The Body Farm
The Body Farm
By
Clayton J. Gibbs
“You will all get equal training from this exercise,” Headmaster Currin explained to the eight FBI cadets sitting neatly in a circle by the edge of the woods. “You’ll have an hour to find the bodies in the woods, figure out how they were murdered and make your sketches. I will break you up in pairs. Stay with your partner and keep close to the opening out here.”
The cadets rose to their feet, were assigned their pairing and entered the dark woods, with flashlights creating cones of misty light. The November chill was brisk and harsh on their lungs, but might help them to detect their bodies by smell alone. God knows that the bodies at the Buffalo Body Farm forensic training facility were most definitely not fresh and had been decomposing in the elements for several months, some, several years.
“This reminds me of a game we played when I was a kid,” John Evans told his partner Marie Gardner. “It was called ‘Ghouls in the Graveyard.’ The ‘ghouls’ went out and hid and you had to go find them. When you did find them, they chased you back to base,” he further explained. Marie shuddered.
“Let’s hope that’s not the case here,” she said and laughed. “I’d hate to see a mostly rotten cadaver get up and chase us.” John chuckled and they both headed along an eastern ridge, their flashlights bobbing ahead, creating spider-webs of black shadows through the old and dying black elms.
John and Marie were both equally glad to have each other for partners. They were both top students in the FBI academy and so far the academy had been extremely unforgiving. This particular exercise would test their forensic skills and get them into their last week of training.
“I see it!” John exclaimed running ahead. Marie followed, squinting to catch a glimpse. Sure enough, there beyond the threshold of her dimming LED light was what appeared to be the heel of a shoe. The body lay, facing away from them, face-down. They both approached, and then hovered above the body, each on one side. Rubber gloves snapped on as the flashlights were held in their teeth, the light showcasing what appeared to be a fairly decomposed corpse.
“Appears to be a male, mid-twenties, dark slacks, blue windbreaker, brown hair which is mostly gone,” Marie spoke into a tape recorder. “There is a small hole in the lower back, possibly a ballistic entry wound.” John removed a leather billfold which was protruding from the rear right pocket of the corpse. Before he could open it, Marie began instructing him.
“Turn the body over so we can get a look at the wound from the other side,” she told him. He nodded and they both turned the body from John’s side. It was lighter than expected, but the frost had tried to keep it glued to the ground. When rolled over to the face up side, they both noticed leaves had stuck to the body in several places. They also noticed the windbreaker had three letters over the left breast pocket. They were: FBI.
“What?” Marie exclaimed, wiping leaves off of the lettering. Below it was a single word: Cadet. John began leafing through the billfold.
“Henry David Kissinger, FBI student, 2003,” he read after discarding several other business cards.
“This has got to be a joke,” Marie reflected. “Why would they use a student?”
“Because,” a low voice said from behind them. John and Marie trained their lights on Headmaster Currin, who was stepping into their clearing, his own light bright in their faces. “Bodies are so hard to come by.” And into the night rang two dry shots, not long after followed by six more, just as dawn was giving light to the eastern edge of the Buffalo Body Farm forensic training facility.
