Free The Border: Part One by Amy Cross

more wounds,” Jane said, pointing down toward Mel’s waist, where the dead woman’s shirt had been sliced in multiple places and was now stained with blood that had already begun to dry in some places, and was glisteningly moist in others. “Jesus, it looks like she’s been stabbed ten, maybe fifteen times. There’s -”
    Before she could finish, Alex grabbed her arm and pulled her back, before letting the bin’s lid fall shut.
    “Let’s leave the examination to the professionals,” he told her.
    She tried to pull the lid open again. “I think I saw -”
    “Jane!” Holding the lid firmly shut, he pushed her away. “I’m serious, we can’t risk contaminating the scene.”
    “I just want to look,” she told him. “I think her -”
    “Our job is to secure the area,” he continued, “and get Tomlin here to take a preliminary look before he takes her for an autopsy.. I don’t want anyone looking at her right now, it’s not right.”
    “I think her heart -”
    “Jesus, Jane -”
    “I think her heart is missing!”
    She paused, before pulling the lid back open and looking inside. Peering closer, she saw a ragged hole in the dead woman’s chest, with several broken ribs poking out.
    “It is,” she said finally, feeling a cold shiver pass through her body. “Her heart’s been taken.”
    “Jesus,” Alex muttered, turning and taking a few paces away.
    “Boss, you know what -”
    “Alright, alright.”
    “But if -”
    “I know,” he said firmly. “I know, okay? You don’t need to say it.”
    She paused, before slowly lowering the lid and turning to him. “We need to get photos,” she said after a moment. “We need to get lots of photos of the scene.”
    With his back to her, he nodded.
    “And we need to get Tomlin here right away,” she added, her voice trembling a little. “We need to… Crap, we need to, we need to…”
    “I know,” he said again.
    They stood in silence for a moment.
    “So I’ll go and get some tape and a camera,” she continued. She waited for a reply, but none was forthcoming. “Boss?”
    “Yeah,” he replied, sounding as if he was close to breaking down. “Do that.”
    “Okay.” She paused again. “Are you… Are you okay?”
    Still with his back to her, he nodded.
    “I’ll be back soon, she continued. “I promise.” Turning, she headed back around the building, before stopping and glancing at Alex again. He’d already walked away from the bin, and she could tell he was struggling with what he’d seen. After a moment, she made her way back around to where Greg was being comforted by some of the people who’d stopped.
    “Is it true?” Margaret asked, with tears in her eyes.
    Jane paused for a moment. “Yeah,” she said finally. “It’s true.”

VI
     
    “That’s not what happened,” Stuart said, sitting on the fertilizer box as he watched Oliver and Lucy playing in the sand. “You two are such children sometimes.”
    “You don’t know anything,” Oliver replied.
    “I overheard Mum and Dad talking,” Stuart told him, “so yeah, actually, I do know what happened, dip-shit.” He paused, with a smug grin on his face. “I heard them describing everything that had been done to the woman in the bin. Mum saw it all in, like, total detail, and she was telling Dad all about it.”
    “Liar,” Oliver muttered, looking back down at his half-buried toys.
    “What happened to her?” Lucy asked.
    “You’re too young to know,” Stuart told her.
    “I am not ,” Lucy replied, setting her doll down. “I’m old enough. What happened?”
    “You’re still a baby,” he pointed out. “You have to be a certain age to know things like this, otherwise you’ll be traumatized.”
    “What does traumatized mean?” she asked.
    “It means upset,” Stuart replied. “It means really, really upset. The kind of upset you never get over. Like, you know Joe O’Brien? You know how everyone always says he’s upset about something that happened years