A decomposing corpse, flesh in varying shades of blue, brown and green.
The skull cracked open, the brain gone.

A fist crashed in the middle of the photograph, lying on what - for lack
of a better word - should be called a desk.

"Yes, I want you to do an autopsy on her!"

An unintelligible reply followed.

"Don't give me that crap! you're the one who called it a suspicious
death, remember?"

More telephone whispers.

"I don't know! That's why they pay you necrophiles those top salaries!"

Mumble, mumble, mumble.

"Yeah, and the same to your mother, fuckbrain! Now do the autopsy or the
next case on your slab will be you!"

Very agitated mumbling.

"That's 'Marbleux', you asshole! Just 'cuz you've been named after the
box they found you in, doesn't mean ... Hello? Hello? oh, screw him!"

The phone was thrown back on the hook with enough force to disintegrate
it, a fate it miraculously escaped - again.

Three bodies, all killed around the same time, all teenagers without any
family - at least one that cared. All showed similar mutilations: gaping
wounds in the chest, missing sexual organs, heads smashed open and
emptied. Just my luck, Marbleux thought, a whodunnit. Other detectives get
wives disemboweling their husbands, I get a fucking cult killer!

Still, there was something odd... He couldn't quite pin down what it was
that bugged him; Maybe the missing limbs: he found it unlikely that rats
would have eaten it all and there was no evidence of wild dogs or cats on
the scene. Or perhaps it was how the bodies were lying: He hadn't been
able to find a single defensive wound on them, they seemed to have just -
accepted their fates.

Marbles hated whodunnits. And he hated his nickname. He would have hated
it even more if he had known that his problems hadn't even started yet...