This time around, four of the remaining nine guests had opted to investigate the morgue. It wasn’t as if they were all suddenly desensitized to the idea of seeing a real dead body up close, or suddenly thirsted at the very idea of gore. More so it was because the winner of the last crime, Charlene, had chosen the morgue. It was a logical guide for their decisions, if nothing else, to play follow the leader.
Gary, Kyle, Cliff, and Charlene were escorted to the mansion’s makeshift morgue. Whitney had chosen the last known whereabouts this time, which had surprised most of the guests. It just seemed like an odd choice to depart from what had worked so well for her the first time.
But nonetheless, that really didn’t matter to the four guests who had picked the morgue this time around once they were in the small room and staring at a pale, well-built body covered in deep gashes, some so severe that glimpses of white bone could be seen at their widest points.
“Is that glass?” Charlene asked.
When Gary had finally pulled off the white sheet covering Aaron’s body, right away they’d noticed something slightly unnatural about the corpse. Not that any of them were all that familiar with what a natural corpse looked like, but nonetheless, they knew that most dead bodies didn’t have shards of glass sticking out of it like a pincushion.
“I think it is,” Cliff said, reaching out and touching the sharp point of a chunk sticking out of Aaron’s left pectoral muscle.
It looked like that particular glass shard ran all the way through his ribs and into his heart. At least he likely hadn’t suffered long.
“This is so messed up,” Kyle said, averting his eyes and covering his mouth.
“You really had nothing to do with this, did you?” Cliff said.
Kyle shook his head, still not able to look up or look anywhere near the body at all. Charlene and Gary were less convinced of the authenticity of Kyle’s reaction, but ultimately, at that point, they both realized it didn’t really matter. Gary especially had reached the conclusion that he’d likely never be able to figure out who the killer was before the killer was ready to reveal themself on purpose. And, as such, all of his efforts and energy would be better spent trying to solve the murders. To play the game. He certainly wasn’t above cheating, but cheating wasn’t always the right answer. It wasn’t always the best way to win. Sometimes playing by the rules was the only way to win.
“Let’s just focus on the task at hand,” Gary said. “So clearly he was cut up pretty badly by glass. But what else should we be looking for? Do any of you know how to do an autopsy or anything?”
Nobody answered him.
“Let’s just look at the body closer,” Cliff said. “As a chef who’s butchered a number of animals, I should be able to tell if anything is out of place. I mean, I’ve heard that pig and human anatomy aren’t all that far off.”
The four of them examined Aaron’s body as carefully as they could. They were tentative at first, in part because, medically, they had no idea what they were doing. And also the reality was that they were three males and an older lady inspecting the body of a well-constructed fourth male. But as they worked, they each began to view Aaron more as a dead body and less as a former human being, which made it slightly easier by the end.
Nonetheless, they found little else beside the deep gashes and shards of glass still embedded in the body. Toward the end of their time, Cliff finally noticed one other item of significance.
“Look at his hands and wrists,” he said. “I think they’re broken.”
He lifted one of Aaron’s arms off the metal table and wriggled the limp wrist around. It flopped like a dying fish on a line.
“Ugh,” Charlene said, turning away.
Kyle could only manage a few glimpses himself. It was a lot harder to become desensitized to a hacked-up human body than he’d expected. After nearly half an hour inside the morgue, he still couldn’t look at Aaron’s corpse for any longer than a few seconds at a time.
But even as little as the four of them could actually look at the body, they all did see that several of his fingers and both wrists were likely broken. Even as rigor mortis began to set in, and they became less mobile, the wrists were still fairly obviously crooked, bent in a most unnatural sort of way.
What exactly that meant was something they’d have to debate or speculate on their own, because the conch sounded through the intercom system a short time later, ending their investigation and any ensuing discussions.