard what she had to say. The
consideration was basically when she three the bag with the ear on the chief of
police’s desk and was almost tackled to the ground by two male officers. Her
move had been very bold but effective, as the police sent several of their own
to check the rest of the boxes she had been going through.
They found the other ear and also a couple of
fingers. When they rang the bell at the mansion the bins belonged to, they
didn’t get any answer. The cops seriously had no interest in talking to anyone
in that house but it was a formality that they had to proceed with. The house
was better known as Montecarlo, the preferred mansion in the city of one of the
richest men alive. Or maybe it was fairer to say he was barely alive, as he
neared ninety years old. That and his unlimited power were the reasons cops
didn’t really want to bother him.
But in any case, no one answered the door.
They tried multiple times for months and no one answered. Even when contacted
through the main offices of the conglomerate the man was president of, no one
would say a thing. It was very uncommon and mysterious but also predictable as
no well known person would even think about being caught in a scandal such as
that one that not only involved body parts found in the trash, but also a
homeless woman and the police.
The ears were sent to a laboratory for exams
and the results were very interesting: apparently, they had been removed fairly
recently, not even a month ago. The studies also said the owner of those ears
was probably younger than forty years old but older than twenty-five years old,
according to the cartilage and general shape of them. They also concluded that
the ears had been sawed from the body they had been attached to, which
indicated the police that they may have been dealing with the case in the wrong
way.
Those techniques to remove body parts were
primarily used by men in the mob or in any other organizations that dedicated
themselves to using violent methods. The cops went through every single mobster
they had arrested recently in order to get a confession that they had done it
but none of them seemed to understand what he was talking about. They were even
so bold to say they hadn’t done that in a while.
But how to believe a mobster when he was arrested
for reckless driving and attempted murder of their own wife? Others had even
had their closest enemies killed and had no problem at all talking about it.
But they’d rather be damned than accept they had cut off those ears. They
didn’t insisted on the subject but most of them were consistently positive they
had nothing to do with it.
That was not good news for the police that had
been investigating for more than six months and nothing had come up: the
mobsters said they weren’t the ones, the owner of the bins was a no show and
even Viv had stopped helping them because she thought the police was only good
for taking her away of all the street’s great prizes.
Almost a year would pass until another body
part was found in a garbage bin; very close to the ones that Viv ad been going
threw. The foot was from a male body and it wasn’t especially big. The
scientists at the police were able to confirm with a high degree of certainty
that the foot and the ears came from the same person. The police couldn’t ignore
this anymore, so they ordered a sweep of every trashcan in the hill. Groups of
people would go through every single garbage container in order to look for the
rest of the body.
The cops were smart enough to get Viv to help
them, as she was the one that knew perfectly about every single spot to throw
food and possibly body parts. They started on the bottom of the hill and worked
their way up. They didn’t find anything near the first houses but as time
passed, other parts were discovered: a nose, a finger, and a toe. They kept
appearing as the police worked their way up to the top of the hill, where the
wealthiest people lived.
Of course, the whole thing was an epic scandal
and many rich people thought the police should stop targeting their neighborhood
as if they were the ones to blame for whatever had happened. They insisted no
one from the hill would even think about killing, simply because they were all
so rich they didn’t need to do it. Their reasoning was easy to understand but
simply not good enough.
After several weeks of research, they had
collected enough body parts to do a proper examination and attempt to
reconstruct the whole person or at least what was his or hers most likely
appearance. When Viv found a penis by a fence, they knew it was a male. All the
parts were dry some that’s why blood testing was impossible and only
reconstruction of the whole body was the only real solution to the problem.
Searches on the garbage bins ended soon and
the police dedicated themselves for a week to reconstructing the body, part by
part. There were still some large parts missing but most small pieces were
there. It was one of the female cops that dropped her coffee when she entered
the room to deliver a letter to the chief of the scientific staff. She knew
whom the body had belonged to.
This time, they didn’t ask to be invited in.
The doors of the mansion were toppled down and every corner of the premises searched.
The head was found on a pike, in the living room, by the fireplace. Someone
really hated the richest man in the city, to the point of killing him in his
own house and dividing his body all over the hill. Who had done it?
