Tess blinked as Marlene reacted to the news that the body had been there three days. With the gun in her coat angled once again to the agent, she listened as it read off the crime coefficient. Higher than before, but still surprisingly low. Tess could only assume that was one of the reasons that she had been selected for the police academy. They needed people whose crime coefficients would not be thrown by the crimes of the city. Back when the sibyl system had first been released, the number of officers who would get sky high crime coefficients in crime scenes had been much greater than anticipated. In the past fifty years work had been done to test new recruits, to ensure that their crime coefficient would not go beyond action level. Still, the agent before her was still new, too squeamish to even go near the body, and too naïve to know that crime in the past hundred years had changed, and it had gotten worse.<br/><br/>The glare she received was given a look of indifference in response. It was hard to tell if the glare coupled with the thanks made it sarcastic, or if the woman was genuine. She also wondered if the woman was so egotistical to think that she was good at her job when she couldn’t even go near a body. Exams and simulations were one thing, a real body was another problem entirely. Marlene would learn that soon enough, and once she learnt that she would start to improve, to see the world as a real detective.<br/><br/>“Yes, from what I can tell, all of the victims so far were alive when they were dismembered. There were traces of Propofol in what little blood I could get from the body. It’s a paralytic that was once used in surgery. Either the dismemberment was done quickly, or the killer found some way to keep the victim breathing, a ventilator perhaps. There was no sedative, so the victim could feel everything.” Tess held the cigarette between her lips as she lifted her wrist to check the information she’d gotten from the blood report. “Resin was simple epoxy. It’s not illegal, and it’s widely used, even in large quantities. People still use it on furniture and floors so you may get a long list.”<br/><br/>As soon as Marlene turned away Tess heard nothing, she couldn’t read lips that were turned away from her. It wasn’t hard to tell what had freaked the detective out however. Tess had known since the moment she had stepped out of the car that another girl had already been taken. Tess hated working for the police, hated how she had no control over her crime coefficient, fondly known as a psychopass, but she wasn’t going to let coldblooded murder take place. Rather than wait for Marlene, she knelt down beside the last few body parts, using the glove that a robot provided to turn the leg this way and that. After a minute she stood and let the removal team take the body, backing away as she thought. She turned as the sky flashed, looking beyond the hologram as it flickered. A tall figure with dark hair caught her eye, but then the hologram reappeared and her view was blocked. She was still looking at the spot in the hologram where she had seen the figure, barely noticing the drops of rain as they fell on her. Her attention was gained by the reappearance of Marlene, whose police uniform was beginning to darken from the rain. She turned to follow the detective, and despite the hologram, she turned her head back to stare at the same spot for a moment before walking over to the car. She finished her cigarette and stubbed it out on the bin as she passed, tossing it in and then sliding into the car. She wasn’t surprised to see the shield up, Sybil would hardly take any chances with someone labelled as unpredictable. She only shrugged at the apology and sat back, putting her feet up on the dash and closing her eyes for a moment before she realised that Marlene had been speaking. She caught the end of the question and let her eye close again.<br/><br/>“Apart from being caught by a serial killer? No, not really, but then I have hardly analysed everything about them before they were taken. The bodies are similar, it’s clear the killer is working on his craft.  This one was the neatest. The bodies so far have been positioned with flowers, and they’ve all had dark hair and eyes, some artificial, but all done antemortem so it’s difficult to know if it was the killer or not. They could be telling us something but dark hair and eyes are hardly uncommon, in fact it could be the most common combination.” Her eyes opened and she stared out of the front window. “The cuts are surgical, and the amount of experience needed to keep the victim alive with a paralytic points to someone with medical experience. I also noticed the first touches of frostbite on the leg. Either the body was stored somewhere cold, or they were killed somewhere cold. That’s all I can be sure about until I do more research.”